Cyndie Zikmund, Technical Marketing Specialist over at VMware in Palo Alto pusblished a new article about a Zero Client strategy. This article gives you a link to a recetly pubslihed technical document which includes real life VMware View scenarios from customers who have successfully implemented a zero client strategy. A great document which help you to understand how to benefit from zero client environments. The cost less and have a smaller footprint, they’re easy to maintain and of course data security is a hot topic.

Link: VMware

Via Twitter: @mittim21

This morning I found an interesting document when I was checking my RSS feed. It’s the ThinPrint Engine for VMware View Quick-Installation Guide. As you may know there is an free implementation of ThinPrint’s .Print Engine in VMware View but you can extend the functionality if you want. For example you can integrate your View Environment in the ThinPrint management Server. What you need for that is the ThinPrint Engine for VMware View.

Link: Cortado/ThinPrint

Several times I’ve written about the VMware View Virtual Printing on this blog, but mostly about the functionallity, not about the fundamental printing concepts of the solution. This is what I want to achive with this new article. With the Virtual Printing component you can compress and encrypt the print stream from the virtual desktop, to reduce the bandwidth consumption on the network, LAN and WAN. This article will show you which concepts can be used for printing, to get use your network ressources as efficient as possible. Let’s take a look at the fundamental information about printing in physical and virtual environments.

The concept of printing in a physical desktop environment should be familiar for you. The printer is connected via USB or the network to the client computer. Of course there are some cases where customers still use parallel or serial printers but those should be rare. The print job is generated by the application i.e. Microsoft Word and then send to the local spooler on the desktop and after that to the printer via USB or network connection for printing. Only when printing to a network based printer, the network is utilized by the print stream. In those scenarios the network printers are usually in the same network segment what means that you don’t need to print over a WAN.

In a VDI environment this printing behaviord change slightly. The fundamental printing is the same: The application on the virtual desktop generates the data, sends it to the spooler of the Windows OS and then transfers it to the printer. The difference here is that the printer is not directly connected to the virtual desktop but to the access device, like a PC or a Thin- or Zero-Client. This means that the virtual desktops firstly sends the data to the access device and from there to the printer connected via USB or the network. In a VDI environment without Virtual Printing components this means an overhead of data communication between the virtual desktop and the access device. Depending on the network bandwidth, the line could be utilized. In a LAN environemnt you won’t have an effect on the network but in a WAN with low bandwidth it could affect your network performance.

For this reason VMware integrated Virtual Printing in the enterprise desktop solution VMware View. VMware has signed a OEM agreement with ThinPrint/Cortado and used their efficient .Print Engine for print stream optimization. The compoenent offers you a seamless compress and encryption solution.  The client and server componets will be installed with the VMware View Agent and Client software. The print job which usually would affect the network bandwidth is compressed and encrypted and sent through a virtual channel in the display protocol. This helps to reduce the network bandwith. The Virtual Printing component is free and comes with VMware View.

Windows and Linux access devices are supported for the .Print Engine. If you’re using Zero-Clients where you don’t have a chance to install additional software and drivers you can use other ThinPrint techniques to optimize the print stream. Additionally to the .Print Engine, ThinPrint offers internal (i.e. HP, Kyocera, Epson…) and external print server modules with partners like SEH. With those boxes you can directly print from the virtual desktop, to a connected network printer without the need for installing software or drivers on the access device. SEH offers for example the TPG60 and TPG120 box. They can be installed and configured very easily. For more information please check the ThinPrint and/or SEH website. If you’re using such a box, the printing scenario again changes a bit. Now the virtual desktop is printing directly to the print server box, without going the detour over the access device and uses the compression and encryption functionallity of ThinPrint.

The setup of a homogene IT environment with a mix of virtual and physical desktop + Terminal Servers is no problem at all. You can use the free Virtual Printing option of VMware View and for the other devices you can get the .Print Engine or ThinPrint Print Gateways and manage the whole infrastructure with the ThinPrint management tools.

Check out this blog post on the VMware End User Computing Blog and you’ll learn more about the new VMware View Android client! The Android Client will be available from the App Market today. Here just a few features included in the version.

A new look and feel – The View Client for Android features the NEW blue look and feel of the VMware View clients!

Multiple broker support – If you have more than one VMware View broker in your organization, you can can easily access your desktop from all of them via the Android client

Desktop Shortcuts – Quickly connect with as many as four recent desktop via shortcuts

Virtual trackpad – Control your desktop on a granular level just like you would control the mouse on a laptop

Custom keyboard toolbar – Super easy access to all of the special keys not found on the Android default keynboard

Honeycomb 3.x support – Made from the ground up for the new generation of Android tablets

Custom gestures – Invoke keyboard, scrolling, etc are as easy as ever and simple to use

VMware View Security Server support (best experience) – No need to have VPN when you use VMware View Security Server

Background tasking – Switch between apps on your tablet and come right back

Teradici has updated the firmware for their PCoIP zero clients to version 3.4 and the Management Console to 1.5.30. The following list gives you an overview of the new functionality.

PCoIP Firmware Release 3.4 enhancements include:

• Support for “T=1″ PIV CAC Smartcards
• Enhanced Event Log and configuration options, including Syslog support
• Added support for Czech, Slovenian and Romanian keyboard layouts

PCoIP Management Console 1.5.30 enhancements include:

• Device auto-configuration to automatically group and configure newly discovered PCoIP zero clients
• Profiles now include firmware file and On-Screen-Display (OSD) logo options
• Profile application to groups or individual devices can be scheduled for a future time

Thanks to Eric Sloof who published an article about the Ericom AccessNow for VMware View first. The Ericom AccessNow for VMware View Client is a new client which is completely based on HTML5 technology. Check the following Youtube Video for more detail.

On 30.11.2011 Cisco updated the Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure using VMware View document to VMware View Version 4.6. Check it out to get information.

Link: Cisco

The VMware View Youtube Channel has been updated recently with 4 news videos. The videos are highlighting the some of the workflows when managing a virtual desktop environment.

Link: VMware View Youtube Channel

Thanks to Joel Lindberg for Retweeting @donjduncanHP’s Tweet regarding the HP Client Virtualization Reference Architecture on Twitter.

HP Client Virtualization Enterprise Reference Architecture with VMware View http://bit.ly/mgxhNL #HPCI #HPDisover #VDI #View

See how you can use HP’s solution to seliver a building block based enterprise client virtualization infrastructure.

Link: HP