Archives for 2013

Clearpath Sponsored ADA Golf Tournament Exceeds Fundraising Goals

June 24, 2013 by Josh Townsend

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) and Clearpath Solutions Group wrapped up another successful fundraising golf tournament, raising over twenty-two thousand dollars in funds. The American Diabetes Association Golf Tournament was held on Wednesday, June 19^th at Westfields Golf Club in Clifton, Virginia. This is the fourth annual ADA Golf Tournament in which Clearpath has contributed as the primary sponsor.

As the 16 foursome teams set out for a shotgun start on the green, Rodney Sampson, Chief Technology Officer for the American Diabetes Association reflected, “It’s such a great day and a great way to get out and contribute to such a …read more

From: Clearpath Solutions Group Blog

Refer a Friend to the Potomac VMware User Conference and Win!

June 11, 2013 by Josh Townsend Leave a Comment

The Potomac Regional VMware User Conference is just a couple days away. We still have room for more attendees, so we are offering a Refer-A-Friend reward for folks who get their IT associates to come out to our awesome, free, full-day customer-focused event. The day will offer in-depth technical sessions, demonstrations, exhibits, and networking opportunities that will feature the latest in virtualization, cloud computing and mobility.

Refer at least 3 friends, and all 4 of you each have a chance to win a $100 American Express gift card!* Simply have your colleagues enter your name under the referral line during registration.

2013 Potomac VMUG Agenda

Thursday, June 13, 2013
8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Marriott Wardman Park
2660 Woodley Road NW
Washington DC 20008
Click here for directions

In addition to a keynote presentation from VMware’s Chris Colotti on How To Build Your Hybrid Cloud and Consume the Public Cloud, we will be offering the following educational and networking opportunities:

Q&A with 4 VMware experts
VMware Educational Sessions with content on:
– Mirage
– Cloud Services Provisioning
– Cloud Governance
– vCloud Director Best Practices
– Getting Storage Right for Your VDI Environment
– Performance Best Practice for vSphere
– A Guide to vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) Deployments
– What’s New in vCenter Operations Manager 5.7: Technical Deep Dive
– vCenter 5.1 Technical Deep DiveSponsor Breakout Sessions
Partner Educational Sessions
Federal Focused Sessions from VMware and Partners
Exhibitor Area with VMware Partners
Complimentary Breakfast and Lunch

You can visit the Event Details Page for a detailed agenda and schedule of events, as well as registration details. Be sure to share this meeting information with your colleagues!

Questions? Contact memberservices@vmug.com

*Must have at least 3 referrals and no more than 7 to qualify for the raffle, winners must be in attendance at the event to receive the prize.

Conccurrent User Licensing for VMware Horizon Suite

June 7, 2013 by Josh Townsend Leave a Comment

VMware has made some changes to the Horizon Suite licensing since my last post about VMware’s Horizon Suite licensing and promotions. The changes are included in the VMware End-User Computing Licensing, Pricing and Packaging Whitepaper, but are not well called out. Here’s what you need to know about the licensing changes.

Horizon Suite (a combination of Horizon View for virtual desktops, Horizon Mirage for physical desktop management, and Horizon Workspace for application and data presentation and management) is now available in a Concurrent User scheme. Previously, the Suite was only available in a Named User scheme. Some Horizon View customers were accustomed to the concurrent user licensing for View virtual desktops and were uncomfortable with changing to named user licensing when upgrading to the whole Horizon Suite, despite the two named users of Horizon Suite for every one concurrent user of Horizon View upgrade promotion.

With the addition of a concurrent user license option, customers with environments where users share a single workstation can effectively license just the endpoint, not the user. For example, in many of our health care customers, nurses on different shifts will use the same View Desktop or set of Horizon Workspace presented applications. Doctors and admins/scheduling staff may also access the same machine. Concurrent User licensing is appropriate for this situation.

Named User licensing is appropriate for business users who use multiple devices concurrently to access Horizon View Desktops, Horizon Data or Horizon Workspace applications, and have an endpoint managed by Horizon Mirage.

List price for Concurrent User licensing for the whole Horizon Suite is $500 per concurrent user. List price for Named User licensing for the Horizon Suite is $300. If you already have Horizon View and want to upgrade to the entire Horizon Suite and keep your concurrent licensing, the upgrade is $250/concurrent user.

With the new flexible licensing options, you can deliver a range of desktop and application services to your users no matter how many devices they may carry, and maintain concurrent user licensing for shared computing environments when you need it.

Performing a P2V on a Physical vCenter Server

June 6, 2013 by Josh Townsend

By Jason Shiplett

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Migrating a vCenter Server instance from physical to virtual can be done in a couple of different ways:

Manually migrating vCenter Server and all of its dependencies (https://kb.vmware.com/kb/5850444)
A physical to virtual (P2V) migration of the vCenter Server machine itself

As the former process is much better documented than the latter, here is the process for performing a physical to virtual migration of a vCenter Server machine.

Note:

If SQL or SQL Express are co-located with vCenter Server, its services will need to be shut down before the process begins
Take a full …read more
From: Clearpath Solutions Group Blog

Horizon View vs. Horizon Mirage

May 21, 2013 by Josh Townsend Leave a Comment

I recently covered the launch of VMware’s Horizon Suite of End User Computing (EUC) products, including VMware Horizon View, VMware Horizon Mirage, and VMware Horizon Workspace. The products present a set of tools that enable IT to exercise comprehensive end-point management while delivering a unified user experience across a variety of devices and access methods.

Today, I want to focus a bit more on View and Mirage. Specifically, when would you choose one solution over the other? Let’s briefly review each product.

VMware Horizon View provides a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) platform for consolidating PC’s in the datacenter, with secure brokered access using PC-over-IP to those desktops from a variety of devices (user-owned or corporate, PC, Mac, tablets, etc.).

VMware Horizon Mirage, by contrast, is focused on the physical endpoint – laptops, desktops, etc. Mirage introduces end point management capabilities that allow IT to deliver standardized layers to endpoints. The layers on endpoints include the OS layer, driver layer, application layers, machine identity (hostname, SID, Windows license), and user personalization layer. Layers can be pushed to endpoints to manage OS upgrades, application deployments, and hardware changes. At the same time, the layers are being synchronized to a central repository (centralization in Mirage terminology), providing single-instance backup and recovery capabilities for the complete endpoint. Backups include all layers, not just user data, for rapid repair or restoration of a failed PC.

These two very different tools are complimentary to each other. Both are part of a holistic approach to managing the corporate PC. Because endpoints requirements are as diverse as the users who work on them, different technologies must be leveraged to deliver the experience expected by users while maintaining the business and security requirements of the desktop computing environment. Some workloads and user experiences are better suited to physical endpoints – a one-size fits all approach with a technology like VDI may be too disruptive to the user and their ability to work. That said, let’s look at some criteria that will help you to decide on which combination of tools to bring to use for your desktop use cases that will enable IT to deliver desktops as a service.

Requirement / Goal	Mirage	View
Enable Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), allowing users to use their own PC, Mac, tablet or other device to access a corporate PC.	√	√
Provide access to same single PC computing environment from any device.		√
Maintain high level of standardization for corporate PC’s		√
Enable off-line use of corporate PC	√
Enhance security of endpoints by placing desktop within datacenter.		√
Deliver high performance (CPU, Memory, Video) applications to end user (e.g. AutoCAD, Revit, Microstation, ArcGIS)	√
Allow users to install applications and customize PC operating environment.	√
Remote Office / Branch Office with poor connectivity to datacenter	√
Remote Office / Branch Office with good connectivity to datacenter		√
Provide stateless/consistent Windows environment for always-on environments such as Point of Care & Point of Sales		√
Lower the cost and reduce the time it takes to upgrade to Windows	√
Desktop recovery & repair	√
Backup user generated data (My Documents)	√	√

While there is overlap in use cases for Horizon View and Horizon Mirage, certain use case goals or requirements will dictate which solution to apply to your user case. With bundled Horizon Suite licensing, you don’t have to choose one or the other. A single license gives you access to both Horizon View and Horizon Mirage for a named user, allowing you to provide the best solution for a particular user’s requirements, and to adapt your desktop deliver approach as your user needs or IT requirements change.

Interested in learning more about Mirage, View, or Horizon Workspace? Reach out to us today for a demo and licensing quote.