This year has almost come to an end and what a year it has been.

During 2011 VMware released a lot of new great products like vSphere 5, View 5, Workstation 8, Fusion 4, Horizon App Manager, vFabric Data Director, etc.

We also visited some amazing events which resulted in great experiences and content. It was the second year VMworld visited Copenhagen and what an awesome VMworld it was. And at the end of the year we had a great dutch VMUG with a suprise visit of the MonsterVM.

Career wise, almost all of us started with our new employer, Imtech ICT, in 2011, bringing us new adventures and opportunities.

This all resulted in some great content which you all appreciate, according to the website statistics. We servered 1.3M webpages during almost 400.000 visits of 240.000 unique visitors, which resulted in 556GB of traffic. Great numbers with steady growth over the whole year.

We will keep up the good work and hope to see you again in 2012 to make it an even better year!
So, from all of us at VMGuru.nl, we wish you all a very happy and virtual new year!

December 9th was the day of the annual dutch VMUG event in Nieuwegein (NL). It was a great day with many interesting sessions, labs, great people to meet and of course the MonsterVM.

During the day Edwin and I had the chance to talk to Alex, Michal and Lauren from VKernel. Besides a sneak preview of vOps 4.5 we also did an interview with Alex about emerging virtualization management technologies, security resources, VMUG sessions of interest and new products featured.

You can check it out here:

Congratulations to our 2011 Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security winners, Edwin Broeken and Michael Jonker. Thank you all again who joined us at the Dutch VMUG 2011 event and whom retweeted the tweets. Also a big thanks go out to Trend Micro for giving away two copies.

During the Dutch VMUG event lunch the MonsterVM ate two copies of Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2012 for 3 PCs with 1 Year subscription.

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During the Dutch VMUG event 2011 the MonsterVM was more or less party crashing on behalf of Steve Herrod. During the keynote Viktor got a call from Steve Herrod announcing that the MonsterVM was about to enter the Dutch VMUG event. During the lunch everyone who had the guts could get his picture taken with the famous MonsterVM.

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Last month PHD Virtual released version 5.3 of their Backup and Replication and PHD Virtual has really stepped up their game with this new release.

There are a handful of new features and improvements but the biggest improvement is the enhanced scalability and performance.

The performance for virtual machine backup and restore operations has improved significantly because of  a new optimized job processing engine and twice the number of data streams per Virtual Backup Appliance (VBA) and the ability to deploy multiple VBA’s. The Enterprise version even has the ability to enable 8 parallel data streams per VBA.

Other new features and improvements are:

• Faster back-up and restore;
• Offsite replication of virtual machines for disaster recovery;
• Replicate without additional snapshots or system impact;

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Today VMware’s partner Teradici announced a significant new releases from their PCoIP zero client and host card firmware and the PCoIP Management Console.

The following releases are now available for download on the Teradici support site (techsupport.teradici.com):

• Firmware 3.5.0 for PCoIP Zero Clients and PCoIP Host Cards.
• PCoIP Management Console 1.7.0

The new firmware update includes the following enhancements:

• USB2.0 with VMware View sessions
• Imprivata OneSign Virtual Desktop Access via proximity cards with VMware View
• IEEE 802.1x network security
• IPv6 support.

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It’s only one week until the annual dutch VMUG with a very impressive speaker line-up. Many international speakers are going to deliver great sessions and workshops at the Nieuwegein Business Center (NBC) on December 9th.

If you’re interest and work involves virtualization and you haven’t registered yet, you should!. This is an event you should NOT miss. Like last year the NBC in Nieuwegein will be packed with people and be host to great speakers in their field of expertise.

If you’re interest and work involves virtualization and you haven’t registered yet, you should! This is an event you should NOT miss. If you haven’t signed in yet you can do so here.

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This week Veeam released their latest version of their Backup & Replication software “Veeam Backup & Replication v6“. With their latest release they offer enhanced scalability and performance.

They also add support for Microsoft Hyper-V so you can protect your multi-hypervisor environment with only one product, from a single console.

New features in version 6 are:

• A new distributed architecture for better scalability. Deployment and Maintenance for remote office and large installations are simplified;
• Advanced replication by combining both backup and replication in to one solution;
• Multi-hypervisor support with the new support for Microsoft Hyper-V. The console let’s you manage both VMware and Hyper-V hosts from a single console;
• 1-Click file restore is an enhancement on the existing “Instant File-Level Recovery” reducing the number of steps needed from 10 to 1.

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During the last few years we published several Enterprise Hypervisor comparisons and we got very positive comments and feedback on it. With the release of vSphere 5, XenServer 6 and a service pack for Hyper-V it was time for an update.

It very interesting to see how some of the products have improved over the years and how the three major manufacturers look at each other and copy features. But you can’t trust all manufacturers by just a simple green checkbox. Some claimed features need third party add-ons, aren’t suitable for production workloads or are only supported on a limited set of operating systems. You have to investigate further and I hope I’ve done most of that work for you with this new enterprise hypervisor comparison.

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If you use Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to deploy software and updates for Microsoft products, VMware vCenter Protect Update Catalog expands your solution to deploy updates for 3rd party applications. Get started pushing updates for applications such as Adobe, Apple, and JAVA in just seconds.

SCCM does a great job of distributing software and deploying updates for the latest Microsoft operating systems and Microsoft applications like Office 2010. What about Adobe Reader and hundreds of other vulnerable applications?

vCenter Protect Update Catalog address a major business pain (keeping up with third party updates) and puts time back into IT admin’s schedule.

How? Read on..

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Just 15 minutes ago I heard the ‘news’ that, last Wednesday, VKernel was acquired by Quest Software.

VKernel will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary of Quest, building, selling and marketing the same performance and capacity management solutions. So, it will be business as usual for VKernel, except the new VKernel will be turbo-charged with the backing of Quest.

For the current customers, nothing changes. The same team that has built, sold, and supported your products is still here. The main difference is that VKernel now has the financial backing and support of Quest Software.

Last Wednesday, November 16th, VMware announced the availability of ThinApp 4.7 and Horizon App Manager 1.2. The combination of the two products enables cloud-based deployment of ThinApp packages with VMware Horizon Application Manager.

ThinApp 4.7 includes the following features:

• The ThinApp Setup Capture wizard includes an option to manage with Horizon Application Manager. When the checkbox is selected, ThinApp checks if the Horizon agent is installed natively on the client and is running. If the Horizon agent is found, the ThinApp package reports to the Horizon agent so that it can be controlled by Horizon Application Manager.
• Horizon Application Manager entitlement allows the delivery of ThinApp packaged applications to specified users and groups. The Horizon agent authorizes a ThinApp package to open, based on entitlements.
• ThinApp packages are registered by Horizon Application Manager and delivered to end points.
• The administrator can track usage of ThinApp packages by using Horizon Application Manager monitoring and reporting.
• The administrator can configure an Organizational URL for end points missing the Horizon agent.

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While browsing the Shavlik.com website I stumbled on a small but powerful hidden away gem in the pages named VMware Security Advisor.

Are you aware of all your security risks? Security Advisor provides you with the ability to perform a no-cost security scan on your machine, domain, or IP range. It instantly reports the following critical information, all ranked by severity:

• A snapshot of your environment including the number of missing patches, missing security patches and the average number of missing patches per machine as compared to the community
• Systems Center ranks machines by severity and identifies the machines requiring patches
• Software Center shows the software by vendor as well as the software titles requiring patches
• Patch Center indicates the percent of products missing patches not covered by WSUS as well the number of missing patches and number of vulnerable machines
• Community Center identifies how the security of your IT environment compares to the community

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Have you ever wondered how I rolled into the IT business, when I got involved with VMware, why I started VMGuru.nl and was rewarded vExpert 2009-2011?

Today I’m in the vExpert Spotlight on the VMware Communities VMTN Blog.

Check out: http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2011/11/vexpert-spotlight-erik-scholten.html

Recently VMware released the latest version of vCenter Protect Essentials. This product is a combination of several technologies but the major part is from Shavlik Technologies, which VMware acquired earlier this year.

VMware vCenter Protect Essentials provides centralized patch management and asset inventory for SMBs/SMEs and departmental needs. vCenter Protect Essentials Plus adds anti virus, power management, ITScripts, and configuration management for both virtual and legacy physical systems in an integrated solution.

This includes centralized management for Windows operating systems and the most widely used Windows-hosted applications running on both virtual and physical servers and workstations.

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Over the years there have been a lot of outcries in the VMware Community to re-instate the VMware Technology Network (VMTN).

The VMTN started in 2005 and is much like Microsoft MSDN or TechNet, for a reduced yearly fee you could use the VMware software and run it for 1 year. Unfortunately VMware canceled the VMTN  program in 2007, reportedly because they didn’t want developers to use it for competitive products.

Right now many developers and techies with home labs use evaluation versions which expire after 60-days.

So, according to VMware CTO, Steve Herrod, VMware is now considering the return of the VMware Technology Network and I think it’s a good initiative. Why?

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Today VMware released a new client for the iPad and Android devices. Version 1.2 is optimized for VMware View 5, has support for iOS 5 including AirPlay and contains presentation mode for use with external displays and AirPlay.

VMware View Client for Android makes it easy to access your Windows virtual desktop from your Android with the best possible user experience on the Local Area Network or across a Wide Area Network.

It requires at least VMware View 4.6 and only has PCoIP only connectivity for excellent interactive performance.

The VMware View client for Android can be found on the Android Market.

The VMware View client for the iPad can be found in the iTunes Store.

VMworld – Day Four – Thursday 20th October

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