VMware to Acquire Certain IT Management Products and Software Expertise From EMC Corporation

VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the data center and to the cloud, and EMC Corporation -- the world leader in information infrastructure solutions -- today announced that the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for VMware to acquire certain software products and expertise from EMC's Ionix IT management business, including solutions aimed at delivering improved management and deployment of servers and applications in a virtualized data center.
"Customers are increasingly leveraging virtualization as the foundation for modern IT architectures and their path to Cloud Computing," said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, VMware. "Essential to this evolution is the ability to provide visibility and compliance from virtualized applications down to the underlying physical infrastructure. The acquisition of these Ionix products and expertise promises to further establish VMware vCenter as the next generation management platform for private cloud infrastructures."

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VMware Welcomes RTO Software

Today we are proud to announce that VMware has acquired the assets of Alpharetta, GA based RTO Software adding their technology and talented people to the VMware View team. For those of you not familiar with RTO software they are well known for their Virtual Profiles, PinPoint and Discover products which help IT organizations simplify desktop deployments while providing end-users with a rich, robust and flexible experience.

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How Big Can My XenDesktop Farm Be?

Ok, tell me if you've heard this one before? How big can my XenDesktop farm be? The response is "It depends. . . Blah, blah, blah"

I've had many people ask me this exact question. I don't like saying "it depends", but it really does. But how can anyone design their XenDesktop environment with an "It Depends" answer? Well, the answer to that is It Depends Enough joking around. Let's take a look at XenDesktop and understand what goes into approximating the size of the farm.

The one component that will have the greatest impact on the size of a XenDesktop farm is the XenDesktop controller.

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Deciding Between Blades and Rack Servers for XenDesktop Environments

There are several pros and cons when choosing between blade or rack servers related to power consumption, consolidated networking, manageability and cost. These comparisons are readily available over the Internet, but what makes one preferable to the other in a XenDesktop deployment? Let's take a look at a few of the differences.


Higher Density XenServer Resource Pools
Rack servers offer more quad-socket models compared to blades and also offer greater memory capacity and the latest processors. This translates into higher VM density per server which is important because the size of a XenServer resource pool is limited by the number of XenServer hosts and not by the number of VMs.

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Vblock Reference Architecture, Deployment Guide and Provisioning Guide published…

VCE work continues along furiously….

We have just published more detailed documents outlining how to:

Deploy a full Vblock (for delivery) as an integrated whole (Deployment Guide)
Simplify Rapid Provsioning across the entire stack whether you are a service provider or an enterprise customer (Rapid Provisioning Guide)
Detailed configuration specification, how it is tested, etc. (Reference Architecture Guide)
Updated Bill of Materials (for quoting and packaging)

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Calculating Desktop Virtualization Costs/Savings

One of the initiatives we have underway in EMC IT is virtualizing our desktop infrastructure. And like most IT organizations, ours needs to be able to calculate a reasonable cost/benefit ratio before continuing beyond the pilot stage. Naturally, there are many consultant-provided cost and savings models available. Just as naturally, most focus on hardware equipment costs and savings. Then there’s the usual rule of thumb that says operational costs are between double and triple the equipment costs. But every IT shop has to verify that they either follow the rule, or are an exception. And that means lots of number crunching. Read the original article here

Source: Virtualization And Streaming

Microsoft to revise virtual desktop licensing in 2010

Microsoft plans to modify its software licensing program to be more amenable to Windows shops that are interested in virtualization but that hold off because Microsoft's per-device licensing makes it too expensive.
One executive responsible for Windows licensing, the Software Assurance (SA) maintenance agreement and Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) said Microsoft will revitalize its licensing program later this year to lift some of the restrictions of today's per-device model.

"We will see incremental changes on product use rights, on product use types and on requirements customers can meet to enable more types of users," said Amilcar Alfaro, senior product manager of worldwide licensing and pricing at Microsoft.

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