21. May 2009 by Tony.

Citrix recently announced XenClient, their client side bare metal hypervisor. VMware announced their client hypervisor back in February and I would not be surprised if Microsoft was also developing a product. A bare metal (or type 1) hypervisor is a visualization layer which is installed directly on your hardware. Most of us are familar with server visualization, well client hypervisors are simply applying the same technology to desktops and laptops. A client hypervisor is more challenging to develop though due to the much broader hardware support needed: think graphics, audio, USB, firewire etc.
So what’s the point? Why the race to bring out a client hypervisor? Because the client hypervisor could be the missing piece of the VDI puzzle. Today, if you implement a VDI solution what do you do with your mobile users or power users who need more resources than VDI can provide? Nothing, you leave them running a locally installed OS which is a different image (or possibly several images to accommodation hardware flavours) to the VDI users. This means greater management effort and costs as well as more difficult and complex troubleshooting.
In the client hypervisor world everyone in your organisation can run the same OS image whether connected to a server based VDI instance or on a physical laptop or desktop. This will drastically simplify environments with follow on cost savings.
Bring it on I say! I can’t wait to try out a client hypervisor.

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6. April 2009 by Tony.

While searching for some information on VMware, I found this solid concise reference card on VI3

• Updated the details to the latest Confuguration Maximiums PDF.
• Updated it to include 3.5 update 3 release notes.
• Changed the versioning to include the latest VMware release, so its more obvious how up to date (or not) your card is.
• Some minor additions (NAS maximums) and corrections.

Many thanks to all the readers who have written in with comments.  Always welcome.

Go and grab it here: http://www.vmreference.com/downloads/vmreferenceVI3card1.3for3.5U3.pdf

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24. February 2009 by Tony.

The posts are abuzz this morning with new thaton on Feb. 23 Citrix will announce that it will be offering free licenses to its full XenServer virtualization program and new partnering with Microsoft to provide system management, Citrix Essentials, for Hyper-V and, in return, Microsoft’s System Center will support XenServer

Steven Vaughn-Nichols detailed the Citrix plans on his personal blog. Apparently Citrix briefed a bevy of bloggers about its plan under embargo, but the presentation is flying around in various in-boxes. Vaughn-Nichols notes that Citrix won’t open source XenServer, however.

I can’t wait to see VMwares stock price today…..

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10. February 2009 by Tony.

VMware has open sourced its View Client software which enables connections from Linux clients to remote Windows desktops managed by VMware View. VMware would like to see their partners developing the client for non-x86 devices using operating systems other than Windows XP or Linux.

You can get the sources from Google code site. The sources are licensed unde LGPL v2.1

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10. February 2009 by Tony.

Desktop virtualization is not a new concept, but it is becoming more popular as enterprise system management becomes more complex. Sun released the Sun Virtual Desktop Access Kit for VMware in early 2007, and will soon be releasing Sun VDI 3.0, which offers a complete Sun stack in addition to the following features:

• Same great VDI product as Sun VDI Software 2.0, including support for Sun Ray devices, traditional PCs, and the VMware back-end
• Integration with Active Directory to allow easy mapping of AD users and groups to pools and virtual machines
• Support for Sun xVM virtualization (based on Sun xVM VirtualBox technology) as an option to VMware VI3
• Improved scalability with support for multiple VMware VirtualCenter servers
• Simplified integration with Sun Secure Global Desktop Software
• Additional access to virtual desktops using RDP clients (for example Windows Terminal Client)
• Enhanced storage mechanism for virtual machines using ZFS file system (in combination with Sun xVM VirtualBox)
• New administration UI and command line interface (CLI)
• Usage of MySQL as configuration database

A virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a layered software solution with three fundamental components: a virtualization platform, a broker, and client devices. The end user accesses a full desktop environment via a thin client device or an internet connection, as though they are using a conventional desktop computer.

Sun VDI 3.0 is made up of three functional layers - the virtualization layer, the session management layer, and the desktop access layer.

Virtualization Layer
The basis for the architecture is the virtualization layer (or hypervisor layer). In addition to creating and storing virtual machines the virtualization platform provides the base functionality needed for virtual machine management (starting, stopping, snapshotting, etc.). Sun VDI 3.0 supports Sun xVM VirtualBox and VMware Infrastructure 3.

Session Management Layer
The central component of the Sun VDI is the Sun VDI Core, located in the session management layer. The VDI Core provides all the functionality needed to build and manage large scale virtual machine deployments. In addition to its management capabilities, the VDI Core is also responsible for the brokering of virtual desktops on behalf of clients connecting from the desktop access layer.

By integrating with Active Directory, the VDI Core is able to provide support for assignment of virtual desktops to existing users and groups within an organization. The VDI Core configuration data and runtime information is stored in a MySQL database, which may be shared across multiple VDI Core instances on the network. This ensures access to the session management layer in failover scenarios.

Desktop Access Layer
Virtual desktops can be accessed via three different methods:

Sun Ray Software (SRS) via Thin Clients - A custom Sun Ray Software Kiosk Session is initiated when a user inserts a token card into a Sun Ray thin client. This session uses the Sun VDI Core to request access to a virtual desktop on behalf of the user. Once a virtual desktop has been assigned to the user, the session establishes a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection to the desktop using the Sun Ray Windows Connector.

Sun Secure Global Desktop Software (SGD) via a Web Browser – A web browser is used to initiate a SGD session. SGD, in turn, uses the VDI Core’s RDP redirection capability to establish a connection to an assigned virtual desktop.

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Connection – A virtual desktop can be accessed by any device capable of initiating an RDP session (RDP redirection must be supported on the client side to use this method). As with the previous case, the VDI Core’s redirection capability is used to establish a connection to an assigned virtual desktop.

here is the download link for Sun VDI 3.0 Early Access

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