With more and more enterprises deploying mission-critical workloads on VMware, enterprises need a comprehensive, easy-to-implement and easy-to-use mechanism for monitoring, replicating and protecting vCenter Server. Maintaining high availability for vCenter Server gives customers continuous access to important functions and critical information about their virtual and cloud infrastructure. VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat extends the protection available in VMware High Availability (HA), adding protection against network, software and entire site failures. vCenter Heartbeat will also support failover for instances of vCenter Server installed on physical servers.
Heartbeat delivers high availability and disaster recovery for vCenter Server and all of its components—including the database and licensing server—with failover across the LAN or WAN. The software supports physical- to-virtual (P2V), physical-to-physical (P2P) and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) failover, ensuring consistent operation of vSphere when vCenter Server is threatened by unplanned or planned downtime. The software monitors vCenter and provides the broadest range of protection against application or operator errors, operating system or hardware failure, or external events. vCenter Heartbeat is easy to install and configure. The software has no hardware configuration dependencies and automatically detects standard vCenter Server components upon installation for instant monitoring and protection.
As anticipated, View 4.6 was released yesterday. It includes the following new features:
Security servers can now accommodate PCoIP connections - Security servers now include a PCoIP Secure Gateway component. The PCoIP Secure Gateway connection offers the following advantages:
The only remote desktop traffic that can enter the corporate data center is traffic on behalf of a strongly authenticated user.
Users can access only the desktop resources that they are authorized to access.
No VPN is required, as long as PCoIP is not blocked by any networking component.
Security servers with PCoIP support run on Windows Server 2008 R2 and take full advantage of the 64-bit architecture.
Enhanced USB device compatibility - View 4.6 supports USB redirection for syncing and managing iPhones and iPads with View desktops. This release also includes improvements for using USB scanners, and adds to the list of USB printers that you can use with thin clients. For more information, see the list of View Client resolved issues.
Keyboard mapping improvements - Many keyboard-related issues have been fixed. For more information, see the list of View Client resolved issues.
New timeout setting for SSO users - With the single-sign-on (SSO) feature, after users authenticate to View Connection Server, they are automatically logged in to their View desktop operating systems. This new timeout setting allows administrators to limit the number of minutes that the SSO feature is valid for. For example, if an administrator sets the time limit to 10 minutes, then 10 minutes after the user authenticates to View Connection Server, the automatic login ability expires. If the user then walks away from the desktop and it becomes inactive, when the user returns, the user is prompted for login credentials. For more information, see theVMware View Administration documentation.
VMware View 4.6 includes more than 160 bug fixes - For descriptions of selected resolved issues, see Resolved Issues.
Experimental support for Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 RC operating systems
Industry observers may consider the desktop virtualization market wide open, but profile management vendor Liquidware Labs is betting heavily on its relationship with VMware. The latest release of its user management product, ProfileUnity 4.7, comes with new purpose-built features for VMware's ThinApp. Two other significant developments for the two-year-old company are its recent partnership with desktops-as-a-service pioneer Desktone, and a licensing deal with Quest Software. The company claims 500% year-over-year growth in 2010 and profitability, but it started from a low base.
The integration of Liquidware's ProfileUnity with ThinApp is a logical follow-on to bundling the user profile management software with VMware View 4.5 earlier in 2010. Both Liquidware and the VMware Consulting Services group, which is officially supporting the product, hope and expect customers will see it as a way to approach upcoming Windows 7 migrations. The deal also plugs a significant hole in VMware's virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) story – one that the company first attempted to plug through its purchase of RTO Solutions in February 2010.
Lexcom's Virtualization Practice can provide a demo of Liquidware ProfileUnity.
Why is this significant? PCoIP for Security Server. They call it a minor release but this is a major new feature and solves a few issues for you.
1) Currently if you have people taking laptops or thin clients on and off the LAN and they require access over the WAN using security server they need to remember to switch their default protocol back and forth (RDP on the WAN, PCoIP on the LAN). When they forget your service desk will probably get a call. This fixes that issue.
2) PCoIP hardware devices or "zero clients" like the Samsung NC190/NC240, Dell FX100 or Wyse P20 are fantastic from an easy to configure, just plain clean for everyone solution, but don't do RDP, so these devices won't function with the current implemenation of security server. This should fix the issue of zero clients off the LAN as well.
I have a Wyse P20 that I'm testing, it works great on the LAN but I can't install a VPN on it so if I'm off the company network it makes a great paper-weight. I'll be doing an upgrade to 4.6 when it is released and further testing of the P20 and its integration with the new version of Security Server. Stay tuned.
We at Lexcom tend to go on and on about business continuity and for good reason. As many of our customers move toward their goal of having 100% virtualized data centers, they increasingly look for ways to bring the benefits of VMware virtualization to their mission-critical Microsoft applications. Customers planning a new deployment, performing an upgrade, or planning to virtualize 100% of their data center have an ideal opportunity to make the transition to a VMware vSphere virtual infrastructure built on NetApp storage.
Virtualizing Microsoft applications on NetApp unified storage provides enhanced data protection and fully automated disaster recovery capabilities. Typically, a virtualized Microsoft application provides much greater flexibility and complete automation with predefined disaster recovery processes and easier, streamlined recovery in the event of a disaster.
Some key benefits of the overall solution are:
Reduced disaster recovery costs with SRM. SRM decreases the risks associated with traditional DR. Repeatable, reliable DR processes are easily developed and maintained. Recovery time objective (RTO) durations are improved through the use of DR workflow automation features. In addition, SRM provides a valuable DR testing capability that allows you to quickly and nondisruptively perform DR tests. Maintaining identical physical hardware at both locations is not required; other processes such as testing and development are enabled to make use of the equipment at the DR site.
Reduced infrastructure costs with NetApp storage solutions. NetApp’s disaster recovery solution helps reduce cost so that the savings achieved at the primary site can be used to fund the DR site. With the NetApp solution, you can achieve multiple levels of storage efficiency at the primary site, and the savings are preserved at the DR site. Built-in WAN acceleration strongly complements this because it reduces the amount of WAN bandwidth required for site-to-site replication transfers by more than 80%. NetApp technologies eliminate the need to maintain twice the disk space at the DR site if you want to perform DR testing without interrupting the site-to-site replication. The key NetApp technologies that enable this are thin provisioning, deduplication, FlexClone, and SnapMirror compression.
Application-consistent disaster recovery.NetApp provides the capability to recover applications in a consistent state after failover to the DR site. The NetApp application-specific SnapManager products along with SRM offer the ability to maintain a history of multiple, verified, application-consistent recovery points at the DR site. The NetApp SnapManager solution is built using integrated VMware, Microsoft, and NetApp technologies for advanced, application-aware data protection.
Simplified disaster recovery processes. DR workflow automation provided by SRM and the NetApp Storage Recovery Adapter allow the customer to implement testable, repeatable, and, most importantly, reliable disaster recovery processes.
Flexible and secure multi-tenancy (SMT).NetApp unified storage with MultiStore capability offers end-to-end data security, nondisruptive data mobility, load balancing across storage controllers, and better manageability in a multi-tenant cloud environment. MultiStore divides a single storage system into multiple secure partitions called vFiler units. Individual vFiler units can be assigned to separate “tenants,” which can be individual organizations, departments within an organization, or individual applications. The vFiler units can also be shared by multiple organizations depending on the requirements.
Here is a video that goes over some of the options to incorporate VMware solutions like HA, FT, SRM into your DR strategy:
Contact us if you require any DR planning or implementation services.
Monday, March 7, 2011 at 1:03PM 
