virtualization.info Editors

Unidesk Corporation launched at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco the new Unidesk 2.0, offering to the attendees live demos of their virtual desktop management software.

Unidesk offers the all in one desktop layering solution,  its integrated third party VDI management solution for VMware View allows IT managers to create customized desktops. Since last may Unidesk Desktop Virtualization Solutions (DVS) is available as part of Dell’s porfolio.

Unidesk now includes VMware vSphere® Hypervisor integrations, user layer snapshots and restore point automation for desktop recovery and backup, among the new capabilities also the integration of Storage tiers for cost/performance optimization and Installation wizards.

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Today PHD Virtual Technologies announced the release of PHD Virtual Backup 6.0, the latest version of its Virtual Backup product for VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer.

The product is delivered as a Virtual Appliance which integrates into the console of XenCenter or vSphere client offering a single pane of glass.
Release 6.0 includes, besides the support for cloud gateway devices as a storage target, the following features:

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Pure Storage is introducing ZeroSnap and a vCenter web client plugin for its product for Server and desktop virtualization: FlashArray.

The new release of the product woud be directed to fulfil a set of networked storage needs for companies who want to leverage flash memory for their performance-critical application.

The new addition of ZeroSnap in Pure Storage FlashArray would permit to take a thousand of indipendent snapshots per minute with minimal overhead, it would not require planning and have full read/write capabilities.

VMware vCenter Web Client Plugin would allow IT adminitrators to manage FlashArray in a easier way, the plugin automates and simplifies storage administration tasks like datastore creation and provides visibility into capacity utilization and performance

Today VMware, together with the release of Fusion 5.0, released version 9 of its desktop virtualization platform Workstation.

The main feature is, of course, the advanced support for Windows 8 and the new web interface that grants access to virtual machine on any device with a modern browser.

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Embotics, the canadian company of virtualization and cloud management founded 2006, announced yesterday august 22, the new release of  its V-Commander, version 4.6, for delivering IT as a service (ITaaS) for both private and public clouds.

Embotics Corporation aims to provide a simplified solutions and their cloud management platform V-Commander allows end users to optimize and automate their data centers, the focus of the software is to transform the management of virtual machines individually to managing the whole range of IT services, IT administrators would be able to control both virtual and non-virtual IT assets.

The main addition is the going from an Infrasturcture as a service (IaaS) to an IT as a service (ITaaS) which would extend to a wider rage of clients that are not completely tech-savy, as the service would be more user friendly.

Embotics will have a demonstration of new V-Commander with a preview of Microsoft Hyper-V support at the VMWorld.

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Today VMware released version 5.0 of its desktop virtualization platform for Apple Mac: Fusion.

This release is obviously designed to integrate with the last Apple OS, Mountain Lion, introducing the support for AirPlay Mirroring and Notification Center.

The press release claims more than 70 new features, more relevant are the support for OS X Mountain Lion in a virtual machine and the optimization for the brand new Microsoft Windows 8.

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Citrix yesterday released version 5.1 of its VDI-in-a-box product, the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution targeted at SMB’s it acquired after taking over Kaviza in May last year. This version is the follow-up of version 5 which was released in October last year.

VDI-in-a-Box offers an all-in-one VDI solution that doesn’t require shared storage and dedicated load balanced connection brokers. Customers just have to deploy the virtual appliance on their hypervisor of choice and they are ready to go.

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While both Microsoft and VMware are working hard to convince existing and potential customers on why they should buy their products, it’s hard to find non-biased comparisons nowadays comparing the features of the current VMware hypervisor vSphere 5 and the just released Hyper-V 3.0 part of Windows Server 2012.

Marcel van den Berg has written a series of blog post making that comparison. And we recommend people who want to make the comparison to read these series of articles in order to get an idea of what each product can do.

You can read the articles here:

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Yesterday CRN reported that, according to their sources “familiar with VMware’s plans“, VMware is going to discontinue vRAM licensing program with the introduction of vSphere 5.1.

Abandoning the vRAM entitlement (that proved to be very unpopular among the community) for its previous CPU-based licensing model, VMware will keep vSphere competitive against the new release of Hyper-V 3 enriched with several enterprise-class features.

A lot of customers feel like they are being nickel-and-dimed on things, which hurts the cost model of virtualization, so VMware is going to aggressively bundle. That bundle scheme made little sense with vRAM.

said a source of CRN, who requested anonymity.

We expect the announcement during VMworld in San Francisco next week where VMware will unveil its official licensing plans, these could include bundled licenses and special package with cloud products.