InfoSystems Senior Solutions Architect, Phillip Kerlin, was on the ground in San Francisco, CA last week at VMworld 2012, sending reports back to the InfoSystems corporate office in Chattanooga, Tennessee to keep us informed of all the big news. Here is his run-down of some major announcements:
There is big news coming out of VMworld 2012 this year! Many of the announcements will have an impact on everything from licensing to infrastructure. I will hit the highlights and look at how each one will change the way Infosystems designs solutions for our customers.
The introduction of vSphere 5.1 brings many new features and enhancements to an already awesome product…
The first big announcement, which was welcomed with a standing ovation during the general session on Monday, was the decision to end the vRAM licensing structure!!! Yep, vRAM is finally dead. VMware stated that they responded to many customer complaints about vRAM entitlement and have made the decision to move to a “per processor” licensing model. At first glance it does not look like they have increased the cost of licenses, so all of you admins can now put away your calculators and never calculate vRAM again (for current pricing details please contact your InfoSystems sales executive or call InfoSystems at 423-624-6551).
The next announcement was the End of Life for the vSphere desktop client. VMware recognized the increased workload caused when sessions were connected to the vCenter server from the desktop client, and decided to make a change. Their new approach to handling this is with a Web Client. The Web Client will give you the same level of access into your virtual infrastructure as the desktop client, but with better access manageability and ease of use.
One other highlight to speak of is the release of vMotion without Shared Storage. What does this mean? This feature positions itself into the SMB market space for customers who do not have the budget for an entry level SAN. You can now place VMs directly on local storage and vMotion over to other servers with local storage in the environment!
We also got a sneak peek into Horizon Suite, which is currently in alpha release and should be available in beta by the end of the year. This product is the answer to the post-PC era of computing. VMware Horizon Suite brings together many of the technologies for VMware – Project Octopus, Project AppBlast, ThinApp, VMware Horizon Application Manager and VMware Horizon Mobile, as well as the management of VMware View. Official press release here!
There are many more releases available from VMware 2012. For further information you can head over to http://www.vmworld.com/community/vmworldblogs/ and explore what other people have said about this year’s conference!
Phillip Kerlin, Senior Solution Architect
InfoSystems, Inc