With Horizon Mirage application layering and ThinApp VMware has now two options to deploy applications to endpoints. The big difference between both products is that ThinApp is an application virtualization solution and Mirage Application Layering is not.

While this is the main difference there are still many, many differences between both products in terms of functionality and deployment options. In the following table I tried summarizes most of the differences.

If you want to know more about the differences between Mirage Application layering and ThinApp head over to horizonflux.com and of course please vote for our VMworld US 2013 session: 4863 Dare to compare: Mirage application layering and ThinApp.

Mike Laverick has published a cool article on his blog www.mikelaverick.com about load balancing a VMware View environment with vCNS Edge Gateway. Again a great publishing! Check it if you want to learn from a pro.

Link: http://www.mikelaverick.com/2013/02/part-57-my-vcloud-journey-edge-gateway-load-balancing-vmware-view/

The VMware Horizon Application Manager offers unified application access to the end users i.e. they can access web and SaaS apps or ThinApp applications via the portal. A customer asked if it is also possible to add just standard hyperlinks to the users workspace so the end user has direct access to the websites from a single point. I’ve talked to on of our system engineers and we found a solution which works.

In the Horizon Application Manager Administrator you’ve to add an new application and give it a name and then add the URL to the field “Login Redirection URL”.

Then choose “Manual Configuration” at the option “Configure Via” and add the URL again to the field “Assertion Consumer Service”.

Save the new application and you will see it in the application overview. The Horizon Application Manager has also grabbed the favico so the user will see the icon in the portal later.

And this is how the end user will see it!

That’s it! Feel free to try this solution!

VMware has released a new version of it’s enterprise class virtualization software vSphere and the new vCloud Suite. Here’s a quick overview of the new features.

• Larger virtual machines (64 vCPU and 1TB vRAM)
• New virtual machine format (better graphics acceleration and overall performance)
• Flexible space efficient storage for VDI (new disk format)
• vSphere distributed switch (enhancements for Network health check, backup and restore)
• vSphere vMotion (No need for shared storage)
• vSphere Data Protection (New architecture based on EMC Avamar technology)
• vSphere Replication (Efficient Array agnostic replication of virtual machines over the LAN or WAN)
• Zero-downtime upgrades for VMware Tools (No reboots will be required)
• VMware vShield Endpoint (Proven endpoint security for every endpoint with a 3rd Party vendor appliance such as McAfee MOVE or Trendmicro or others)
• vSphere Storage DRS (New integration with vCloud Director)
• vSphere Auto Deploy (Two new methods of deploying vSphere hosts)
• vSphere Web Client (The new core administration interface)
• vCenter Single-SignOn (Access all instances of vCenter authenticating once)
• vCenter Orchestrator (Newly designed workflows)

Again a great release and loads of interesting stuff for your virtual desktop infrastructure.

Link: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsphere/vmware-what-is-new-vsphere51.pdf

The VMware User Group Germany North is meeting again on 26.09.2012 in Hamburg.

If you’re around on that day please join me when I’m presenting the new VMware Mirage solution!

The registration page for the VMUG will be up soon!

In the meantime you can visit the group in the XING forum.

Link: https://www.xing.com/net/pridfdc92x/vmugnorth (XING Group)

This is just brilliant! The DELL Solution Center Team published a video on running Autodesk CAD Software and Call of Duty on a VMware View virtual desktop, using the new VSGA capabilities and a NVIDIA Quattro graphics adapter.

Yesterday VMware has published the latest version (5.1.1) of VMware View.

Resolved Issues in View 5.1.1:

View Administrator

• When the number of View entities managed by one group of View Connection Server instances exceeded 10,000, View Administrator had intermittent problems displaying desktop pools, desktops, and user/group references. The intermittent display problems caused many administrative operations to fail. A View entity can be a desktop pool, desktop, or user/group reference.

View Persona Management

• View Persona Management failed to replicate a user profile that contained very large files to the remote profile repository. The incomplete replication could result in data loss or data corruption in the user profile.

User Profile Management in View

The following resolved issues concern desktop session management by View Agent and View Connection Server. In certain situations, View closed sessions prematurely, affecting user profile synchronization. In View 5.1.1, View Agent and View Connection Server wait for user profile replication to be completed before closing desktop sessions.

• When a user logged off soon after adding a large amount of data to the user profile, View shut down the View desktop before the user profile had finished being replicated to the remote profile repository. The incomplete replication could result in data loss or data corruption in the user profile. This issue is resolved when PCoIP or RDP is used.
• If a user logged off from a View desktop and immediately logged in to a new desktop session within the same pool, user profile data that was created in the new session could not be saved. The user could also lose data that was created in the previous session. This issue applied to desktops running Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, or later Windows operating system releases.

Link: https://www.vmware.com/support/view51/doc/view-511-release-notes.html

VMware has published an highly interesting article for Microsoft Lync customers on their End User Computing blog. Warren Ponder from Product Management at VMware does write about the upcoming Lync 2013 support for View which will support audio as well as video in a virtual desktop session.

Link: http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2012/07/microsoft-lync-2013-support-with-vmware-view-desktops.html