Virtualization by Davis: “Release: VMware vCloud Suite 5.1” plus 11 more

Release: VMware vCloud Suite 5.1
Release: Virsto for vSphere 1.5
Accelerate VDI rollouts with HP and Citrix
Paper: What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1
Release: Unidesk Corporation Unidesk 2.0
Receiver for Android 3.1.176
Receiver for iOS version 5.6.2 RELEASED
How to specify the version of Visio that is launched by an App-V client
Join Citrix Marketing Concierge in SUM117 at Summit Barcelona! 15 -16 October, 2012
What Inspires You?
Release: PHD Virtual Backup 6.0
Find all used Drive Letters

Posted: 28 Aug 2012 03:21 AM PDT

Yesterday, onstage at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco, VMware announced its first comprehensive solution to deliver a software-defined datacenter: VMware vCloud Suite 5.1.

The goal of a software-defined datacenter is to abstract all hardware resources, pool them into aggregate capacity to facilitate automation of applications and services deployment.

Today at VMworld®, VMware and its partners are taking a bold step toward simplifying IT, offering customers everything they need to build, operate and manage their cloud environments. The VMware vCloud® Suite delivers the software-defined datacenter – the architecture for implementing cloud computing.

said Paul Maritz, VMware CEO.

VMware vCloud Suite 5.1 aggregates all the components customers need to build, operate and manage a modern, cloud integrated, infrastructure:

VMware vSphere® 5.1: with more than 100 enhancements and new features constitutes the foundation of the suite
VMware vCloud Director® 5.1: orchestrates the provisioning of abstracted resources such storage, networking, security and availability pooling them as software-defined datacenter services
VMware vCloud Networking and Security 5.1: VMware's software defined networking and security solution, enables the dynamic creation of virtual networks and services decoupled and independent from the physical network hardware
vCenter Site Recovery Manager™ 5.1: simplifies disaster recovery planning and ensures predictable recovery through automated testing and plan execution, can also support datacenter migrations and disaster avoidance, integrates with VMware vSphere Replication and replication technologies from VMware's partners

As previously announced VMware abandons vRAM licensing and vCloud Suite will be licensed per processor.

The VMware vCloud Suite 5.1 is expected to be available Sept. 11, 2012. It will be offered in three editions – Standard, Advanced and Enterprise – and includes the following products: VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus, VMware vCloud Director, VMware vCloud Connector, VMware vCloud Networking and Security, VMware vFabric Application Director, VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. Prices will start at $4,995 per processor.

For a limited time, VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus customers will be able to upgrade to VMware vCloud Suite 5.1 Standard for free or upgrade to vCloud Suite 5.1 Enterprise at 35 percent off the list price.

Labels: Release, vCloud Suite, VMware

Release: Virsto for vSphere 1.5

Posted: 27 Aug 2012 06:34 PM PDT

Virsto, the Californian company that provides storage hypervisor software for virtual machines announced today at VMware the release of storage hypervisor for vSphere 1.5

Virsto developed an integrated solution that aims to manage performance and utilization of storage for virtualized datacenters, the purpuse of this upgrade is to optimize VM storage for Software-Defined datacenters increasing storage IOPS without buying new hardware.

The new release includes:

VM-level storage management and seamless integration with VMware vCenter and View Manager

Virsto's storage hypervisor provides provisioning, management and utilization of storage for the Software-Defined Datacenter

Labels: Release, Virsto, vSphere

Accelerate VDI rollouts with HP and Citrix

Posted: 27 Aug 2012 03:14 PM PDT

Say you want to roll out XenDesktop to 1,500 users. Imagine being able to unpack a box, plug in the power cord and the network cable, configure XenDesktop and your users are up and running. There is nothing to size, no disparate components to configure or architect, no guesswork or hassles of having to deal with separate servers, storage farms, and interconnects. Even better, imagine…

Paper: What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1

Posted: 27 Aug 2012 04:28 PM PDT

This paper is particularly appropriate for this week, enriched with the VMworld 2012 in San Francisco.

The document summarizes the new features and enhancements introduced with release 5.1 of vSphere:

Compute

• Larger virtual machines: up to 64 vCPUs and 1TB vRAM

• New virtual machine format: with CPU performance counters and virtual shared graphics acceleration

Storage

• Flexible, space-efficient storage for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)

Network

• vSphere Distributed Switch: with Network Health Check, Configuration Backup and Restore, Roll Back and Recovery and Link Aggregation Control Protocol support

• Single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) support

Availability

• vSphere vMotion®: without the need for shared storage configurations

• vSphere Data Protection: based on EMC Avamar technology allows to backup VM data to disk without the need of agents and with built-in deduplication

• vSphere Replication: over LAN or WAN

• Zero-downtime upgrade for VMware Tools: no reboot required for subsequent VMware Tools upgrades after 5.1

Security

• VMware vShield Endpoint™

Automation

• vSphere Storage DRS™ and Profile-Driven Storage: with a new integration with VMware vCloud Director

• vSphere Auto Deploy™

Management (with vCenter Server)

• vSphere Web Client

• vCenter Single Sign-On

• vCenter Orchestrator

Labels: Paper, VMware

Release: Unidesk Corporation Unidesk 2.0

Posted: 27 Aug 2012 03:55 PM PDT

Unidesk Corporation launched at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco the new Unidesk 2.0, offering to the attendees live demos of their virtual desktop management software.

Unidesk offers the all in one desktop layering solution, its integrated third party VDI management solution for VMware View allows IT managers to create customized desktops. Since last may Unidesk Desktop Virtualization Solutions (DVS) is available as part of Dell's porfolio.

Unidesk now includes VMware vSphere® Hypervisor integrations, user layer snapshots and restore point automation for desktop recovery and backup, among the new capabilities also the integration of Storage tiers for cost/performance optimization and Installation wizards.

Chris Midgley, Chief Technology Officer and Founder of Unidesk commented about the new release:

First generation VDI was plagued by excessive cost and complexity, yet VDI desire remains strong, our full desktop layering approach has proven to be a simpler, more complete single-pane-of-glass alternative to the mishmash of tools others offer for provisioning, image management, application virtualization, departmental apps, user-installed apps, and profile management. With Unidesk 2.0, our improvements in availability, performance, and scalability enable customers to accelerate VDI rollouts and realize even greater operational cost savings.

Labels: Release, Unidesk, VDI

Receiver for Android 3.1.176

Posted: 27 Aug 2012 01:10 PM PDT

Receiver for Android 3.1.176 is now available in the Google Play. Items addressed in this release are: 1. Screen Resolution Settings (New) – a resolution setting is now available in the settings menu. This allows the different resolutions of server settting, fit to screen, 1.5x. 2x, and 2.5x the screen resolution. 2. Right-click bluetooth mouse support (New) – the right-click button on a bluetooth paired…

Receiver for iOS version 5.6.2 RELEASED

Posted: 27 Aug 2012 11:41 AM PDT

Receiver for iOS version 5.6.2 is now available in the App Store. The items addressed in the release are: 1. HTML5 application performance enhancement – some HTML5 applications report an extensive slowness while loading the application. The fix addresses this delay to improve the speed with which the HTML5 applications launch. 2. Improved refresh applications experience – while Receiver is loading or refreshing the application…

How to specify the version of Visio that is launched by an App-V client

Posted: 27 Aug 2012 10:06 AM PDT

There seems to be some confusion surrounding the licensing model used by Microsoft Visio and how it affects App-V deployments of Visio packages so I wanted to take a minute and see if I could clear this up a little bit.

The licensing model used by Visio is unique among the Microsoft Office suite in that the version deployed is based on the product key that is being used. For example, if you install the Standard Edition of Visio and then later decide that you want the Premium Edition all you have to do is change the key. The key determines the edition presented, not the install image. In other words all the code for Standard, Professional and Premium are in a single image of the product.

So what does this have to do with Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)? This means that if you sequence the Standard Edition of Visio 2010 and deploy it to an App-V client, the version of the product that the App-V client launches is based on the Office Deployment Kit (ODK) configuration on that client.

For example, let's say you configure the ODK using the following syntax:

msiexec /i OffVirt.msi PROPLUS=1 VISIOPREM=1 VISIOSTD=1 VISIOPRO=1

In this case, the App-V client will always launch the Premium Edition of Visio. If you rerun the above command and you remove VISIOPREM=1, App-V will launch the Professional Edition. Once again, this is because the version being run is determined by the key not the installed image of the product. This means that unlike other Office products where you can configure the ODK with all the versions, you cannot do so with Visio as the highest version defined by the ODK configuration will always be the version that is run.

Ramifications of this issue:

1. You can only deploy one version of a Visio 2010 App-V Package to a single machine, meaning an RDS/Terminal Server can only have one version of a Visio 2010 package installed and it cannot be based on App-V AD groups.

2. If you want to deploy all three versions of Visio you only have to sequence Visio 2010 once, not three times.

3. To deploy different versions to different machines, you will have to deploy the ODK configuration specifically for the version you want on a per machine basis. In other words, you have to target the ODK deployment to a set of machines like a specific collection in Configuration Manager.

Please keep in mind this is not an issue with App-V and it is not a bug, it is simply how Visio was designed to work.

This issue is briefly mentioned in the following KB article:

Known issues and limitations when using virtualized Office 2010 applications on App-V 4.6 and App-V 4.5 SP2 clients
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2481474/EN-US

For more information on sequencing Visio see the following:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/odsupport/archive/2010/12/03/volume-license-editions-of-visio-2010-install-premium-edition-by-default.aspx

John Behneman | Support Engineer | Management and Security Division

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Join Citrix Marketing Concierge in SUM117 at Summit Barcelona! 15 -16 October, 2012

Posted: 27 Aug 2012 10:13 AM PDT

Join Citrix Marketing Concierge at our session, SUM117 at Summit, Barcelona 2012. THE Citrix premier training event for partners. We welcome you to join us at session SUM117 and we will show you why Citrix Marketing Concierge is your one-stop shop for solution based marketing materials, resources and templates. With CMC you can get Citrix created marketing materials, templates and services targeting the latest Citrix…

What Inspires You?

Posted: 27 Aug 2012 06:30 AM PDT

There are times when you are caught in your tracks and you have to slow down to take a second look at something. Such is the case with Matt Woodrum, an 11 year old from Worthington, Ohio who attempts the impossible on a daily basis. When asked to participate in his schools running day, he decided to volunteer to run the longest race, the 440 yard…

Release: PHD Virtual Backup 6.0

Posted: 27 Aug 2012 07:51 AM PDT

Today PHD Virtual Technologies announced the release of PHD Virtual Backup 6.0, the latest version of its Virtual Backup product for VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer.

The product is delivered as a Virtual Appliance which integrates into the console of XenCenter or vSphere client offering a single pane of glass.
Release 6.0 includes, besides the support for cloud gateway devices as a storage target, the following features:

PHD Instant Recovery

Full and Incremental Backup Mode Options

Application Aware Backups

Enhanced File Recovery

Encryption and Security Compliance Improvements

Email Report Enhancements

Virtual Backup Appliance (VBA) Tools for Import/Export, VBA Health, Inventory Management and Migration

PHD Virtual Backup 6.0 is already available for a 15 days trial.

Labels: PHD Virtual Technologies, Release