The Virtualization Practice

Posted By Bernd Harzog on February 8, 2010

Both VMware (View 4) and Citrix (XenDesktop 4) are increasing the marketing and sales pushes for their hosted virtual desktop offerings. Hosted Virtual Desktop is how we refer to idea that users use a thin client (in hardware or software) to connect via a connection broker and a remote access protocol (VMware PCoIP, Microsoft RDP, or Citrix HDX) to their operating system, applications and data which are running as a guest on a host with a hypervisor (VMware ESX, VMware ESXi or Citrix XenServer). (more…)

Topic:  Desktop Virtualization,  Performance Management | No Comments »
Tags: Aternity, Hosted Virtual Desktop, Knoa, Lakeside Software, LiquidWare Labs, VDI, Xangati

Posted By Andrew Wood on February 5, 2010

Can your businesses increase productivity and save money by implementing a Bring your own Computer (BYOC) program? Are there benefits in giving staff a free choice of PC technology (be that a Windows, Mac, Linux, or other devices – perhaps even an iPad) if you give them a  cash allowance to purchase and use their own PC for company and personal use? Are there pitfalls?

(more…)

Topic:  Desktop Virtualization,  Presentation Virtualization | No Comments »
Tags: 2x, BYOC, BYOPC, Citrix, Ericom, Moka5, Propalms, Quest, Systancia, VMware

Posted By Texiwill on February 4, 2010

I was posed with a question today, “I’m looking for some info on account & password management for consultants that visit a lot of customers where they have to do admin stuff.” with a secondary question of “how to manage the account if a constultant leaves?”  This was specific to the VMware vSphere but would apply to any hypervisor.

There are two issues:

• How to control who can access the administrative functions within their own datacenter and how to access administrative functions on remote systems spread all over the world. (more…)

Topic:  Cloud Computing,  SMB Virtualization,  Virtualization Security | 2 Comments »
Tags: Account Management, ESX, ESXi, outsourced administration, vCenter, VMware

Posted By Tom Howarth on February 3, 2010

There has been a rumour that VMware circulating that are going to move to a per VM Guest licensing model rather than the traditional Host based licenses.  Well it looks like the first move to this has been taken,  I was having a conversation with a friend about an issue they were having with a VDI Proof of Concept (POC) they were running.

So what exactly was this issue,  well one of his co-workers was trying to vMotion a running XP desktop from host one to host two but was receiving the following message

Error: There are not enough licenses… (more…)

Topic:  Data Center Virtualization,  Desktop Virtualization,  SMB Virtualization | No Comments »
Tags: ESX, ESXi, Licensing, VDI, VMware, vSphere

Posted By Mike on February 2, 2010

Given the hype in the press, most SMBs are now starting to be curious about what the “cloud” means for them. They may be surprised to realize they are already partially in the cloud.

• They have a website which is managed separately from the main IT function and hosted on some server somewhere in the cloud.
• Their email may or may not be in the cloud, depending on whether they have on-premises Exchange or hosted Exchange/pop/imap.
• They may use some hosted line-of-business ISV applications, for example a CRM or a project management application

Whilst new SMBs may be dabbling with online application suites, the bulk of the established SMB workload, however, is done in desktop applications, typically Microsoft Office, running in various flavours of Windows with a Windows Server. This is definitely not in the cloud, and there are lots of very good reasons why it won’t be, and less radical solutions  are likely to offer more benefit.

(more…)

Topic:  Application Virtualization,  Cloud Computing,  SMB Virtualization | 1 Comment »
Tags: Cloud, Endpoint Virtualization, SMB, Symantec, VDI, VDI Migration

Posted By Bernd Harzog on February 1, 2010

On January 25th 2010 VMware reported earnings for the fourth quarter of 2009 and for the full year of 2009. While we are not a financial analysis site focused upon earnings and stock prices, there is important information contained in these earnings numbers about the success of VMware. This is a critical issue, as many people expected the release of Microsoft Hyper-V R2 to significantly eat into the growth of VMware, and perhaps even start to eat into VMware’s dominant market share position. These earnings numbers provide a critical insight into how well VMware is doing, which helps us understand how impacted by Hyper-V VMware was in the fourth quarter of 2009. (more…)

Topic:  Application Virtualization,  Business Agility,  Cloud Computing,  Data Center Virtualization,  Desktop Virtualization,  Performance Management,  SMB Virtualization,  Virtualization Backup,  Virtualization Management,  Virtualization Security | No Comments »
Tags: Hyper-V, VMware, VMware earnings report

Posted By Andrew Wood on January 29, 2010

In The Virtualization Practice’s new whitepaper -  Presentation Virtualisation Solutions – we look to give you a summary of what benefits Presentation Virtualization can bring to your enterprise.

(more…)

Topic:  Presentation Virtualization | No Comments »
Tags: 2x, ApplicationServer, AppliDis Fusion, Citrix, Ericom, Genuit, Go-Global, Graphon, Microsoft, Propalms, Quest, Remote Desktop Services, RemoteView, Systancia, ThinWorx, vworkspace, XenApp

Posted By Texiwill on January 28, 2010

VMware has just announced the End of Availability but not End of Life (EOL) for some of its pre-vSphere ESX products (Announcing End of Availability), specifically all but the latest releases of ESX 3.x and vCenter 2.x however, it has dropped availability for the ESX 2.x products completely. This tells us several things:

• There are not many customers still on or using ESX 2.x products. This is a true statement. If there are still ESX 2.x systems in use, they are either unsupported by VMware or using special contracts to maintain their support. (more…)

Topic:  Data Center Virtualization,  SMB Virtualization | No Comments »
Tags: End of Availability, ESX, ESX 3, ESX 3.5, ESXi

Posted By Mike on January 27, 2010

In the Red Hat and Microsoft alliance against VMware, there is one  definite area of strain, namely VDI, or more generally  the way to deliver  applications  through a combination of  Presentation Virtualization (i.e. Terminal Services) and/or Hosted Desktops.  See  Andrew’s recent post for a discussion of the various options.   In many ways VMware and Red Hat are natural partners in VDI, and Microsoft and Red Hat on servers.

Red Hat’s emerging VDI offering is based on its acquisition of Qumranet in 2008, more specifically a technology known as Spice which is designed to replace RDP and ICA as the protocol between the server and the client.  Spice was made Open Source at the end of 2009. (more…)

Topic:  Desktop Virtualization,  Presentation Virtualization | No Comments »
Tags: Open Source, PCoIP, Red Hat, Spice, terminal services, VDI, VMware, VMware View

Posted By Texiwill on January 26, 2010

The future of Virtualization and Cloud Security is being worked on today and there are several projects worth watching. Early guidance from these projects will aid your current virtualization and cloud security policies, procedures, plans, and architectures. (more…)

Topic:  Cloud Computing,  Virtualization Security | No Comments »
Tags: A6, Auditing, Compensating Controls, CSA, DMTF, FDIC, PCI