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

Today, at VMworld 2010 in San Francisco, VMware announced the launch of VMware View 4.5.

VMware View 4.5 is packed with loads of new features which increases VMware View use cases and definitively narrows the gap with Citrix XenDesktop.

In fact, Chris Wolf from Gartner has declared View 4.5 as an enterprise ready desktop virtualization solution.

I’ve attended the View 4.5 beta program and I can honestly say that View 4.5 is a huge improvement. In the past, we had to deploy XenDesktop for VDI deployments with specific customer demands but with the release of View 4.5 these scenarios have decreased significantly.

General availability for VMware View 4.5 is set for early September.

Here are some of the improvements/features in View 4.5:

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We’ ve been doing quite a few VMware View POC’s and the question that colleagues keep asking me is:
‘How do I optimize my Windows guest OS for use with VMware View?’.

First of all, I primarily use x86 versions of Windows XP and 7. The disk usage is much less, I seldom need more than 4 GB of RAM and application compatibility is still an issue on x64 systems.

After installation of the guest operating system in the template virtual machine I do the following to optimize the operating system for use with VMware View.

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There was an issue discovered earlier today that prevents View Composer from working with vSphere 4.1.

VMware apologizes for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If you know how to spread the word to your friends and colleagues, please do so.

It is always nice to see how Citrix fan-boys reacts on publications about VMware View. Especially when it comes to an comparison or XenApp for View trade in. It is often said that Citrix listens to their customers but they are seldom heard! People need simple solutions in a complex IT world. Why pay for a very high end piece of engineering like a Ferrari if I can get the job done with a Volkswagen! OK, it is nice to have a car that nobody else has and can do 320 km/h but in times were budgets are under pressure, I have a hard time defending expensive, complex and high-end solutions.

The fact that VDI is putting a significant load on the storage is true, but that counts for every VDI solutions including XenDesktop, so no differences there. Also the new upcoming version of View includes a basic profile management solution “Persona Management”. Which makes the use of linked clones a very workable solution.

When you compare installing View and XenDesktop you will see the following diagram.

When it comes down to management consoles the two solutions also look very different.

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As a reaction on the Citrix program to trade in your VMware View licenses for XenDesktop, VMware comes with a program to trade in your XenApp licenses for VMware View.

The trade in program is quite simple: For the price of 3 years XenApp SA (€ 182,-) you will get View Premier and 3 years SnS.

VMware’s offer differs from the one from Citrix in a few way’s.

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After attending the dutch Citrix Partner Exchange 2010 I realized that there is a lot of FUD out there:

• in the Citrix community with regards to VMware View and PCoIP;
• with me personally with regards to XenDesktop (no F, but a lot of UD)

This is also what we saw when Alex shared his experience with Citrix XenDesktop, which was not so positive, and we got a lot of comments comparing XenDesktop to VMware View.

But the Citrix Partner Exchange got me interested in XenDesktop and XenClient and I decided to do a little research. Then I came across Brian Maddens site to find that he had just finished his ‘Geek week VDI‘ in which he did a ‘real life’ lab-test with VMware, Citrix and Microsoft VDI. They tested all three vendor in their lab environment but added a WAN ’simulator’ to create real life and worst case scenarios by introducing packet loss and latency.

And honestly I was surprised by some of their their conclusions. Not because I have no faith in Brian Madden but because I know Brian Madden to be a real Citrix enthusiast and a PCoIP critic. At the end he was very honest by admitting that Citrix XenDesktop looks like a mash-up of a bunch of different things, he was surprised by the simple, straightforward installation and configuration of VMware View and the good performance of PC-o-IP.

So bottom line?

• VMware View shines because of simplicity and has good user experience even with PC-o-IP over a WAN connection.

• XenDesktop is, at the moment, certainly the more mature and complete product but it’s complexity is a drawback.

• And Microsoft ‘in box’ VDI? Well as expected, it’s complex, not enterprise ready and it’s no match for Citrix or VMware.

So as always, there is no clear winner, it all depends on the customer’s wishes.

Special thanks to Brian Madden and his team for creating this great VDI test!

I won’t summarize the total VDI test, you can read it yourself here but I will quote some of the conclusions which I found to be very interesting.

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Two months ago, I heard Citrix was giving away a free VDI version called XenDesktop Express for a maximum of 10 users. The general idea is that you can experience the Citrix product advantages without investing anything but time and hardware. I downloaded it but didn’t have time to actually get some hands-on experience until last Wednesday.

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Yesterday VMware has released the new version of their application virtualization product, ThinApp 4.5

ThinApp 4.5 includes the following new features to improve usability, performance, and updates:

• Support for Windows Server 2008 R2, 32-bit Windows 7, and 64-bit Windows 7 operating systems.
• ThinApp version updates to incorporate the latest features or support enhancements without rebuilding packages. The relink.exe utility updates existing packages.
• Compression of MSI packages that uses the MSICompressionType parameter to improve the ThinApp SDK performance.
• Reduced memory consumption and page file usage to improve startup performance. The OptimizeFor parameter works with the CompressionType parameter to customize memory performance and startup time.
• Anonymous collection of statistics to expand the support for applications. You can use the Setup Capture wizard or the QualityReportingEnabled parameter to help VMware build support for applications and help you migrate more native applications to a virtual environment.
• Loading of DLL files as virtual DLL files without using API functions. The ForcedVirtualLoadPaths parameter loads external system DLL files that depend on DLL files inside the package.
• Product interface updates to improve usability and link to video and documentation information. German and Japanese versions of the ThinApp User’s Guide are available.

You can find more information here, here or in the release notes. You can download ThinApp 4.5 here.

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)
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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.

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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.

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.

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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:

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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