Back in 2007, Citrix acquired XenSource for a reported $500 million. A lot of people at the time either thought that was lunacy or brilliance. I remember someone asking Doug Brown about what he thought of the purchase during Citrix iForum 2008. Doug didn’t skip a beat when he answered, “I think it is the best $500 million Citrix could have ever spent on marketing.” I can 100% agree with that statement because any time an article or news source mentions VMware, Citrix XenServer is mentioned too.

$500 million - that seems to be a shocking number. But, what has Microsoft spent on acquiring companies in the virtualization space? Brian Madden recently wrote an intriguing article speculating this question as well. Microsoft, has acquired companies like Kidaro, Calista, and Softricity. What was purchase price for these companies? That information doesn’t seem to be publicly available, but based on speculation it seems to be somewhere around that $500 million mark as well.

Let’s not also forget about VMware purchasing application virtualization vendor ThinStall (now ThinApp), and Oracle purchasing/destroying Virtual Iron. I guess the bottom line is vendors definitely see the virtualization battle and everyone is trying to win the war.

Technorati : Calista, Citrix, Kidaro, Microsoft, Softricity, VMware
Del.icio.us : Calista, Citrix, Kidaro, Microsoft, Softricity, VMware

The vendor landscape for application virtualization has continued to grow. The question a lot of people have when trying to choose a vendor in the application virtualization space is “which vendor is the best fit for my organization?”. The answer to this question is naturally “it depends”. Fortunately, a lot of the comparison work has already been done for you in the updated whitepaper titled “Application Virtualization Solutions Overview and Feature Compare Matrix” authored by Ruben Spruijt and team at PQR. This whitepaper provides new and updated information about the various Application- and Desktop Delivery solutions, Application Virtualization in general and the main Application Virtualization vendors.

The following vendors are included in the feature matrix:

• Altiris SVS Professional
• Citrix XenApp application streaming
• Endeavors Application Jukebox
• InstallFree Bridge and Mini Bridge
• Novell ZenWorks Application Virtualization
• Microsoft App-V
• VMware ThinApp
• Xenocode

Continue at source…

Technorati : Altiris, Application Virtualization, Citrix, Endeavors, InstallFree, Microsoft App-V, Novell, ThinApp, VMware, Xenocode
Del.icio.us : Altiris, Application Virtualization, Citrix, Endeavors, InstallFree, Microsoft App-V, Novell, ThinApp, VMware, Xenocode

VMware recently made a VMware View Reference Architecture kit available for download. This reference architecture kit is contains papers written by VMware and supporting partners to serve as a guide to assist in the architectural design of large-scale VMware View based solutions.

Included in this kit are the following materials:

• VMware View Reference Architecture
• Guide to Profile Virtualization
• Windows XP Deployment Guide
• Storage Deployment Guide for VMware View

You will need to register to download this kit, but registration is free.

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Be sure to check out other resources on VirtualizationAdmin.com for VMware View…

Technorati : Architecture, VDI, VMware, VMware View
Del.icio.us : Architecture, VDI, VMware, VMware View

Just last month, software giant Oracle purchased Virtual Iron. Apparently, Oracle only wanted pieces of the company (like the VM management) as Oracle has killed the brand by firing all but 10 Virtual Iron employees. Also, just this week, Oracle has closed the Virtual Iron reseller channel. It is yet to be seen how much of the Virtual Iron IP will be integrated into Oracle’s Oracle VM offering.

Technorati : Hardware Virtualization, Oracle, Virtual Iron
Del.icio.us : Hardware Virtualization, Oracle, Virtual Iron

Now that Citrix XenServer 5.5 is free, a lot of people want to try it out to see if it can fill some of their virtualization needs. One of the strategies I have seen for people running VMware shops is to migrate some smaller workloads from VMware to XenServer. This gives them a nice introduction and way to compare functionality and performance. Aisle 10.Net recently posted a detailed article explaining an easy way to perform such a conversion using a combination of freeware tools like MergeIDE and some Windows/VMware/Xen command line tools.

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Technorati : Citrix, Conversion, VMware
Del.icio.us : Citrix, Conversion, VMware

There are a lot of new features coming out in Windows Server 2008 R2. Some of the exciting features encompass Hyper-V. One of the new features will be how Hyper-V handles virtual machine snapshots. Some of the changes include:

• You can now export a single snapshot from a virtual machine.
• Snapshot AVHD files are now created in the same directory as their parent VHD files. Their names have also been updated to include the name of the parent virtual hard disk. Both of these changes make it easier to identify and group snapshot files.
• When you open the settings for a virtual machine snapshot and look at the hard disk settings - you will see the name of the AVHD that is associated with that snapshot. This helps you to map AVHD files to specific snapshots.
• You can now edit AVHD files in the edit VHD wizard. This means that if you want to manually merge AVHD files to a new VHD to give to someone else - you can.
• You can now directly attach an AVHD file to a virtual machine. This is very handy if you have lost your virtual machine configuration and need to get data off of a snapshot file.

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Technorati : Hyper-V, Snapshot, Windows Server 2008 R2
Del.icio.us : Hyper-V, Snapshot, Windows Server 2008 R2

Citrix recently released version 5.5 of their XenServer product. Some of the new features include:

• Consolidated backup
• Enhanced conversion and search tools
• Active Directory integration
• Expanded guest support for virtually every version of Windows and Linux operating systems

Citrix Essentials includes:

• Seamless storage integration Citrix StorageLink™ technology exposes the advanced data and storage management features in today’s storage systems directly to a virtualized environment.
• Dynamic workload management provides granular visibility to real-time system performance and intelligently places and rebalances virtual workloads across XenServer resource pools to ensure optimal utilization and performance.
• Stage management streamlines the process of building, testing, sharing and delivering applications on demand into production environments.
• Automated lab management enables self service set-up and tear down of non-production environments typically used in development, support and training organizations reducing management complexity, time and cost.
• Dynamic provisioning services provides simple deployment of workloads to any combination of virtual machines or physical servers from a single golden image.
• High availability for the automatic restart and intelligent placement of virtual machines in case of failure of guest or physical servers.
• Workflow orchestration enables customized automation of key management processes.

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Technorati : Citrix, Hypervisor, XenServer
Del.icio.us : Citrix, Hypervisor, XenServer

VMware vSphere is out and a lot of people like what VMware has done. I don’t think anybody questions that VMware has more virtualization options than anybody else, but all those options come at a price. So, what are the pricing options for VMware vSphere? The Mental Ward blog over on VirtualizationReview.com has a nice breakdown of vSphere pricing options:

There are two entry-level suites: Essentials and Essentials Plus. Essentials Plus adds high availability and data protection onto Essential’s base offering. Essentials is $995 for three servers (about $166 per socket), and Plus triples that, for a cost of $2,995.

The four core suites are Standard, Advanced, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Pricing:

• Standard: $795/proc
• Advanced: $2,245/proc
• Enterprise: $2,875/proc
• Enterprise Plus: $3,495/proc

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More information on VMware vShpere…

Technorati : VDI, VMware, vShpere
Del.icio.us : VDI, VMware, vShpere

Ever wonder how different application virtualization vendor features compare? VirtualFuture.info put together a nice PDF document comparing several application virtualization vendor’s features in a nice matrix. The vendors compared are:

• Citrix
• InstallFree
• Microsoft App-V
• Symantec Appstream & SVS Pro
• VMware ThinApp
• Xenocode Virtual Application Studio

The comparison categories include:

• Technology
• Supported platforms to run virtualized applications
• Packaging
• Deployment
• User Experience
• List Prices

Continue at source…

Technorati : Application Virtulization, Appstream, Citrix, InstallFree, Microsoft App-V, ThinApp, VMware, Xenocode
Del.icio.us : Application Virtulization, Appstream, Citrix, InstallFree, Microsoft App-V, ThinApp, VMware, Xenocode

Ruben Spruijt recently posted an updated article on BrianMadden.com detailing all the concepts dealing with Application and Desktop Delivery. This article isn’t necessarily a deep dive; it is more of an explanation of the various components involved in application and desktop delivery. Each component is explained in further detail including:

• Trusted and Untrusted Work Place Scenarios
• Secure Access
• Web Application Acceleration
• Connection Broker
• Application Streaming and Virtualization
• OS Provisioning
• Server-hosted VDI
• Server-hosted VDI, GPU Acceleration
• Terminal Services
• Client-side VDI
• Client Management

Continue at source…

Technorati : Application Virtualization, Connection Broker, Terminal Services, VDI
Del.icio.us : Application Virtualization, Connection Broker, Terminal Services, VDI