virtualization.info Editors

Citrix has released a whitepaper titled:"Windows 2008 R2 Optimization Guide For Desktop Virtualization with XenApp 6 / 6.5", the paper which contains 23 pages outlines optimization for XenApp 6 and 6.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2.

The paper starts with recommended GPO’s which can be applied to Windows Server 2008 R2, secondly it provides some recommendations on to be modified registry keys, which preferably can be set using Group Policy Preferences (GPP). It will then provide some registry keys to modify for images deployed using standard disk mode vDisk images using Citrix Provisioning Services.

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Open source vendor Red Hat has released version 6.2 of its Linux distribution, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This version is the follow-up of version 6.1 which was released in May this year.

Version 6.2 consolidates all patches, enhancements and security updates released after version 6.1. Some of the new features provided are:

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Microsoft has released version 3.2 of the Linux Integration Services for its hypervisor Hyper-V. This version is the follow-up of version 3.1 which was released in July this year.

The Linux Integration Services enable synthetic driver support for Virtual Machines running one of the supported Linux Distributions, currently the 32 and 64 bit versions of:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 and 6.1 (up to 4 vCPU)
• CentOS 6.0 (up to 4 vCPU)

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Since its first official release beginning 2009, the Virtual Session Indexer(VSI) has gained popularity as an independent benchmarking tool. One of the projects using the VSI tool is Project Virtual Reality Check, which entered phase 4 last June. Now Login Consultants has made available the Virtual Session Indexer (VSI) version 3.5. VSI is a benchmarking platform to measure remote desktop performance in a Terminal Server farm or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment.

The tool is developed by Login Consultants and is provided for free as an Express Edition, there is also a Pro edition which is supported by Login Consultants consulting services.

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VMware has released version 4.1 of its desktop virtualization platform for Apple Mac: Fusion. This release is considered an minor upgrade for version 4.0 which was released in September this year.

This version now supports running Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard as guest OS additional to running the already supported OS X Lion, OS X Lion Server, Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server and Mac OS X Leopard Server.

New features and improvements:

• Smart Full Screen, providing full screen mode
• Automatic Virtual Machine power on
• Improved animations

• Fast screen resizing and improved startup time
• Improved Mac OS X Lion guest OS support

• Improved graphics performance

Update: VMware stated in a blogposting that the support for running Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard will be removed in a future update for Fusion, mainly because they are not complian to the licensing terms stated by Apple.

In September VMware released a new major version of its virtualization platform Workstation 8.0 and in October it released Player 4.0. Now VMware released an update for its virtualization platform Workstation and Player. Workstation gets updated to version 8.0.1 and Player to version 4.0.1.

Workstation 8.0.1. and Player 4.0.1. now support Ubuntu 11.10 as a guest OS and provide improvements in creating and using shared VMs and remote VMs and graphics performance. Disk and Memory management issues have been addressed and this version provides some compatibility enhancements.

VMware has released version 4.7 of of its application virtualization solution ThinApp. This version includes the ability to use ThinApp packages in combination with its Software as a Service (SaaS) application catalog product Horizon Application Manager, a feature announced in September this year. This version is the follow-up of version 4.6.2. which was released in August this year.

More information on how to enable ThinApp integration with Horizon Application Manager can be found in a blogposting on the VMware Blogs website, and is described in the ThinApp Horizon Integration Guide.

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VKernel, provider of performance and capacity management products, has announced its acquisition by Quest Software. VKernel will operate as a independent subsidiary of Quest.

VKernel entered the virtualization market in October 2007, releasing VKernel 1.0 a product capable of providing chargeback functionality integrated with VMware VirtualCenter. VKernel further evolved its products resulting in the release of the vOperations Suite providing Performance Analisys, Capacity Management, Resource Optimization, Reporting and Chargeback which is currently at version 4 and which now supports Microsoft Hyper-V environments besides VMware environments as well.

Lanamark has released a new version of its Capacity Planning platform Suite, this version is the follow up of version 2010 which was released in March last year.

Suite 2012 introduces two new modules:

• Lanamark Central using Multipoint Data Access which enables IT Solution Providers to stream encrypted IT asset data into their public or private cloud for analysis

• Lanamark IQ, which provides Asset Intelligence normalizing and enriching raw hardware and software asset data with actionable business information.

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In November last year, started releasing Solaris 11 Express, the development version eventually leading to the release of Oracle Solaris 11 which was released last week. Solaris is one of the assets which Oracle acquired from Sun in April 2009.

Solaris features so called container virtualization called Solaris Zones, which stands for virtualization on the OS level creating multiple isolated containers on a single server making sure applications do not conflict. Besides that Oracle also supports running Solaris on top of Oracle VM Server for x86 or SPARC based systems, the products providing hardware virtualization.

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