Month: January 2008

VMware Releases Virtual Desktop Manager 2

VMware has just released their new VDI solution.  VDI; what’s that? 

Virtual Desktop Infrstructure can be seen as an alternative to traditional server based computing (SBC) such as Terminal Services and Citrix Presentation Server/MetaFrame.  The idea is that you use virtual machines running in the data center that run desktop operating systems.  Users of those VM’s will access them using a protocol such as RDP or ICA via an easily replacable terminal device.  It has some serious adminsitrative advantages.  Anyone running SBC is aware of the driver issues, application silos, applicaitons that don’t like running ina  shared environment, minor changes require projects, etc, not to mention the hell of managing user profiles or "flex profiles".  VDI says "screw all that", let’s just move the user desktop to a central repository and run it in a similar data center, just with the admin and process execution model that we know that works and is responsive to business needs.

The underlying technology is servers, SAN and a hypervisor virtualisation solution.  VMware has ruled the roost here for some time.  Microsoft aims to step on their toes with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.  These products alone offer you a pretty traditional desktop experience for the user and for the administrators.  Sysprep’ed virtual machines are cloned and software is deployed.

You can build on top of this using advanced desktop management (even if they are VM’s) using something like SMS 2003 R2 or SCCM 2007, SoftGrid or whatever your favoured software deployment and desktop management solutions are.

The big thing is linking users to their VM’s, provisioning those VM’s in the first place and providing VPN access to roaming users.  How do you do it?  Well, you can do it the old fashoined way with lots of technology strung together.  It works.  We’ve all seen that in the past.  It’s better again to use a broker.  A VDI broker can provision VM’s as they are required.  A user connects to the broker, a VM is deployed and the user is automatically connected to the VM.  Sweet!  It also can offer VPN connectivity, possibly via HTTPS, similar to what you get from Citrix Access Gateway, a well accepted and strongly recommended remote access solution.

VMware have released their own product, VDM2,  in this market.  It will obviously garner a strong market share because of the name.  Brian Madden had a quick look at it and so-far, so-good.  There’s a 60 day eval so that’s one product you’ll want to look at in a lab.

You should also note that Provision Networks has a well recommended solution and that Citrix and Microsoft are also working on a solution to work on Hyper-V.  The latter may include Ardence, a really clever desktop streaming solution, that could be used for VM deployment.

Credit: Brian Madden

System Center Manages Itself!

If you’ve gone to any presentations by Microsoft on System Center then you’ll have heard all the marketing blurb and TLA’s on how their solutions will manage your network and manage themselves.  Well folks; it’s starting to happen now!

Microsoft recently released a SCCM 2007 configuration management pack for SCOM 2007.  SCCM can used desired configuration management to audit the installation and configuration of SCOM based on the SCOM team’s recommendations.  This means that SCCM will continually audit your SCOM system and you can report on non-compliance.  Obviously, this pack may require some tuning for your environment because SCOM always requires some customisation.

SQL 2008 Launch VS RTM Dates

You might have already received notification of a big launch in your local area for Windows Server 2008, Vistual Studio 2008 and SQL 2008.  VS 2008 is RTM’ing right around now and W2008 RTM’s pretty soon.  However, SQL 2008 will not RTM until Q3, 2008.  MS are holding onto it so they can get it right.  Fair play to them.  It’s easy to fall into the trap of release now no matter what.  They held on with W2003 and produced what was their best Server release yet.

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Assessment Configuration Packs

Microsoft has released two auditing packages for SCCM 2007 so that you can assess your configurations for European and USA data privacy compliance.  You can use SCCM 2007’s Desired Configuration Management to query file, security, registry and WMI for configurations of your servers.  This can be used to generate configuration compliance reports.  You can use these reports to plan remedy actions on your servers.

Credit: Bink.

I’ve also noticed a pack for SQL 2005 SOX compliance and for EU data compliance.  Sweet!

System Center Configuration Manager and W2008 NAP

Nexus SC has posted an article on how SCCM 2007 and Windows Server 2008 Network Access Protection work together.  This is something I have mentioned early last year when I was working on the betas of SCCM 2007.

SCCM 2007 has knowledge of how your Windows network is configured, e.g. what patches are deployed.  It also can be repsonsible for deploying those same patches.  NAP is a Server 2008 soltuion for isolating machines that do not meed seceurity configuration criteria, e.g. authorised patches must be deployed.  Toegether, NAP and SCCM can isolate non-compliant machines, resolve those issues and allow the affected clients access to the network when they are compliant.  The whole process is automated once you have defined your policies.  Pretty sweet, eh?  Anyone who is serious about security will look at this.  They might even integrate it with Cisco Network Access Control (NAC).  Cisco and MS have worked toether on integrating NAC and NAP to make it a security solution rather than just a policy enforcement solution.  Note: Without NAC, it can only be considered a policy enforcement solution because a user with admin rights on the desktop can still locally override actions by the system to gain access to the network at the TCP/IP level.  NAC can disable that at the switch port level.

Credit: Bink.

Windows Essential Business Server

You’ve heard of Windows Server and you’ve heard of Small Business Server.  SBS has  a hard coded limitation of 75 users so it’s only good for the small business.  What about that huge number of smal-mid sized organsiation that wants a tightly integrated server solution that isn’t your normal Server deployment?  What do they get?

Last year we first heard of Centro, a 3 server version of SBS.  It is now called Windows Essential Business Server (WEBS).  It comes in two packages and includes:

  • It is built on Windows Server 2008 x64 (not this does not support x86; only x64)
  • System Center Essentials
  • It includes Exchange Server 2007
  • Forefront Security for Exchange (anti malware)
  • The next release of ISA
  • SQL Server 2008 (only in the "Premium" pacakge of WEBS).

Like SBS, the idea is to tightly integrate the entire solution so that it is quick to deploy and easy to mange for lesser skilled engineers, i.e. those likely to be found in smaller organisations that would not otherwise have the experience to build an integrated solution from these technologies.

This will be of major interest to companies who are not only investing in their own IT but those who provide managed services, e.g. server hosting.  Building a template for this solution should make it easy to rapidly deploy a customer’s network espeically if hosted in a virtualised or cloned environment.