RES Virtual Desktop Extender – the missing piece in the VDI puzzle?

On the heels of receiving United States patent approval for its RES Virtual Desktop Extender (VDX) technology, RES Software have announced that it will also be offering VDX as a standalone product. A feature within RES Workspace Manager (formerly RES PowerFuse), VDX serves as a fundamental component in the successful deployment of virtual desktops. It enables local applications that typically do not run smoothly, or at all, in virtual environments to run seamlessly within a virtual session. However, while VDX’s functionality allows wider access to hosted desktops, organisations need to ensure that the management and maintenance of that legacy environment isn’t overlooked to the point where it impacts user experience and the organisation’s security.

VMware, Novell and the CVP

There has been a lot of noise about a negotiations between VMware and Novell, rumors are that it regards the purchase of the SUSE division, now firstly every thing that follows is pure supposition on my part, I have no insider knowledge. now mike has put forward one argument on why a VMware purchase of Novell SUSE assets make very good corporate sense. However I put another idea into the fray.

View 4.5 Availability and Enhancements

Anticipating the formal announcement was a widely leaked report that View 4.5 would ship without Virtual Profiles, the user profile management solution that VMware OEMed from RTO Software in fall 2009. VMware finally confirmed that the leak was correct on the first day of VMworld 2010, but even then held back from announcing its interim solution until after the formal product launch. Then rather than simply offer View customers a copy of Virtual Profiles as a standalone product, VMware chose instead to partner with Liquidware Labs to enable them to offer Liquidware Labs’ ProfileUnity to View customers at a substantial discount. While VMware’s position is that Virtual Profiles will ship with View 4.5 at some point in the future, the decision to offer ProfileUnity instead did nothing to address the concerns of potential customers, especially those who might finish up paying twice for a profile management system. The only good news for View customers is that ProfileUnity’s agent-less and database-less architecture should make the future migration to Virtual Profiles a simple matter when the time comes to move.

Virtualization Backup Round-up

With VMworld around the corner, it is interesting to note the new an old players within the Virtualization Backup space. The virtualization backup space often includes:
* VM Backup
* VM Replication
* Continuous Data Protection (CDP)
* Storage Hardware Replication
Pretty much anything that will maintain your VMs while allowing your data to be placed elsewhere for later retrieval; such a place could be the cloud. In this article we will avoid Storage Hardware Replication and discuss only backup software.

VMware doesn't have a Client Side Hypervisor solution – so what?

Is the lack of Client Hypervisor (CHv) a problem for VMware in delivering a complete desktop solution to customers especially in the light of the XenClient release announcement? Indeed, is a client side hypervisor, technology viable for business use now, where should a CHv be considered in your desktop strategy? Is it simply a BYOC solution? Centralising desktop services is not just about delivering a hosted virtual desktop infrastructure. Managing and maintaining the end devices is equally important. CHv is a technology that is viable for business uses now beyond BYOC to match an ever more mobile