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).