Plain Virtualization

Many of the times, many of us get really confused by the different channels of communication of licensing.  In this case for VMware Horizon. The most confusing part is always Named and Concurrent user license.  In my previously article on Horizon Suite, which is the current Horizon bundle, this has not change. To keep things simple, I am going to put down the sources and wordings in case any of the sources ever get removed. From VMware Product Guide , page 56 for Horizon Enterprise: Active Connection : any connections to Powered On Desktop Virtual Machines, Terminal Services Sessions and physical computers. Concurrent Users : the total number of users accessing or using the Software at any given time to maintain an Active Connection to their desktop through an endpoint device. Named User : Your single designated employee or Third Party Agents who have been authorized by You to use the Software in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. The confusion comes wh...

Over the last few weeks of new over the announcement of VMware Cloud on AWS partnership.  This brings lots of attention to the IT market where two of the domain giant come together to make it bigger. Why is this a Win-Win?  Let's take a look. AWS With the partnership, VMware will definitely lease the data centres spaces from AWS irregardless AWS doing well or not they got another constant revenue. It make more sense to use AWS services e.g. S3 storage, etc. as your workload can be directly accessing it within AWS's Data Centre. With VMware's partnership, it adds another valid reason for AWS's customer or VMware's customers to consider AWS external services and this brings business opportunities for AWS tapping into VMware's customers base. VMware Leverage on AWS's Data Centres, VMware can now achieve more public cloud offering around the world in terms of locations. Able to leverage on AWS presence, VMware will allows customers to achieve ...

Network Virtualization (NV) and Software Defined Network (SDN) has been a hype over the last 2 years through media and lots of news publicity. The adoption for many is still new.  In fact, most customers around the world has either yet to start, or just starting, or have a setup just running not at full scale. Over the last two years, we see lots of solutions ranging from NS from VMware NSX via software to SDN from Cisco ACI via hardware.  This then also started up many new comers from companies like Nuage Networks to vArmour. Having meeting many customers from different industry and verticals the questions often been asked are like the below: why this and not that? what the different from your competitors? isn't going to SDN or NV makes visibility more complex? how secure is logical compare to physical? While some of the questions and more cannot be explained in details, from a personal point of view it often drive down to a few factors: 1) Will the company be a...

Awhile a go I wrote an article about how the different vSphere Desktop licensing is for and the entitlement. Having meeting many customer with big and small environment, projects or used cases for certain requirements.  There were some question revolving around vCenter licensing especially for the desktop related. Here is an article of the FAQ on vSphere Desktop licensing.  One of the question in this article states: Q. Do I need a separate vCenter Server for my VDI hosts?  A. Yes, like Horizon 7 deployments on vSphere 5.x, you will need a separate VMware vCenter Server® for your VDI hosts. vCenter is not included in vSphere Desktop.  Let me further explain the above.  If you are running a 3rd party VDI solution riding on vSphere Desktop licensing, vCenter is not included.  You would need to purchase vCenter Standard to manage that environment. However if you are a Horizon customer, the bundle include vCenter Desktop use to manage a vSphere Des...

During the first day of VMworld 2016, VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) was announced.  Some of us who are following what VMware has in its portfolio might be really confused.  I am just one of the few. So what is VMware Cloud Foundation?  Basically remember we used to have a platform known as EVO?  EVO Rail and EVO Rack.  EVO Rail has been deprecated and was only leaving the EVO Rack which was later rebrand as EVO SDDC.  VMware Cloud Foundation is the replacement for EVO SDDC. As of 1st Sept today, EVO SDDC is no longer available as stated here .  You can read more of VMware Cloud Foundation here .  The FAQ that clearly describe here . In a simple summary, EVO SDDC is been replaced by VMware Cloud Foundation and VCF is no longer limited to the few (actual 4) vendors exclusively, in fact customer can choose to use even a VSAN Ready Nodes with VCF and use the supported switches from Cisco or Arista making sure TOR and Spine are from the same vend...

In most announcement in VMworld, often there will be a release every other time for vSphere.  This time round, there isn't any announcement or a given date.  However, there are session on vSphere 6.5 and also on VM encryption feature which will be introduced in the next version.  This year it was announced at VMworld Barcelona 2016. There ain't major features but some great enhancement and requests that customer has been asking for.  So here is a breakdown of some of the important features enhancements or addition to this release: vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) VMware has already introduce this back in version 5.0.  And at 6.0, it has already been in par with the Windows version.  In this release, there will be no update to vSphere Client and Update Manager is now part of vCSA.  API is also provided for automation. vCenter Migration , a new feature to help existing Windows vCenter Server customers to move to the vCSA.  This tool wil...

If you head to VMware Certification site, you will be able now to book the following VCAP6 exams at USD400 each and USD100 for the beta exam: Data Center Virtualization VCAP6-DCV Design  (GA) VCAP6-DCV Deploy Network Virtualization VCAP6-NV Design (pending release) VCAP6-NV Deploy Cloud Management and Automation VCAP6-CMA Design  (GA) VCAP6-CMA Deploy Desktop and Mobility VCAP6-DTM Design VCAP6-DTM Deploy Apparently only VCAP6- NV Design is not yet release.   During this period, passing VCAP6-NV Deploy will give you direct access to be VCIX6 waving the two VCAPs requirement.  So if you are keen, do be fast.   This is also stated here . As for the rest of the track, well you will need both VCAPs in Design and Deploy to be VCIX unless you are upgrading our certification from VCAP5.  Read more about it in my previous post . Update One of our VMUG SG Member pointed this out.  Apparently only the VCAP6-DCV Design and VCAP6-CMA Design...