Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization – MED-V: Just a Band-Aid Solution?

Is Med-V only a ‘point solution’ to ease migration or can you use that functionality to a wider audience to solve other problems? When considering Med-v as part of MDOP, is it a useful client hypervisor tool for reducing desktop management costs.

Can you use a bare metal Client-Side Hypervisor to Manage your Desktops?

Virtual Computer recently announced the availability of their NxTop product for free for up to five users. NxTop combines centralized virtual desktop management with a “bare-metal” client-hypervisor to make managing many desktops as easy as managing one. But, you may ask, what can a client side hypervisor do for me? The answer – solutions such as Virtual Computer’s NxTop can be utilized to effectively manage your desktop environment, provided they have a functional management interface. That said, bear in mind this is a developing technology, but it is a technology that offers you the opportunity to manage your desktops with virtualization without the larger infrastructure requirements of VDI but that doesn’t mean to say it wholly replaces SBC solutions: but it is a useful option to consider.

The Value of VDI Trade-Ups: XenApp to XenDesktop or VMWare View, Is It Worth It?

Which is better – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure or Presentation Virtualization? If you have, say, a Citrix XenApp PV solution – you may may be tempted at the reduced cost per license of VDI – XenDesktop appears to be almost half the cost per user than XenApp. Maybe you’ve a VMware vSphere back-end and the thought of having one platform to manage is appealing. Maybe you have a different solution – perhaps Quest’s vWorkspace or Ericom’s Webconnect and are wondering what all this fuss about moving between PV and VDI is all about?

What is in a name?

So what has this got to do with virtualization I hear you say, simple, Companies change their name all the time. they rebrand their products to make it “shiney and new” or to reflect a change in corporate direction.

Virtual Thoughts: Is the Hypervisor moving into Hardware?

During the Virtual Thoughts podcast on 6/29/2010, the analysts discussed various hardware aspects of virtualization trying to determine if the hypervisor was to move into the hardware? and if so how much of it? as well as whose hypervisor? and lastly such a move part of any business model?
Virtual Thoughts is a monthly podcast that looks at the entire scope of virtualization to discuss new trends and thoughts within the virtualization and cloud communities.
This weeks podcast started with a discussion of TPM/TXT and the boost it gives to virtualization security. Since TPM/TXT is based in the hardware and provides a measured launch of an operating system, the next logical discussion was on whether or not the hypervisor would be placed into the hardware?

Controlling the Virtual Infrastruture

There is a great deal of marketing hype about which hypervisor is better but I have spent some thinking about this and really have to wonder if the hypervisor is what we should really be focusing or concentrating on. A lot of third party vendors are starting to port their products to be able to work with both hypervisors but what about the management server itself? When third party application vendors design their applications to work with VMware or Microsoft hypervisors they have been writing plug-ins for their product to work inside the management server systems and or its client.