Dell vWorkspace 8.5 review

A cool year so far to be working in IT! alot of new tech been released and I have a lot of catching up to do. One of this is vWorkspace 8.5 which was released a couple of weeks ago.

For those that aren’t aware of what it is, can read some of my previous posts regarding vWorkspace or see a bit from this Dell FAQ: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/virtualization/vworkspace/b/vworkspace-blog/archive/2014/12/09/latest-release-of-vworkspace-8-5-faq-39-s

http://msandbu.wordpress.com/2014/04/20/introduction-to-dell-vworkspace/

Now vWorkspace has been an underdog to the other competition like Vmware View and Citrix XenDesktop, but with this release they have removed some of the gap that the competition might have.

So what’s included and what’s new in this release?

* Foglight for virtualization
Foglight is a monitoring tool which allows us to monitor our entire virtual infrastructure even if it us running on Vmware or Hyper-V

it also has a good integration directly to vWorkspace which allows us to drill down to see specific user sessions (screenshot is from user experience monitor from Foglight) Foglight can also be expanded to monitor solutions like Exchange, which requires that we have a new cartridge (addon)

* Wyse Streaming Manager (7.2)  (In premium edition) http://documents.software.dell.com/DOC262841
Is a streaming technology, kinda like Citrix Proervisioning Server, which allows us to stream OS images directly to a server or a client. Also in the new release is support for application layring features as well, which is some of the features that Unidesk and Cloudvolumes from VMware is delivering. Will write more about WSM in a future post.

Also in the latest version of vWorkspace, Dell added a HTML 5 receiver which allows for clientless access to vWorkspace. And also for those unaware vWorkspace already supports Linux VDI using the open source project Free RDS RDP server.  (Something that Vmware and Citrix are currently working on)

Also they have a pretty nifty setup regarding deployment of Connectors and have as well support for most mobile platforms with own clients. And of course many of the Wyse ThinOS clients are certified for vworkspace as well.

vWorkspace can also integrate against, Vmware and Hyper-V / System Center for provisioning and managment of VDI / RDSH.

Also with 8.5 came support for the following platforms.

Microsoft SQL Server 2014
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2
Microsoft App-V 5 SP2
VMware vCenter 5.5
Cisco IP Communicator
Nutanix

Now vWorkspace has suppor for the tradisional ways of delivering VDI / RSDH and also has extended capabilities for Hyper-V with something called Hyper-V catalyst components.

HyperCache: provides read Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) savings and improves virtual desktop performance through selective RAM caching of parent VHDs. This is achieved through the following:

• Reads requests to the parent VHD are directed to the parent VHD cache.
• data that is not in cache is obtained from disk and then copied into the parent VHD cache.
• Provides a faster virtual desktop experience as child VMs requesting the same data find it in the parent VHD cache.
• Requests are processed until the parent VHD cache is full. The default size is 800 MB, but can be changed through the Hyper-V virtualization host property.

HyperDeploy: manages parent VHD deployment to relevant Hyper-V hosts and enables instant cloning of Hyper-V virtual computers. HyperDeploy uses the following techniques to minimize the time used to deploy a virtual computer.

• Smart copying that only copies to the Hyper-V hosts the parent VHD data that is needed.
• Instant provisioning allows the child VHDs to be cloned while the parent VHD is still being copied to the Hyper-V host.
• Copy status is displayed on the Parent VHDs tab to allow for monitoring of the progress and completion.

So looking forward to see if vWorkspace can match the competition in the time ahead!