Simon Bramfitt

VMware's new horizon

There's no secret that I really like Citrix Dazzle, a single common portal that provides access to self provisioned web and Windows (dare I say legacy) apps is huge step on the path towards user-centric computing. Really good stuff. The only shortcoming is that all you get with Dazzle is the first (easy) part of the puzzle. There's no back end integration to take care of provisioning user accounts in web or SaaS apps.

Well today VMware stepped into the fray with Project Horizon. And it is outstanding.

Still very obviously pre-beta, but based on what I've seen so far it's clear that VMware have both the vision and capability to suceed with Horizon and I expect it to be a big hit.

More on this later.

View 4.5 launch, not with a bang but not with a whimper

The least surprising announcement at VMworld 2010 had to be the launch of View 4.5. The announcement was initially expected to come the week before Citrix synergy back in May, but was pulled at the last minute for reasons unknown. Next came the news that view 4.5 was to be shipped without  the user profile manager that VMware acquired when it purchased RTO.

So now that View 4.5 has officially been launched were there any surprises that VMware had been able to keep hidden until today?  Back at the beginning of the month I wrote a short wish-list of things that I would like to see VMware announce at VMworld.  I didn't think it was a completely unreasonable set of desires, certainly no more than to be hoped for as part of a package of enhancements to move View from being an enterprise ready product to something that is capable of full integration with heterogeneous enterprise desktop environments.

And what did I get?  Nothing, well not much.  There was a really cool demo of a PCoIP client running on an iPad, but that was only a demo there real thing is still some ways off. Everything else was sadly missing. The only real surprise was VMware's announcement of vShield Endpoint which isn't even part of View 4.5 it just makes it work better.

vShpere Endpoint is VMware's response to Citrix's and McAfee's announcement from Synergy  of a plan to allow anti-malware services to be pulled from the OS and offloaded to the virtualization layer as a single dedicated VM.  Clearly a huge benefit when delivering server hosted virtual desktops. It would be unfair to say that this was VMware playing catch-up.  The Citrix/McAfee initiative is still some ways off from shipping and there's no doubt in my mind that VMware had been thinking a.ong this line for sime time.  It just a matter of timing that the Citrix conference is earlier in the year than VMware's. 

All thinjgs considered, this lackluster delivery is the worst possible thing that could've happened to desktop virtualization this year.  Not to dismiss the progress that companies like Virtual Computer and Moka Five have made with client virtualization, the only reason why Citrix has worked so hard to deliver XenClient and push out two substantial updates to XenDesktop in as many months has been a threat that VMware will establish itself as a serious contender on the desktop.  Today when we all hoped that VMware would raise the bar on desktop virtualization all we saw was VMware attempting to catch up to where Citrix was last month. So now the heat is off Citrix there's concern that based on past rformance Citrix might ease off on desktop virtualization development and focus its resources elsewhere, and that will help no one. Still there's a lot of new faces on the Citrix team and the need to fight it out in a competiative market may be enough to remove past complacency.

As it is Citrix, Quest, AppSense, RES, Virtual Computer, Moka Five and all the other desktop virtualization players will be partying hard tonight on the back of VMware's failure to step up to the game today. I just need to find out where the party is.

 

Virtual Computer spoils VMware's day

Virtual Computer took a poke a VMware today with the launch of NxTop 3.0 

Just hours after VMware's Scott Davis dismissed the idea of type I client hypervisors as being unworkable, Virtual Computer provided him wrong by launching a type I hypervisor that delivers solid performance and innovation without locking it's customers into a single vendor or virtualization strategy.

In NxTop 3.0 Virtual Computer has made and some significant advances in both the NxTop Center management system and the NxTop Engine hypervisor.  I'm going to skip over most of the management system enhancements other than to report on two new features that NxTop Center now offers that is going to make NxTop both more scalable and more supportable.  NxTop Center 3.0 now has a hierarchical management model that supports branch office deployments using distributed management servers.  It also includes the ability to provide pre-OS boot remote support, so that  This will significantly reduce administration and\or network bandwidth costs for organizations that deploy NxTop across multiple sites, and is certainly a worthwhile improvement.

Far more important though is what Virtual Computer has done with the NxTop Engine.  Before I get into the new features let's just recap what NxTop Engine is.  The NxTop Engine is a full type I client hypervisor in the same vein as Citrix's is recently launched XenClient (virtual computer will of course point out that NxTop Engine has been around for a lot longer than XenClient and supports a much longer hardware compatibility list).

The logical architecture of current generation NxTop desktops look something like this.

It's important to note here that Virtual Computer's hypervisor is based on the open source Xen hypervisor platform. Unlike the Citrix XenClient which is not open source (although many XenClient components find their way into Xen) the NxTop Engine can run on both Intel and AMD processors (running Intel VT-x or AMD-V) with Intel, Nvidia and ATI Graphics. With NxTop engine built on Xen and Citrix being the primary contributor to Xen as well as the owner of both XenServer and XenClient, we should expect Virtual Computer and Citrix to have one of those interesting coopetition relationships.  And certainly the case, in fact I think that Citrix is hedging its bets here this and has a invested in Virtual Computer.

Now with NxTop Engine 3.0 Virtual Computer has taken an additional step forward with the introduction of NxTop Connect.  NxTop Connect is a new services domain which can be used to run Linux applications that are managed directly through NxTop Center.

Right now virtual computer provide about half a dozen NxTop Connect applications these include the Citrix Receiver to provide access to XenApp and XenDesktop, the Quest EOP client, Virtual Computer's own RDP client, as well as some more interesting offerings like Google's Chrome browser and a Linux Skype client.  Missing from the list at the moment is a VMware View client, Virtual Computer have promised that this is on its way, but will be limited to the supporting RDP and not PCoIP.

The great advantage of these features are that you now have an instant on capability; boot to the hypervisor, the service domain applications will be displayed in a way that is very familiar to any Mac user, select your application and you will be and running almost immediately. At the same time that you're doing this a full Windows or Linux desktop session can be booting inside another virtual machine in the background.

Virtual Computer has not shared with me all of its plans for NxTop Connect but given the direction that Citrix and others are taking to allow anti-Malware solutions to be deployed as dedicated virtual machines I think we should expect to see Virtual Computer announcing something similar at some point in the future.

At the same time as announcing NxTop 3.0 Virtual Computer also announced a partnership with Quest Software to provide a combined Client Virtualization (Virtual Server), Server Hosted Virtual Desktop (Quest Software) solution that will deliver the best of both worlds. I want to explore this in more detail in a later post but for now at least let's just say that if this is done right, it could be extremely attractive.

You can find Virtual Computer on the VMworld 2010 exhibition floor in booth 1433 (for the moment anyway).

View 4.5 to ship without profile management?

In my last blog post I  made the bold prediction

I fully expect [View 4.5] to ship with a persona management capability even if the last View 4.5 beta didn't offer this.

And no sooner than than I said that Tech Target's Bridget Botelho comes out with this little gem VMware seeks to bounce back from View 4.5 fumble where she confirms previous reports that View 4.5 will not ship with RTO's profile management software.

Well I'm not going disagree twice. But I will say that if View 4.5 ships without persona management then this is a major error of judgement, and one that will have VMware's competitors celebrating over.

I just have to wonder though, given this news, will Gartner be polling its customers to reassess its position on persona management as a mandatory requirement for enterprise-class server hosted virtual desktops?

The Disconnected Virtual Desktop

I've been out on vacation for the last couple of weeks; visiting relatives for the most part, but taking a little time to show my family around the English Lake District. Aside from the lakes, mountains, delightful stone cottages, sheep and rain; there's one other thing that the Lake District is noted for - woeful connectivity. So no surprises then to hear  that while our stone cottage was right on the lake front and had wonderful views of damp and rather sad looking sheep on the surrounding mountains; it had no phone, no cell coverage, and no internet access. I can't recall any time in the last few years when I didn't have some sort of connectivity so being completely cut off from the digital world was, initially at least, a refreshing change.

OK, so what does this have to do with desktop virtualization?  Not that much other than to serve as a reminder that even today making plans for desktop services based on the assumption of ubiquitous communication won't always work.  As desktop virtualization adoption continues to grow, edge cases like this will take on greater importance when it comes to differentiating between departmental solutions and enterprise-class solutions.   So with this in mind I'm going to be taking a close look at what VMware will be saying about View 4.5 when it is formally announced at VMworld in two weeks time.

I don't expect any real surprises as far as the product itself is concerned. Burton Group's - sorry, Gartner's Chris Wolf has already shared that View 4.5 will meet Gartner's requirements for an enterprise-class server hosted virtual desktop (SHVD) platform, which means that we can expect Windows 7 support, delegated administration, as well as a change logging and auditing capability asnew features, and I've ready said that I fully expect it to ship with a persona management capability even if the last View 4.5 beta didn't offer this. What I'm really interested to see is how VMware will position View's disconnected operation capabilities (Offline Desktop in VMware speak).  To date VMware hasn't really put as much effort behind disconnected operation as it might.

Offline Desktop has been there languishing in the wings as an "Experimental Feature" for two years and will only reach mainstream supported status with the release of View 4.5.  During this time VMware has done little to promote Offline Desktop leaving it as a worthwhile but not mold-breaking feature.  This is pretty much in line with Gartner's positioning of disconnected operation as a preferred rather than required feature. But given just how valuable Gartner's opinion is to VMware (see the VMware web site front page where VMware are highlighting Gartner's Magic Quadrant report on server x86 virtualization infrastructure)  is there opportunity and incentive for VMware to game the system and shape what Gartner considers to be and "enterprise-class" SHVD solution?

If VMware were able to establish a groundswell of opinion amongst large enterprises that an enterprise-class server hosted virtual desktop platform MUST provide support for disconnected operation, then that opinion will inevitably inform Gartner's perspective on requirements for SHVD. Then with the next release of Gartner's update to SHVD platform requirements Citrix might suddenly find itself behind VMware on Gartner's scorecard.

Regardless of the possibility of VMware attempting anything like this (frankly low); is it time to consider support for disconnected operation as being an essential part of an enterprise-class SHVD solution?  I honestly believe so; in fact I'd go further to say that support for disconnected operation is an essential part of every desktop virtualization solution, not just those we choose to call enterprise-class.