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

While I was updating the Determining VMware vCenter and ESX Build Numbers post I thought I would semi-automate the updating of the post with new build numbers for new releases, while working on it I started too fill an excel sheet and ended up with an excel sheet with the following products and build numbers for easy reference:

VMware vSphere 4 Suite (combines several products)
VMware Infrastructure 3 Suite (combines several products)
Cisco Nexus v1000 (1.0)
VMware ESXi (4.0, 3.5, 3.0)
VMware ESX  (4.0, 3.5, 3.0, 2.5, 2.0, 1.5, 1.0)
VMware Server (2.0, 1.0)
VMware vCenter Server (4.0, 2.5, 2.0)
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone (4.0, 3.0)
VMware vCenter Lab Manager (4.0, 3.0, 2.5, 2.4)
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (4.0, 1.0)
VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat (5.5)
VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager (1.0)
VMware vCenter CapacityIQ (1.0)
VMware vCenter AppSpeed (1.0)
VMware vCenter Chargeback (1.0)
(more…)

Today Scense launched version 7 of their User Workspace management. If you are going to do a full blown VDI install. A product like Scense will give the VDI implementation extra value to your users and easy management of the complete environment.

Scense 7 simplifies management and distribution of the end-user workspace within virtual and physical Windows desktop environments.

The main focus of this release is on the support of Windows 7 and 64 bits Microsoft Windows desktop environments. This release also introduces a new rich, modern and extremely intuitive user interface helping to further simplify user workspace management within MS Windows desktop environments.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

November 4th we published an article on Virtual Infrastructure best practices and the response was overwhelming. During the last month we received a lot of questions regarding best practices on VDI/VMware View. When I then read a comment from VMware’s evangelist, Richard Garsthagen, that the attention on blogs for VMware View was minimal I thought well let’s extend our View articles/knowledge base.

So, VMware View best practices. First of all check the article on Virtual Infrastructure best practices to create a good understanding for the underlying virtual infrastructure challenges.

So hereby my list of best practices which I gather from VMware KB articles, instructor led VMware View design training and the VMware community:

• CPU sizing;
• Memory sizing;
• Storage sizing;
• Network sizing.

If you have additions or new insights please reply.

(more…)

Although PCoIP is very efficient display protocol also over WAN connection. (See video demonstration on Vimeo ) there was still the leak of a good WAN optimization solution for VMware View 4.0.

We all know that the user experience will heavily benefit  if we can control the WAN traffic. As we know the PCoIP uses both TCP and UDP transport protocols. All of the WAN optimization solutions support TCP. But UDP is not broadly supported with the WAN optimization solutions.

That changes because Expand Networks provide immediate support for all VMware View 4 remote display protocols across the Expand’s Accelerator range of WAN optimization solutions to securely enable, accelerate and control VMware View over the WAN, including the PCoIP protocol.

The benefits that Expand’s solution brings to VMware View include support for:

(more…)

A lot of our customers are asking me about the management differences between the VDI solutions from Citrix (XenDesktop 4.0) and VMware (View 4.0). Because I realize that there are a lot of “it depends” choices to be made I decided to compare the two solutions in a basic VDI setup. In a basic VDI environment you need a couple components.

I decided to compare the VMware View Premier edition with the Citrix XenDesktop Platinum edition. I know that the Citrix XenDektop Platinum edition brings a lot more products of Citrix within the bundle but because I am only comparing the basic components and no costs our nice to have features, that is not a problem.

So in a basic VDI environment you need:

(more…)

Last we had the opportunity to set up a VMware View Proof of Concept based on the new version 4.0.  We grabbed some hardware set it up in our Support Lab. Installed vSphere 4.0 Update 1 on it. Prepared three virtual servers setup a domain with a domain controller, a vCenter server and a View 4.0 Manager server. We prepared the XP Sp3 golden image we planned to use and setup a Windows XP Sp3 laptop we planned to use as a View 4.0 End Point.  From this point we started the VMware View installation. The installation is pretty straight forward and even me as a pre-sales consultant was able to do the trick. I was lucky to have some help from our engineers. One of them just passed the vSphere 4.0 exam and another one had some experience with VMware View 3.0. Everything worked well and with 90 minutes we had our first vDesktop up and running and a laptop connecting to it.

(more…)

Yesterday VMware released it’s new version of its VDI solution, VMware View 4.

VMware View 4 includes the following new features and improvements:

• VMware View with PCoIP – PCoIP provides an optimized desktop experience for the delivery of the entire desktop environment including applications, images, audio, and video content for a wide range of users on the LAN or across the WAN. PCoIP can compensate for an increase in latency or a reduction in bandwidth, to ensure that end users can remain productive regardless of network conditions.
• PCoIP includes VMware View Display with support for up to four monitors and the ability to deliver the optimal resolution and pivot orientation to each monitor independently.
• VMware vSphere Support – VMware vSphere 4 support enables improved virtual machine scalability, performance, and management, with continued support for VMware Infrastructure 3.x.
• Enhanced single sign-on – The Log in as current user feature is integrated with Active Directory and smart cards to help simplify the process of logging in to a VMware View desktop.
• Restricted entitlements – Administrators can control user access to virtual desktops based on the View Connection Server being used for authentication.
• Smart card policies – Administrators can set group policies to force desktop disconnection and require reconnection when users remove smart cards.
• Domain filtering – You can use vdmadmin.exe to control the accessibility of domains and traverse trust relationships more quickly.
• You can cleanly delete View desktops using scripts.
• You can log in to View desktops using user principal names (UPN).
• You can explicitly configure IP addresses to override those supplied by the View Agent when accessing a desktop.
• Mixed Active Directory and Kerberos authentication is supported.

The VMware View 4 release can be found here.

I do like advertising from time to time. I think advertising gives away a lot about how companies operate and what their internal values are. You also find out if the company understands their market and their potential users.

When looking for VMware View articles with Google I came across an ad for Citrix, look at the picture to the right. The ad is somewhat funny actually. Citrix says that their solution with HDX is faster than VMware View. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t, I don’t know. It all depends on workloads, hypervisor, storage and so on.

(more…)

Today is the day!

Today VMware released the new version of VMware View with the long awaited PCoIP protocol which provides a superior end-user experience over any network.

The new VMware View 4 is an integrated desktop virtualization solution, enabling reduced desktop costs, increased security, compliance and simplified desktop management, along with a rich, flexible desktop experience.

VMware View 4 is supported on the latest version of vSphere, bringing the most mature virtualization functionality to the desktops. View PCoIP establishes a new standard in the desktop user experience. Purpose-built for specifically delivering virtual desktops over the WAN or LAN, PCoIP is optimized to deliver the best user experience for the available bandwidth – without sacrifing user productivity.

With this this new version of VMware View with PCoIP it is possible to deliver a personalized, feature rich, graphical virtual desktop complete with applications and data and settings anywhere and anytime.

You can watch the VMware View 4 introduction video here.

Next week,  November 16th 19th, VMware View 4 will be generally available.

With the launch of VMware View 4 with PCoIP on the horizon Scott Murnan, European Director of Teradici, was in the Netherlands at the end of October and Ann Jan had the pleasure to do an interview with him.

Together they shed some light on Teradici, the new PCoIP protocol, the differences with RCP and ICA, bandwith, latency, etc. So check out the video.

Today I received an invitation for a ‘What’s new in VMware View 4′ training.

According to this invitation the release of VMware’s new version of View including the long awaited PCoIP will be release November 16th.
That is a week later then the date mentioned in earlier VMware View release chatter.

After a few phone calls I’m a bit wiser now. The release will probably be November 9th and the general availability will be a week later, November 16th.

So another 2 weeks till we can experience PCoIP first hand.

A few years ago I didn’t pay much attention to the thin clients. If a customer wanted them fine, you choose a model started a pilot, bought the thin client and you were done.  As we now see that Green Computing is no longer a hype and the interest in centralizing desktops is growing every day. All of a sudden the possibilities and choices in the thin client market are booming. I thought the time was right to inform myself more about the thin client.

Last week I attended the AVNET “Thin is In Event 2009” it was a well organized event with a quick presentation of the Wyse, Chip PC, Igel and Samsung products. Afterwards there was the opportunity to meet with all the vendors to speak about their products and to see some live action. The funny thing about Thin Clients is that they are becoming more and more fat clients!! If you want a flexible solution with all the features and a minimal risk of non functioning peripherals you are forced to use the WinXPe or the new Windows Embedded Standard.

The conclusion for this afternoon was. Thin clients are al the same and yet they are all different. What I mean is they all provide their share in making IT more green. They all provide tooling for management of the thin client firmware. They all make maintenance a lot easier, etc, etc and yet they all have a unique selling point. So if you are thinking about centralizing your desktop environment define your wishes, select two vendors and two models of each vendor a start your pilot.

(more…)

Last week I held a presentation for our Sales department. As we sold a lot of Citrix Xantippe over the last few years they wanted me to tell them more about the differences between a VMware View and the traditional terminal server based Citrix XenApp solution. So I made a summery about the differences and similarities. When VMware also asked me about the presentation I decided to translate it into English and share it with you all.

(more…)

Today was a special day, VMGuru.nl celebrated it’s 1 year anniversary and to celebrate VMware organized a party, how thoughtful

Seriously, today we attended the VMware Partner Forum at Bussum in the Netherlands. So at 5:45 my alarm rang because we had to be in Bussum at 8:30. We arrived tight on time and after a cup of coffee we attended the keynote ‘Energize Business Through IT!’ Here VMware told us how important their partners were and what business to focus on during these difficult times and Jeremy van Doorn presented the news from VMworld 2009.

After a refreshment break it was time for our first breakout session. Anne Jan and I went to ‘5 great reasons to upgrade customers from VI3 to vSphere 4‘. The title says it all, convince customers to upgrade based on better scalability, flexibility, manageability and integration.  This session was completely my style, to the point, not too technical and without basing of the competition (as many of the other vendors do, much to my disgust). Citrix XENServer and Microsoft Hyper-V were mentioned and compared but the conclusion was all up to the listeners.

(more…)

As a real VMware View enthusiast I’m really anxious to work with the new VMware View 4 with PCoIP. Just like vCenter Site Recovery Manager, were the new version was released last week,  VMware View has to be adjusted to support VMware vSphere 4.

The release of VMware View 4 is expected at the end of this year and earlier this week VMware launched a private beta.

The major difference will be  software version of the Teradici PC over IP (PCoIP) protocol which VMware View 4.0 will contain. The demo at VMworld Europe 2009 looked very promising and I’m very curious how this will perform.

This video I found on YouTube certainly looks very very promising indeed.

I’m not invited to this private beta (yet) but I hope that my VMware contact can arrange an invitation soon so I can experience this new technology soon so I can implement this at client sites as soon as it is released.

During the last months it has become very clear that the fight in the VDI space is on. Citrix and VMware have released new and better versions of their product and Microsoft stumbles behind with their MED-V ’solution’.

Last February, around VMworld Europe 2009, VMware announced an open source version of their VMware View client. Now that VMware View with the long awaited PCoIP is on the horizon, VMware has released the VMware View Open Client 4.0 for the public beta. With this VMware is hoping to conquer a large number of thin client providers so many new devices will contain an out-of-the-box VMware View client.

Samsung is the first to take advantage of this new opportunity with the release of their new 930 DN 19″ LCD monitor with integrated PCoIP.

The VMware View Open Client 4.0 beta includes support for SSL tunneling, two-factor authentication with RSA SecurID and a Command Line Interface (CLI).

Unfortunately there is no support for:

• USB redirection
• Multiple desktop sessions
• Multimedia redirection

I just finished a great webinar by Randy Groves, Chief Technology Officer at Teradici Corporation.

The challenge for this and upcoming years is to give the most demanding users a true user experience while working on a true zero client through any network. The Teradici corporation is far ahead of the rest with their PCoIP protocol. No surprise VMware embraced the technology and the Teradici corporation by working together to answer the challenge.

The entire focus of the Teradici company is PCoIP, the DNA of the team working on the PCoIP protocol is from big and important companies like Broadcom, Intel, Nvidia and others.

Why should you want to use your graphics remotely you ask?
Several branch of industries choose for running graphics in the datacenter because of several reasons. For instance the healthcare industry and because of security, Media & Entertainment and CAD/CAM because of the enormous power they can use in a datacenter and efficient way of using resources and you can connect to it from anywhere. So designers aren’t convicted to 1 pDesktop, if that 1 breaks down it will be a big loss, instead they can use almost any device to do their work from anywhere connecting to their vDesktop or even vDesktops. Also branches like the Trading Floor, Air Traffic control and others who want space savings are using graphics remotely.

(more…)

Project Virtual Reality Check finally posted a new document about previous results and possible clock drift when using the “Login Virtual Session Indexer (VSI)”.  Previous test setups and results didn’t take into account how different hypervisors handle passing time.

In my opinion this is a serious setback to Project VRC which is considered an institute in the virtualization world. People will start questioning the results when no new tests will be performed.

Below is a description from the Project VRC website explaining the new whitepaper they published on September 14th 2009. This is a must read for people that already did some testing as well as new tests. In short: ‘Because of Windows clock behavior in virtual machines the results were affected and some hypervisors may come out better than they really are.

This whitepaper is a review and reflection on previous Project VRC publications, the benchmark: “Login Virtual Session Indexer (VSI)” and Windows clock behavior within virtual machines.  This discussion is fueled by the fact that results from the individual Project VRC whitepapers are set side-by-side to compare hypervisors. Project VRC has been in discussion with both vendors and community, and performed additional research in this context. Before Project VRC can publish new results, it is important to address any questions, review the impact of this discussion and improve VSI where possible.

You can download it at www.projectvrc.nl

The major conclusions in this Whitepaper are:

(more…)

Now that the new version of VMware View is coming shortly I was investigating the new possibilities with our thin client providers. Wyse Technology which has a nice solution already for the View 3.1 platform now has a new Zero Client which is specially made for View 4.0.

What makes this Zero Client so special? This model support PCoIP. PCoIP is the answer from VMware to make a great user experience possible with VMware View. VMware partnered with Teradici to introduce the PCoIP technology into View.  The P20 not only uses the software implementation but the P20 also contains the hardware chip that Teradici uses in the PCI Card solution. Tested by Brain Madden a couple of month ago.  Also see this article at BrianMadden . Imagine the possibilities this solution can offer in your VDI environment.

When the Wyse P20 comes to EMEA is not yet clear, but I hope to find out more next month. We at VMGuru.nl will also try to get our hands on a P20 model so we can blog our experiences.

More info on:  http://www.wyse.com/products/hardware/zeroclients/P20/index.asp

Yesterday, the three of us attended one of the quarterly CDG⁽¹⁾ Technical update sessions which was held at ‘de Glazen Ruimte‘ in Maarssen.

The three subject were:

1. RES Software and VMware View by Bart van Winden (RES) en Ton Hermes (VMware);
2. Citrix reduces traffic jams on the roads to and from our Dynamic Delivery Center by Marc Wagevoort (CDG);
3. VMworld San Francisco 2009 update by Rob van der Wel.

(more…)

VMware announced their effort to produce a software implementation of PCoIP together with Terradici at VMworld 2009 in Cannes.

Since then I have been anxiously waiting for a demo or beta. During today’s keynote at VMworld 2009 VMware gave a demo of their long awaited PCoIP demo.

Joep Piscaer from VirtualLifestyle.nl made a video of this demo. Audio is bad and the image is a bit shakey but it gives a good impression of the PCoIP performance an d possibilities.

You can watch the video here.

I’m impressed by the performance and I can’t wait to get my hands on the beta. I’m curious what Brian Madden’s opinion is on this premiere as he was skeptical on VMware’s effort to produce a software implementation of PCoIP.

User profiles are a pain in the *. All to often profiles get corrupted by multiple sessions and logons are often slow.
RTO has a product for this: Virtual Profiles. This product solves a lot of problems with user profiles.

If you are going to use virtual desktops you will eventually end up with the same problem Terminal Server and Citrix users have had for a long time. But don’t worry, there is hope on the horizon:

AN FRANCISCO, Calif. – September 2, 2009 – Today at VMworld 2009, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, announced it has signed an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with RTO Software to integrate its industry-leading Virtual Profiles technology with VMware View™, the industry-leading enterprise desktop virtualization solution. The integrated offering will provide comprehensive user personality management and will enable VMware View customers to dynamically provision users, together with their profile, applications and data, across networks and devices. (See related press release also announced today: “VMware Leads in Virtual Desktops with VMware View™ – Simplifying Desktop Management, Lowering Costs and Enriching User Experience.”)