VMware has now announced two new advanced certifications that will be available for registration in the very near future. VMware Certified Advanced Professional 4 – Datacenter Administrator (VCAP4-DCA) and VMware Certified Advanced Professional 4 – Datacenter Design (VCAO4-DCD). Both these certification and exams are a stepping stone for the VMware Certified Design Expert on vSphere 4. These new exams are in all intensive purposes an updated version of the exams needed for the VCDX certification for ESX 3 but with the added bonus of advanced certifications during the journey to achieving the coveted VCDX certification. Let’s take a quick overview of the new certifications.
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Growth of Citrix and Hyper-V EcoSystems
PhD Virtual has gained its second round of funding with investment from Citrix amongst others as discussed within our post News: esXpress is no more but what does this mean for XenServer? Up until this point it looked like Citrix was out of the server hypervisor wars and backing Microsoft’s Hyper-V play. Yet this looks on the surface like a basic shift to that direction. Yes, XenServer was placed into the OpenSource community and the latest improvements, such as the Open VSwitch integration and a new releases emphatically say that XenServer is alive and well and that its ecosystem is growing for that matter so is Hyper-V’s.
Virtualize Java without an Operating System
When we put a .NET application on Windows on Hyper-V (or a Java application on Linux on ESXi) we are actually virtualizing twice. Can we virtualize only once, by putting the CLR or the JVM directly on the VM Host? In this action of course we remove the operating system. Oracle is taking the lead in this area with JRockit VE JVM. There is no VMware support, the only hypervisor it supports is Xen, or more precisely Oracle VM. it only comes bundled only with an Application Server, namely Oracle WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option. The entire stack inside the virtual machine is in “User Mode” in other words the JVM and the drivers are all in the same memory address space and you don’t need to switch contexts into Kernel Mode in order to perform I/O or network access. Does VMware have a strategic initiative (or even a skunkworks) to engineer a similar bundle for its SpringSource runtimes? Or are they just concentrating on scaling out with as per the Google announcement?
Red Hat 6 Beta – Look No XEN
The Red Hat 6 Beta is out, and there is no Xen in it, only KVM. It can operate as a guest in an existing Xen environment, but it cannot act as a Xen host. A few minority interests still cling to Xen, but ultimately it makes no sense for most Linux distributions to ship with Xen. Novell will stick with Xen for a while, and also Oracle, because they are no friend of Red Hat, but when the hypervisor wars become old news, they will quietly move to KVM. It’s easier. In future we fully expect to be talking about Xen/Linux in the past tense.
Centralisation without Virtualization
The centralisation of desktop services can generate cost savings through simplified management and faster, more reliable implementation time. Desktop Streaming solutions such as Citrix Provisioning Services for Desktops and Double-Take Flex provide the option of centralising desktop images for delivery across your enterprise’s desktop solutions.
Will Your VDI Solution Support your Remote Users?
If your organisation has remote users – consider that the impact of centralisation on their desktop experience can be very different: and not always in a happy way. Citrix’s ICA protocol has been joined by the likes of Quest’s vWorkspace with EOP Xtream, or Ericom Blaze. There are a number of hardware solutions for WAN optimisation with the likes of Expand Networks focusing specifically on solutions to support VDI implementations. Don’t allow poor network performance and user experience to sabotage your desktop virtualization project.