As announced at VMworld 2008, VMware View 3 has been released, it decouples a desktop from specific physical device … in short … VDI.
VMware View 3 is a family of products available in two editions:
- VMware View 3, Enterprise Edition: includes VMware Infrastructure Enterprise Edition and VMware View Manager 3
- VMware View 3, Premier Edition: includes VMware Infrastructure Enterprise Edition, VMware View Manager 3, VMware ThinApp and VMware View Composer, a new product that enables IT staff to create multiple virtual desktops from a single image, increasing the speed of provisioning desktops and reducing storage requirements.
During VMworld 2008 VMware laso announced that VMware view would also include client bare-metal hypervisor, teradici based remote display protocol and offline VDI. Of these 3 nice features, 2 are missing (the first two) and the third is included but is clearly indicated “experimental”. If I would be a CIO I would not be running “experimental features” in my product data center. When the feature goes from “experimental” to “final”, then that is a very fine feature.
A feature overview ….
- VMware View Composer is a new product that uses Linked Clone technology to create virtual desktops rapidly from a master image while consuming up to 70 percent less storage space. Automated image preparation and provisioning take only seconds and are centrally controlled by View Manager. In addition, View Composer can reduce management costs by enabling IT to update thousands of individual virtual desktops by simply updating the master image with a patch or application update and then applying the changes to each desktop cloned from the master image. View Composer provides this one-to-many image updating while preserving user data, settings, and preferences so patching is seamless to end users.
- VMware ThinApp is bundled with VMware View 3 to enable simplified application packaging and deployment to a virtual desktop environment. ThinApp and View Composer work together to provide streamlined virtual desktop image creation and updating. ThinApp enables applications to run independently of the host operating system version or patch level. This simplifies updating and patching applications, and provides additional storage reduction for virtual desktops by centralizing and compressing applications. ThinApp’s unique architecture does not require an agent on the user’s desktop, a major advantage compared to other techniques for virtualization applications.
- Offline Desktop, an experimental feature, provides the flexibility to intelligently and securely move virtual desktops between the datacenter and a local laptop or desktop, increasing user productivity while providing secure mobility. Users can “check out” a virtual desktop onto an ordinary PC, such as a laptop, run the virtual desktop locally and then check it back in to the datacenter. Offline Desktop allows a user to keep using his virtual desktop when no network is available, or simply to take advantage of local resources for the best virtual desktop user experience available.
- Unified Access, a new feature of VMware View Manager 3, provides desktop administrators with a single management platform for multiple types of sessions. VMware View Manager 3 connects to desktop environments hosted on VMware Infrastructure, or user sessions running on Windows Terminal Servers or even physical PCs such as a blade PC. Individuals have a single point of access to seamlessly connect to their desktop environment, while administrators have a single point of administration.
- Virtual Printing provides end users the ability to print to any local or network printer without installing specific printer drivers. Virtual Printing technology provides compression for print jobs and auto detection of local printers from the client. This eliminates printer driver issues and the need for printer configuration. End users get high quality printing with enhanced performance across the WAN.
Note: The virtual printing solution is licensed from ThinPrint, there are add-ons available from ThinPrint if you would be using a dedicated printserver, more info can be found here.
- Multimedia Redirection improves the user experience with rich multimedia playback capabilities. The multimedia processing tasks are intelligently redirected from the server to the end user device where the multimedia stream is decoded, taking advantage of the local processing power.
Note: the support for extensive multimedia has been licensed from Wyse.
VMware View 3 Enterprise Edition is priced at $150 per concurrent connection and the VMware View 3 Premier Edition is priced at $250 per concurrent connection. If you already have ESX 3.5 / VI3 Enterprise, you can add the Enterprise version for $50 per CCU, or the Premier version for $150 per CCU.
One thing is for sure the analysis between Microsoft – VMware – Citrix – RedHat – … will pop-up within the following days.
Filed under: desktop virtualization , VMware View
