VMware has released a paper titled: “VMware Horizon View Large-Scale Reference Architecture“. The paper which contains 30 pages details a reference architecture based on real-world test scenarios, user workloads and infrastructure system configurations. The RA uses the VCE Vblock Specialized System for Extreme Applications, composed of Cisco UCS server blades and EMC XtremIO flash storage, to support a 7,000-user VMware Horizon View 5.2 deployment. Benchmarking was done using the Login VSI Max benchmarking suite.
Year: 2013
VMware acquires Desktone
VMware has announced that it acquired Desktop as a Service (DaaS) platform provider Desktone. Desktone, which was founded in 2007 and is based in Boston, MA provides the DaaS platform for service providers and telecommunication companies.
The Desktone Platform can deliver three seperate types of hosted virtual desktop to end users:
VMware hints on VMworld Europe announcements
Each year at VMworld VMware announces new or updated products. This year we saw at VMworld US the announcement of many new releases like vSphere 5.5 and the public beta of Virtual SAN.
VMware saves some of the new announcements for VMworld Europe. The European edition of one of worlds largest IT-events is to be held in Barcelona, Spain October 15-17.
While VMware is always very secret about new releases (even about the version number) the content of breakout sessions give a clue.
This blogposting published by VMware gives some clues on new announcements. Many sessions on vCenter Operations.
- Oct 15 Tue 11am, VCM5539 – The Missing Link: Storage Visibility In Virtualized Environments
- Oct 16 Wed 2pm, VCM4992 – Tips and Tricks for Capacity Risk Assessment, Rightsizing and Planning
- Oct 16 Wed 2pm, VCM5811 – How to Manage vSphere and Hybrid Cloud with vCenter Operations Management
- Oct 16 Wed 3pm, VCM5008 – vCenter Operations and the Quest for the Missing Metrics
- Oct 16 Wed 3:30pm, VCM5100 – How to Customize Your vCenter Operations Management Deployment for Your Specific Business Needs
- Oct 16 Wed 5pm, VCM5009 – Practical Real World Reporting with vCenter Operations
- Oct 17 Thu 9am, VCM4952 – Practicing What We Preach: VMware IT on vCenter Operations Management Suite and vCloud Automation Center
- Oct 17 Thu 12pm & 3pm, VCM5169 – How to troubleshoot VM performance issues across applications, infrastructure and storage using vCenter Operations Management(Live Demonstration!)
- Oct 17 Thu 1:30pm, VCM4981 – How to Identify if Your vSphere Environment is Configured to Meet Your Internal IT Standards
- Oct 17 Thu 1:30pm, VCM5781 – What’s New and What’s Next in vCenter Operations: A Tech Preview
Oracle Linux fully supported to run on VMware ESXi and Hyper-V
Oracle made a big step forward by officially supporting running Oracle Linux on both VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. Per October 9 2013 Oracle has certified both for Joint Support.
There has been many discussions about supporting Oracle software running on hypervisors. Those discussions are on licensing as well as on technical support. Oracle cannot being accused of being very transparent in their licensing policies. When an Oracle Director was very clear about licensing during a taped interview at VMworld 2012, the video was removed from the VMworld TV site within a few hours after publication. Guess who ordered the removal.
VMware releases Horizon Workspace Manager 1.5.1
At October 10 VMware released version 1.5.1 of Horizon Workspace Manager. This is a minor update to 1.5.0.
New in this release are updated VMware Horizon Workspace Client for Macintosh & Windows.
Download here.
Horizon Workspace Manager enables mobile devices and mobile users to access corporate data and applications. It can be seen as a broker. For accessing data it can be seen as the Dropbox for the Enterprise.
While Dropbox does not allow control by the IT-department, Horizon Workspace Manager does. Policies can be set to define who is able to access what data, set quotas, define who can view what filetypes and much more.
Paper: Microsoft Desktop Hosting Reference Architecture Guides
Microsoft has released two papers related to Desktop Hosting. The first is called: "Desktop Hosting Reference Architecture Guide" and the second is called: "Windows Azure Desktop Hosting Reference Architecture Guide". Both documents provide a blueprint for creating secure, scalable, multi-tenant desktop hosting solutions using Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager or using Windows Azure Infrastructure Services.
The documents are targeted to hosting providers which deliver desktop hosting via the Microsoft Service Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA). Desktop hosting in this case is based on Windows Server with the Windows Desktop Experience feature enabled, and not Microsoft’s client Operating Systems like Windows 7 or Windows 8.
For some reason, Microsoft still doesn’t want service providers to provide Desktops as a Service (DaaS) running on top of a Microsoft Client OS, as outlined in the "Decoding Microsoft’s VDI Licensing Arcanum" paper which virtualization.info covered in September this year.
Book: Citrix Virtual Desktop Handbook XenDesktop 7
Citrix has updated its Virtual Desktop Handbook to include XenDesktop 7, StoreFront 2.0 and XenServer 6.2. The book, which contains 141 pages is an architect’s guide to desktop virtualization. It provides readers with the methodology, experience and best practices they need to successfully design their own desktop virtualization solution.
In this release of the handbook the following sections are updated:
Paper: Deploying Extremely Latency-Sensitive Applications in VMware vSphere 5.5
VMware has released a paper titled:"Deploying Extremely Latency-Sensitive Applications in VMware vSphere 5.5". The Paper which contains 17 pages provides details about a new per-VM feature introduced in vSphere 5.5. called Latency Sensitivity.
Latency Sensitivity allows virtual machines to exclusively own physical cores, thus avoiding overhead related to CPU scheduling and contention. Combined with a pass-through functionality, which bypasses the network virtualization layer, applications can achieve near-native performance in both response time and jitter.
VMware vSphere 5.5 Hardening Guide beta released
VMware released a beta of the VMware vSphere 5.5 hardening guide. The Excel sheet is full with recommended settings which improve security of vSphere components. The document covers the following components:
- Virtual Machines
- ESXi hosts
- Virtual Network
- vCenter Server plus its database and clients.
- vCenter Web Client
- vCenter SSO Server
- vCenter Virtual Appliance (VCSA) specific guidance
- vCenter Update Manager
Veeam announces System Center Operations Manager Management Pack for VMware 6.5 – UPDATED
Veaam today releasedannounced version 6.5 of its Management Pack for VMware which can be used within Microsofts monitoring tool: System Center Operations Manager (SCOM). This release is the follow up of version 6.0 which was released in April this year.
New in this version is the ability to monitor the Veaam Backup & Replication backup infrastructure including proxy servers, repository servers, WAN accelerators, backup jobs running on backup servers, and more.