A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is an excellent expectations-managing mechanism, but it’s important to manage your own expectations of what an SLA can realistically accomplish. Just those three words “Service” “Level” and “Agreement” is often an attention turn-off I know: SLAs are to infrastructure bods what documentation is to developers. Yet, when considering taking up cloud and utility services many consider that the SLAs offered aren’t reliable, if they exist at all. So the SLA becomes the blocker – ‘If I move services out of my data centre, how will I guarantee availability and performance’.
Andrew is a Director of Gilwood CS Ltd, based in the North East of England, which specialises in delivering and optimising server and application virtualisation solutions. With 12 years of experience in developing architectures that deliver server based computing implementations from small-medium size business to global enterprise solutions, his role involves examining emerging technology trends, vendor strategies, development and integration issues, and management best practices.
VDI Printing. Is it the Nemesis it was for Terminal Services? Part II
VDI Printing. Is it the Nemesis it was with Presentation Virtualisation? We consider the core printing options for the likes of Citrix XenDesktop, Microsoft RDS, Quest vWorkspace and VMware View; and how they match to our printing considerations. We take an overview of solutions from ThinPrint, triCerat and UniPrint. An effective printing strategy must provide both the facility for printing to local printers as well as remote printing and include dedicated print server support. Ideally, you are in a better position to understand the cost of printing to your organisation: but don’t be surprised with incredulous looks when you tell user’s how much printing out their team meeting agenda cost.
VDI Printing. Is it the Nemesis it was for Terminal Services? Part I
VDI Printing. Is it the Nemesis it was for Terminal Services? If not, would client hypervisors help, or is it that traditional desktops delivery is the best method for dealing with printing requirements? In this, the first of two articles on VDI printing, we consider what are the issues with distributed printing and, what printing functions should you consider for your desktop architecture. You need to consider Bandwidth Prioritisation; Printer Driver Management; Universal Printer Driver; Proximity Printing and Printer Naming.
Podio Released. Does the social work platform herald the beginning-of-the-end of desktops?
Podio offers a service that can be readily set-up, customised and deployed: with little IT knowledge – or IT service interaction. You create a workspace, you add applications to that workspace, you invite members of your team (regardless of the fact that your team may extend beyond your organisation) and you start working. if there were more Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings such as Podio available, would they negate the need for Desktop as a Service (DaaS)? Podio is likely a game changing environment for collaboration environments, but the rise of such services is likely to have a far wider impact in providing desktop services.
VMware View Client and Citirix Receiver for iPad – truly free of charge?
VMware View users along with Citirix XenDesktop and Quest vWorkspace have an iPad client for their respective solutions. Personal device use may seem appealing in reducing the demands on IT support – but to fully comply with the license agreements can incur additional license charges, and those charges are difficult to manage. Despite the advertising blurb attached to the free clients, the headaches for finance and IT are not over yet.
Virtual Computer collaborates with Lenovo-NxTop the industry's best enterprise-class type 1 client hypervisor?
Virtual Computer are to optimize their NxTop client virtualization and management solution to operate with select models of Lenovo laptops and desktops PC platforms. For their part, Lenovo will allow customers to have Virtual Computer’s NxTop client loaded onto their custom images, direct from the factory. There are a number of client hypervisor solutions that can be used by enterprises today. The focus for these have been on security. At moment, the only vendor offering an enterprise ready PC management solution based on client hypervisor is Virtual Computer. The partnership withLenovo is likely first in line of tie-ups. Nxtop is Enterprise ready, with such deals Enterprises will be better ready for NxTop.