Key Features

Windows 7 Support – Full support for Windows 7 desktops as a host OS or guest (virtualized) desktop to help customers with the migration to Windows 7 environments to help customers migrate to Windows 7 at double the speed and half the cost of a traditional physical Windows 7 migration.

View Client with Local Mode – The industry’s first integrated offline virtual desktop solution allowing users to download View desktops onto a local device and execute locally with or without a network connection. View Client with Local Mode helps IT organizations securely enable mobile user, contractor and Employee Owned IT (EOIT) use cases.

View Administrator Enhancements – Including a new look and feel, increased performance, improved scalability and new efficiencies through dashboards and the integration of application assignment to help simplify desktop management.

Kiosk Mode – Allow multiple users to share a published virtual desktop from a kiosk in a public or other shared space. Kiosk Mode helps to enable and simplify the delivery of kiosk based applications to end-users

http://www.vmware.com/products/view/overview.html

• Performance Improvements
• Automated LDAP Data and View Composer Database Backup
• Client Information
• Improved Logging
• Edit Desktop Wizard Navigation
• USB Improvements
• Multimedia Redirection (MMR) for Windows Vista
• Adobe Flash Bandwidth Reduction
• Multi-Protocol Support

For release notes and to download, go here.

VMware announced VMware View 3. VDI is now a part of VMware View. The View product portfolio will also include

• VMware View Manager (formerly VMware Virtual Desktop Manager): Enterprise class server which helps rapidly provision virtual desktops and connects users to their personalized desktops.
• VMware View Composer: New Product – Enables storage optimization and scalable management of virtual desktops from a single master image.
• ThinApp: Delivers and deploys applications more efficiently, more securely, and more cost-effectively with agentless application virtualization.

The following figure provides an overview of how this is accomplished.

On the left side you find the virtualisation hosts that serve the desktop to the user. This is typically the Microsoft Windows XP desktop. Currently, VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 is the supported platform, more specifically VirtualCenter 2.5.

Sun VDI Software is placed in the middle between the virtualization hosts and the remote clients. Sun VDI Software consists of three parts that all can reside on a single system. The Virtual Desktop Connector (and more specifically, its service component) is responsible for allocating virtual desktops to the user from the virtualisation platform. This is done through a Sun Virtual Desktop Connector agent installed on the virtualisation layer.

The lookup process is initiated through the Virtual Desktop Connector client, invoked through a Sun Ray Server Software (SRSS) or Sun Secure Global Desktop (SSGD) session. Once the virtual desktop is located and up and running, a remote connection (Microsoft RDP) is established and routed through the access tier (Sun Ray Server Software or Sun Secure Global

Desktop) to the client device and its user. Besides the allocation and routing of virtual desktops, the Sun Virtual Desktop Connector provides features that control the whole desktop lifecycle from creation up to deletion of the virtual desktops. Some of these features are illustrated later in the description of the core configuration tasks.

I successfully implemented SUN-VDI using ESX backend. Fell free to contact me if you have any questions or click here to talk to the experts.

VMware view is made up of VMware View Composer, VMware Offline Desktop and Client Virtualization which all are directly related to VDI.

VMware View Composer – Advanced image management for virtual desktops allows you to:

•  Reduce storage cost and management by up to 90 percent
• Reduce desktop provisioning from 15 minutes to just seconds
• Manage hundreds of desktops from a single central image, retaining user settings when updating or patching service packs, application updates or even OS upgrades
• Roll back instantaneously, enabling customers to streamline management and guarantee that all user systems are up to date
• Reduce the number of images to manage

VMware Offline Desktop – Access virtual desktops whether online or offline to:

• Backup critical user data and applications for remote employees
• Create transparent user environments on the road or in the office
• Increase user productivity while decreasing management complexity and risks
• Harness local compute power for a superior PC-like end user experience while maintaining data back ups and settings

VMware Client Virtualization – With virtualization for laptops and desktops PCs you can:

• Reduce the number of PC images with hardware independent virtual desktops that run on each PC
• Provide centralized management of VDI users and virtual client users from the same management console
• Enable users to take advantage of local PC hardware for superior user experience and offline usage

Companies can run desktops inside virtual machines that are located in a central data center. Users access these desktops remotely from a PC or a thin client over a remote display protocol (e.g. RDP/ICA)

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is made up of: 

• Operating System Virtualization – Virtualized operating system layer to provide multiple virtual machines on the same physical hardware.
• Remote Display – A device to display the connection
• Application Delivery System – Technology to deploy and update applications within the desktop
•  Connection Broker – A broker that provides the remote display protocol, possibly provides remote access, possibly access to local devices.
• Virtual Machine Management – Manages the provisioning/deprovisioning of private or shared virtual machines.

I have finished testing VMware, Leostream, Citrix XenDesktop & SUN VDI. I Will post on these and more here.