All DABCC Virtualization & Cloud Computing: Citrix, VMware, and Microsoft Resources - RSS

Symantec Workspace Virtualization: Desktop Virtualization Technical Overview Video Podcast

Douglas A. Brown — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:24:00 PDT

In the following DABCC Virtualization Video Podcast, we are very happy to have Brian Duckering, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Endpoint Virtualization at Symantec. In this video Brian and Douglas walk us through the Symantec Workspace Corporate and Workspace Remote Desktop Virtualization solutions....

The Citrix Business Value Message: Is it Missing The Mark With IT Management?

Douglas A. Brown — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:00:00 PDT

I was going through some surveys recently in CIOInsight magazine and came across the article on their annual Vendor Value Survey. I was amazed to see the numbers for Citrix in this survey. I thought to myself that the message is somehow missing its target by corporate or we in the partner community not able to get the message high enough?...

Is VMware More Like Novell or Oracle?

Douglas A. Brown — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:09:00 PDT

David Cappuccio, in his blog for Gartner, Just a Thought; Will VMware become the next Novell?, draws severaldisconcerting parallels between VMware?s current virtualization industry dominance and a similar position enjoyed by Novell in the early 1990?s. Cappuccio wonders if VMware, like Novell, is going to get trounced by Microsoft....

Cross Training to Citrix XenServer

Douglas A. Brown — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:20:00 PDT

Comparative analysis of VMware and XenServer interfaces...

DABCC Radio: Virtualization Management Podcast with visionapp - Announces New OpsQuick Solution - July 2, 2009 - Episode 85

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:51:00 PDT

In episode 85, Douglas Brown interviews Paul Ardoin, Director of Marketing and Chuck Fritz, CEO at visionapp. Doug, Paul, and Chuck discuss visionapp?s application / server deployment / automation solution for Citrix, Terminal Services, and all around Windows environments, gives us an introduction to their new OpsQuick solution, plus much more....

Gartner Wonders; Will VMware become the next Novell?

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:25:00 PDT

I know, I know, the title alone can be misleading, but what I?m thinking here is a result of yet another trip down memory lane. I was talking with a client at the IT Operations and Management conference this week and he was a huge VMware fan (as are many). ...

VMware Releases VMware Studio 2.0 Beta

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:24:00 PDT

VMware just announced they have posted the VMware Studio 2.0 Beta! VMware Studio provides mechanisms for the creation, distribution, deployment and management of production-ready virtual appliances....

FUJIFILM UK Focuses on DataCore?s SANmelody for Storage Virtualization Cost Savings and Disaster Recovery

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:21:00 PDT

DataCore announced that together with DataCore's trained and accredited partner, Vcentral, it has installed SANmelody? as the storage area network (SAN) virtual infrastructure at FUJIFILM UK....

Devon IT, IBM to Host Desktop Virtualization Seminars in Midwest United States

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:17:00 PDT

Devon IT and IBM will host educational virtualization events to educate IT personnel and administrators about the cost-savings capabilities of virtual desktops. The events will be held at the IBM offices in Kansas City on Tuesday, July 7, Chicago on Tuesday, July 14, Indianapolis on Wednesday, July 15, and Detroit on Thursday, July 16. ...

Forrester: A Close Look At Cloud Computing Security Issues

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:15:00 PDT

Organizations are increasingly looking to cloud computing to improve operational efficiency, reduce headcounts, and help with the bottom line. But security and privacy concerns present a strong barrier-to-entry....

New Desktop Virtualization Solutions Can Cut Costs And Bolster Security

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:13:00 PDT

Maintaining employees' computers is one of the information technology department?s most thankless responsibilities. The desktop and laptop PCs that are fixtures of today?s workplace eat up IT staff time and a good slice of the department?s capital budget. But usually, the IT department hears from users only when the devices are broken or tied to a security breach....

VMware and Cisco Demoing VMotion Between Data Centers

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:55:00 PDT

While at Cisco Live I stopped by the VMware booth to check out the proof-of-concept that VMware and Cisco are currently doing involving extended distance VMotion. VMware?s latest information about it is here. The idea behind this is that you can distribute your CPU resources in multiple sites. This should be especially useful for those running out of space, power, and/or cooling in existing data centers. Now you can split your infrastructure without losing the benefits of virtualization....

Automating workflow execution for Citrix Workflow Studio using a .NET Windows application

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:54:00 PDT

This is the third part of a four-part series on automating workflow execution within Citrix Workflow Studio. In the first two parts of the series, I discussed how you can create Powershell scripts to execute workflows. ...

OpsWise Software Announces First Workload Automation Broker for Cloud Computing

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:49:00 PDT

OpsWise announces first Workload Automation Broker for the cloud. As enterprises shift workload to the cloud, the need for workload automation is mission-critical. Automation Center can be fully deployed as a cloud solution or manage cloud resources from the traditional data center. ...

KACE Adds Mac Support To Systems Appliance

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:48:00 PDT

Consumerisation is said to be driving an increase in demand to use Macs at work, and more IT shops are having to look for cross-platform desktop management tools as they consider adding formal support for Apple machines in the corporate desktop estate....

Mobile Device Security Through Virtualization

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:43:00 PDT

Mobile handsets are getting smarter. However, behind this fact is complexity: Designs are growing more complex and connectivity issues are evolving, adding to the challenges that developers face in creating mobile devices. As handsets become more robust and feature-rich, they are also becoming more vulnerable to attack through their operating systems....

Citrix TechTalk Webinar: How To Manage Power And Capacity For XenApp Farms

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:43:00 PDT

This month's Citrix TechTalk technical webinar is focused on managing power and capacity in your Citrix XenApp farms. In this TechTalk, XenApp Product Manager Sridhar Mullapudi and Architect Juliano Maldaner discuss the features, functions and implementation of the upcoming Power and Capacity Management feature of Citrix XenApp....

Crash Course in P2V Virtualization Migration

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:41:00 PDT

One of the most-discussed advantages of virtualization is consolidation?the ability to merge many systems into a few. Organizations usually consolidate servers, thereby saving the business big money on maintaining expensive enterprise infrastructure....

How to Dual Boot from VHD Using Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:40:00 PDT

Boot from VHD is a new technique for installing and maintaining operating system environments. Unlike virtual machines, the operating system that is running from a ?boot from VHD? environment is using the actual hardware instead of emulated hardware....

Virtualization Personalization Vender: RES Software Raises 12.5 Million in Capital to Lead "Workspace Management" Market

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:39:00 PDT

RES Software, the leader in User Workspace Management software, today announced it has secured $12.5 million dollars in expansion funding from Updata Partners to better capitalize it for global growth. Workspace Management software enables an enterprise to centrally compose, deliver and manage an end user's "personal" workspace - the unique combination of personal desktop settings, security clearances, and administrative profile - separately from the user's underlying applications, sy...

Virtualization: Challenging VMware's Dominance

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:38:00 PDT

While VMware pursues its sales strategy in down times, it seems most other vendors in the virtualization galaxy are pursuing VMware. The common pitch is to talk about cost savings versus comparable VMware installations....

The Citrix "Cloud Bridge"

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:37:00 PDT

You can create a complete end-to-end network from the datacenter to the cloud. All cloud servers communicate securely over SSL VPN. Between the datacenter and the Amazon EC2 cloud is a site-to-site SSL VPN built with Vyatta. On the XenApp server in the cloud runs the Citrix Accelerator which connects back to the Citrix Branch Repeater/WANScaler at the datacenter, to accelerate data connections. The Citrix Accelerator makes cloud computing fast, Vyatta makes it secure....

Citrix XML Service Chokes on Request Larger Than 4KB

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:35:00 PDT

I have recently worked on an implementation for a customer and was concerned with a large number of group memberships. Although the solution for authenticating against the operating system are well documented by Microsoft, the XML service does not allow requests larger than 4KB. So if users have a large number of group memberships, authentication via the XML service can fail due to this limitation. But here?s the solution....

Hypervisors and Virtualization Explained

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:34:00 PDT

If you?re deep into the world of virtualization, you probably know what a hypervisor is, what it does, and why one type of hypervisor is better than another. But to the uninitiated, hypervisor is just another term to describe an element in the complex world of virtualization. ...

Forrester: IT Spending Will Rebound In Time For Windows 7 Launch

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:31:00 PDT

Microsoft may be timing its October release of Windows 7 just about perfectly, if Forrester Research Inc.'s mid-year IT forecast -- improved spending by the end of the year -- holds up. Forrester believes IT buyers are realizing an ugly truth about this recession: They cut capital investment far more than they needed to. "We overreacted here," is how Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels describes what he believes is the collective assessment among IT buyers. ...

Long Distance VMware vMotion? Heading to the vCloud

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:30:00 PDT

VMware have an interesting proof of concept document posted online here, this is great progress for the platform and it can only be helped out by the close partnership with Cisco that has resulted in the NX1000V switch....

VMware Arms for Microsoft Battle

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:30:00 PDT

Former Microsoft executives Paul Maritz and Tod Nielsen know a thing or two about how the software giant snuffs out budding threats. They helped Microsoft battle upstart Netscape in the late 1990s. Now they?re on the receiving end....

Windows 2008 Terminal Services RemoteApp User Or Group Filtering - Part 1

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:28:00 PDT

The most wanted feature for Windows 2008 Terminal Services is RemoteApp user filtering. You don?t want all users to see all applications on the web portal. This feature will probably be released in Windows Server 2008 R2 but till then, you are out of luck....

The Need for a Virtualization Capacity Manager

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:25:00 PDT

In this latest article in Computerworld, "Hot Jobs: Capacity Manager," it states that many organizations are looking to add a capacity manager to make sure the right amount of IT resources support the business and that the IT infrastructure is fully optimized. Virtualization is the primary driver for this need as the dynamic nature of the virtual environment goes beyond traditional capacity planning....

Recognize the Real Promise of Hosted Desktop Virtualization

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:21:00 PDT

One recently introduced technology whose adoption trajectory seems to be following that of a typical hype cycle is hosted desktop virtualization. Hosted desktop virtualization (sometimes referred to as virtual desktop infrastructure, or VDI) represents a completely new approach to the deployment of enterprise desktop computing. ...

InstallFree Rolls Out Electronic Medical Records (EMR) System at Pentucket Medical Using Application Virtualization and SaaS Delivery

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:20:00 PDT

InstallFree, Inc., developer of platform application virtualization solutions for enterprise desktop environments, today announced the completion of the InstallFree Bridge rollout at Pentucket Medical Associates, a leading multi-specialty medical group practice, with over 400 medical professionals and staff serving patients in five outpatient facilities in Massachusetts....

Microsoft Reduces Windows 7 Packaging

Douglas A. Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:18:00 PDT

High-tech companies are joining the ranks of leading food companies and retailers in developing new ways to reduce their products? packaging. Microsoft recently announced that the packaging for the new Windows 7 operating system will deliver a simpler, clean design that is easy to open and reduces waste....

Today's New Virtualization Related Community Videos - June 30th, 2009

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:30:02 PDT

The following new virtualization related videos we added to the DABCC Community Video show where we try to find the best new virtualization videos on the net so you dont have to: Cisco Nexus 1000V - How to Install an Purchased License...

Introducing Remote Desktop Connection Manager

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:16:00 PDT

In Windows 2008 R2, we added a new MMC snap-in called Remote Desktop Connection Manager (SBMGR.msc on the Connection Broker machine). This Remote Desktop Connection Manager UI tool is available on a Remote Desktop Connection Broker server....

Microsoft Warns: Beware The VMware Core Tax & More

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:14:00 PDT

We'd like to again offer congratulations to AMD on the release of their new 6-core Opteron ("Istanbul") processors. As Bryon mentioned, Hyper-V R2 goes hand in hand with these new processors with support for AMD's Rapid Virtualization Indexing, advanced power savings with Core Parking and, of course, more cores means compute resources to run more virtual machines. In fact, two factors that have fueled virtualization have been the rise of 64-bit (x64) computing and the rapid growth of ...

Citrix Essentials 5.5 and XenServer 5.5 - The Best Platform for XenDesktop

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:13:00 PDT

lways make a pretty big deal of XenDesktop being an open desktop virtualization solution. Particularly on the subject of hypervisor support, XenDesktop treats the 3 big vendors equally (Microsoft, VMware, plus our own XenServer). But, just like in life, some are more equal than others! Just using your existing production server virtualization infrastructure can unnecessarily drive up the cost and complexity of your XenDesktop deployment. ...

Using Citrix EdgeSight in a Provisioning Server Shared Image ? Properly!

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:12:00 PDT

As EdgeSight is a component that is offered by Citrix in several Platinum Editions for strategic products as well as a substitute for Resource Manager in XenApp, customers like to profit from the value-add compared to traditional system management products. EdgeSight is often used to augment the data collected by those tools....

Citrix Suggests Business Planning for the Cloud - Don't Let The Pigs Fool You

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:10:00 PDT

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." Those are the words of the infamous George Orwell. The same guy who wrote Animal Farm and forever changed our views about social behaviors. Orwell developed a farm full of animals to imitate the behaviors of humans in their most despicable forms. ...

Citrix XenServer Tip How To Maximize Work Space For VM Consoles

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:09:00 PDT

If you are like me running a 1280 x 1024 display resolution, you may have run into the issue of displaying a virtual machine console at 1024 x 768 display resolution inside Citrix XenCenter. Even when XenCenter is maximized I still have to use virtual and horizontal scroll bars when working on a virtual machine console. It's inconvenient to use. Here is the screen shot....

Blades Won?t Die, But They Will Change

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:06:00 PDT

I was going through my list of actions in OmniFocus, looking at my projects and actions and evaluating each of them. In my ?Potential Posts? project, where I keep links to articles that I might use in a blog post, I found the URL for this article by Steve Kaplan about virtualization, Cisco Nexus, and blade servers. The basic idea of his article is that virtualization and the Cisco Nexus?specifically, the unified fabric?are going to combine to kill blade servers....

Managing Devices on Server 2008 Core Edition

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:04:00 PDT

Windows Server 2008 Core Edition requires some changes to how administrators do standard tasks, such as device management. Find out more in this guide....

Forrester Bucks Conventional Wisdom on Cloud Computing

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:03:00 PDT

A couple of weeks ago Forrester released a report on cloud computing, based upon a survey of small and large enterprises located in North America and Europe. I was particularly interested in its findings as it addressed the question of private (internal) cloud computing, given my recent CIO.com blog series, "The Case Against Cloud Computing."...

IGEL's New Firmware Saves Time, Money and Energy

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:01:00 PDT

IGEL Technology launched its new Linux Universal Desktop firmware adding important new power management, multimedia and virtualization functionality to its Linux-based thin client range. New power management functionality allows Linux users to switch their IGEL thin clients into standby mode and back on in seconds, eliminating long boot times....

Desktop Virtualization (VDI) with MokaFive or MED-V

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:00:00 PDT

Today I found an interesting web video from MokaFive?s CTO ?John Whaley? on Virtual Desktop (http://www.mokafive.com/solutions/it-administrators.php). He does a good job explaining the differences between deploying a virtual desktop on a server (such as Microsoft Hyper-V, although he didn?t call out any product) versus deploying a ?master image? onto a desktop. Again, he didn?t call out an one product, but I?m assuming he?s trying to get viewers to lean towards their ?Live PC? solution....

Rapid Growth of VMware Service Provider Program Illustrates Increased Demand for VMware-Based Cloud Solutions

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:57:00 PDT

VMware announced expansion and continued momentum of the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP). The VSPP is designed to enable IT service provider partners -- solution providers that offer cloud-based IT services to customers outside their traditional datacenters -- to leverage the VMware platform, including VMware vSphere 4, to offer external IT infrastructures for customers so they can increase or reduce compute capacity based on business demands....

Configuring Terminal Services Gateway using WMI

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:56:00 PDT

This article is about WMI and Terminal Services Gateway. You can find a way to manage your TS Gateway server remotely by using WMI. Here I describe two methods, to add and to remove a Resource Authorization Policy (RAP). All code blocks are picked from proof-of-concept demo and they do not represent "in production" state of the code....

Will Larry Ellison Eat His Words On Cloud Computing?

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:53:00 PDT

The buzz from analysts and reporters is that Larry Ellison is rethinking Oracle's cloud computing strategy. Just last year, when asked about cloud computing, Larry said, "Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?" If he's flip-flopping, it's interesting. Since Oracle's one of the titans of Silicon Valley, it's news....

IGEL?s New Linux Universal Desktop Firmware Helps Customers Save Time, Money and Energy

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:52:00 PDT

IGEL Technology today launched its new Linux Universal Desktop firmware adding important new power management, multimedia and virtualization functionality to its Linux-based thin client range. New power management functionality allows Linux users to switch their IGEL thin clients into standby mode and back on in seconds, eliminating long boot times. Traditionally thin clients use 51% less power than traditional PCs and this functionality will help save customers even more on power costs and tim...

Does Cloud Commoditize Cisco, Others?

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:47:00 PDT

An insightful piece of analysis from Morningstar, the mutual fund ranking people, on the disruptive effects of cloud computing suggests hard times ahead for hardware. Enterprises looking to pay for compute cycles on an as needed basis will require less data center infrastructure -- that's a given....

Virtualization, Cloud Computing Pose New Challenges, Opportunities

Douglas A. Brown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:30:00 PDT

Three years ago, Carnegie Mellon University opened the Data Center Observatory ? an answer to the ever-rising operational costs in IT. Administrative expenses were spiraling out of control because individual research groups within the university were running their own IT infrastructure, characterized by short periods of heavy use followed by many hours sitting idle and wasting energy....