VMWare View 5.1 Implementation

Overview

My company has implemented/upgraded several environments to View 5.1 and the bottom line is I am impressed. There are 2 key features that I am impressed and would recommend any VMWare View Administrator to utilize. The first is the Physical and Virtual Persona management. The second is the performance cache for login storms and per user "learning" of workloads. I recently implemented this in a very active call center utilizing HyVE-100-N's (http://www.hyvesystems.net/) and one word "WOW"!!!! I believe we as engineers and implementation guru's for desktop virualization have come to a frontier of end user compute. The consumerization of this technology is evolving quickly and my belief is VMWare has finally stepped up to and delivered an end-to-end solution.

I recommend reviewing the information on VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/support/view51/doc/view-51-release-notes.html#whatsnew) , but the bottom line is GET READY FOR PURE STATELESS VDI!!!!

Enjoy:)

What's New in View 5.1

VMware View 5.1 delivers important features and enhancements that improve the performance, security, management, and flexibility of virtual desktops. This release of VMware View adds the following new features and support.

• Advanced storage options that leverage vSphere 5.0 - The following performance optimizations and integration features take advantage of vSphere 5.0 enhancements:
• View Storage Accelerator uses Content Based Read Cache (CBRC) - CBRC is an ESXi 5.0 server memory cache of common blocks. During peak I/O workloads such as logon boot storms, View desktops can access common blocks of the OS disk and shared applications in the main memory cache, improving performance, enhancing the user experience, and saving storage array costs.
• Tech Preview: View Composer Array Integration with VAAI - Additional View Composer cloning options leverage the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) Native Cloning capability of Network Attached Storage (NAS). Note: The storage vendors developing support for NFS native cloning (VAAI) need additional certification to support the View workload. CBRC is not supported with the NFS native cloning feature.
• Customizable View Composer disposable disk drive letter.
• Support for up to 32 hosts in a cluster when Network File System (NFS) is in use. (The former limit was 8 hosts per cluster.)
• Improved USB support.
• Radius two-factor authentication support.
• View Administrator user interface (UI) enhancements - These include context menus, linking to saved View Administrator pages, enhanced table column viewing, and globalization and localization in five languages.
• Support for pre-created Active Directory machine accounts.
• Optional customer experience improvement program. View collects anonymous data about View usage to help make View more responsive to customer needs. No user-identifiable data is collected. You can opt in or out of the program at any time.
• View Persona Management is supported on physical computers - View Persona Management (virtual profiles) can manage user profiles across physical computers and View desktops. Simultaneous sessions are not supported.
• View Persona Management user profile migration - The View Persona Management utility migrates Windows user profiles from Windows XP to Windows 7. The utility migrates profiles from physical computers to View or from View to View.
• Standalone View Composer server - View supports the installation of the View Composer server on a standalone machine separate from VMware vCenter Server.