Virtual Desktop Blog

VMware - ACE 2 - Pocket ACE Guide - Now Avialable

wponder — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 04:42:00 GMT

Early this summer I wrote a guide covering Pocket ACE that has finally made its way through the system. Pocket ACE is a new feature included in the release of ACE 2 Enterprise Edition. Pocket ACE allows an ACE Administrator to deploy a Virtual Machine to a portable storage device. A user can take that portable
device and run their virtual machine by attaching the device to any supported x86 based system.

I wanted to take the time to acknowledge a few people that were instrumental in helping along the way. Matt Ginzton, Gilad Ben Zeev, Chris Leroy and Ed Albanese. Matt is a Sr. Staff Engineer at VMware and always helps me with all things ACE and Pocket ACE related. Gilad is a Sr. MTS Engineer at
VMware and played an important role in helping me better understand our instance customization. Ed Albanese is a Product Manager at VMware. Ed plays an important role by directing and reviewing content and ensuring the highest quality. Chris Leroy is a Sr. MTS Engineer at VMware and helped in the areas of disk i/o
performance, sync performance and overall review contributions. This guide is intended for IT Architects and technical influencer's looking to better understand
Pocket ACE. I hope you find it useful. The guide can be found here, VMware Pocket ACE Guide.

ACE 2 Release Canidate available

wponder — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:17:00 GMT

The ACE 2.0 Release Candidate is now available here. A ton of work went in between the last beta and this build. I think all the developers deserve a huge pat on the back for their late nights and hard work hammering though last minute issues. A new cool feature in this build is the integration of ThinPrint. This greatly enhances the printer management and capability of ACE instances. Its easily configured using the policy settings of an ACE Master. Once enabled, it automatically handles the addition of the required virtual serial port as well as installing the .print components for ACE packages. When an ACE instance that has the virtual
printer option enabled is deployed. The .print client manager is automatically installed on the host and accessible from the system tray icon for controlling the behavior. Its only available while the ACE instance is running.

ThinPrint.

In addition, a lot of work was put into how Pocket ACE's handle situations where a user may accidentally or purposely unplug their USB stick. This is a interesting situation. In essence, a USB flash stick becomes your hard drive and unplugging it while the VM is running is the same as unplugging the hard drive of a physical system as it running. Needless to say, some amazing work has gone into Pocket ACE to protect the integrity and recovery of an ACE instance if this occurs. All the skins and GUI's are finalized as well so, for early beta testers there will be some changes in the way things look. A few weeks back I received a Garmin 60CSx. Since I do not really own my own personal computer I keep an ACE instance for my personal stuff that I need to move around. Obviously, being able to load Maps and Waypoints was going to be a must have. Using after loading the Mapsource software from Garmin that includes the USB drivers my ACE instance picked up my GPS unit right away and I am golden.

ThinPrint.

ACE Beta 3 Launched - Sick as a Dog

wponder — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 17:06:00 GMT

VMware is a great place to work. Smart people, everyone’s on the go, lots of perks, lots of fun blah, blah, blah. However, the downside is it seems everyone is always sick. I work remotely from my home office and travel back and forth from Palo Alto. Everyday several times a day I see messages with Subject lines: Going
home not feeling good. Going home STILL not feeling good. WFH Today - open the message - sick!

My favorite's are the ones sent BEFORE they have come in and contaminated the office. At first, I thought these email messages were just standing out. That
was until after my first few trips . People walking around coughing, sneezing, red noses everywhere tissue rags in pockets, book bags, meeting tables, purses, over flowing trash cans. Don't get me wrong, I am the furthest thing from a germ-a-fobe. I felt like I was suck in the middle of a mine field and anything I touched was a flirtation with a weeks worth of misery. Someone tell these people to go home! I have had Bronchitis and the Flu since Friday. Proudly, I picked it up
the week before in Palo Alto. Two weeks before earlier, I had a cold, I had pick up out there as well. With the technology we have today, there is NO reason anyone needs to be in an office if they are even remotely contagious.

VDI can help with this, by remotely accessing your Virtual Desktop securely, you have access to all your stuff and your infestations stay at home. On to the good stuff, March 26th! ACE Beta 3 has gone live! If you have not already registered and want to start kicking the tires, you can register here. It’s really coming together. I have only been glancing at it, as I am still a little cross eyed but, it looks good. A new toolbar button for creating Pocket ACE packages. I also noticed you can now also associate managed ACE's to a new server now as well as a nice status notification when one is trying to contact the management server all really good
stuff and more to come before GA!