VMGuru.nl – I choose (a virtual) life!

VMware really wants to get a piece of the desktop market. After acquiring and/or releasing products for desktop management (VMware View and ThinApp)

VMware announced at VMworld ‘09 that they had an OEM agreement with RTO for Virtual Profiles. VMware wanted to integrate the product into VMware View, it’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure product. Now, almost a year later, VMware announced the acquisition of RTO Software.

Here’s a quote from the VMware View-Point blog:

We’ve been talking about provisioning users, not devices, and the importance of composition or layering in a desktop virtual machine – that a desktop VM is comprised of independent virtualized component parts that are dynamically brought together on demand into an encapsulated VM. One of those critical parts is the user persona, a user’s profile, data files and settings. Clean, efficient user persona virtualization is vital to our vision and that is precisely what RTO’s industry-leading Virtual Profiles will deliver for VMware View. With persona management, end-user specific information such as user data files, settings and application access is separated from the desktop image and centrally stored, enabling increased flexible access, greater portability and seamless file management and backup.

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Yesterday RES Software announced the availability of the new version of their Workspace Management solution RES PowerFuse 2010.

In our projects we often use RES PowerFuse as an additional tool to virtualize the last step within desktop virtualization. It simplifies the management of the virtual desktops and enables a fully roamed environment for end users.

In summary, new key features within PowerFuse 2010 include:

• New Desktop Sampler, Desktop Designer and Workspace Model features
  RES PowerFuse 2010 provides the ability to sample and analyze existing desktops prior to workspace implementation, ensuring a smooth roll-out and minimal impact to the productivity of users;
• Zero profile technology
  This provides a new method for storing and applying user settings independently from the user’s profile, alleviating the profile management issues that often plague IT and making performance better for the user;
• Support for Microsoft SQL Azure databases
  RES PowerFuse now enables IT professionals to take advantage of Microsoft’s highly available, cost-effective Azure cloud offering, by enabling them to store user configurations in the cloud.

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VMware has just released the new 4.0.1 version of their VMware View VDI suite.

VMware View 4.0.1 is a maintenance release that fixes some known issues in the previous releases.

So, what’s new in version 4.0.1?

• Support for vCenter 2.5 Update 6 and ESX 3.5 Update 5;
• Enhancements to the PCoIP Display Protocol.
  • PCoIP now supports the following features:
    Virtual Printing, which allows end users to use local or network printers from a View desktop without requiring that additional print drivers be installed in the View desktop.
  • Single sign-on support for third party providers such as Sentillion and Imprivata.
  • View Client supports international keyboards when using PCoIP.

According to news reports a small plane has crashed in Palo Alto this morning, causing a power outage.

At 7:50 AM, shortly after take-off a small plane crashed into the power lines and exploded on impact, killing all three people onboard which were  all employees at Tesla Motors.

The power outage caused a phone outage at VMware headquarters. Currently VMware Support is still available – phones working – 1 877 4VMWARE.

VMware Support is currently accepting ONLY Production Down Service Requests through supportvmware@gmail.com with:

1. Company
2. Contact
3. Phone#

For critical License issues please email vmwarelicensesupport@gmail.com with the same information.

Due to the power outage and the phone outage todays VMware community roundtable is canceled.

Regularly I receive question from worried colleagues who have passed their VCP410 exam but haven’t received their certificate and welcome kit yet.

The only answer I had until now was the one I picked up on the VMware communities website stating that VMware had delayed the shipment of certificates and welcome kits due to the introduction of their new logo.

But this weekend I finally received my VCP 4 certificate and the long awaited Workstation 7 license after passing my VCP410 exam on September 4th 2009.

So If you have passed your VCP410 exam and haven’t received your certificate yet, it’s on it’s way (I hope ).

It was Valentine’s Day, February 14th, the day the boys and girls at Partner Exchange exchange business cards with their business partners.  They draw hearts and flowers and write funny poems.  VMware awoke early and looked over at the stack of cards ready and waiting to be given to friends, including one very special card for Cisco and NetApp, VMware’s best friends.

At the Partner Exchange, VMware was surprised to see that lots of other partners were already there and every desk was piled high with Valentines.  VMware went to work right away, hurrying to leave a Valentine at each desk before the bell rang for the keynote.

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Today VMware organized the vForum 2010 in Nijkerk, the Netherlands, and during this day Dutch VMUG-er Viktor van den Berg interviewed Richard Garsthagen. Richard is one of the organizers of VMworld and during this interview he revealed some news about VMworld 2010.

First of all VMworld 2010 USA will be held from August 30th until September 2nd  in the Moscone Center in San Fransisco. The European version in the Bella Center in Copenhagen will take place from October 12th until October 14th.

Talking with colleagues and community members the issue which is immediately brought up is ‘Can we expect any news in Europe or is all news presented one month earlier?‘ Richards response is that VMworld is not primarily meant for product news but it’s a three day training event.

The biggest news Richard bring is that VMware is going to promote the experts. How? During VMworld 2010 you can get educated in four different ways. First of all you can attend breakout sessions or attend the self passed labs. A new item is that a you can attend smaller, more private group sessions. But when this is not private enough you can register for a 10 minute one-on-one private session with one of the VMware experts! Very cool!

A second great new feature …..

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The Cisco Nexus 1000V is the first switch that can be placed in your vSphere virtual infrastructure, giving back network control back to the people that know the most about networking: The network admins. The Nexus 1000V is built on the distributed vSwitch technology in vSphere and can be managed by the same tools that network admins already use for manging their physical switches.

Cisco is organizing a series of free seminars aimed at sales professionals as well as admins.

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Have you ever wondered what the world of work would look like in 2020? I have. With the huge technological progress, it’s hard to imagine what we will be doing and how the world around will look.

If you look at the way we do our jobs today, it seems to be a lot like factory, blue collar labour. It is somewhat cleaner, but the way we do our work today is just like in the early 1900’s in the Ford factory at the treadmill. The industrial revolution made it possible to automate almost everything with machines. Only the parts that could not be automated, were filled by people. Still we treat them as if they are just a mechanical part of a larger machine.

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