Thanks to @VirtualClarity (http://www.virtualclarity.com/) for posting an interesting link on Twitter.

The video features an interview with Tony Kerrison, CTO at ING who’ve rolled-out VDI into theit IT landscape.

Link: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns340/ns517/ns224/case_study_ingcustomer.html

Kudos to Matt Lesak who posted a link to the VMware View 5.0 Documentation Center. He pusblished a link on Twitter which forwards you to the TCP and UDP Ports needed for VMware View. As I get tons of requests about the networking ports I thought it might be a good idea to pusblish this link on the blog.

The article gives you an overview of all ports with Source, Target, Port number, protocol and a brief description.

Example:

Link: http://3url.de/vmwareviewports

Original Tweet by Matt: #VMwareView network port table ow.ly/7Z8sv #VDI #VMware

A free tool for VMware View with the name VMware View Portal eXtender was coming up in the last week. With that tool you can add a Content Management System (CMS) for branding and adding oher functionality to the View Portal. With the eXtender you can add functionality like announcements, links, support information and more. Here’s what the vendor says:

If you want to learn morr about the tool, you should check ou this website: http://www.techstur.com/Solutions/VMWare/Tech.aspx

VMware has published a few videos about vCenter Operations for VMware View. This article gives you just one of the videos. Please check this link to see more.

Via Twitter: @mittim21

At this years VMworld in Las Vegas, VMware announced the new version of VMware View. View 5 brings up to 75% bandwidth reduction, persona management and VoIP support and lots more to you. Today I’ve seen that the download is now availabe. Go and try it!

Download: http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_view/5_0

The Philips SpeechMagic Dictation Software is broadly used in the healthcare sector. But how can you use the dictation solution in a VMware View session? A VMware community member now posted a great community article about it. If you like it please don’t forget to award him the points in the community for this helpful post.

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-17068

You can also follow Jo on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/jo_strasser

There was a lot of rumours going around on several websites in the last few month about the new feature set of VMware’s Enterprise Virtual Desktop solution View. Today the company announced the upcoming release and of course it comes with loads of great enhancements. The user experience is cleary the focus as it comes with a lot nice new features here but also the new management functionality looks great. Let’s see what you get with the new version.

• PCoIP Optimization controls
• View Media Services
• PCoIP Continuity Services
• View Client for Android
• Korean Language Support
• View Persona Management
• PCoIP Extension Services
• Enhanced Security Certificate Handling
• vSphere 5.0 Platform Support

A lot of new stuff, right? Let’s check out the new features!

PCoIP Optimization Controls

With the PCoIP Optimization Controls you can gain control oft he user experience performance requirements. There are three new controls which can help to reduce the used bandwidth by 75%. The Client Side Caching helps to cache the image content on the client to avoid the retransmission. This setting is enabled by default and you can configure the cache size. Usually the PCoIP protocol delivers a lossless image which is great but also uses a lot of bandwidth, depending on the content. With the new version you can disable the „Build to lossless“ option and customize the time to build images to a fully lossless state. Those options will help to reduce the bandwith required. For environments where you need a lossless, high quality image with a rich user exerience i.e. Healthcare Imaging or Designers, you shouldn’t disable the option. Use it more for task or knowledge workers and other typical desktop use cases.

View Media Services

The View Media Services include the Unified Communications, the Printer Support, Clipboard Support and the Media Services for 3D Graphics. With View 5.0 VMware delivers a integrated and scalable Unified Communications and virtual desktop solution. View offers new interfaces for partners companies to deliver a VoIP integration. This is ideal for call centers, knowledge workers or home offices. Leading vendors like Avaya, Cisco and Mitel will support the new technology.

The second part of the Media Services (for 3D graphics) enables richer graphics and applications fort he end user. There is no need to purchase specialized graphics cards as it is a non-hardware accelerated basic 3D capability for non-worlstation users. It supports DirectX9 and OpenGL2.1 apps, like Google Earth and also AERO. The great news ist hat there are no client dependencies for this functioniality. You’ll get acceptable performance on the WAN up to 100ms latency.

The next part of the Media Services is the View Media Services for Printer Support. This is enabling location based printing for non-Windows clients. This is an enhancement which extends the location based printing function for Window clients which already was part oft he VMware View solution. It helps the ser to print tot he closest network based printer. There are several location detection rules including IP address, MAC address, Username, User Group and Client hostname.

The last part is the View Clipboard support which expands support for copying and pasting content between the local machine and the virtual desktop. It’s configurable via GPO and there are four different policies. Allow local to virtual, allow virtual to local, allow bi-directional, Disbaled. The function supports files up to 1 MB size which can also include graphics and rich text documents and it will preserve the formatting.

PCoIP Continuity Services

With this function the users will automatically be reconnected to their virtual desktops after a lost of connectivity. The session will seamlessly recover during loss of network of 30 seconds. The benefit here is clearly a better experience and it minimizes end user productivity disruptions.

VMware View Client for Android

A few weeks ago VMware publsihed a tech preview oft he VMware View Client for Android. Now the client goes GA! It’s made for Android Honeycomb and later tablets and it does support the PCoIP protocol. View 4.6 is a minimum if you want to use this client.

View Persona Management

Back in February 2010 VMware announcec that they’re going to aquire RTO’s Windows profile management solution. With the View Persona Management you’ll get a just in timeretrieval of your user persona and you don’t need any infrastructure fort hat. The profile management is integrated in the View components. You can maintain the personalization between sessions with no dependency on Roaming profiles but it will still support them. Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows Xp is supported.

PCoIP Extension Services

The PCoIP Extension Services will gain you an insight for troubleshooting your View environment. You’ll get per session statistics for protocol performance and network impact. There are 23 statistics available in 4 different categories. The Extension Services support WMI based tools. This component enabled you to do performance monitoring, proactively troubleshoot issue and find a quick resolution for them. Here are some statistic details:

Enhanced Security

On the client side VMware has added enhanced security capabilities, especially for client certificate handling. Like standard browser-based models, VMware View uses known SSL security models. With that you get another mechanism to enforce higher security and using commercial certificates. All VMware View Clients can be configured in three ways:

1.)  Disable certificate checking (TRUSTED network)

2.)  Prompt user to accept/igonore common certificate erros (This is similar to web browser defaults)

3.)  Mandatory certificate checking (For Internet/DMZ)

Last but not least: VMware vSphere 5 Platform support!