May 16, 2011
Cruise Operator Facilitates Companywide Operating System Upgrade with Virtualization
MED-V virtualization tool used to ease compatibility issues during migration to Windows 7.
Microsoft Case Study: Microsoft Windows XP - Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
Cruise Operator Facilitates Companywide Operating System Upgrade with Virtualization
A spirit of innovation has driven Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. to the top of the cruise vacation industry. It also drove the company to embark on a companywide upgrade to the Windows 7 Enterprise operating system. The project was at risk, however, because some key business applications that rely on the Windows Internet Explorer 6 browser couldn’t run on Windows 7, which has Internet Explorer 8 as part of its base image. By using Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), Royal Caribbean found it could run applications that require Internet Explorer 6 in a virtual Windows XP environment on Windows 7–based desktops. With this solution, the company can now proceed with its Windows 7 rollout and upgrade applications when it makes most business sense. IT staffers avoid spending weeks remediating application compatibility issues and gain simplified desktop computer troubleshooting.
Situation
Founded in 1968, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. has grown into the second largest cruise company, operating five cruise brands, Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, Pullmantur, Azamara Club Cruises, and CDF Croisières de France. Headquartered in Miami, Florida, the company reported U.S.$5.89 billion in revenue in 2009. Its commitment to innovation extends to information technology. Evidence of IT can be seen shipboard—for instance, with bow-to-stern wireless networks, interactive digital signage, and real-time restaurant availability tracking on recently launched ships—as well as shore side, where IT is used to help guests plan cruise activities in advance of their trip, and employees rely on the latest technologies to perform daily business operations.
The IT staff at Royal Caribbean supports about 6,000 employees and more than 5,500 desktop and laptop computers, all of which were running either the Windows XP Service Pack (SP) 2 or SP 3 operating system. Although Windows XP had served them well in the past, some employees—in particular, those who were more tech-savvy and at senior levels in the organization—wanted a more modern solution. “Our executives wanted their computers to perform faster. They wanted quicker PC start times and more seamless sleep functionality,” says Alex Ramos, Senior Manager, IT Operations at Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
Additionally, the IT team wanted a better way to manage and secure employees’ computers. “We gave our laptop users administrator rights so that they could have more flexibility over their devices, but that made the devices susceptible to malware from software downloads,” notes Jose Grullon, Senior IT Project Manager at Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
To address these issues, in May 2010, Royal Caribbean decided to upgrade all of its computers to the Windows 7 Enterprise operating system. “Windows 7 provides the improved performance and manageability that we need. It starts faster than Windows XP and is easy to bring out of hibernation and back to current state. We also liked the idea of centralizing security through BitLocker drive encryption and using the User Account Control feature to decrease the chance that employees will inadvertently download software that corrupts their computers,” says Jean Claude Akin, Software Engineer, Systems Certification at Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
Royal Caribbean wanted to begin the upgrade as quickly as possible to accommodate demand from senior-level employees. There was one problem, however, and it was significant. Several of the company’s key applications—including software from JD Edwards, Siebel, and Hyperion—depend on the Windows Internet Explorer 6 browser. Because Windows 7 has Internet Explorer 8 as part of its base image, and only one version of Internet Explorer can be installed natively, IT staffers cannot install Internet Explorer 6–based web applications on Windows 7 devices. The implications of not being able to run these applications were far-reaching because several thousand workers use them.
Although a newer version of the JD Edwards software is compatible with Internet Explorer 8—and the company had budgeted for the upgrade—IT staff would not have the resources or time to be able to deploy the upgraded package until the second or third quarter of 2011. “We wanted to move employees’ computers to Windows 7 so that they could benefit from its security and performance improvements. But if we couldn’t run these older business-critical applications that required Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 7, we would have to keep about 2,000 of our users on Windows XP,” Ramos says.
*
* MED-V helps ensure that we can move forward with an enterprisewide rollout of Windows 7 without getting sidetracked by application compatibility issues. *
Alex Ramos
Senior Manager, IT Operations, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
*
The company had considered using the Windows XP Mode feature in Windows 7, which would enable users to run Windows XP–based applications, but quickly realized that it was not suitable. “Windows XP Mode is designed for small businesses rather than enterprises. It doesn’t have the usability and management capabilities that we need, and it would have required us to use an image that wasn’t certified for our environment,” says Ramos.
Solution
In June 2010, to help get its Windows 7 upgrade off to a strong start, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. engaged Sogeti, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. “We wanted Sogeti to educate us about how to get the most value from the new operating system. When we told the consultants about our application compatibility challenges, they recommended evaluating Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization [MED-V]. It was immediately apparent that MED-V could help us address our problems,” says Grullon.
MED-V, part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (a suite of technologies available as a subscription for Software Assurance customers), is used to run older applications in a virtual Windows XP environment on a Windows 7–based desktop. Royal Caribbean did a proof-of-concept project with MED-V in July 2010 and implemented it the following month. In September 2010, when the company’s IT staffers needed to begin deploying Windows 7 Enterprise to director-level employees and above, they were ready with the MED-V solution.
Royal Caribbean deployed the MED-V client with the Windows 7 image using the company’s existing management tools. As of December 2010, Royal Caribbean had installed MED-V and Windows 7 on about 525 computers. According to Akin, “The feedback from employees was positive, but printing and saving files with MED-V weren’t as seamless as we would have liked. Luckily, we found out about an upcoming release of a newer MED-V. We realized right away that, with its enhanced integration with Windows 7 and easier printing and document management, the latest MED-V had exactly the capabilities we needed.”
Royal Caribbean joined the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) for the newer MED-V to speed its implementation. “We were eager to deploy MED-V so that we could move ahead with our rollout of Windows 7, and working closely with the Microsoft team enabled us to accelerate our deployment,” Grullon says.
Through the TAP, Royal Caribbean was exposed to MED-V enhancements that made the product even more attractive. Akin notes, “MED-V is simple to use and fast. Its performance is great, and because it doesn’t require a separate server infrastructure, it can be quickly and easily deployed. And, it enables us to easily redirect a wider variety of web applications by using wildcards and special characters.”
The company tested the newer MED-V with an initial group of 20 employees in December 2010. Based on its success, in January 2011 it began the process of including MED-V in all Windows 7 deployments. Royal Caribbean will upgrade earlier MED-V installations on an as-needed basis.
Before the IT staff deploys Windows 7 to employees, it meets with them to determine if they use any applications that may require Internet Explorer 6. If they do, the IT staff enables the MED-V client. If they don’t, the MED-V client is disabled—but it can be easily invoked when needed. The company expects to install Windows 7 on all 5,500 desktop and laptop computers used by shore-side North American employees by the end of 2011. It also hopes to deliver the operating system to 1,700 computers that are used by international employees during the same period. Shipboard computers are targeted to receive Windows 7 in 2012.
Benefits
By using Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. can deploy the Windows 7 Enterprise operating system on all company computers without worrying about whether its key applications will still run. It can remediate compatibility issues related to the Internet Explorer 6 browser in just minutes, give business groups more flexibility in determining when they will upgrade applications to the newer operating system, and more easily troubleshoot computing problems. According to Ramos, “MED-V has been invaluable to our Windows 7 upgrade. We couldn’t have proceeded without it.”
Enables Enterprisewide Upgrade to Windows 7
Because it can run essential Internet Explorer 6–based applications on Windows 7, Royal Caribbean was able to move forward with a companywide rollout. “Without MED-V, we would have had to put a large portion of our Windows 7 deployment on hold. MED-V gave us the tools—and the peace of mind—we needed to forge ahead,” Grullon says.
*
* MED-V is simple to use and fast. Its performance is great, and because it doesn’t require a separate server infrastructure, it can be quickly and easily deployed. *
Jean Claude Akin
Software Engineer, Systems Certification, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
*
Ramos adds, “The beauty of using MED-V is that we can give Windows 7 to all employees without worrying that, down the road, they’ll run into problems. Whatever web application compatibility issues they may encounter can easily be addressed with MED-V.”
If people who have MED-V disabled on their computer begin using an application that Royal Caribbean hadn’t known was incompatible with Windows 7, or if they change job functions and then require JD Edwards or Hyperion software, for example, the company’s help desk can turn on MED-V for them. “It’s very easy to invoke the client so workers can immediately begin using the older applications,” says Akin.
Avoids Lengthy Remediation; Allows Flexible Application Upgrade Schedule
By using MED-V, Royal Caribbean avoids the time-consuming tasks that would have been required to remediate incompatibility issues. “Without MED-V, it could easily take weeks to find a fix for a web application that won’t run in Windows 7. We’d have to track down the application owner and subject-matter expert, and research resolution scenarios with the vendor—and even then there may not have been a way to make it work,” Grullon says. “With MED-V, we can resolve Internet Explorer 6/Windows 7 compatibility issues in minutes. We just add the web address to our list of URLs that are accessible through MED-V, and it’s done.”
Ramos stresses that its goal is to eliminate tasks that would divert time and resources from the rollout. He says, “Our focus is not about how to remediate everything. It’s about ensuring that we don’t get mired down in remediations. MED-V helps ensure that we can move forward with an enterprise wide rollout of Windows 7 without getting sidetracked by application compatibility issues.”
By using MED-V, Royal Caribbean also gains the flexibility to upgrade applications when it makes the most sense for the business. “Because we can run the older applications our employees need on Windows 7, we aren’t under pressure to update applications that we don’t have the time or resources to do. For instance, we can use MED-V to help us bridge the gap until we’re slated to upgrade from our existing JD Edwards product to the Internet Explorer 8–based version,” Grullon says.
Adds Carlos Arribas, Windows 7 Project Technical Leads at Royal Caribbean, “By using MED-V, we can move our enterprise into the future while also carrying our past.”
Eases Troubleshooting
One MED-V benefit that Royal Caribbean hadn’t expected is how it helps IT staff troubleshoot computer issues. “When you install a new operating system, there is a tendency to blame application-related problems on the upgrade. MED-V helps us quickly determine if the issue is with the application or the operating system,” Grullon explains.
The IT staff can tell an application owner whose software is running directly on Windows 7 and is experiencing problems to enable MED-V and run the application in Windows XP instead. “If the problems still exist, then we know the cause is within the application,” Grullon notes.
Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) for Software Assurance makes it easy for an organization to administer its applications, offering tools for virtualizing and inventorying software installations, for managing Group Policy settings, and for system repair and data recovery.
For more information about MDOP, go to:
www.microsoft.com/mdop
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Royal Caribbean products and services, call (305) 539-6000 or visit the website at:
www.royalcaribbean.com
Microsoft Case Study: Microsoft Windows XP - Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
Posted by Staff at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)
December 11, 2010
How to Set Up a Virtualization Server
Useful article on setting up a virtualization server (storage and cpus and ram)..
How to Set Up a Virtualization Server - PCWorld Business Center
By Paul Venezia, PCWorld
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If there's one technology that can greatly improve computing environments of any size, it's virtualization. By using a single physical server to run many virtual servers, you can decrease operational costs and get far more bang for your buck. Whether your company is a 2-server or 2000-server shop, you can benefit from server virtualization in a variety of ways. The best part? You can do it cheaply and easily.
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How to Move From a Physical to Virtual Infrastructure
The reasons to virtualize even a small infrastructure come down to ease of administration and cost reductions. Cost reductions come from cutting down the number of physical servers, thus reducing the power and cooling requirements, but they also come in the form of greatly reduced expansion. Rather than having to purchase new hardware to support a new business application, all you need to do is add a new virtual server.
If your business has only a single server, virtualization isn't likely to buy you much, but if you have more than two servers or if you plan on expanding anytime soon, virtualization can likely make a difference.
It's impossible to purchase a server today that isn't multicore, but many small-business server requirements simply don't call for that much horsepower. The end result is a relatively expensive server that does very little but still consumes power and generates heat. That's why using a multicore server--that is, a server that has 4, 6, or 12 processing cores on a single CPU--to host several virtual servers makes sense, no matter what size your company is.
The Host Server
The key to successfully virtualizing servers in a smaller environment starts with the physical host server, the box that will run multiple virtual servers. Even though this one server will be responsible for hosting possibly dozens of virtual servers, it will require far fewer CPU resources than you might assume.
Depending on the virtualization software in use--VMware, Microsoft's Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, or another package--you will likely be able to run a surprising number of virtual servers on a four- or six-core CPU. The reason is that generally most servers run near idle a significant portion of the time. When they are tasked with work, their resources tend to be spread out among the RAM, CPU, disk, and network input/output, with only a subset of the virtual servers actually requiring significant CPU resources. By taking advantage of this law of averages, you can consolidate a considerable number of physical servers onto a single host server.
That isn't a hard and fast rule, however. Some servers, such as database servers, run heavier loads on a more consistent basis, and may not be suitable candidates for virtualization in a smaller infrastructure. It all depends on the hardware resources available to the host server, on the virtualization software features, and on the requirements of the virtual server. Fortunately, setting up and testing these requirements beforehand isn't difficult.
The first order of business when approaching a small virtualization project is to choose the hardware. Generally you'll start out with only a single server, so try to get the best mix of resources possible within budget.
A good rule of thumb is that having more cores in the host server trumps higher clock speeds, so if you have a choice between a 4-core CPU running at 2.93GHz and a 6- or 12-core CPU running at 2.4GHz, you'll be better off with the latter option. That's because the capability to spread the virtual-server load across more CPU cores typically translates into faster, more consistent performance across all the virtual machines. Think of it as needing a dump truck (which isn't that fast) instead of a sports car (which is faster but can haul far less than the dump trunk can).
Posted by Staff at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2010
U.S. School Districts Transform Education for the Digital Age with VMware View
VMware View case study nuggets include repurposing old Dell desktops + new lapops.
Helping transform education for the digital age, VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced growing momentum for desktop virtualization in the classroom with VMware View.
Using desktop virtualization with VMware View, kindergarten through 12th grade students and teachers gain access to enhanced learning resources and digital content on school networks or remotely via the Internet. Additionally, VMware View enables the growing trend of students bringing their own laptop or connected devices to school by providing a secure virtual desktop that is managed and controlled by the school’s IT department. As a result, VMware helps blend technology into school life, from lesson plans to homework, increasing time spent learning 21st century skills versus managing technology.
For school IT administrators, VMware View provides the ability to reduce cost and complexity by enabling them to manage virtual desktops centrally in the datacenter. Applications are installed, upgraded and patched once, then securely delivered over the network to any device, including PCs, Macs, laptops, tablets and thin clients. At the same time, the school’s IT team can eliminate the time previously required to manage and support individual desktop computers, and instead apply precious personnel and budget resources to other important projects.
Center Grove Community School Corporation, Indiana:
Located 20 minutes south of downtown Indianapolis, Center Grove Community School Corporation, the public school district that serves the White River Township, recognized that 21st century students have unique and changing educational needs which often require cutting-edge teaching methods and tools. Center Grove’s Early College program features a 1-to-1 laptop program that leverages VMware View desktop virtualization technology to deliver mobile computing resources to students and teachers.
The Early College virtualization project was so successful; Center Grove’s IT team began to look for ways to expand the program. In addition to purchasing new Dell laptops the district repurposed 460 old desktops as virtual clients, saving the school district $325,000 in additional hardware costs. The desktop lifecycle which used to be four to five years has been extended to as long as seven to eight years with desktop virtualization. As a result of the school’s early success, the district plans to roll out more than 2,400 virtual desktops based on VMware View.
School District of Somerset, Wisconsin:
In its efforts to achieve a 1-to-1 computer-to-student ratio for its 1,650 students and 225 faculty members, the School District of Somerset adopted VMware View to extend the life of its existing desktops and let students safely use their own computers to access school content and applications. In addition, the solution helps the district contain ongoing operational costs and lets students and school administrators stay productive by enabling anytime access to school assignments and applications from any device. They simply launch VMware View and their “school desktop” is delivered to their machine.
Ontario Montclair School District, California:
Located in Southern California, Ontario Montclair School District (OMSD) provides kindergarten through eighth grade education for about 23,000 students. Looking for a more flexible and cost effective way to get computers into the hands of its students, OMSD turned to VMware for a virtual desktop solution with HP mobile thin clients. Using VMware View and VMware ThinApp, OMSD now provides students with district-wide access to applications, such as Rossetta Stone language arts courseware, while allowing the district’s small IT team to retain control and management of more than 2,000 mobile thin clients.
Supporting Quotes:
“VMware technology removes obstacles. And ultimately, it’s the teachers and students who benefit the most. The technology is never in the way of the academic experiences. Everyone can access the software they need from a robust machine that works the way it’s supposed to every time. That is what really speaks to the beauty of VMware View™ in my opinion.”
— Julie Bohnenkamp, director of technology, Center Grove
“As long as they can connect to it from an eligible client — whether that is a PC, a Mac, an iPad or similar device — we can still give our students and faculty the same look and feel for the applications that they need for their learning environment at school.”
— Ryan Sicard, IT director, School District of Somerset
“VMware View™ allows us to get more laptops into hands of more children. By deploying virtual desktops, we give our educators the tools they need to prepare students as they enter high school and beyond. VMware View provides teachers with a more dependable, consistent technology that links back to the districts datacenter, so they don’t have to worry about updates and can focus their time and effort on helping students. We believe that it's going to help our department meet the expectations for supporting those teachers and students, in a cost effective way.”
— Jeremy Wood; technology planning coordinator, Ontario Montclair School District
VMware’s End User Computing Vision
More than ever, organizations are dealing with two fundamental client computing pain points – providing secure data access to an increasing number of mobile users, and managing the burgeoning diversity of data, applications and client devices needed for their organizations to thrive. Establishing a new end user computing model to address these pain points is a fundamental component of VMware’s IT as a Service vision.
VMware’s IT as a Service strategy seeks to free users and IT from more than two decades of complex, device-centric computing and deliver a more consumer-focused cloud experience for the enterprise. IT as a Service is the transformation of IT to a more business-centric approach, focusing on outcomes such as operational efficiency, competitiveness and rapid response. This means IT shifts from producing IT services to optimizing production and consumption of those services in ways consistent with business requirements. This changes the role of IT from a cost center to a center of strategic value.
Posted by Staff at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)
July 04, 2010
Cisco's Cius Video & Voice Killer
Cisco announces Android-like tablet/smartphone. Negotiating with Wyse, VMware and Citrix.. Ready to run desktop
The Cius tablet that Cisco announced earlier today may seem like just a business-flavored Android runner up to the iPad, aiming to fill a niche between your company-issued laptop and your smartphone. But Cisco's senior vice president for voice technology, Barry O'Sullivan, has bigger plans: Combined with virtualization, he wants it to replace your mobile phone, desktop phone, and even your desktop PC.
O'Sullivan told us in an interview that Cisco is negotiating with two out of the major three desktop virtualization providers--Wyse, VMware, and Citrix--to ship the device with virtual desktop software ready to run. (It's safe to guess that VMware is one of those two, given Cisco's close relationship with the company.)
That would allow the Cius to act as a "thin client"--a stripped down PC that acts as a window on a virtual computer in a remote data center. Put a Cius into its dock with a landline handset connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, and it could load your virtual Mac or Windows desktop and act just like a traditional PC as well as a desk phone. "If your company's running desktop virtualization, this will be the only device you need on your desktop," says O'Sullivan.
Posted by Staff at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)
May 07, 2010
Citrix Synergy 2010 in San Francisco
Next week in SF is the Citrix Synergy summit. Sponsors include Microsoft, Wyse, Intel, Dell, HP and McAfee. Michael Dell is doing the keynote. Sinbad is the ironic entertainment...
Citrix Synergy, where virtualization, networking and cloud computing meet : Synergy
Sessions on Desktop Virtualization
SYN222 - Guaranteeing availability and scale for XenApp and XenDesktop deployments
SYN224 - Gazing into the Citrix CTO crystal ball - a look at Citrix next generation technologies
SYN301 - Server Virtualization – smashing success, Desktop Virtualization - on hold. Why?
SYN302 - CIO Insights - How to implement a Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) program
SYN303 - Desktop virtualization for the real world
SYN304 - What’s new in XenApp – the inside scoop
SYN305 - Anytime, any device computing with XenDesktop and iPhone
SYN306 - What's next for XenApp? Technical insights from the experts
SYN307 - Making sense of desktop virtualization – what we learned
SYN308 - From A to XenApp: the comprehensive technical guide to optimal XenApp farm design (2010 Edition)
SYN309 - Optimized security architecture for VDI deployments
SYN310 - Top 10 reasons you (still) want Citrix with Microsoft Windows 2008 R2
SYN311 - Living with XenDesktop: observations and advice
SYN312 - XenApp and XenDesktop in the cloud? Yes you can!
SYN313 - Server-hosted Virtual Desktops: what the vendors aren't telling you
SYN314 - Making IT as easy (and fun) as iTunes by building your own self-service app store with Dazzle and Receiver
SYN315 - 15 reasons desktop virtualization projects fail
SYN316 - Get mobile and go virtual anywhere - sessions new for Citrix Receiver for smartphones and tablets
SYN317 - Implementing XenDesktop with "server-less" App-V
SYN318 - Dazzle and Receiver vs. ICA clients – what’s the difference, why it matters and how to make the move
SYN319 - Mastering user profiles in virtual desktop environments
SYN320 - Dear CFO, I know how we can save big bucks with desktop virtualization…
SYN321 - Supporting Macs and iPhones in your corporate infrastructure
SYN322 - Get the answers before the pilot – what you need to know before you start your VDI project
SYN323 - Succeeding in Higher Education with Citrix
SYN324 - XenDesktop – today, tomorrow, and beyond
SYN325 - Real world tips for developing an enterprise desktop strategy
SYN326 - FlexCast delivery technology: delivering the right desktop for every user
SYN327 - Gathering intelligence for your virtual desktop initiative
SYN328 - XenDesktop with HDX vs. VMware View with PCoIP – how do they compare?
SYN330 - Move to Windows 7 the easy way with desktop virtualization
SYN332 - To 10,000 virtual desktops and beyond: best practices for scaling XenDesktop
SYN334 - HDX internals: how to deliver a great experience for every user, every time!
SYN336 - Take your virtual desktops with you: XenClient makes XenDesktop mobile
SYN338 - Get under the hood of Citrix XenClient technology
SYN340 - Designing an enterprise-class XenDesktop solution
SYN342 - Adding virtual desktops to your XenApp implementation the easy way!
SYN344 - Optimizing virtual desktops and apps in the branch without adding hardware – Branch Repeater goes virtual
SYN346 - Optimize FlexCast performance and security – just add Branch Repeater and Access Gateway
SYN348 - It’s the right time to go virtual and upgrade Secure Gateway to Access Gateway VPX
SYN350 - Incorporate speed and security into your desktop virtualization project
SYN601 - Intel VP shares vision for future of enterprise client computing (Intel Corporation)
SYN602 - Delivering the power of Citrix HDX technologies in thin and cloud computing environments (Wyse Technology, Inc)
SYN603 - Dell’s Client Hosted Virtualization: completing the virtual management paradigm (Dell)
SYN604 - How to lower virtual desktop cost per seat for Windows 7 (NetApp)
SYN605 - XenDesktop reference architecture: HP best practices help you make the most of client virtualization (Hewlett Packard)
SYN606 - Understanding how Microsoft Virtualization compares to VMware (Microsoft)
SYN607 - Desktop virtualization: proven approaches to lower the risk (IBM)
Posted by Staff at 08:22 PM | Comments (0)
November 25, 2009
Desktop virtualization cheat sheet
Here’s a nice roundup of our most recent desktop virtualization/virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) coverage. ClearCubeTech noticed it.
Articles
FAQ: Desktop virtualization: There's huge interest in desktop virtualization technology, due to its promises of improved security, manageability and flexibility. Here are some details on how the technology works and why it might be a fit for your company.
Weighing the pros/cons of desktop virtualization: Successful server virtualization deployments lead many IT managers to believe desktop virtualization would provide the same benefits. While that is partly true, companies need to be aware of how the two technologies differ, industry experts caution.
Windows 7 and Desktop Virtualization: The New Tools: It seems as if every vendor is putting out new products or touting old products designed to help make Windows 7 a good platform, or to cement justification for desktop virtualization projects.
Window 7 may spur virtual desktops, on and off the iPhone: Predictions from analysts and virtualization vendors that desktop virtualization will take off during 2010 may be off the mark. Sales may take off, but the desktop PC may not have much to do with it.
Three caveats for desktop virtualization: Before moving to any flavor of desktop virtualization, consider these issues: the network; management; security.
Disaster Can Inspire Quick Move to Desktop Virtualization: A major disaster led the University of Texas Medical Branch-a sprawling campus of hospital and office buildings in Galveston plus a spray of clinics and smaller facilities all over Texas-to shift virtual desktops from a fringe technology to its main platform.
Virtual desktops ripe for deployment, hindered by cost: Desktop virtualization, with its promises of improved security, manageability and flexibility, may be on the verge of huge adoption, some experts are predicting. But as with many new technologies, there is a catch. ROI is one of the main selling points, but desktop virtualization requires significant upfront costs and it can easily take three or four years to realize financial rewards.
Companies choose VDI to fit existing infrastructure: Enterprises are choosing desktop virtualization offerings from Symantec Corp., VMware Inc., Citrix Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. according to the vendor's area of strength -- and how it fits with the infrastructure they already have, according to one Canadian analyst.
VMware bolsters desktop virtualization product: VMware's View desktop virtualization offering boasts new remote desktop protocol
Citrix desktop virtualization push: any device, any location: Citrix says its latest desktop virtualization software will give users access to high-definition desktops from any location and from just about any device, including PCs, Macs, thin clients, laptops, netbooks and smartphones.
Posted by Staff at 07:05 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2009
Whitepaper - VMware cCenter
Yesterday two really valuable articles were released about Site Recovery Manager for VMware. Both articles relate to Site Recovery Manager(SRM).
Posted by Duncan Epping on August 12, 2009
What you should know about Site Recovery Manager
Yesterday two really valuable articles were released. Both articles relate to Site Recovery Manager(SRM) which happens to be one of my focus areas.
The first article is an official VMware Whitepaper "VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Performance and Best Practices". This white-paper describes how to optimize your SRM environment to decrease your RTO. In the end that is what SRM is all about, decreasing your downtime if and when disaster strikes. I will quote one recommendation just to give you an idea of that this white-paper is all about. I highly recommend reading the full document for all the details.
http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10057
If VMware DRS is not enabled on a cluster, then it is a good practice to manually distribute placeholder virtual machines evenly across hosts. This will help in distributing the load across hosts when recovered virtual machines are powered on and will in turn improve performance and recovery time. To do this, drag and drop the placeholder virtual machines across desired hosts.
Coincidentally at the same day I published a SRM FAQ. This FAQ was part of a reference guide written by VMware's BCDR Specialist System Engineer Michael White. Michael was so kind to share it with me and the rest of the world via Yellow-Bricks.com. This FAQ will be updated on a regular base and if you have any questions or comments don't hesitate to leave a comment on my blog.
While we are on the subject of SRM I would like to draw your attention to these excellent VMworld sessions you should definitely attend if BC-DR is one of your focus areas:
BC2260 Automated Disaster Recovery for Branch Offices using SRM and vSphere 4
BC3301 DR Architecture Design Workshop with SRM
BC3421 SRM Architecture & Features: The Road Ahead
DV2181 Leveraging SRM with VMware View - Lessons Learned
SPL16 VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Basic Install & Config
http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2009/08/what-you-should-know-about-site-recovery-manager.html
Posted by Staff at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2009
VDA by Wyse catching lots of press
Wyse is proud to announce our newest software innovation, Virtual Desktop Accelerator (VDA). Wyse VDA is a software-based solution for Wyse thin clients and supported PCs. Wyse VDA delivers the best user experience for the network bandwidth allocated to users, neutralizes the effects of network delays (latencies) and errors (packet loss) for thin computing, making it suitable for more remote-site, branch, or field-based users. Wyse VDA is one more reason to choose Wyse thin-computing solutions over the competition. Our commitment and investment in making thin computing better for users of Wyse thin clients and PCs is a testament to our total solution focus and approach.
Wyse eases traffic jams for thin clients
EE Times, by Rick Merritt
Thin-client maker Wyse launches software to shrink data centers
VentureBeat, by Camille Ricketts
Wyse VDA Accelerates Cloud Computing over Long Haul
Channel Insider, by Jessica Davis
Wyse Launches Virtual Desktop AcceleratorWyse Launches Virtual Desktop
Accelerator
ecoINSITE
Wyse: Continent-Spanning Virtualization Saves Data Center Costs
Greentech Media, by Jeff St. John
A purpose-built-for-remote-display-protocols, software-only WAN
accelerator from... Wyse
Brian Madden
VDI for the Long Haul
ITBusinessEdge, by Arthur Cole
Virtual Strategy Magazine Podcast
Wyse VDA software can be purchased for both Applications (MS Terminal
Services/ Citrix XenApp) or Desktop (Citrix XenDesktop/ VMware View)
Virtualization. It is also built in to the Wyse ThinOS 6.4 devices.
For more information on Wyse VDA or to download a trial version, see
http://www.wyse.com/products/software/vda
Posted by Staff at 08:43 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2009
vSphere4 Cloud OS by VMware
VMware Unveils the Industry’s First Operating System for Building the Internal Cloud—VMware vSphere™ 4
Two articles on vSphere. First is writeup by Betanews and then the actual PR on vmware.com
By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews
At a large-scale rollout today, VMware and blue-chip partners filled in the details on a cloud-oriented "virtualization operating system" that's been hinted more and more about since its initial preview at an EMC customer conference last fall.
Essentially, vSphere 4 "slides in a new layer of software" for bringing together "islands" of server software running in different operating environments, said VMWare CEO Paul Maritz, speaking at an event that also featured live appearances by top brass from allies Intel, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell.
"It's de rigeur these days when giving a presentation to talk about 'the cloud," Maritz admitted. "I'm going to be no exception," he added, asserting that, to him, "cloud" is simply "shorthand" for "cutting the complexity" out of computing.
Reiterating a long-term strategy of virtual "private clouds" articulated in Cannes, France during February, Maritz said today that vSphere 4 will be followed by a "steady tempo" of related announcements over the next 18 months. Under the long-term scenario, customers will be able to create clouds that keep the security, manageability, and high availability of the internal computing environment while also accessing applications and services from one or more external clouds.
Specifically, the product announced today allows up to eight Intel Xeon 5500 processors to function as a single virtual machine (VM), for operating database and other mission critical applications, said VMware CTO Jeff Nick.
But beyond Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus versions, VMware will also offer an edition for SMBs known as "Essentials Plus," to be "affordably priced" at $166 per processor.
With Essentials Plus, smaller businesses will be able to build virtualized "mini data centers" on just a few servers, said Nick. The CD for the "virtual OS" went gold today, and shipment is slated for later this quarter.
In addition to greater scalability than VMware's earlier virtualization software, vSphere brings a new user interface and capabilities across areas that include efficiency, control and choice, said Nick, who also talked about the benefits of virtualization for cutting costs through server virtualization.
On a Sun Fire 15K server, Nick demo'd new features such as vCenter Host Profiles, for quickly rolling out configuration changes to multiple servers, and vStorage Thin Provisioning.
In a reference to Oracle's surprise buyout of Sun on Monday, a VMware staffer playfully replaced an "IBM" sign attached to the Fire server with an "Oracle" placard. "I like the 'Oracle Fire.' That's good," Nick quipped.
Maritz contended that while IBM has sometimes taken credit for "inventing virtualization," VMware was the first to recognize -- soon after its founding in 1998 -- the potential for virtualization across multiple servers.
But IBM -- a company that was in talks to buy Sun before Oracle entered the picture -- was among a long list of VMWare hardware, software, and hosting partners making video testimonials for vSphere 4 at the event.
"BlackBerry users tend to think of BlackBerry as a mission critical application," remarked Peter Walker, senior director of software product management at RIM, in one of the testimonials.
Maritz also mentioned that VMware continues to work on a client-side initiative called VMware View, for installing "software to people" independently of whether they're using a "thin client" or "a thick client like a laptop."
Speaking live, Dell Inc. Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said that his company plans to expand support beyond the four Dell products now supporting VMware View.
Taking note of individual efforts of various VMware partners, Joe Tucci -- VMware's chairman of the board, and CEO of EMC -- maintained that Dell is in "excellent position" to take advantage of VMware's client-side virtualization.
In announcing its own x86-based cloud storage system earlier this month, EMC -- which holds a majority interest in VMware -- said that the will be available for VMware first, and on Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization platform later.
Here is the official Press Release
Next Generation Virtualization Platform Helps Enable Enterprises and Service Providers to Deliver Efficient, Flexible and Reliable IT as a Service
PALO ALTO, CA, April 21, 2009 — VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced VMware vSphere™ 4, the industry’s first operating system for building the internal cloud, enabling the delivery of efficient, flexible and reliable IT as a service. With a wide range of groundbreaking new capabilities, VMware vSphere 4 brings cloud computing to enterprises in an evolutionary, non-disruptive way – delivering uncompromising control with greater efficiency while preserving customer choice.
As the complexity of IT environments has continued to increase over time, customers’ share of IT budgets are increasingly spent on simply trying to “keep the lights on.” With the promise of cloud computing, customers are eager to achieve the benefits, but struggle to see the path to getting there. Leveraging VMware vSphere 4, customers can take pragmatic steps to achieve cloud computing within their own IT environments. With these “internal” clouds, IT departments can dramatically simplify how computing is delivered in order to help decrease its cost and increase its flexibility, enabling IT to respond more rapidly to changing business requirements.
VMware vSphere 4 will aggregate and holistically manage large pools of infrastructure – processors, storage and networking – as a seamless, flexible and dynamic operating environment. Any application – an existing enterprise application or a next-generation application – runs more efficiently and with guaranteed service levels on VMware vSphere 4. For enterprises, VMware vSphere 4 will bring the power of cloud computing to the datacenter, slashing IT costs while dramatically increasing IT responsiveness. For hosting service providers, VMware vSphere 4 will enable a more economic and efficient path to delivering cloud services that are compatible with customers’ internal cloud infrastructures. Over time, VMware will support dynamic federation between internal and external clouds, enabling “private” cloud environments that span multiple datacenters and/or cloud providers.
“Since pioneering virtualization for x86 systems 10 years ago, VMware has delivered an impressive list of ‘industry-firsts’ – the first hypervisor, the first VMotion™ capability now synonymous with VMware, and the first platform for pooling servers, storage and network, allowing customers to decrease the capital and operating cost of computing by up to 60-70 percent,” said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, VMware. “VMware vSphere 4 is the next evolution along this path of innovation. By giving IT organizations a non-disruptive path to cloud computing, we will be leading our customers on a journey that delivers value every step of the way, delivering up to an additional 30 percent cost reduction today while enabling IT to provide reliable and adaptable IT services.”
FICO, the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology to the world’s top banks and credit card issuers, commented on how VMware vSphere 4 will improve the efficiency of its business.
“As a critical player in the global financial services ecosystem, we require flexibility and standards to stretch the limits of our IT resources and adjust to the unknown,” said Christopher Rence, CIO, FICO. “With VMware vSphere as the foundation of our cloud computing initiative, we’re now in a better position to deliver a unified platform that enables the world’s top financial services institutions to make effective and confident decisions at all stages of the customer lifecycle.”
VMware vSphere 4 Delivers Unprecedented Efficiency, Control and Choice
VMware vSphere 4 extends the previous generation VMware platform – VMware Infrastructure 3 – along three dimensions: it delivers the efficiency and performance required to run business critical applications in large scale environments, it provides uncompromised control over application service levels, and it preserves customer choice of hardware, OS, application architecture and on-premise vs. off-premise application hosting.
Efficiency. One of the primary benefits customers are seeking with cloud computing is decreasing the cost of IT services, freeing up budget to focus on delivering new capabilities that strategically differentiate the enterprise. VMware vSphere 4 enables transformative capital and operational expenditure cost savings over and above what was possible with the previous generation VMware Infrastructure 3:
About 30 percent increase in consolidation ratios, further decreasing infrastructure cost per application.1
Up to 50 percent storage savings with VMware vStorage Thin Provisioning, which minimizes storage overprovisioning by enabling virtual machines to consume storage only as needed. Accrued across all VMware vSphere customers, these storage savings would free up enough storage to save up to 50 times the number of pictures currently on Facebook. 2
Up to 20 percent additional power and cooling savings with VMware Distributed Power Management which uses VMware VMotion to automatically place all virtual machines on as few physical servers as possible without compromising service levels, and power down physical servers that are not needed. The power savings with VMware Distributed Power Management across all VMware vSphere 4 customers over one year could power a country the size of Denmark for 10 days.3
TradeBeam, a leading provider of global on-demand supply-chain management solutions, has used the beta version of VMware vSphere and expects it to increase the company’s competitive advantage.
“Cloud computing is the future for us, and VMware vSphere 4 is the ideal platform to build our internal cloud,” said Nasser Mirzai, IT director at TradeBeam. “In our business, every sale requires a proof of concept which can become lengthy and expensive by using dedicated infrastructure. With an internal cloud built on VMware vSphere 4, we will be able to provide that infrastructure as a user friendly service to our sales teams and prospects. They will be able to request the infrastructure they need through a simple web portal and get it on-demand with guaranteed service levels and lower costs. That means getting the prospect up and running in one day instead of two weeks; the lead stays hot and we can increase our conversion rate while decreasing the cost of sales.”
Performance and Scalability for the 100 Percent Virtualized Internal Cloud
VMware vSphere 4 delivers significant performance and scalability improvements over the previous generation VMware Infrastructure 3 to enable even the most resource intensive applications, such as large databases and Microsoft Exchange, to be deployed on internal clouds. With these performance and scalability improvements, VMware vSphere 4 will enable the 100 percent virtualized internal cloud.
VMware vSphere 4 delivers more powerful virtual machines with up to:
2x the number of virtual processors per virtual machine (from 4 to 8)
2.5x more virtual NICs per virtual machine (from 4 to 10)
4x more memory per virtual machine (from 64 GB to 255GB)
3x increase in network throughput (from 9 Gb/s to 30Gb/s)
3x increase in the maximum recorded I/O operations per second (to over 300,000)
New maximum recorded number of transactions per second - 8,900 which is 5x the total payment traffic of the VISA network worldwide4
Targeted performance improvements for specific applications:
Estimated 50 percent improved performance for application development workloads
Estimated 30 percent improved performance for Citrix XenApp
BayScribe, a leading provider of dictation services, supporting more than 50,000 physicians nationwide and facilitating more than 500,000 transcribed reports each month, commented on enhanced application performance with VMware vSphere 4.
“We have been using the VMware vSphere 4 beta, and even with the beta code, we have observed greatly accelerated application performance compared to VMware Infrastructure 3," said Steve Bonney, vice president of business development at BayScribe. “As a result, we are now planning to run the production database for our primary revenue generating application in a virtual machine on vSphere so that we can also take advantage of the availability, security and scalability features built in VMware vSphere 4.”
VMware vSphere 4 brings the capability to aggregate large number of virtual machines and large amounts of physical infrastructure into a single logical resource pool or “compute plant” on a cloud scale in order to create “the mainframe of the 21st century.” VMware vSphere 4 can pool together up to:
32 physical servers with up to 2048 processor cores
1,280 virtual machines
32 TB of RAM
16 petabytes of storage
8,000 network ports
Control. VMware vSphere 4 enables efficient operational control of these very powerful “compute plants” with new large scale management features such as VMware Host Profiles and VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch that allow easy standardization of server security, storage and network settings; automating configuration management and reducing errors due to misconfiguration. For an environment of 100 virtualized hosts, these new management features can save an estimated 25 weeks or half year of system administrator time, thus significantly reducing operating cost.
VMware vSphere 4 brings uncompromised control over application service levels – enabling the right levels of availability, security and scalability to all applications independent of the OS or application architecture. All these new application service level capabilities can be delivered with one-mouse-click configuration simplicity, for set-it-and-forget it management simplicity, further reducing datacenter operating costs.
Zero downtime, zero data loss protection against hardware failures with VMware Fault Tolerance, without the cost and complexity of alternative solutions.
Minimized planned downtime due to storage maintenance and migrations with VMware Storage VMotion, available with a new administrator interface, which provides live migration of virtual machine disk files across heterogeneous networked storage types.
Quick, simple, integrated, and cost effective disk-based backup and recovery for all applications with VMware Data Recovery.
Easier and stricter security compliance with VMware vShield Zones which simplifies application security by helping to enforce corporate security policies at the application-level within logical zones in a shared environment, while still maintaining trust and network segmentation of users and sensitive data.
Easier application service level management with VMware vApp, which is an industry standard way to encapsulate all virtual machine components of an application and describe their compute and memory resource requirements.
Southwestern Energy Company, an integrated energy company primarily focused on the exploration for and production of natural gas, is using VMware Fault Tolerance.
“VMware Fault Tolerance is extremely useful,” said Larry C. Miller Jr., senior systems administrator at Southwestern Energy. “This is a welcome addition to our arsenal of high availability technologies because it makes previously very high-end, expensive and complex functionality truly accessible. VMware Fault Tolerance can be turned on and off with a mouse click and while protecting applications against hardware failure.”
Choice. With VMware vSphere 4, customers retain flexibility of choice, remaining independent of hardware, OS, application stack, and service providers. For example, VMware vSphere 4 offers the broadest choice of guest operating systems over any other virtualization solution on the market today. This means customers can support their existing applications and feel confident about future applications, while retaining the flexibility to deploy within internal or external clouds.
“The days of the traditional monolithic operating system are numbered,” said Chris Wolf, senior analyst with Burton Group. “Server platforms are now being purposed-built for virtualized workloads, and many of the roles associated with the traditional OS are transitioning to virtualized internal and external cloud-based infrastructures. Organizations looking to gain the operational and financial benefits of cloud-based IT can do so today by deploying purpose-built cloud infrastructure software that streamlines internal data center operations, while providing a gateway to future external cloud expansion.”
Qualcomm, a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications products and services, commented on the flexibility that VMware vSphere 4 can provide for its business.
“VMware has provided us with cost savings and efficiencies for a number of years,” says Paul Poppleton, IT architect, Qualcomm. “With VMware vSphere 4, we can leverage our virtualization implementations to get greater economies through an internal cloud strategy. As a leader in virtualization, VMware is positioned to help us continue to automate and streamline our infrastructure to best serve our business needs, on or off premise.”
VMware vSphere 4 Pricing Starts at $166 per Processor5
VMware vSphere 4 is expected to be generally available later in Q2 2009 and will be available in six editions meeting the requirements, use cases and budgets of customers of all sizes. In the current tough economic climate, VMware vSphere 4 offers unbeatable value to customers with up to 30 percent higher consolidation ratios, up to 50 percent storage savings, and up to 20 percent power savings over the previous generation of VMware Infrastructure 3.
VMware vSphere 4 Essentials, priced at $995 for three physical servers, or $166 per processor, provides an all-in-one virtualization solution for the small office IT environment. VMware vSphere 4 Essentials Plus, priced at $2,995 for three physical servers, or $499 per processor, adds high availability and data protection capabilities that are otherwise out of reach for the small office IT environment. VMware vSphere 4 Essentials Plus is the only virtualization offering that provides integrated, built-in availability, data protection, patch management, and customizable alerts and reports at this price point.
For datacenter deployments requiring the ability to scale and grow, VMware vSphere 4 provides four editions for four distinct use cases:
VMware vSphere 4 Standard priced at $795 per processor provides significant server consolidation ROI with new cost saving capabilities including thin provisioning for up to 50 percent lower storage costs and performance optimizations for up to 30 percent higher consolidation ratios than the previous generation of VMware software.
VMware vSphere 4 Advanced priced at $2,245 per processor provides application availability and protection. Live migration with VMware VMotion, and the addition of VMware Fault Tolerance for continuous availability, VMware Data Recovery for backup, and VMware vShield Zones for security uniquely deliver Always on IT in one integrated package.
VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise priced at $2,875 per processor adds automated resource management with VMware DRS and VMware Storage VMotion.
VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus priced at $3,495 per processor includes the full range of VMware vSphere 4 features for transforming datacenters into internal cloud computing environments including VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch and VMware Host Profiles for simplifying the operational management of large deployments.
Special Upgrade Promotions for Existing VMware Infrastructure Customers. Existing VMware Infrastructure 3 customers with valid support and subscription contracts are automatically entitled to VMware vSphere 4 editions. (For more information, visit the VMware vSphere 4 upgrade center at: http://www.vmware.com/go/vsphere-upgrade-center.) VMware is offering limited time promotions for existing VMware Infrastructure 3 customers wishing to upgrade to VMware vSphere 4 editions over and above what they are entitled to under their support and subscription contracts:
VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard to VMware vSphere 4 Advanced: At less than 50 percent of the upgrade list price, customers can add key features such as live migration with VMware VMotion, continuous availability, network security zoning, and data protection. Suggested US list price: $745 per processor
VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise to VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus: At less than 50 percent of the upgrade list price, customers can add key features such as dynamic resource allocation, power management, live migration, the distributed switch, and host configuration controls. Suggested US list price: $295 per processor
For more information on VMware vSphere 4, please visit: http://www.vmware.com/go/vsphere.
For more information on the VMware vSphere 4 pricing, please visit: http://www.vmware.com/go/vsphere/buy.
About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter—bringing cloud computing to businesses of all sizes. Customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC). For more information, visit www.vmware.com.
VMware, vSphere and VMotion are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements made in this press release which are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements and are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements relate, but are not limited, to, the benefits of customer adoption and deployment of our products and architecture and expectations for the release and delivery of our products. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) the duration and deepening of negative economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in consumer or information technology spending; (iii) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the virtualization market, and new product and marketing initiatives by our competitors; (iv) our customers’ ability to develop, and to transition to, new products, (v) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology initiatives; (vii) rapid technological and market changes in virtualization software; (viii) changes to product development timelines; (ix) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (xii) our ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; and (xii) fluctuating currency exchange rates. These forward looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in condition, significance, value and effect as well as other risks detailed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2008, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. VMware disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.
1Based on VMmark benchmark comparing the performance of ESX 4.0 on 2-socket server with 6-core Intel processors to the performance of ESX 3.5 on 2-socket server with quad-core Intel processor.
2 Calculation based on the usage of VMware vStorage Thin Provisioning across all VMware virtual machines - we assume thin provisioning is turned on for all current VMware virtual machines and this results in deferred storage needs of less than 50%
3 Calculation based on the usage of VMware DPM across the current installed base of VMware ESX - we assume DPM gets turned on across all servers and some number of those servers get powered off on nights and weekends
4 Benchmark published at VMworld EMEA http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/performance-vmworld.html
A single VMware vSphere 4 VM delivers 5 times the payment traffic of VISA, which is estimated at 55 billion transactions over the four quarters ended Sept. 30, 2008.
5 All prices referenced in this section are suggested US list prices and may be subject to change.
Posted by Staff at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2009
NComputing Aims to Disrupt Desktop Virtualization
Let the battle continue...NComputing promises that its X- and L-series products will give users the benefits of desktop virtualization for a fraction of the cost of competing solutions by VMware and Citrix... I feel like its 1991 and we are witnessing the wars between Novell and Microsoft LM and Banyan VINES...
DATE: 2009-03-13
By Sharon Linsenbach
NComputing promises that its X- and L-series products will give users the benefits of desktop virtualization for a fraction of the cost of competing solutions by VMware and Citrix.
NComputing is changing the rules of desktop virtualization with its proprietary all-in-one solutions, allowing solution providers to deliver high-performance desktop virtualization solutions at a fraction of the cost of competitors such as VMware and Citrix.
NComputing developed its own desktop virtualization software and associated hardware appliances in-house, allowing its solution providers a one-stop solution for customers in markets as diverse as education, manufacturing and for enterprise customers with multiple branch offices, says Carsten Puls, vice president of strategic marketing at NComputing.
“We developed a disruptively low-cost solution that provides not just the software but also the hardware, and because we developed and manufacture that in-house, solution providers can get to a very low acquisition price,” he says. “That makes it ideal for any size customer – from small, just-getting-started businesses to major corporations,” he says.
Better-known players such as VMware and Citrix certainly have their own virtual desktop solutions, says Puls, but they rely on the addition of third-party hardware, which can often drive up the cost of such solutions as well as introduce unnecessary complexity.
Resource Library:
“The other players tend to fall into two categories: either providing virtualization software or hardware. These products just aren’t enough for customers on their own, and when you add up the per-seat price of software with the added hardware components, you get an acquisition price that’s higher than standard, traditional PCs,” he says.
Often, that cost ends up being around $1,000 per user, whereas with the NComputing solution, prices range from $70 to $200 per seat.
Puls says the key is recognizing that individual PCs now have excess capacity and power that far surpasses what the average user needs. The company’s software works by installing an agent on host machine connected to as many as 30 additional PCs, and creating multiple workstations that function like sessions, he says, harnessing the extra power from those PCs to create multiple virtual environments.
NComputing’s proprietary user extension protocol (UXP) delivers the desktop experience and protocol across a variety of mediums, so users get the look and feel of an actual desktop PC, he says. NComputing’s access hardware is an incredibly small, energy-efficient appliance about the size of a deck of cards, Puls says.
By combining these components, NComputing allows solution providers to deliver a virtual desktop experience using very low-cost, entry level PCs as both the host and the clients, he says.
“The example that we use in our executive briefing center here is a $360 Dell PC that’s used to run 11 seats,” he says.
NComputing offers two product lines: the X-Series, which creates a direct connection between the host and client computers, and the L-Series, which connects host and clients via Ethernet.
The X-series uses a PCI card for interconnection, and requires that host and client machines be within 10 meters of each other. The L-series is better suited for manufacturing environments or for larger enterprises with branch offices. The L-series can connect up to 30 users from a single host using a networking switch. Both can be installed and deployed within about 15 to 20 minutes, Puls says, making the solution a great fit for solution providers whose customers want to see fast ROI.
The X-series proximity requirement along with its low cost of $70 per seat makes it ideal for education settings, Puls says, and in fact, that’s where many of NComputing’s solution providers sell.
Eight percent of new computing purchases for K-12 school and universities are from NComputing, says Puls, and the company’s sold 1.2 million seats in the last two years. IDC research says NComputing is the third-largest provider of thin-clients after only Hewlett-Packard and Wyse Technology.
While NComputing’s solutions ship with built-in management software, the solutions are completely compatible with existing third-party management software, says Puls.
“We made it a point to partner with third-party systems that customers already have,” he says. “We work with standard Linux and Windows operating systems and peripherals, too; we don’t want customers and solution providers to have to make further purchases or spend time learning new software,” he says.
Source Link on Channel Insider
Posted by Staff at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2009
VMware clarifies what features they'll support via PC-over-IP for VDI
Writeup on VMware presentation at conference on PC-over-IP but still doesn't show software-only implementation example?
Like most conferences, VMware used the Day 2 keynote for the more technical content they wanted to share with the conference-wide audience. The keynote was led by VMware's CTO Steve Herrod. Steve confirmed the high level stuff that Paul Maritz mentioned yesterday. There was nothing really new, although he did mention a cool feature of the client hypervisor that it will have the ability to check-in periodically for enforcement of usage and security policies. The example he used was that if you realized you had a major security problem with one of your VMs, you could enable a policy which would disable that VM. Then the next time a remote client running the hypervisor checked in, it would learn that VM was disabled and it would security destroy it. Pretty cool!
The "money" information was about VMware's protocol plans. They talked about the PC-over-IP capabilities that they're adding into their View VDI products. As you may recall, last September VMware announced that they'd signed a codevelopment agreement with Teradici and that the two companies would work together to create a software-only implementation of Teradici's PC-over-IP remote display protocol. (Today's PC-over-IP implementations are hardware-based, meaning you need a graphics card with a Teradici chip in it on your remote host, and a thin client device with a Teradici card in it to connect from the client end.) From a branding standpoint, VMware never mentioned the word "Teradici" on stage today, and they did not mention that this technology was based on their co-development agreement. (I guess they didn't want anyone to know that this technology was currently available via companies other than them.) Instead, VMware only mentioned this as "PC-over-IP." (And while most readers of this website are familiar with PC-over-IP and Teradici, a journalist sitting next to me was really impressed and asked my several questions about how this "VMware PC-over-IP" works.)
In the keynote, Steve and Jerry explained that VMware would use PC-over-IP to support three use cases:
Jerry explained that while the WAN use case is really complex, it's VMware's intention to use the software-only implementation of PC-over-IP to support users with 150-250ms latency. They'll give them "basic" flash (think YouTube videos, not full-on Flash apps), voice over IP, remote printers, local storage, etc. (Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not 100% sure the WAN use case was using PC-over-IP. The WAN use case might just be using the traditional RDP with the Wyse TCX extensions that VMware licensed.)
LAN for 2D graphics use case
VMware expects the LAN use case for business apps to be the most common. They'll support multiple displays (they didn't specify how many "multiple" meant) at 1900x1200 resolution, a rich internet browsing experience, "full" Flash content, Adobe AIR, Silverlight, etc. Jerry said this would be the "true PC experience" with HD video and rich 2D graphics. And again, this was all with a software implementation of PC-over-IP.
LAN for 3D graphics use case
The final use case that VMware will support is for full 3D graphics over the LAN, including CAD/CAM, video, GIS, animation, etc. For this use case, they will require the assistance of "specialized hardware on the host and the client." In other words, this is exactly how Teradici works today. (It's just that they can broker the connection with VMware View, which is also actually available today.)
Demo Time: A bit misleading for people not "in the know"
After explaining the three use cases, Jerry showed a demo of "VMware View's 3D performance over a LAN." He used Google Earth and an application with a 3D CAD-like rendering of the Eiffel Tower. I hate to sound so negative about everything here, but most in the audience were mislead by this demo. It was a demo of Teradici's hardware chipset-based implementation. It had absolutely nothing to do with VMware. Yes, the crowed loved it and they applauded wildly. But they didn't know they should be applauding for Teradici, not VMware.
To be fair to Jerry, I don't think he purposefully tried to mislead anyone. He mentioned this was a "hardware assisted" solution connected to a workstation behind the stage. But after the demo, two people came up to me and said "Wow! I can't believe VMware gets such good performance!" I mentioned this performance was from Teradici and their chips, not VMware, and the people were surprised. So while the demo was a connection that was "brokered" by View 3, VMware didn't really have anything else to do with it.
So congratulations Teradici! Your demo rocked!
The big question
VMware has still not publicly demonstrated their software-only PC-over-IP implementation. This is the one we'll all get for free when we buy future versions of VMware View, and this is the experience our users will have when connecting to VM-based View environments. It's great that VMware is planning to support the LAN and WAN use cases, but we're still waiting to see how good the user experience will be.
Stay tuned!
Posted by Staff at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2009
VMware makes world takeover bid - All of your clouds belong to us.
VMWorld -- VMware is introducing a new vSphere architecture and management product to manage a data centre as an internal or external cloud of services.
Source article on The Register
The idea, introduced by VMware CEO Paul Maritz at VMworld in Cannes, is to have a set of interfaces looking downwards at the IT plumbing and another set looking at the applications.There is a vCompute interface to look at the compute resources and see what is available and provision them. A vStorage layer gets told by storage resources - the arrays for example - what they can do, such as block copy or deduplication. Then vSphere admin staff, and ultimately users themselves, can provision storage resources.
A vNetwork layer does the same thing for networks. The vSphere architecture also provides a point of insertion, as Maritz would have it, for policies relating to security, availability and scalability. It enables data protection and clustering for availability, firewalls, anti-virus and compliance for security.
In general IT resources are treated as things to scale up or down as required operationally.
The vSphere product will be able to trace every instruction executed on every server in the data centre, providing an extremely granular record for security purposes and also, eventually, for billing purposes as VMware will add billing hooks to vSphere.
VMware sees no difference between internal and external clouds and wants to encourage federation between them with vSphere being used inside companies and also by external service providers so that the decision by a business to use its internal cloud or an external one is an operational decision.
The external cloud can be used to provide resource for extreme IT loads that are beyond the internal cloud's capabilities with multi-tenancy keeping a customer's workload separate from other customers.
One implication is that it might even be possible to move VMs between internal and external clouds.
Maritz said there should be an open eco-system of cloud providers rather than private and incompatible clouds. VMware will start to work with standards bodies to try and avoid the emergence of massive proprietary uber-clouds.
Client-side
VMware is also working with Intel to integrate its client-side bare-metal hypervisor with Intel's vPro technology so that hypervisor and processor can work together to verify that a virtual machine environment downloaded to the client device is the right one, and also to enforce separation between VMs and help prevent malware.
VMware's virtual desktop infrastructure will support various types of client end-points, such as thin clients, rich desktops and notebooks. Users at these devices will be authenticated and the correct environment downloaded to them, even to an internet-connected notebook if the connection enables it. Desktop and notebook devices will have their data made available to them with any local changes sent back to the centre so that users can re-connect to this virtual desktop cloud with the same or different devices and work with the same data.
If their end-point device crashes they re-connect with a new one and resume working with no or minimal data loss. The ideal here is for users to bring their own end-point devices and have them treated by VMware in the same way as cell phones are by a service provider.
VMware reckons it will dramatically improve the performance of its thin client software with accelerated protocols. It also reckons there is a phenomenal opportunity for deduplicating desktop images. Admin staff will manage templates and not individual images. The templates will enable a few administrators to manage thousands if not tens of thousands of actual images with the actual image required by a user built from different elements according to the template.
The VMware spider
The over-arching Maritz view is that virtualisation enables the creation of a giant software mainframe with management at the service level and not at the plumbing level. It also means that everything in the data centre - servers, storage and networking - and at the end-points of the web of connections it controls is a virtual data centre OS co-operating and managed resource. Everything dances to VMware' VDOS tune and VDOS becomes a massive controlling spider, hyper-vising at the data centre level.
In a breath-taking vSphere vision a whole era of distributed and independent computing is coming to an end in VMware data shops as the software mainframe hands control back to the centre.
Paul Maritz, a man who helped spread the distributed computing gospel while at Microsoft, is now hoping to destroy it in the name of efficiency, utilisation, control and cost-saving.
Posted by Staff at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2009
VMware Announces First Open Source Virtual Desktop Client
PALO ALTO, Calif. – February 3, 2009 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced the first open source client for virtual desktop infrastructure, VMware View Open Client.
VMware View enables IT organizations to safely host user desktops in the datacenter, while letting users access their personalized desktop environments from almost any device, at any time – all at a lower cost of ownership than traditional desktop environments. Now, VMware is providing VMware View Open Client for partners, enabling them to use VMware View source code to optimize their products to deliver rich, personalized virtual desktops to users. In addition, partners will be able to use the source code to help accelerate the development and delivery of solutions for enterprises to provision and manage thousands of virtual desktops simply, securely and at substantially lower operating costs.
This announcement is another important step in VMware’s vClient Initiative to deliver universal clients – desktops that follow users to any end point while providing a rich personalized experienced that is secure, cost-effective and easy for IT to manage.
“VMware feels strongly about industry collaboration to move the market forward to develop the best solutions,” said Jocelyn Goldfein, vice president and general manager of VMware’s Desktop Business Unit. “Now we are sharing our source code in VMware View Open Client so vendors can easily optimize devices to create the best virtual desktop solutions. As a result, IT is able to reduce the total cost of providing desktop environments by allowing low-end or less-expensive devices that provide the same feature set as higher-end devices. This also brings us closer to our Universal Client vision, where users can securely and efficiently access rich personalized desktop environments, from any device at any time.”
According to Gartner:
Gartner projects that approximately 50 million user licenses for hosted virtual desktops will be purchased by 2013.1
The thin-client terminal will account for about 40% of user devices for hosted virtual desktop deployment. 2
VMware View Open Client is available under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 (LGPL v 2.1) and is accessible from http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/. Some of the features included in this release support secure tunneling using SSL, two factor authentication with RSA SecurID, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client Add-On RPM package and a full command line interface. Support for the source code distribution is available through the VMware View Open Client community at: http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/.
“Chip PC and VMware have collaborated through the VMware Thin Client Certification Program to provide certified thin clients that integrate seamlessly into customer environments and deliver predictable results,” said Frank Bernard, director of U.S. operations, Chip PC. ”With VMware View Open Client, we can broaden the range of thin clients certified for VMware View, increase the security of existing thin clients through secure tunneling and reduce the cost of deploying virtual desktops.”
"Customers of all sizes and in all verticals have realized the benefits of deploying thin clients and virtualization," said Joe Makoid, president, Devon IT. "The new VMware View Open Client takes desktop virtualization to a new level, enabling more of Devon's customers to benefit from lower total cost of ownership, increased security and a wider range of our thin client devices to choose from."
“HP and VMware have a history of working together to help meet the needs of customers looking to deploy cost-effective desktop solutions,” said Jeff Groudan, vice president of marketing, desktop solutions organization, HP. “VMware View Open Client enables us to deliver thin client devices certified for VMware View faster and at an even lower cost while driving down the total cost of ownership of a virtual desktop deployment.”
"As thin client vendors increasingly adopt the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform for their devices, enabling VMware virtualization within the operating system is a natural step forward," said Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of open platform solutions, Novell. "Our collaboration with VMware is geared toward allowing customers to seamlessly adopt desktop virtualization in their environments with the flexibility and cost savings that Linux provides."
“We are excited about VMware's decision to open source VMware View Open Client given Sun’s proven leadership in delivering open source software,” said Jim McHugh, vice president, Datacenter Marketing, Sun Microsystems. "We're looking forward to working with VMware and extending our existing support for VMware View."
"Today's announcement regarding the integration of VMware View Open Client with Wyse's thin computing solutions continues to move the virtual desktop market forward," said Ricardo Antuna, vice president of products and business development, Wyse Technology. "Our customers will continue to benefit from increased security, lower total cost of ownership and a lower environmental footprint, and now with a tighter integration of Wyse virtual desktops with VMware View."
For more information on VMware View Open Client, visit http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/.
About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC). For more information, visit www.vmware.com.
VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
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1 Gartner, Dataquest Insight: Growth in Thin-Client Terminal Markets Points to a Fundamental Shift in Computing Architecture, By Mikako Kitagawa & Ranjit Atwal, October 18, 2008.
2 Gartner, Dataquest Insight: Growth in Thin-Client Terminal Markets Points to a Fundamental Shift in Computing Architecture, By Mikako Kitagawa & Ranjit Atwal, October 18, 2008.
Posted by Staff at 02:33 PM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2008
VMware Announces Certification Program for Thin Client Vendors
New Program Helps Vendors Certify Thin Client Devices for VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Providing Greater Choice for Customers
PALO ALTO, Calif. — VMware, Inc., (NYSE:VMW) the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced a new certification program for thin client devices. Thin clients--which have small footprints and price tags because they use centralized servers for most of their processing power--provide a cost-effective alternative to standard PCs when used in conjunction with VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is a comprehensive desktop virtualization solution that replaces traditional PCs with virtual machines that are centralized in the datacenter and available to users from any device. This model streamlines desktop management while reducing desktop TCO, increasing IT's control, improving data security and enhancing user experience, flexibility and productivity. When VDI is used with a thin client device, customers can extend the desktop life cycle, dramatically reduce energy consumption and further reduce costs associated with maintaining a traditional PC.
The new VMware certification program will enable VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure customers to choose from a wide variety of thin client devices officially certified for VMware products. VMware's open standards ensure that thin client devices running on multiple platforms will deliver a consistent experience for virtual desktop users. Organizations choose what type of device suits their business needs and are not tied to a specific device that will only support VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
"As enterprises increasingly standardize their desktop environments using VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, it is important to offer customers the broadest choice of thin client options available," said Jeff Jennings, vice president, desktop products and solutions, VMware. "With an expanding community of thin client vendors, customers can select from a wide range of devices that are specifically designed and optimized to work with VMware virtual desktops."
Chip PC, Computer Lab International (CLI), Devon IT, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IGEL, NEC, Pano Logic, Praim by CompuMaster, Sun Microsystems, and Wyse are among the thin client vendors who will be certifying their clients as part of the new program. After the thin client device has been certified, it will be listed on the VMware Certified Compatibility Guide: http://www.vmware.com/resources/guides.html. Customers can be assured that devices listed in the guide have passed VMware's testing criteria for interoperability and quality assurance listed here: http://www.vmware.com/resources/guides.html
VMware launched its hardware certification program in 2000 to enable VMware and its hardware partners to fully test and optimize their products for VMware Infrastructure. Nearly 2,000 different server and storage hardware models are currently certified, representing products from 46 vendors. VMware is working directly with a variety of its Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program members and OEM partners to certify their thin client devices. Read what partners are saying about VMware's thin client certification program here: www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/thinclient_partner_support.html.
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About VMware
VMware (NYSE:VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2007 revenues of $1.3 billion, more than 100,000 customers and nearly 14,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. VMware is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and on the web at www.vmware.com.
VMware is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
VMware Public Relations Mary Ann Gallo, 650-427-3271 [email protected] or OutCast Communications for VMware Andrew Schmitt, 415-392-8282 [email protected]
Posted by staff at 07:56 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2007
Virtualization software set to crush server market
Analysts starting to talk about a crippling of the low-end server market thanks to growing virtualization. All of this is underpinned by the emerging software as a service trend we think.
Virtualization software to crush server market
By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View ([email protected])
Published Wednesday 1st August 2007 09:37 GMT
Analysis Virtualization software will apparently cripple the low-end server market.
Analysts and executives came out this week and declared that x86 server shipments will likely decline as VMware, Microsoft and a host of start-ups push their virtualization wares at speed. This thesis du jour centers on the notion that customers will buy fewer low-end systems, since they'll be running more software per box thanks to virtualization technology.
While this may feel like an obvious transition, most server and chip vendors have been arguing against the slowdown idea over the past couple of years. Even when blessed with cost or space saving tools, computer users tend to keep right on buying more gear and just use technology advances to cram greater horsepower in the same space. Now you're being told that virtualization technology will buck this trend.
For example, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz blamed virtualization technology for Sun's declining server revenue, during a call yesterday with financial analysts to discuss Sun's fourth quarter results. Schwartz told the analysts that virtualizaton in the near-term appears to have a "depressing" affect on units.
Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., has chipped in on the gloom and doom scenario as well in a new research report.
"As the use of server virtualization rises, a negative impact on x86 server demand appears all but inevitable," he wrote. "While we still positive x86 server unit growth in 2007 and 2008, our forecast calls for shipments to contract in 2009 and for growth to be about zero between 2007 and 2012, compared with historical double-digit gains."
In a rare feat, Schwartz and Sacconaghi also happen to agree about another trend that virtualization will drive. They're claiming that customers will buy larger, more memory- and component-packed servers moving forward to handle the demanding virtualization code. Why consolidate a couple of workloads on a two-socket box when you can consolidate more software on a four- or eight-socket system and deal with less hardware management overhead?
According to Sacconaghi, the trend toward larger systems will hurt Dell, since it has specialized in two-socket gear. It will, however, also hurt Sun, since x86 virtualization will only speed the move away from Unix systems.
Schwartz disagreed here - you're shocked, we know - arguing that Sun's larger system expertise will help it benefit from the virtualization charge. Sun can sell you larger x86 boxes, and it can offer Solaris Containers - arguably a cheaper and more efficient form of virtualization than VMware - on either Unix or x86 kit. In addition, customers doing the virtualization thing tend to "buy more integrated racks rather than piecemeal components," according to Schwartz, which signals higher margin deals for Sun.
Our take on the overall server market tends to overlap liberally with the views held by Schwartz and Sacconaghi. But we're seeing things differently this time around.
The major driver behind our skepticism is the relentless desire for more compute power demonstrated by customers again and again. The only time the server market really crawls to a halt is when there's no money to spend on new gear because of a broad economic slowdown. Given the moderately healthy state of the worldwide economy, and surging demand from developing regions, it seems unreasonable to us to expect that customers will not find a need for the mutli-core chips being thrown at them by Intel, AMD, Sun, IBM, Fujitsu and others.
Evidence for this horsepower pursuit can be found in the healthy hardware-based acceleration market. There's a resurgent desire for things such as FPGAs and GPGPUs (general purpose GPUs) that can speed specific workloads.
Rest of article
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/01/virtualization_doom_gloom/
Posted by Staff at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)