Tuesday, February 25. 2014
Graphics Acceleration in VMware Horizon View Virtual Desktops
This document defines the various types of virtual machine graphics acceleration available for 3D graphics in Horizon View, describes how to implement and troubleshoot each type, and provides knowledge around the benefits of each technology.
Monday, February 24. 2014
Security of the VMware vSphere Hypervisor
In this document, Mike Foley; a senior technical marketing manager at VMware will elaborate on how ESXi security architecture and controls address common concerns in the security community regarding virtualization.
This information is for experienced security professionals who are familiar with compute, storage, and networking technologies and with data center operations.
Some of the concepts discussed in this paper might require a deeper understanding of general virtualization concepts. These are documented in the Understanding Full Virtualization, Paravirtualization, and Hardware Assist and Virtualization Overview white papers.
Download the technical white paper: Security of the VMware vSphere Hypervisor
Wednesday, January 29. 2014
VMware vCloud Automation Center 6.0 Reference Architecture
Download: VMware vCloud Automation Center 6.0 Reference Architecture
Monday, January 27. 2014
Enhanced Management and Performance of VMware ThinApp Virtual Applications with CloudVolumes Shared VMDKs
CloudVolumes ThinApp Edition complements ThinApp by enhancing the ease of management, speed of deployment, and responsiveness of applications, all while leveraging existing storage infrastructure.
With CloudVolumes ThinApp Edition, you can utilize any VMware vSphere datastore and make individual ThinApp packages instantly available to users logging in to their virtual desktops, in real time or on demand.
Download the white paper: Enhanced Management and Performance of VMware ThinApp Virtual Applications with CloudVolumes Shared VMDKs
Friday, January 24. 2014
Virtualizing Active Directory Domain Services On VMware vSphere
This technical white paper provides best practice guidelines for deploying AD DS on vSphere. The recommendations in this guide are not specific to a particular set of hardware or to the size and
scope of a specific AD DS implementation.The examples and considerations in this document
provide guidance, but do not represent strict design requirements.
As the prominent directory service and authentication store, Active Directory Domain Services
(AD DS) is in the majority of network infrastructures. In some environments AD DS is viewed as
another required service, but it does not attract much attention. In other environments AD DS is
treated as the business critical application (BCA) that it is.
Considering that the ability to access
network resources and the Internet, look up user information, and use email often requires AD
DS, it is worth understanding the importance of this service and the stability of its underlying
infrastructure.
In much the same way that the criticality of AD DS differs from organization to organization, so
does the acceptance of virtualizing this service.
More conservative organizations choose to
virtualize a portion of the AD DS environment and retain a portion on physical hardware. The
cause is typically misinformation, lack of experience in virtualization, or fear of the unknown.
With the release of Windows Server 2012, new features alleviate many of the legitimate concerns
that administrators have about virtualizing AD DS. These new features, the latest versions of
VMware®
vSphere®
, and recommended practices help achieve 100 percent virtualization of AD
DS.
Download: Virtualizing Active Directory Domain Services On VMware vSphere
Monday, January 20. 2014
Enabling VMware vShield Endpoint in a VMware Horizon View Environment
The performance problems caused by AV software are compounded in large implementations. When many people log in around the same time, waking up dormant virtual machines and triggering simultaneous antivirus signature updates, the resulting I/O problems—login and AV storms—become time-consuming and inconvenient, to say the least.
Even with improved scheduling and other techniques designed to mitigate their effects, these I/O problems downgrade the typical user experience and precipitate expensive service calls. They are capable of bringing VDI performance to a grinding halt.
VMware vShield Endpoint addresses the problems of antivirus scanning in a large-scale virtual desktop implementation with a better solution: It consolidates and offloads all antivirus and associated operations into a centralized security virtual appliance (SVA), supplied by a VMware partner.
The SVA runs and manages antivirus software as a dedicated virtual machine on the hypervisor, with very small desktop drivers. This replaces dozens or hundreds or thousands of large AV agents on individual virtual desktops.
New technical white paper: Enabling VMware vShield Endpoint in a VMware Horizon View Environment