virtualization.info Editors

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.

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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:

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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.

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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

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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.

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Server virtualization is a great way to improve server utilization & availability, speed up provisioning of servers etc. However there is a risk of not being in control of the IT-infrastructure. Too many virtual servers to handle because of server sprawl leads to jumping from issue to issue. IT departments becoming reactive instead of proactive.

There are quite a few software vendors active in the space of operations management helping IT to keep their infrastructure healthy.
CloudPhysics is one of those. It is a young company founded by a former VMware employee. CloudPhysics is unique because it is cloud based. The company uses data collected from its customers datacenter to improve the intelligence of the software. The company receives a daily stream of 100+ billion samples of configuration, performance, failure and event data from the global user base. The data is then compared to best practises, do health checks and report back to the customer.

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Cormac Hogan, Senior Technical Marketing Architect for Storage at VMware, wrote a 30-page PDF document titled “Virtual SAN Design & Sizing Guide”.

The document is designed to assist customers with sizing decisions when deploying VSAN clusters. It should be used in conjunction with other official VMware collateral related to VSAN, such as the VSAN documentation from
VMware Technical Marketing and VMware Technical Publications.

The image below shows what the document covers:

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VMware has released a paper titled:”What’s new in VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN)“. The paper which contains 15 pages explains the new storage services feature in vSphere which utilizes the local disks on vSphere hosts which VMware calls Virtual SAN (VSAN). VMware introduced this experimental feature in vSphere 5.5. which was released in September this year

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Microsoft has released another free ebook about System Center usage, last month they released Designing Orchestrator Runbooks for their System Center Orchrestrator product and this time the ebook covers System Center Configuration Manager. The title of the book is: "Microsoft System Center: Configuration Manager Field Experience " and is written by by Rushi Faldu, Manish Raval, Brandon Linton, Kaushal Pandey and the System Center series editor Mitch Tulloch. It contains 81 pages.

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EMC has announced support for the Server Message Block (SMB) 3.0 as a default CIFS protocol in their VNX and VNXe product line series storage products. SMB is developed by Microsoft and version 3.0 was introduced with the release of Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. The protocol is used to access file shares over the network capable of providing increased performance, scalability, and continuous availability.

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