VMware VDI - VMworld session you don't want to miss

wponder — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 15:37:00 GMT

Not a lot to share lately. I have been traveling for the last three weeks and will be traveling through the early part of Oct. Last week I
was in London, the VMware VDI team all got together for some great meetings and sessions. I have also been heads down working on a few new
papers and getting ready for VMworld. Just after VMworld I am finally taking some time off for some much needed Fly Fishing! If anyone out
ever wants to go let me know. It needs to be in the Rockies, Canada, New Zealand or South America though, because I like to go WAY out.

Sorry I digressed, can you tell I am ready to go! VMworld is a few short days away and I will do my best to post some
pictures and updates from there. Anyone attending swing by the VMware booth, say hi and share your experiences on how you VMware VDI efforts
are going! There is one session you will not want to miss.

Mark Benson, a VDI Solution Architect with the VDI development team will present the following session on Tuesday 9/11

DV18. Tuesday 9/11 5pm – 6pm.

“VDI with VMware’s Next Generation Connection Broker - Architecture, Security and Deployment Scenarios”

“As many people are realizing the potential of hosting desktop operating systems on VMware ESX Server in the data center, aspects of
access security, scalability and high availability become increasingly important. This session discusses the architecture of VMware’s next
generation connection broker from a design perspective, paying special attention to the security features and deployment scenarios supported.
We’ll also provide insight into how the product was developed to simplify the operational management needs of VDI in large production
environments.”

Just after the session will also be a “meet the developers” session for 90 mins immediately following the session. This will be a great opportunity to meet the team.

See you there!

Whats in a name?

wponder — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 15:10:00 GMT

Ok, I finally FORCED myself to start blogging again. Last December, I embarked on a new and exciting phase of my career. I was fortunate enough that the Enterprise Desktop and Solutions product team at VMware asked me to join their team, a really smart and talented team of people by the way. Since that time, I have been sucking from a fire hose and trying to get my legs. Pictures of Bambi on ice seem to play through my head.

The level of activity and the amount of work too be done is a bit overwhelming but, I would want it no other way. I simply have not had the time to get this blog going. Between upcoming product launches, writing white papers, setting up labs and traveling to meet with customers, it's been crazy. I also was having trouble coming up with a name for my blog. I wanted to keep my former blog name Ponder This but because VMware does not have an internal blog server today, that was becoming harder to do. I also did not want to do something lame and play-off something else and use a name like Think Virtual. Sorry, that's an inside joke.

As I struggled to come up with a catchy phrase. I decided I would play a little game. Call it what it is, a blog about Virtual Desktops. What is a Virtual Desktop? My vision is it's an evolution. It's an evolution that includes best of breed technologies and architectures from the past, today and future, which are coming together and changing the way we use desktop computing today. The "desktop" is often referred to as physical device. IMO that's not a desktop, that's a Personal Computer, simply a device that is running a users desktop environment. This desktop evolution has been occurring for some time. It all started with WIMP . Virtual Desktops have existed at the desktop for a long time, primarily in UNIX like systems. Never really main stream in Windows.

This creates a unique challenge as something like 98% of the desktop market is Windows based and the largest population of users has never been exposed to dynamic flexible desktop environments. Most will only start to get exposed as they are introduced to Windows Vista. Besides the Virtual Desktop evolving at the UI level, there is also an infrastructure or delivery evolution that has been occurring and is entering a new phase driven most recently by VDI . The infrastructure and delivery evolution is a combination of Network Clients, Server Based Computing, Virtualization and Application Streaming technologies that I believe we will start to see merge together as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

So what's the game, in what's a name? It's not really a game but more of a test. We have an awesome team that is handling the blogsphere at VMware. I am amazed by the amount of content they find and aggregate. I just wanted to see how long it would take for them to find this. If you have a better name please fee free to share it. In the end I figured it really did not matter.

Virtual Desktop Blog

VMware VDI - VMworld session you don't want to miss

Whats in a name?