Virtualization News: VMware, Dell, Violin Memory

Just ahead of the 2012 VMWorld event next week in San Francisco VMware, Dell and Violin have virtualization announcements.

VMware launches Fusion 5. VMware (VMW) announced VMware Fusion 5 with 70 new features and a new Fusion 5 Professional version with new capabilities. Some of the new features in version 5 include optimization for Mountain Lion and Windows 8, 40 percent faster general performance, and new powerful ways to experience Windows on a Mac.  VMware Fusion 5 Professional includes the ability to create encrypted corporate images with restrictions to prevent users from changing virtual machine settings or attaching USB devices to Windows. It includes VMware Player 5 to deploy and run restricted virtual machines on Macs, Windows and Linux systems. “While the number of users adopting Macs continue to rise, the business environment is still dominated by Windows,” said Jason Joel, director, personal products, VMware. “VMware Fusion 5 and Fusion 5 Professional build upon our award-winning platform, adding new capabilities that are in demand among both individual and professional users. Leveraging our experience with consumer and enterprise end-users, we believe this new version of the product is the best solution on the market for users who want to run Windows on Mac simultaneously.” VMware also announced VMware Workstation 9, the latest version of its personal virtualization software.

Dell expands cloud client computing.  Dell announced an expansion to its cloud client computing offerings with an array of enhanced end points, storage solutions and reference architectures validated by VMware. Dell announced the Wyse P class family of PCoIP zero clients, designed specifically for VMware View. The new EqualLogic PS6510ES (10GbE) and PS6500ES (1GbE) 'hybrid' storage arrays bolster the company's end-to-end capabilities for VDI. Dell EqualLogic Host Integration Tools for VMware 3.5 provides centralized EqualLogic management from VMware vCenter Server plus new storage recovery replica capabilities. Dell also introduced three new desktop virtualization reference architectures validated by VMware, as well its Desktop Virtualization Solutions for Government (DVS-Gov).  “Dell is now able to offer a whole range of desktop virtualization solutions from the data center to the cloud that suit the needs of organizations that require rigorous security, unrivaled reliability, and above all granular control,” commented Tarkan Maner, vice president and general manager, Cloud Client Computing at Dell. “Organizations are able to meet the needs of a rapidly changing and increasingly social, mobile, virtual, converged and contextual workforce by providing them with near universal access to corporate information as well as an optimal user experience without compromising the security of sensitive data.”

Violin signs OEM agreement with VMware. Violin Memory announced an OEM agreement with VMware, offering virtualization-in-a-box to enterprise customers. By running vSphere natively on Violin’s flash Memory Arrays, customers can put business critical applications directly on Violin’s system to get increased storage performance without worrying about the configuration or management of traditional storage networks. “Violin has identified the virtualization challenges with disk-based storage infrastructures and set out to eliminate those barriers using flash,” said Narayan Venkat, vice president of products for Violin Memory. “By partnering with VMware, we enable our customers to achieve their goal of a fully virtualized data center. This is one of the many steps we’ve taken to apply the benefits of flash to virtualized environments, and create specialized application acceleration appliances like Virtual Database-in-a-box, Private Cloud-in-a-box and VDI-in-a-box.” Violin also announced Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) lab tests validating Violin’s ability to deliver 1.35 million IOPS for virtualized mixed workloads on VMware vSphere.