During the Tuesday Keynote presentation at VMworld 2010 several executives from VMware covered the upcoming View 4.5 release. As they dove deper into the features and showcased the product. They announced a new previously unheard of application being called Project Horizon.  Now to me Project Horizon seems like the Web 2.0 version of Citrix Dazzle. If your not familiar with Dazzle its kind of an App store for checking in and out published Citrix applications. As it was demo’d during the speech Project Horizon is going to allow users to have a single sign-on experience for locally installed apps and Saas applications. (SaaS = Software as a Service) These types of apps are becoming common place among users everyday and if IT departments want to be able to provide them in a secure fashion Project Horizon will have a stake in this from VMware’s perspective.

See some details from the PR released from VMware.

At VMworld 2010 in San Francisco, VMware will preview a cloud-based management service — codenamed Project Horizon — that will securely extend enterprise identities into the cloud and provide new methods for provisioning and managing applications and data based on the user, not the device or underlying operating system.

Project Horizon will establish a user’s “Cloud Identity,” securely extending on-premise directory services between private and public clouds and enabling customers to take advantage of the flexibility and new services in the public cloud while maintaining the security and control from their private clouds.

“A cohesive desktop strategy should provide secure, direct access to many types of applications, including SaaS and legacy and mobile applications, regardless of device type or location,” said Mark Bowker, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “Project Horizon is an example of how VMware has the potential to help dramatically transform desktop and application delivery services, maintain IT control, and ensure a productive, personalized experience for the end user.”

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. Specializing in VDI and Cloud project designs. Awarded VMware vExpert status for 2012 & 2011. VCP3, VCP5, VCA-DT, VCP5-DT, Cisco UCS Design

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Now that things have slowed a bit at VMworld 2010 for news, I have some time to put together a post about VMware View 4.5. The soon to be released View 4.5 has a bunch of new features and I probably cannot do it justice yet, but will continue to post as I learn more about the product.

There are two versions of View 4.5 available now with features that I will list below. There is an Premier license that includes the full Suite of VMware VDI related products and the Enterprise edition with covers the base View VDI install.

So what does VMware promise that View 4.5 can delivery on? It now offers Windows 7 support which can increase speed and reduce the cost and complexity of migrating to Windows 7. Some other important benefits are Simplified Desktop Management and Application Management via VMware ThinApp.

What is included with VMware View 4.5

• VMware vSphere for Desktops – #1 Virtualization hypervizor
• VMware View Manager – Central Management for Desktops
• VMware ThinApp – Agentless Application Virtualization solution
• VMware Composer – Create Desktop images and linked clones
• VMware vCenter Server for Desktops – Management for vSphere Server
• VMware View Client – Allows access to desktops in Datacenter now with Local mode for offline use
• VMware vShield Endpoint – Enables offload and centralization of AntiVirus & Malware scanning

VMware View 4.5 product page

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. Specializing in VDI and Cloud project designs. Awarded VMware vExpert status for 2012 & 2011. VCP3, VCP5, VCA-DT, VCP5-DT, Cisco UCS Design

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VMware announced that it will soon support the Apple iPad with VMware View 4.5 when it’s released in a couple of weeks. The expected release time is sometime in late September 2010. The iPad View client will offer new innovation that VMware has created to keep ahead of it’s competitors. The new iPad client will use PCoIP for connecting to your VMware View servers.

In this new View client they have created new custom gesture integration to make using a Windows desktop easier from an iPad. Some of the new gestures that they have created are listed below.

New iPad Features and Gestures for View client

• Gesture to bring up iPad keyboard
• They created a virtual touchpad
• System preference settings to allow for client personalization
• A system monitor to show you about network performance

UPDATE March 9th 2011:

VMware View iPad Client is now available. Read more here.

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. Specializing in VDI and Cloud project designs. Awarded VMware vExpert status for 2012 & 2011. VCP3, VCP5, VCA-DT, VCP5-DT, Cisco UCS Design

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The VMware self paced labs for VMworld 2010 are taking things to a new level. This setup and the amount of computing power on display here is second to nothing. Something different from the 2009 VMworld labs is that any Lab Topic cab be presented at any set of terminals. In last years labs there was different sections for each topic which led to lines and delays for popular topics. There is in the neighborhood of 480 seats for the VMworld labs. When checking in and selecting your topic it will be assigned to your badge. You can see from the image below that the setup is very impressive.

Each VMworld lab topic is based on a Pod. The lab pod’s are heavily customized installs that are based on vSphere, Lab manager wither their own Active Directory and vCenter server. To break it down they are creating nested or virtualized copies of vSphere ESX and ESXi server within VMware Lab Manager and associated products. This allows them to deploy them in just a few minutes and also have around 30 different topics stored in Lab Manager configurations waiting to be deployed for the next lab. It was discussed today that each hour they expect about 5000 virtual machines will be created and destroyed.

Your probably wondering what it takes to run all of this virtualize goodness and where is it at. Well the VMworld labs are being sources from 2 off site Data centers and 1 on site facility. The entire VMworld lab setup is going to be monitored and supported by over 100 VMware employees from the Services and Engineering groups. They will be there to make sure things are going smoothly and answer any questions that attendees might have.

Some estimated stats that VMware is throwing out what will be served up during the 4 day even.

• Over 100,000 virtual machine will be provisioned this week.
• Total memory for the vSphere hosts supporting the VMworld labs is 36TB
• Each data center has 4 racks of servers and 2 racks of storage
• 20,000 Lab set hours for the week
• HP, Dell, EMC, Xsigo, Netapp and Cisco are providing the hardware
• Each lab seat has a Wyse thin client

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. Specializing in VDI and Cloud project designs. Awarded VMware vExpert status for 2012 & 2011. VCP3, VCP5, VCA-DT, VCP5-DT, Cisco UCS Design

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