As I said yesterday, VMworld is always the time and place for VMware to announce new products and technologies.
Today was not any different.

VMware announced the next version of their virtual desktop solution, VMware View 5 which will become available in the coming weeks.

VMware View 5 will deliver better PCoIP performance, more supported client devices and integrated persona management. Also, VMware’s Horizon App Manager application broker will get a mobile version with ThinApp and View integration.

Persona management
VMware finally integrated the Virtual Profiles management tool which they acquired from RTO Software last year. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support XP to Windows 7 profile compatibility. Probably because of the RTO Virtual Profile problems VMware encountered with  Windows 7 compatibility.

But the integrated View Persona Management feature does provide a basic way to manage user data and settings, application data and Windows registry settings. By doing so, the user profile is now independent of the virtual desktop, so the end user can log into any View desktop and see his profile.

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IToday VMware revealed Project Octopus at VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas. VMware stopped being a virtualization-only company a while ago and now it continues to develop technologies and infrastructure that improve the way people work in this post-PC era.

Project Octopus will leverage data sync technology from VMware Zimbra and Mozy to enable enterprise-grade collaboration and information/data sharing. Project Octopus will enable users to access files from any device and share them with people both inside  and outside their company in a completely safe and secure way.

Project Octopus integrates with VMware Horizon, VMware View and Project AppBlast to create a secure enterprise cloud service.

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Today VMware’s VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas has started and VMworld is THE place for product announcements and releases.

This year VMware is announcing vFabric Data Director, a product which powers database-as-a-service for your cloud, reducing database sprawl and drastically accelerating application development cycles with a self-service database provisioning and operations platform.

The new product offers policy-based automation to manage those diverse databases. vFabric Data Director allows for self-service provisioning of databases for developers so they can quickly grab the database service they need to create new applications. vFabric Data Director is an enterprise solution that extends the benefits of VMware’s leading virtualization platform to the database tier and lets administrators securely automate and delegate routine tasks, including database provisioning, backup, and cloning.

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With the release of service pack 3 for Simpana 9, CommVault adds full support for VMware vSphere 5. Many organizations struggle with  rapid data growth, expanding virtual server deployments and increasing data center consolidations because legacy backup and recovery solutions just can’t cope with the demands of new virtual infrastructures.

With vSphere 5, VMware raises the bar again and pushes the limits of performance and scale. Virtual machines can now be up to four times more powerful than previous versions. With full vSphere 5 support, CommVault claims it can keep up with VMware’s pace.

CommVault Simpana 9 with service pack 3 delivers the ability to protect hundreds of VMs in minutes, scale to protect thousands of VMs and provides an off-host backup approach that ensures even the most performance intensive “Monster VM” can be easily backed-up.

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After the release on July 12th, you can now download VMware vSphere 5 and enjoy the 150 new features.

You can find the downloads here.

For more information visit:

• VMware ESXi and VMware ESX Info Center
• VMware vSphere 5 release notes.

If you want to upgrade your existing VMware vSphere installation, check out my previous article on how to upgrade to vSphere 5.

Want to know more regarding VMware’s new licensing model? Check out the latest changes here.
Hint: Read carefully and calculate the impact on your environment before forming your opinion!

Now, don’t let me keep you, GO and try out vSphere 5!

On July 12th, VMware announced the release of vSphere 5.

With the release comes the challenge to upgrade your existing installation.

However, there are a few caveats:

• vSphere 5 is the first version which comes in a ESXi version ONLY! ESXi 5 is available in an embedded or installable version. If you’re running ESX 3.x or 4.x you should do a clean installation. You can find more information here.;
• VMware changed their licensing method. Familiarize yourself with this and check if you need to upgrade/extend your licenses. You can find more information here.

Because I run a VMware vSphere 4.1 environment, this is a upgrade from vSphere 4.1 to 5.

The upgrade is a straight forward five step process.

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Sometimes a company rethinks its strategy and thinks it has found a new edge. This was, or better, is the case with the new licensing model for vSphere 5, that was announced 12th of July.

Actually, vSphere 5 has a lot of new and exiting features, but all were pushed into the shadows by this new licensing model. Comments varied from ‘it will not hurt us right now’ up to ‘this is opening the door for HyperV and all other competitors!’.

Fortunately, VMware also is a company that quickly learns and as they watched the storm run through virtualization land, they came to the conclusion that a slight adjustment would silence the competition, reinstate lost faith (if that happened at all ) and, most of all, bring peace of mind to their customers.

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