Citrix announces VDI-in-a-Box 5.3

Citrix last week announced version 5.3 of its all-in-one Virtual Desktop Infrastructure solution VDI-in-a-Box. Version 5.3 will share technologies with XenDesktop 7, which was also announced recently. Version 5.3 will provide full Windows 8 support with HDX connections, personal desktops (PVD) on Windows 8, Single Sign-On for remote users through Citrix NetScaler/Access Gateway, and a new wizard-based SSL certificate installation and management.

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Paper: Dell DVS Enterprise Reference Architecture for Dell vWorkspace 8.0

Dell has released a new paper titled: "Dell DVS Enterprise Reference Architecture for Dell vWorkspace 8.0". The paper which contains 71 pages addresses the architecture, design, configuration and implementation considerations for the key components of the architecture required to deliver virtual desktops, RD Session Host sessions or applications via Dell vWorkspace on Hyper-V 2012.

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Paper: VMware View with FlexPod – Deployment Guide

FlexPod is a CISCO Systems base data center solution built upon Cisco Unified Computing System, Cisco Nexus switches and NetApp Fabric-Attached Storage (FAS) components.

The advantage of using pre-designed and pre-validated configurations is the opportunity of reducing administrative effort maintaining a stable and compliant architecture while delivering, in this case, Windows desktops and applications.

This paper, published by VMware, describes the Flexpod reference architecture for VMware View 5.1 with the technologies above mentioned.

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Citrix boosts VDI with Nvidia GRID vGPU technology

In recent times Nvidia has been investing in the enterprise market rather than its usual HPC environments.
In March the company unveiled its NVIDIA GRID-based server solutions announcing that was working with the major virtualization vendors to offer vGPU accelerated VDI.
Last week, during Citrix Synergy in Los Angeles, Citrix finally announced the integration of NVIDIA GRID vGPU in its XenDesktop 7 solution which potentially represents a big step forward in VDI experience for the end users.
In working environments where BYOD is becoming day after day more important, benefit of full graphic acceleration independently from the device used to access enterprise applications, could advantage not only graphic intensive applications but the general desktop experience of the users.

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Veeam announces Backup & Replication v 7.0

Veeam has announced version 7.0 of its Backup & Replication product for VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V environments. Version 7 introduces two major new features: built in WAN acceleration and backup from storage snapshots.

Veeam claims that the build in WAN acceleration can optimize the data copy up to 50 times faster than a regular file copy, removing the need of purchasing and deploying WAN acceleration appliances for this purpose. The Backup from Storage Snapshot feature, which Veeam developed together with HP allows customers to use backup from SAN snapshots supporting HP StoreVirtual Storage and HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage.

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Release: Dell Foglight for Virtualization, free edition 6.5.2 – Updated

Dell today announced the release of version 6.5.2 of Foglight for Virtualization, free edition. Foglight for Virtualization was known as vOPS Server Explorer, for which virtualization.info covered the release of version 6.3 in January this year.

Version 6.5.2. now includes a new tool called Snapshot Explorer, which detects all snapshots, including orphaned ones to avoid problems with performance and capacity. The product now also includes support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) 3.1, VMware vSphere 5.1 and Microsoft Hyper-V 2012.

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