virtualization.info Editors

VMware has released the RDP VC Bridge SDK. This SDK is intended for ISVs who have applications that today run on Microsoft RDP using the RDP WTS APIs.

By simply recompiling and linking their code with the header and library files included in the SDK, ISVs can quickly enable their applications to run over the PCoIP protocol on VMware Horizon View.

One of the use cases for this SDK is in healthcare. In hospitals ECG and bloodpressure devices are used to monitor the health of patients. These devices can be attached to a laptop next to the bed. Software on the laptop can be used to monitor things like heartbeat. For a central monitoring in a hospital control room the software can be installed on a Microsoft Remote Desktop Services server or a Citrix XenApp server. The protocol must devices support are ICA and RDP.

To be able to use PCoIP to use the healthcare software remotely the VMware RDPVCBridge comes in handy.

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Helge Klein, which we know from tools such as SetACL, SetACL studio and Delprof2 has released a Splunk agent for Windows called the uberAgent for Splunk. The agent is capable of monitoring user experience and system performance.

The agent provides the following functionality:

• Process Startup
• System Boot Performance
• Logon Time Monitoring
• Application Usage Metering
• Browser Performance – Per Website
• Automatic Application Identification

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In June this year Microsoft released the betas for App-V 5.0 SP2 and UE-V 2.0. Both products are now released within the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2013 R2, which is available for Microsoft Customers with Software Assurance. This version of MDOP adds support for Windows 8.1 and the virtualization of Office 2013.

The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack contains the following technologies:

• User Experience Virtualization (UE-V)
• Application Virtualization (App-V)
• Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V)
• Microsoft Bitlocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM)
• Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM)
• Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit (DaRT)

In the 2013 R2 version of MDOP the following products have been updated:

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Log Insight is VMware’s product for log management and analysis, introduced in June and quickly updated in the following months in order to be competitive on this market that sees Splunk among its leaders.

This week VMware released a video (thanks to Eric Sloof for reporting), through VMware Learning YouTube channel, where Manuel Duron does a quick demo showing the key capabilities of the product and explains its key benefits.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3bBxH_fdQk[/youtube]

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Citrix has released a Technical Preview of a new connector for XenDesktop. This connector will enable customers to use System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) to deploy application to a XenDesktop Server OS Farm ensuring that if you are using PVS or MCS for provisioning that clones do not get caught in install/reboot issues and that the master VM of the PVS/MCS catalog get correctly updated. The connector does not support XenDesktop Client OS scenario’s (VDI).

Once the application is deployed ConfigMgr can then be used to publish the application in Citrix StoreFront where it can be selected for use by users on any device that has Receiver installed (iPad, Android, Mac, PC, Windows Phone etc). Its also possible to selectively deploy an applications as an App-V, MSI OR XenDesktop Published Application to Managed PCs

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In august this year, VMware announced the first public beta of Virtual SAN. Today VMware announced a new version of the beta being available. Virtual SAN is a software-defined storage tier embedded directly within vSphere 5.5 hypervisor (but licensed separately) and constitutes (with NSX) one of the key components of VMware’s vision of a Software-Defined DataCenter (SDDC). Customers currently in the beta program of Virtual SAN are advised to update to this new version, which contains:

• A fix for the AHCI controller issue encountered in the beta testing
• New Ruby Virtual Console commands
• A new PowerCLI fling
• Changes to certain VSAN limits; a disk group may now contain a single SSD and up to seven HDDs so that all disk slots on a server can be utilized.

Red Hat has released version 6.5. of its Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Linux-based Operating System. The OS is released in server versions for x86, x86-64, Itanium, PowerPC and IBM System z. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 was forked from Fedora 12 and contains many backported features from Fedora 13 and 14.

New functionality includes:

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VMware today released version 5.3 of its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) product Horizon View. With this release, VMware also updated the View clients to version 2.2.

Version 3.5 was announced during VMworld Europe in October last year, together with vCloud Automation Center 6.0, vCloud Operations Management Suite 5.8, vCenter Log Insight 1.5, IT Business Management Suite 8.0 and Horizon Mirage 4.3.

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Just a week after releasing a free version of their security product for Microsoft Hyper-V called Security for Microsoft Hyper-V with built in Security and Compliance scanner, 5nine released version 3.7 of their Security Standard product. Security Standard provides an agentless anti-virus and anti-malware protection solutions for Hyper-V hosts and VMs running on top of Hyper-V. Version 3.7 adds an Active Protection feature allowing for monitoring and protecting files, virtual disks and memory of VMs and hosts in real time. For this to work an Agent, called the VM Active Protection Agent must be installed though. Customers can choose between VIPRE or Sophos as their anti-malware engines.

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Catbird is a well-known security player in the virtualization market with its vSecurity product able to proactively secure the virtual network and guest operating systems by analyzing and responding to network events and attack, and enforcing correct VM configuration automatically mapping to industry-standard compliance frameworks such PCI, HIPAA, FISMA and COBIT.

vSecurity for Microsoft Hyper-V, whose release is planned for December 2013, will support Hyper-V Server 2012, SP1 and R2 and promises the same functionalities now provided to VMware vSphere and ESX users.

The solution will be delivered with two components: a web management console, providing policy definition, visualization and workflow on a logical zone basis, called Catbird Control Center and a virtual machine appliance to be deployed for each virtual switch or hypervisor.

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