Alessandro at Virtualization.info already mentioned it in a nice summary so I quote:
Today VMware releases its much awaited VDI connection broker: Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) 2.0
Despite the versioning this is the very first release of VDM that VMware makes available outside its Professional Services channel. This specific release is also interesting because is the first one which integrates technology acquired from Propero.
The product is in public beta since September 2007 and the RTM build (403) sports some interesting features:
- Partially fault-tolerant architecture (user database synchronization between VDM servers)
- DMZ-friendly architecture (front-end tier for incoming connection and back-end tier for Active Directory and VI3)
- Integration with VirtualCenter
- Win32 and web-based client (it integrates rdesktop on Linux and Microsoft RDP Client on Windows and Mac OS)
- Web-based management interfaces
- RDP tunneling over SSL
- Support for HA solutions (NLB or clustering)
- Support for persistent and non-persistent desktop pools
- Support for RSA SecurID based authentication
- Support for Microsoft Active Directory authentication
- Support for client USB redirection
Download a trial here.
To add some extra info: Eric Sloof from NTPRO.NL gave a presentation about the installation and configuration of the Virtual Desktop Manager at the Dutch VMUG event last december. This presentation is available for download at the site of the Dutch VMware User Group: www.vmug.nl.
It’s official SWsoft changed it’s name to Parallels. That’s exactly the reason why Virtuozzo is called Parallels Virtuozzo from now on. Yesterday Parallels Virtuozzo Containers 4.0 was released. What exactly do we have here? Let’s take a look.
Virtuozzo Containers is a virtualization product in the OS Virtualization section, this means that it virtualizes servers at OS (kernel) level. On the site of Parallels they have a nice diagram showing the hypervisor/hardware virtualization technology in comparison to OS virtualization.
Examples of hypervisor/hardware virtualization: VMware Virtual Infrastructure, Parallels Server, Microsoft’s Hyper-V, Virtual Iron etc.
Examples of OS-virtualization: Parallels Virtuozzo, Sun Solaris Containers, OpenVZ
The new features in this version are:
- Re-designed Management tools
- Full support for Windows and Red Hat Linux clustering services.
- A full set of backup enhancements
- Additional high availability and incremental processing capabilities with support for Microsoft Network Load Balancing.
- Robust centralized resource management.
At tuesday January 22, Microsoft Virtualization Deployment Summit was kicked of with a keynote. A lot of news regarding Microsoft and Virtualization was presented before and after this date.
There are three major news facts to identify:
- Microsoft’s acquisition of Calista Technologies
- Microsoft and Citrix Systems expand alliance to deliver Virtualization Solutions from the Desktop to the Datacenter
- Microsoft annouced extension of their licensing policy regarding Microsoft Vista, now also the Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium are officaly supported to run in a virtual environment. Together with this Microsoft announced support for their applications running through virtual (Microsoft Application Virtualization f.k.a. Softgrid), starting with Microsoft Office.
The (recorded) webcast of Keynote Microsoft Virtualization Deployment Summit (approx. 2 hours)
Anthony Clendenen (Solutions Engineer at 1E) posted a link on Config Manager – http://configmgr.com from where you can download the Microsoft Application Virtualization Guide.
This trial guide walks you through a step by step creation of a Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 system including the Sequencing of two applications. Once you have completed these setup steps, you will be able to test the benefits of Microsoft Application Virtualization in your own environment.
A great way to get introduced in the world of Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly known as Softgrid).
Today VMware Released VMware Stage Manager 1.0 Beta. Stage Manager automates preproduction infrastructures and processes. VMware Stage Manager helps transition services and applications through the stages of the release process and into production. Out of the box it supports 4 stages as displayed in the picture below (Development, Test, Staging and Production).
If you look at the installed product it looks a lot like VMware Lab Manager. VMware Stage Manager runs on top of VI3 and Virtual Center which differs from Lab Manager which runs side by side Virtual Center which can cause conflicts if you don’t pay attention. Just as Lab Manager, Stage Manager uses the ip-fencing and snapshot technology.
Vmware Stage Manager has the following prerequisites:
- Windows 2003 server (at least SP1!)
- Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0
- Microsoft IIS with ASP.net v2.0.50727
- Virtual Center 2.5
- ESX3.5 (at least one host)
- Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer
- 512MB Ram and 200MB disk space
- A static ip-adress
The installation takes about 20 minutes. In this Beta release a custom install is not supported, only typical is supported. Please note that when choosing custom even when you know that is not supported, you have no choice but to accept that Stage Manager will use SQL2005 Express (which is installed during setup).
Looking at Virtual Center after clicking around in Stage Manager, the stage-structure you see in Stage Manager is also created (represented as a folderstructure) in Virtual Center see snapshot below.
As you can see in this snapshot-image, there are two releases active (intranet_v2 and intranet_v3) in two different stages (development and production). In each different stage you will see a xxxx-VirtualRouter_xxxxx_DontModify machine. This machine is automatically created by Stage Manager and holds the router which is created from a template and is responsible for the ip-fencing mechanism.
Platespin announced the release of Platespin Forge, a device used for recovery of physical and virtual servers. It is a Hardware appliance with Virtualized Disaster Recovery aiming at the SMB-market.
A closer look reveals that it’s DELL hardware with VMware’s VI3 (probably 3i?). The hardware configuration consists of a quad-core dual processor 2,6 GHz, 16 GB of RAM memory, 6 GB ethernet nic’s and 2,5 TB of SATA storage with RAID-5. Platespin says it can protect 25 workloads with one appliance.
Where does it fit in the current market of Backup and DR-solutions:
http://www.platespin.com/products/forge/whereitfits.aspx
The list of workloads that can be protected is limited to this list:
Workload Operating
Systems Support
- Windows 2000 Server
- Windows 2000 Advanced Server
- Windows 2003 Server
- Windows 2003 Server R2
- Windows XP Professional (SP2)
In the event of production server downtime or a disaster, administrators are automatically alerted via email. Notification messages enable context-sensitive actions that can be performed simply by clicking a link within the email from a PC, Blackberry® or other mobile device.
Platespin’s uses the technology of it’s well known product PowerConvert to make identical copies of physical (P2V) or virtual (V2V) machines which incase of recovery can be restored back on the same or different hardware (V2P) or even on a production virtual environment (V2V again).
The product was released in America on the 15th of January, unfortunately Europe has to wait until april of this year.
A summary of new features:
- Xen Security Modules (XSM)
- ACPI S3 suspend-to-RAM support for the host system
- Preliminary PCI pass-through support (using appropriate Intel or AMD I/O-virtualisation hardware)
- Preliminary support for a wider range of bootloaders in fully virtualised (HVM) guests, using full emulation of x86 ‘real mode’.
- Faster emulation of standard (non-super) VGA modes for HVM guests
- Configurable timer modes for HVM guests, depending on how the guest OS manages time-keeping
- Many other changes and enhancements across all supported machine architectures
More info here: http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-announce/2008-01/msg00000.html
A couple of months ago Apple changed their policy regarding virtual instances of Mac OS X Server. The license agreement of Leopard Server now contains a part which allows you to install one virtual copy of OS X Server on a single Apple-labeled computer. More info about this change here.
Yesterday Pete Kazanjy of the VMware Fusion team posted an article about this on VMTN.
In this article they announced that after Parallels also VMware Fusion is capable of running a virtual instance of Mac OS X Server (Leopard that is) on Apple hardware. This was achieved without any modifications to Mac OS X kernel. They demo this Technology Preview on Macworld, which is currently on show in San Francisco (15-18 january 2008).
They have made some photo’s and screenshots while installing/running it, so take look:
Thinstall is an Application Virtualization Platform that enables complex software to be delivered as self-contained EXE files which can run instantly with zero installation from any data source. The core of Thinstall VS is the Virtual Operating System, a small light-weight component which is embedded with each “Thinstalled” application.
With the acquisition VMware strenghten’s its position in the application virtualization market. Combining it with products like VMware ACE will bring new opportunities.
Thinstall significantly decreases the time to value of a software application and reduces the overhead of costly integrations. Software management on the desktop can be simplified by using thinstalls application virtualization. Applications no longer interfere with each other so the configuration of the host becomes less important and it can boost your app deployment by reducing application testing.
Click on the following link for to view a 58 minutes video with a demo of the capabilities of Thinstall.
Technorati Tags: VMware, Acquisition, Thinstall, ApplicationVirtualization, Application, Virtualization
1. VMware Stage Manager
Stage Manager is another solution in the IT service delivery life cycle (dev/test/prod), to date not much information is available. Features like IP-fencing and snapshot technology known from Lab Manager will most likely appear in this product. In a way it looks like Lab Manager, I am curious if it is running next to Virtual Center or (better) on top of Virtual Center.
2. VMware Lifecycle Management
Lifecycle Management is the rebranded VS-O lifcycle formerly delivered by Dunes
3. VMware (Fusion) Importer
Aimed at Apple users, Importer makes it possible to import third-party Mac-based virtual machines into VMware Fusion. Vm’s created in Parallels Desktop for Mac 2.5 and 3.0 and Virtual PC 7.0 for Mac are now ready to convert (only windows versions BTW)
At least the first two are showcased at VMworld Europe 2008 the last one will probable also getting some attention there.
Technorati Tags: VMware, Products, StageManager, Lifecycle, Importer
Comments