Virtualization Planet

The Virtual Intelligence Briefing—How to start a business continuity program

This CSO quickly realized that the heart of business continuity is ensuring that the company can keep making money after a disaster. So he identified the functions critical to that ability and planned out how to keep them going after a spectrum of possible interruptions. Then he did something that many might envy: He handed off the business continuity function to a talented underling.

If you can’t do what he did–offload the task entirely–you can at least benefit from the lessons learned by those who’ve been in the BC trenches. Business continuity is a broad discipline, encompassing both disaster recovery for data and the activities that ensure business will carry on (or be restored quickly) in the case of an adverse or catastrophic event. Therefore, BC cuts across divisions and incorporates people, processes and technology.

CSO

Here are the top nine BC lessons from CSOs and experts:

Lesson 1: Business continuity is its own discipline; treat it that way.

Lesson 2: The process is collaborative, but ultimately the CEO owns it.

Lesson 3: Be thorough in your business impact analysis.

Lesson 4: Focus on business value, not assets or functions.

Lesson 5: Don’t go it alone.

Lesson 6: Beware the ROI trap.

Lesson 7: Build in some flexibility.

Lesson 8: Show clients your plans.

Lesson 9: Make sure everyone knows what to do.

To read the entire article, please click on this link http://www.cso.com.au/article/424846/how_start_business_continuity_program/#closeme

 

The Virtual Intelligence Briefing—Oracle Releases Cloud Service, VM Server 3.1

Oracle has issued a one-two punch in the cloud and virtualization server space, paving the way for a spate of professional services with the launch of its Oracle RightNow CX Cloud service followed swiftly by the release of the latest version of its VM Server for x86 v. 3.1., which allows it to inch closer to biggest competitor VMware in the virtualization server market.

Oracle’s RightNow CX Cloud Service combined with Oracle Fusion Sales, aims to give channel partners a comprehensive view into the IT and sales environments of their customers–an added insight that could ultimately create pathways for the creation and expansion of assessment, monitoring, consulting and other professional services with the ability to spot inefficiencies and vulnerabilities and identify areas for increased productivity and sales opportunities.

OracleIn addition, the tool feasibly allows the channel to offer services that provide information sales reps resolving customer issues, providing purchase advice at the “right” time, reviewing service history prior to sales calls and enabling a way to assess customer value based on customers’ buying habits and current opportunities.

“Every interaction is a relationship opportunity to grow your business. When these interactions are relevant and add value for customers, customers are more likely to trust the relationship and seek purchase advice,” says David Vap, Oracle group vice president. “This customer trust provides an opportunity to increase customer product adoption and to reduce the cost of customer acquisition, thereby increasing company profitability.”

Meanwhile, Oracle aims to ease the way for virtualization partners and service providers with the latest release of its VM Server v3.1, designed to support rapid application deployment and simplify data management, making itself a little more viable in its competition with VMware for the virtualized server market.

To read the entire article, please click on this link http://channelnomics.com/2012/05/18/oracle-releases-cloud-service-vm-server-3-1/

The Virtual Intelligence Briefing—LevelCloud Named In World’s Top 100 Cloud Service Providers

Nine Lives Media Inc, parent company of MSP Mentor and Talkin’ Cloud, released their list of the top 100 Cloud Service Providers (CSP) in the world. LevelCloud not only made the list but was one of the few companies mentioned that focuses on selling exclusevly through the MSP channel.

Corona, CA (PRWEB) May 17, 2012
In the short history of the CSP market, the world’s top 100 providers have emerged as leaders in providing a reliable platform and growth to the market overall. Combined revenues for these providers hit 2.3 billion dollars in 2011, with no signs of slowing in 2012. Among the list were the large names in our industry including Amazon Web Services, Cloud Sherpas, and MindShift who was recently purchased by Best Buy. Although a relatively young player to the market, LevelCloud made the list! Focusing solely on integrating the industry’s leading solutions (including Citrix, Vmware, OS33) and delivering them through the MSP channel, LevelCloud has gained traction quite rapidly. With a main stronghold in the Southwest, LevelCloud’s user base is quickly spreading throughout the rest of the nation.

LiveCloud

“We have law firms, manufacturers, non-profits and many other verticals on our platform today. Providing a proven business-class total cloud solution across the nation is a rewarding feeling after years of building and crafting our business model”, said LevelCloud CEO Biren Shukla. “To be mentioned as one of the world’s top providers is an honor, especially to be on the same list as some of the giants in our industry”, mentioned Shukla.

LevelCloud’s engineering staff has been working diligently to integrate today’s leading solutions while continuously testing various solutions for what is coming tomorrow. “We feel very confident in our platform’s stability, performance, and redundancy. Our partners and clients depend on us to provide their network to them 24 hours a day, 365 days a year”, said LevelCLoud CTO Olivier Matime. “We are working harder than ever to continuously innovate and prepare for the computing market 5 years from now so that our partner base always have the leading solutions for their customers”, mentioned Matime.

Today LevelCloud has authorized approximately 20 partners across the US to provide services to end users. The plans are to have enough partners to deliver services to all areas of the country and then explore operations overseas. “I could not be more proud of our team and what we have achieved in only a couple of years, but we are nowhere near our internal goals and have a long way to go. Our plans for 2012 and 2013 put us on track to become the leader in providing turnkey cloud solution through MSP’s in the U.S.”, said Shukla.

ABOUT LEVELCLOUD
LevelCloud is a turnkey channel-only cloud computing solution that replaces the traditional onsite network. The entire business network (e-mail, apps, data) is delivered through a centralized platform powered by dedicated resources in state of the art datacenters. LevelCloud enables organizations to free themselves from the traditional constraints of IT, and empower their staff to work anytime, anywhere, on any device through a collaborative platform. The solution is provided solely through a channel of LevelCloud Authorized Partners throughout North America.

The Virtual Intelligence Briefing—Why service providers should not ignore cloud

For many service providers, cloud computing seems to be disruptive for their business model. Especially in the outsourcing business, many service providers are reluctant to offer cloud-based services to their clients. There are two main reasons behind this skepticism:

  • Cloud computing gives agility to the client to subscribe or unsubscribe to services quickly. Although this is a big advantage for the client, it brings challenges to the provider. Smaller service providers have difficulty estimating the required capacity correctly and they risk keeping expensive resources underutilized.
  • Larger providers fear losing their clients once the clients have cloud services with more flexible, standardized contracts. In today’s outsourcing world, it is difficult for a client to switch providers.

Cloud ServiceThe example of Kodak somehow shows what it means to answer a disruptive business change by just ignoring it. Kodak, inventor of modern photography and one of the market leaders in the early 1990s, decided not to move towards digital photography because this was considered disruptive for their photo development labs all over the world. When they finally accepted the industry trend, they had already lost ground against their competition — and you can read in the news what happened to them in 2012.

The point is, if you are not offering your clients what they want, someone else will.

So, there are good reasons not to ignore cloud to keep your current clients with you, but there are even better reason to think about cloud to win clients you have not thought about before.

To read the entire article, please click on this link http://thoughtsoncloud.com/index.php/2012/05/why-service-providers-should-not-ignore-cloud/

Steve Jin—Open Source VI Java API 5.0.1 Released

While preparing this annoucement, I realize that on the same day last year we had a very successful community event with several techtalks to celebrate the 3 year of vijava open source project. Today it’s the 4th year of this project! Since VI Java API 5.0 GAed last October, there have been some changes, one of which is [...]

Open Source VI Java API 5.0.1 Released originally appeared on DoubleCloud by Steve Jin, author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK (Prentice Hall) and creator of VMware vSphere Java API. Follow Steve on Twitter and receive future articles via RSS or Email.

VMblog—New Release of Oracle VM Now Available

Today, Oracle announced the availability of Oracle VM Server for x86 Release 3.1, the latest release of Oracle's server virtualization solution designed to support rapid application deployment and simplify data center management from applications to disk. Enhanced user interface is designed to significantly simplify ease of use for virtualization administrators and help reduce deployment times. ...(read more)

Between The Lines—Oracle v. Google loses another juror; patent verdict looks distant

Verdict deliberations in Oracle v. Google have been mixed up as the jury looks like it might be stuck on the question of infringement once again.

Scott Lowe—It’s Not Too Late

It’s not too late to sign up for Spousetivities at EMC World 2012! The conference is upon us next week, and if you have a spouse/partner/friend/family member traveling with you then you owe it to them to check out Spousetivities. More information on the activities, costs, and the ability to actually register for activities can be found on the registration page. Go sign up now!

Here’s a preview of what will be available next week:

  • Welcome Breakfast on Monday
  • Wine excursion
  • Horseback riding in Red Rock Canyon
  • Spa services through Canyon Ranch Spa at The Venetian

For more information on any of these activities, or to sign up, visit the registration page.

This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org. Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies.

It’s Not Too Late

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The Virtual Intelligence Briefing—Birst Gathers Customers and Partners at Birst FORWARD 2012

Birst Inc., the leading provider of agile business analytics, today announced the Birst FORWARD 2012 Annual User Conference will take place next week, May 21-23, at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. The education-focused event for all things Birst and Business Intelligence (BI) will provide participants with key tools and information to help users get the most out of their Birst solution.

BirstGlobal investment in BI initiatives continue to grow and now represent the top strategic IT initiatives for CIOs. To meet this demand, Birst is focused on providing customers with an enterprise-ready solution that enables customers to more easily make sense of their growing data.

Birst customers and partners will gather at Birst FORWARD 2012 to find out how Birst will continue to set the industry standard for world-class, agile business analytics. In addition to distinct tracks for Birst administrators and business end users, the agenda is packed with workshops designed to prepare Birst customers to make smarter business decisions.

“As Birst continues to drive innovation, new features and capabilities set us apart from other solutions and underscores our value within our customer and partner communities. Birst FORWARD is designed to inform, encourage knowledge-sharing, and enable customers to leverage and maximize all aspects of the Birst solution,” said Brad Peters, CEO and Co-founder at Birst.

WHAT:     Birst FORWARD 2012 Annual User Conference
WHEN:     May 21-23, 2012
WHERE:     Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, CA

Birst FORWARD 2012 sponsors include ParAccel, SnapLogic, Cervello, Host Analytics and TriCore Solutions. For more information about the event, please visit http://www.birst.com/forward2012.

About Birst
Birst™ is the leader in agile business analytics. It offers a single place to manage all of your organization’s business analytics and the agility to answer questions spanning departments, data sources, and deployments—across both public and private clouds. Birst gives users the fastest way to answer their most pressing business questions, and, the ones they didn’t know to ask. At one-third the cost, time, and staff of traditional big BI, Birst brings the benefits of analytics and fact-based decision-making to a much broader audience. For more information, visit http://www.birst.com.

The Virtual Intelligence Briefing—Actuate and Hortonworks Announce Partnership to Enable Big Data Visualization

Actuate Corporation recently announced a collaborative initiative with Hortonworks to enable Big Data visualization. The company is one of the leading open source Business Intelligence (BI) vendors and also the developer of Eclipse BIRT open source project.

InfoTech

Hortonworks, which is a commercial vendor of Apache Hadoop, has designed the Hortonworks Data Platform to deliver an open and reliable foundation for enterprises and to support the development and deployment of big data solutions.

In a release, John Kreisa, VP of Marketing at Hortonworks, said that, “We have dedicated significant resources to make Apache Hadoop more robust and easier to integrate, extend, deploy and use. Our partnership with open source BI leader Actuate enables more users to cost effectively analyze vast amounts of data stored in Hadoop using open source technologies.”

The ActuateOne integrated product suite, which is based on BIRT, employs native access Hive query to make use of MapReduce functions while extracting data from Hadoop; and for converting those data sets into creating customized BIRT-based dashboards and scorecards that support interactive visualization and analysis.

To read the entire article, please click on this link http://it.tmcnet.com/topics/it/articles/2012/05/16/290661-actuate-hortonworks-announce-partnership-enable-big-data-visualization.htm

The Virtual Intelligence Briefing—Cloudera Partners With Hadoop Managed Services Provider MetaScale to Help Large Traditional Enterprises Adopt Apache Hadoop

PALO ALTO, CA–(Marketwire – May 17, 2012) – Cloudera Inc, the leading provider of Apache Hadoop-based data management software, services and training, today announced that Hadoop managed services provider MetaScale has joined Cloudera’s rapidly growing partner ecosystem, Cloudera Connect. MetaScale specializes in solutions for traditional brick-and-mortar enterprises across all industry verticals looking to efficiently establish and grow their Big Data expertise, experience immediate tactical success and begin to build out their fundamental Big Data capability in an organized and precise fashion. As the only company able to provide a full spectrum of services focused on Big Data in the virtual private cloud, MetaScale is partnering with industry leader Cloudera to enable customers to take advantage of Hadoop without an upfront investment in skills and resources.

cloudera

“As we’ve witnessed firsthand, traditional enterprises are faced with an overwhelming number of challenges when building Hadoop clusters, as well as a shortage of skilled Hadoop workers. The partnership between MetaScale and Cloudera solves these issues by combining Cloudera’s Distribution Including Apache Hadoop (CDH), Cloudera Enterprise management software and Cloudera University training programs with MetaScale’s ability to host managed Hadoop clusters and associated data management technologies in the cloud,” said Krishna Nimmagadda, Head of Marketing and Business Development at MetaScale. “We’re empowering our customers to ask questions they couldn’t ask before and learn more from their data and their customers to potentially create new business models, increase revenues and reduce costs and complexities.”

MetaScale’s services include building and configuring Hadoop clusters; operating, managing and monitoring the cluster; integrating with other data management technologies; running data-cleansing and other data management projects; writing and developing MapReduce applications; and custom solution design and system integration. MetaScale, a subsidiary of Sears Holdings has deep expertise in providing data management services based on the Apache Hadoop framework. The company’s Hadoop Center of Excellence runs Cloudera’s Distribution Including Apache Hadoop (CDH) and has worked closely with Cloudera in providing Hadoop support to Sears’ companies for many years.

“MetaScale is opening the door for large-scale traditional enterprises that haven’t taken advantage of or investigated the potential of Apache Hadoop to benefit immediately from Hadoop and Big Data analytics in the cloud with a minimum IT investment,” said Tim Stevens, Vice President of Business and Corporate Development at Cloudera. “We’re excited to be working closely with MetaScale and look forward to the benefits that our mutual customers can reap from this partnership.”

About MetaScale

MetaScale provides best-in-class, technology-managed services and solutions to enterprises that are looking to unlock the potential in their data without the time, cost and complexity associated with traditional big data initiatives. MetaScale delivers an end-to-end solution so time is better spent analyzing and driving business value from big data. MetaScale provides a full spectrum of services in a private cloud that leverages Hadoop, and helps businesses perform complex analytics and batch-production schedules not possible prior to Hadoop. Part of the Sears Holdings family of companies (Sears Holdings Corporation-NASDAQ SHLD), MetaScale offers a mix of speed, scale, skills, and end-to-end solutions unavailable anywhere else in the big data space. To learn more about MetaScale, visit www.metascale.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About Cloudera

Cloudera, the leader in Apache Hadoop-based software and services, enables data driven enterprises to easily derive business value from all their structured and unstructured data. Cloudera’s Distribution including Apache Hadoop (CDH), available to download for free at www.cloudera.com/downloads, is the most comprehensive, tested, stable and widely deployed distribution of Hadoop in commercial and non-commercial environments. For the fastest path to reliably using this completely open source technology in production for Big Data analytics and answering previously un-addressable big questions, organizations can subscribe to Cloudera Enterprise, comprised of Cloudera Manager software and Cloudera Support. Cloudera also offers training and certification on Apache technologies, as well as consulting services. As the top contributor to the Apache open source community and with tens of thousands of nodes under management across customers in financial services, government, telecommunications, media, web, advertising, retail, energy, bioinformatics, pharma/healthcare, university research, oil and gas and gaming, Cloudera’s depth of experience and commitment to sharing expertise are unrivaled. www.cloudera.com

Connect with Cloudera

Read the blog: http://www.cloudera.com/blog/
Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cloudera
Visit on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cloudera

VMblog—Four weeks to go until doors open at the 4th Annual Cloud Computing World Forum

It’s now just four weeks until the doors at Earls Court open for the 4th annual Cloud Computing World Forum on the 12th and 13th June. With over 100 exhibitors, 150 leading speakers and 4,000 attendees expected at the two day event, time is ticking for those hoping to register for a FREE pass. ...(read more)

The Virtual Intelligence Briefing—Did Yahoo sow the seeds of its own demise with Hadoop?

HadoopYahoo is famous for saying that Hadoop, the data-storage-and-processing platform it helped develop into a big data juggernaut, is “behind every click” on the site. But as the world once again starts analyzing Yahoo’s myriad woes after Sunday morning’s ouster of embattled CEO Scott Thompson, I’m left wondering if its investment in Hadoop didn’t aid in the company’s demise — even if it’s a way down the long list of Yahoo’s mistakes.

While Hadoop might have given Yahoo a competitive advantage early on by letting it better analyze user behavior, it also leveled the playing field over time. For years, Yahoo has used Hadoop to better personalize the content its visitors see, both ads and articles, and now so does everybody else. In the meantime, however, Yahoo failed to evolve its business at the same pace as it did its analytic capabilities.

Big data is great, but it’s not a business model in and of itself. Yahoo might as well have just told its competitors, “We still suck, but we spent a lot building a great technology to help you compete.”

But whatever benefits Hadoop brought to Yahoo in terms of letting it better targeting the right content to the right visitors, it also brought them to everyone else. If you talk to a company building an ad-targeting or web analytics technology, chances are Hadoop is somewhere in its technology stack. The aforementioned Hortonworks, which spun out of Yahoo last June, is now peddling Hadoop software and services to the world. A new startup called InsightsOne, also comprised of former Yahoo data experts, is selling a technology for helping marketers reach consumers wherever they happen to be on the web.

The big problem for Yahoo is that, increasingly, users and advertisers want to be everywhere on the web but at Yahoo. Maybe that’s because everyone else that’s benefiting from Hadoop, either directly or indirectly, is able to provide a better experience for consumers and advertisers alike. Facebook has been particularly adept at using and developing Hadoop to analyze behavior, and — despite potential privacy problems on the horizon — it’s eating Yahoo’s lunch in terms of attracting advertisers and eyeballs.

To read the entire article, please click on this link http://gigaom.com/cloud/did-yahoo-sow-the-seeds-of-its-own-demise-with-hadoop/

The Virtual Intelligence Briefing—VMware Can Disrupt Big Data Analytics With Cetas Acquisition

VMware, the leading virtualization company has acquired Cetas, an early stage startup focused on making access to big data analytics easier and cheaper. Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed yet.  VMware competes with Microsoft, Oracle and Citrix in the virtualization space.

VMWare

Pure Play Cloud Platform

Unlike most big data applications, Cetas’ software is designed to run on virtual resources like Amazon Web Services and VMware’s vSphere. With this software application, there is no need to sell physical servers along with the software, making this easier to scale and cheaper to use. This acquisition makes sense for VMware as its applications are deployed on vSphere.

Cetas will continue to operate as a startup under the VMware umbrella and plans to integrate the software more tightly into the VMware product suite.

More Than Just Big Data Analytics

The leading providers of big data analytics are Hewlett-Packard and International Business Machines, but VMware’s foray into this space might not be to compete with the leading players. The strategic target of these acquisitions is most likely Amazon and OpenStack. The Platform-as-a-service offering can be greatly enhanced if it came with a built in analytics tool such as the one provided by Cetas.

To read the entire article, please click on this link http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/05/11/vmware-can-disrupt-big-data-analytics-with-cetas-acquisition/

Virtualization Practice—What is your Definition of a Successful Implementation?

How do we measure success? This seems like it should be an easy question to answer but is it? Success itself is a dynamic variable that can be defined in several different ways from a promotion or even recognition from your peers. Now what about a successful cloud implementation or implementation in general? How would you define success? The true definition of implementing is to fulfill; perform; carry out: or to put into effect according to or by means of a definite plan or procedure. For the design and implementation team, success could be defined by the completed installation design, deployment and verification testing of all functionality as defined in the statement of work.

What is your Definition of a Successful Implementation?|The Virtualization Practice

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Between The Lines—Cloud meets hardware: The inevitable merger

The evidence is piling up: Hardware systems will increasingly work in tandem with the cloud.

Between The Lines—Twitter accused of 'tracking' users across the Web

Twitter was quick to act when it was accused of recording its users across the Web amid an announcement that it will allow users to opt-out of online activity tracking.

Between The Lines—Wireless carriers' revenue grab: How you're paying for the machines

Wireless carriers’ never-ending effort to preserve ARPU (average revenue per user) may begin to hurt. Will there be a pushback as consumers and business have to offset less profitable M2M connections.

Between The Lines—Oracle v. Google jury stumbling over tech terminology, illness

The Oracle v. Google jury is facing some tough times over highly technical terminology and even personal illness.

Between The Lines—Intuit rides taxes, SMB to solid Q3

Intuit’s tax business could have been better, but the company’s SMB business is healthy and QuickBooks Online is going global.

Between The Lines—Salesforce cruises in Q1; Eyes $3 billion in annual revenue

The results seem to indicate that Salesforce’s cloud efforts are paying off and large enterprises are on the bandwagon.

Between The Lines—HP reshuffle could see 10-15 percent of staff cut

Reports suggest HP is pushing for a mass layoff as much as 15 percent of its workforce.

Between The Lines—HP's big layoffs will only go so far

HP will need to lay off workers to boost its profitability, but then reinvest the savings in more lucrative markets.

virtualization.info—NVIDIA introduces World’s Firs Virtualized GPU

On May 15th NVIDIA unveiled the NVIDIA® VGX™ platform that will be available later this year through NVIDIA’s hardware OEM and VDI partners.

This new platform promises to deliver a desktop experience  comparable to a local PC, up to 100 VDI users for each single server equipped with a VGX board.

NVIDIA VGX represents a new era in desktop virtualization. It delivers an experience nearly indistinguishable from a full desktop while substantially lowering the cost of a virtualized PC.

said Jeff Brown, general manager of the Professional Solutions Group at NVIDIA.

This product is intended for those kind of users who work with 3D design softwares and simulation tools and is designed to be integrated into enterprise IT departments providing an integration layer for commercial hypervisors (the news only talks about Citrix XenServer) and a level of manageability that allows to configure the graphics capabilities delivered to individual users in the network, based on their demands.

NVIDIA describes as follows the three key technologies of this solution:

NVIDIA VGX Boards
NVIDIA VGX boards are the world’s first GPU boards designed for data centers. The initial NVIDIA VGX board features four GPUs, each with 192 NVIDIA CUDA® architecture cores and 4 GB of frame buffer. Designed to be passively cooled, the board fits within existing server-based platforms.

The boards benefit from a range of advancements, including hardware virtualization, which enables many users who are running hosted virtual desktops to share a single GPU and enjoy a rich, interactive graphics experience; support for low-latency remote display, which greatly reduces the lag currently experienced by users; and, redesigned shader technology to deliver higher power efficiency.

NVIDIA VGX GPU Hypervisor
The NVIDIA VGX GPU Hypervisor is a software layer that integrates into a commercial hypervisor, enabling access to virtualized GPU resources. This allows multiple users to share common hardware and ensure virtual machines running on a single server have protected access to critical resources. As a result, a single server can now economically support a higher density of users, while providing native graphics and GPU computing performance.

This new technology is being integrated by leading virtualization companies, such as Citrix, to add full hardware graphics acceleration to their full range of VDI products.

NVIDIA User Selectable Machines
NVIDIA USMs allow the NVIDIA VGX platform to deliver the advanced experience of professional GPUs to those requiring them across an enterprise. This enables IT departments to easily support multiple types of users from a single server.

USMs allow better utilization of hardware resources, with the flexibility to configure and deploy new users’ desktops based on changing enterprise needs. This is particularly valuable for companies providing infrastructure as a service, as they can repurpose GPU-accelerated servers to meet changing demand throughout the day, week or season.



Labels: NVIDIA, VDI

Between The Lines—AT&T mobile chief: Windows 8 can boost Windows Phone

Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility, sees a possible Windows 8-Windows Phone juggernaut.

virtualization.info—Microsoft announces Assessment and Planning Toolkit 7.0 Beta Program

Microsoft announced this week the new Beta version of its capacity planning tool Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) 7.0 Beta.

The Beta program opened on May 15th and the review period will run through July 5th.

To download the beta materials on Connect follow this link: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=219165

To join the beta review program follow this link: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=171065

The new features introduced in version 7.0 include Windows Server 2012 Beta readiness assessment, VDI readiness assessment and the ability to plan for virtualization assessment of Linux server.

MAP 7.0 supports SQL Server 2012 discovery and migration planning and, along with Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter, simplifies the migration of VMware virtual machine to Hyper-V.

Key features and benefits of MAP 7.0 Beta help you:

  • Understand your readiness to deploy Windows in your environment with hardware and device readiness assessments
  • Determine Windows Server 2012 Beta readiness
  • Investigate how Windows Server and System Center can manage your heterogeneous environment through VMware migration and Linux server virtualization assessments
  • Size your desktop virtualization needs for both Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and session-based virtualization using Remote Desktop Services
  • Ready your information platform for the cloud with the SQL Server 2012 discovery and migration assessment
  • Evaluate your licensing needs with usage tracking for Lync 2010, active users and devices, SQL Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 Beta


Labels: Capacity Planning, Microsoft, Release

Between The Lines—Windows 8 will "disappoint": Analysts cut price targets on HP, Dell

HP and Dell have seen their target price lowered after Windows 8 was dubbed “a disappointment” in an analysts note.

VMblog—Marine Resources Group Makes the Move to the Cloud with Virtustream xStream

Virtustream, Inc., the leading cloud solutions provider, today announced that Marine Resources Group (MRG), one of the largest maritime services companies in the United States, has deployed Virtustream’s xStream enterprise cloud solution to drive profitability and maintain its competitive edge in the marine services market. ...(read more)

VMblog—NextIO Secures $12.3 Million in Series F Financing

NextIO, the pioneer in I/O consolidation and next-generation networking solutions, today announced it has closed a Series F funding round of $12.3 million. This round included investment by existing investors and an undisclosed strategic investor. NextIO, which demonstrated significant growth in 2011, will use the new funds to further expand sales and marketing efforts and to further expand NextIO’s family of I/O consolidation solutions. ...(read more)

VMblog—Veeam to Present at the Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference

Veeam Software, innovative provider of backup, replication and virtualization management solutions for VMware vSphere and Windows Server Hyper-V, announces that William H. Largent, Veeam’s Chief Financial Officer, will present at the Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference in New York on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 at 1:45 p.m. ET....(read more)

Roger Lund—VMware View 5.1 Released, with New Client Support.

 

VMware released a new version of VMware View , Here are the release notes.

 

What’s new?

 

“

What's New in View 5.1

VMware View 5.1 delivers important features and enhancements that improve the performance, security, management, and flexibility of virtual desktops. This release of VMware View adds the following new features and support.

  • Advanced storage options that leverage vSphere 5.0 - The following performance optimizations and integration features take advantage of vSphere 5.0 enhancements:
    • View Storage Accelerator uses Content Based Read Cache (CBRC) - CBRC is an ESXi 5.0 server memory cache of common blocks. During peak I/O workloads such as logon boot storms, View desktops can access common blocks of the OS disk and shared applications in the main memory cache, improving performance, enhancing the user experience, and saving storage array costs.
    • Tech Preview: View Composer Array Integration with VAAI - Additional View Composer cloning options leverage the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) Native Cloning capability of Network Attached Storage (NAS). Note: The storage vendors developing support for NFS native cloning (VAAI) need additional certification to support the View workload. CBRC is not supported with the NFS native cloning feature.
    • Customizable View Composer disposable disk drive letter.
    • Support for up to 32 hosts in a cluster when Network File System (NFS) is in use. (The former limit was 8 hosts per cluster.)
  • Improved USB support.
  • Radius two-factor authentication support.
  • View Administrator user interface (UI) enhancements - These include context menus, linking to saved View Administrator pages, enhanced table column viewing, and globalization and localization in five languages.
  • Support for pre-created Active Directory machine accounts.
  • Optional customer experience improvement program. View collects anonymous data about View usage to help make View more responsive to customer needs. No user-identifiable data is collected. You can opt in or out of the program at any time.
  • View Persona Management is supported on physical computers - View Persona Management (virtual profiles) can manage user profiles across physical computers and View desktops. Simultaneous sessions are not supported.
  • View Persona Management user profile migration - The View Persona Management utility migrates Windows user profiles from Windows XP to Windows 7. The utility migrates profiles from physical computers to View or from View to View.
  • Standalone View Composer server - View supports the installation of the View Composer server on a standalone machine separate from VMware vCenter Server. “

source www.vmware.com

 

                       


                       

                      Check out the Compatibility notes.

                       

                      ”Compatibility Notes

                      • VMware View 5.1 is supported on the following versions of VMware vSphere:
                        • vSphere 5.0 Update 1 or later
                        • vSphere 4.1 Update 2 or later
                        • vSphere 4.0 Update 4 or later
                      • Both ESXi and ESX hosts are supported.
                      • Supported browsers for View Administrator and View Portal include Internet Explorer 8 and 9 and Firefox 6 and 7. Safari 5 is supported for browsing to View Portal on a Mac.
                      • For more system requirements, see the VMware View 5.1 Installation documentation.
                      • For more compatibility guidelines, see the View 5.1 Readme First document and VMware View Component Compatibility Matrix in the VMware View Upgrades document.”

                      source www.vmware.com

                       

 

Resolved issues.

 

“

Install and Upgrade
  • In previous releases, you could not install View Transfer Server on a virtual machine that used LSI SAS or PVSCSI disk controllers. If the virtual machine's guest operating system was Windows 2008, where LSI SAS controllers were configured by default, you had to ensure that the virtual machine had the proper disk-controller configuration (LSI Logic Parallel) before you began installing the operating system.
  • An error occurred after installing View Agent on Windows XP after a reboot.
View Administrator
  • Enhancements were made to allow View Administrator to support larger numbers of users. Now you can entitle a large number of users to pools.
  • In the German View Administrator, the last three pages in the Add Pool wizard for creating a linked-clone pool were blank.
View Client
  • A tunneled connection from View Client for Mac OS X to a Terminal Server desktop running on Windows Server 2003 SP2 failed to connect.
  • In previous releases, for languages other than English, text might have been truncated in the Configure SSL dialog box of View Client.
  • If RSA SecurID authentication was enabled and you used View Client in local mode without a network connection, if you then reestablished a network connection and attempted to perform operations such as checking in the desktop or accessing a remote desktop, the client exited unexpectedly. Attempts to restart the client failed.
  • When a user presses Ctrl+Alt+Del in a PCoIP desktop session, the Ctrl and Alt keys are not released on the client host.
  • When a large number of desktops were running concurrently, some desktops displayed the following error dialog: "TPAutoConnect User Agent has stopped working."
  • If the Enable RDP Auto-Reconnect View Client Configuration group policy is enabled, USB devices are not automatically reconnected to the View desktop after a direct RDP connection to the View Agent is lost. The USB devices are also not available on the client system.
Smart Card
  • Performance has been improved for smart card use over PCoIP when desktops have more than one vCPU.
View Persona Management
  • Files and folders specified as exceptions to the "Files and folders excluded from roaming" and "Windows roaming profiles synchronization" lists did not show up in the user's desktop when a user logged in. For example, if you specified folder ABC in the "Files and folders excluded from roaming (exceptions)" group policy, and set the "Remove local persona at logoff" group policy, folder ABC did not appear when the user logged in.
View Composer
  • Under rare circumstances, it was possible that View Composer could enter a repeated polling loop during a recompose operation, which could result in an unusually long completion time.
  • If you migrated View Composer from one server to another server, and you stopped or uninstalled the View Composer service on the original server, you could not reconfigure the View Composer settings in View Administrator. This issue could occur if you stopped or uninstalled the View Composer service on the original server before you reconfigured the new View Composer settings in View Administrator.
  • When you created an automated pool of 100 or more desktops, View Composer did not warn you to limit the prefix name to 12 characters. In an automated pool, desktop names could be no longer than 15 characters, including the prefix name and the autogenerated number. For example, if you created an automated pool with a 13-character prefix and set the maximum pool size higher than 100 desktops, View Connection Server could not provision more than 99 desktops.
Miscellaneous
  • Under certain rare conditions, if connectivity between View Connection Server instances was temporarily lost, the resynchronization messages exchanged by the View Connection Server instances could fill up the JMS message queue, causing the View Connection Server instances to restart. “

Source www.vmware.com

 

 

 

 

Make sure to follow the Documentation.

 

VMware has also released new clients for VMware View.

 

“

VMware View Client for Mac   
VMware View Client for Mac 
VMware View Client for iPad   
VMware View Client for iPad in iTunes App Store 
VMware View Client for Linux   
VMware View Client for Linux in Ubuntu Software Center 
VMware View Client for Windows   
VMware View Client for 32-bit Windows 
VMware View Client for 64-bit Windows 
VMware View Client for Windows with Local Mode Option   
VMware View Client for 32-bit Windows with Local Mode Option 
VMware View Client for 64-bit Windows with Local Mode Option 
VMware View Client for Android   
VMware View Client for Android in Google Play S
VMware View Client for Kindle Fire in Amazon Android Ap
VMware View Clients for Cisco Cius in Cisco AppHQ
VMware View Client for Android Standalone Package”

 

Source Check out http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2050-VMware-Released-New-View-5.1-Clients-for-Windows,-Mac,-Ubuntu-Linux,-iPad,-and-Android.html

 

 

Roger L.

 

 


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VMblog—Liquidware Labs Introduces FlexApp UIA Technology in Current Release of Flagship User Virtualization Solution ProfileUnity 5.0

Liquidware Labs, the leader in desktop transformation solutions, announced today that ProfileUnity 5.0 with FlexApp user installed applications (UIA) technology is available. ProfileUnity with FlexApp allows virtual desktop users to seamlessly install their own applications into any non-persistent Windows environment, including virtual desktop solutions from VMware, Citrix, and Red Hat, without affecting master images or underlying systems. As a result, fewer desktop images can be used to support more workers on virtual desktops....(read more)

VMblog—Podcast: Top New Features in Hyper-V 3.0 and Windows Server 2012

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Between The Lines—Toshiba's cuts TV production in operating profit return plan

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Toshiba’s plan to double its operating profit in the coming years includes slashing its domestic flat-panel television production and focusing on electronic devices and chip sales.

Virtualization Practice—The IaaS Cloud Performance Management Problem

The IaaS Cloud Performance Management Problem will continue to be one of two major factors impeding the adoption of public cloud services (multi-tenant security being the other one). Inferring performance from resource utilization metrics does not work in a simple single tenant virtualized environment (vSphere in your data center). It is worse than useless in muti-tenant public cloud environments that are build up upon a virtualization platform. The only known fix for this issue is for the cloud vendors to embrace end-to-end infrastructure latency as the quality of service metric and to surface this metric on a per tenant and per image basis to their customers.

The IaaS Cloud Performance Management Problem|The Virtualization Practice

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Footnotes