I'm pretty sure all of you know I work for VMware's PSO. But did you know that for about the past year I've been specializing in VDI, specifically View? Probably not. Not a lot of people know that! I didn't know that people didn't know that, until recently at a few vBeers events I've been telling people what I've been getting up to and everyone was quite surprised. So I thought I'd share some of my experiences with you.
The two main types of engagements I've been working on are View Plan and Design and VDI Troubleshooting/Healthchecks. All of the engagements mentioned are 1000+ seat environments, all large scale and some global.
Today see's the public release of VMware View 5. I've been fortunate enough to have been using this in Beta for a while, and I must say, I am impressed (again). Key features of this release are:
Optimized and Adaptive Experience
VMware View with PCoIP display protocol delivers high-performance desktop experience across the LAN or WAN. Built for desktop delivery, VMware View with PCoIP dynamically adjusts to network conditions to enable the most productive environment. Optimization controls enable IT administrators to customize protocol settings to adjust bandwidth use and session density by user, use case or available network conditions.
I don't normally post things like this on my blog, but I feel that these courses could offer real value to people who are currently looking into VDI or have just installed it and looking to optimize it for their environment. I will be one of the experts on the on the bootcamp community pages, so I look forward to your questions.
Starting July 19 through July 29th, join the VMware VDI experts for a FREE 9-part bootcamp training series. In these online sessions-VMware will show you how to get started and successfully roll out and deploy your virtual desktops and applications. You’ll learn about key design considerations, storage and networking best practices, PCoIP tuning and how to optimize your base image. They will also touch on VMware's security server for PcoIP, how you can take advantage of powershell to write your own scripts and much more.
Every day VMware will publish a new 45 minute video for you to view. The VDI experts will be on the View bootcamp community pages throughout the course of the July bootcamp to answer any questions and jump in any discussions that come up. VMware will lock the discussions each night and move on to the next video.
At the end of this bootcamp, you will have a good understanding of the VMware View solution, how to roll it out and how to optimize View in your environment. Customers and partners can also register to receive a FREE e-book which is a collation of all of the presentations used during the bootcamp.
And don’t worry if you can’t make it to the session on July 19th-29th-because we will be making these trainings available on-demand and locking all the threads so you can come back and view these at any time in the future.
Become a Bootcamp Survivor by tuning in each day
In order to qualify to become a “bootcamp survivor” you will need to log in and post a discussion thread in any of the bootcamp discussion forums. Qualified community IDs will be posted on the “Bootcamp Hall of Fame” page at the end of the bootcamp.
Bootcamp participants can also qualify for extra community points by blogging about the bootcamp over the course of the program. Post a link to your View Bootcamp related blog post in the bootcamp discussion forumto qualify for an extra 10 points per post, which will be awarded at the end of the program.
Summary
I thought I'd put together some notes on the VMware View Transfer server as there doesn't seem to be to much information easily available on this feature of View. Essentially it is used to Check-Out and Check-In virtual desktops, allowing them to be used in Local-mode (Offline). I want to show you in a bit more depth what happens when you Check-in, Check-out, Replicate and Rollback your virtual desktops.
I've seen and had many discussions around this topic when discussing VMware View desktop design, so I though I'd gather as much information as I could to help you decide.
From the information below, I would personally recommend using the following:
Windows XP:LSI Logic Parallel or SAS
Windows 7:LSI Logic SAS
The PVSCSI controller will be the controller of the future so you may also want to keep this in mind. Of course you can make your own decisions. Most of the points made are desktop focused, however most will apply outside of a View environment.
I've just seen this news I feel you all need to know about this:
LG and VMware announced this morning a partnership that brings visualization to Android smartphones. The non-nerd premise is this: You've got your standard Android smartphone, with your e-mail, your apps, your phone number. And in a virtual space on the same device, you have another set of apps, corporate e-mail, another phone number — completely sandboxed from your personal stuff, unable to talk to or access its data.
Watching this brought back the excitement I felt after the VMware MVP presentation that VMware made back at VMWorld 2008. Since then it's all been quiet…..Until now.
A few weeks back, Global Knowledge announced a new service called VMware Xtra. VMware Xtra is the brainchild of awarding winning Instructor Scott Vessey. Having already met Scott and regularly chatting with him I had a feeling that this will be good.
VMware Xtra is a selection of online resources to help you get the most from your VMware training courses. The online repository allows users access to support tools such as technical papers, industry experts and video tutorials.
The Steering Committee are pleased to announce the next UK London VMware User Group meeting, kindly sponsored by RES Software, to be held on Thursday 6th May 2010. We hope to see you at the meeting, and afterwards for a drink or two, courtesy of VMware.
Our meeting will be held at the Thames Suite, London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 33 Queen Street, London EC4R 1AP, +44 (0)20 7248 4444. The nearest tube station is Mansion House, location information is available here. Reception is from 1230 for a prompt 1pm start, to finish around 5pm. Our agenda is not final at the moment, but looks something like this:
Hey guys, Welcome! I'm Simon Long and I've setup this Blog to pass on my experiences and other useful information, mostly focused around Virtualization.
