TVP Strategy Archives

vPilgrimage to VMworld 2011

VMworld 2011 is fast approaching and now is the still to start making final preparations for the pilgrimage to Las Vegas. The question that I see a lot, before these types of events, is what can I do to get the most out of the conference? I have been lucky enough to have been to all the VMworld Conferences since 2005 as well as one lucky trip to VMworld Europe in 2009. I am going to chime in on the some of the things that I do to get the most out of VMworld.

Secret Consoles — Multiple Management Interfaces — Security Nightmare

While looking on twitter this morning I discovered a tweet that pointed to the following article, which is relatively devoid of details but none-the-less extreme interesting to those who follow virtualization security: Fired techie created virtual chaos at pharma company. This article points out an external attack that lead to management access of a virtual environment. Now we do not know if the attack was using antiquated credentials or some other means. But what we do know is that VMs were deleted by an external source that used to be a former employee. Hoax or not, this is a very serious issue brought to light.

If Citrix is on a buying spree – should its next purchase be Virtual Computer?

Like a new college student, fresh from the flush of new found freedom to expand their horizons, Citrix appear to have had a case of the munchies. First Citrix’s portfolio was extended with the acquitisition of Kaviza. More recently, the purchase of RingCube. The desktop virtualisation techhnologies acquired will help strengthen Citrix’s virtualised desktop offering. VDI-in-a-box offering simplicity of deployment, providing options for the SMB and MSP spaces; and vDesk providing a layering functionality giving greater VDI scalability with an improved personalisation offering.

Mitre – Two New Tools to Help with PaaS and Risk Assessment

On the 7/28 Virtualization Security Podcast, we were joined by Robert Martin of Mitre to discuss Mitre’s new CWE, CWSS, and CWRAF tools to aid in software and system security evaluation. We put a decidedly cloud based discussion around these tools to determine how they would be used by those that program within a PaaS environment, make use of SaaS, or other cloud services.

Does VDI need User Virtualization, or does User Virtualization need VDI?

VMware view to release RTO profile solution. Is this lagging behind Citrix who have bought Ringcube? View now has profile management – but that isn’t user virtualisation. Does VDI need User Virtualization, or does User Virtualization need VDI? User Virtualization has the capacity to extend across desktop delivery boundaries because the user workspace, their applications and data are no longer bound to the desktop OS. Solutions available from vendors such as AppSense, UniDesk and RES. To deliver virtual desktops for the enterprise, it is not simply a case of managing profile load time better: many users need greater customisation than a shared desktop can deliver. In an enterprise environment VDI is not the only method of delivering desktops. A complete user virtualization solution needs to be able to accommodate, not only centralised hosted desktops, but off-line use as well and standard desktops.