Featured

HP today expanded its client virtualization offerings for businesses to help reduce the costs and complexity of client virtualization while improving the user experience.

The new offerings, announced at Citrix Synergy 2010, include:

• The HP 4320t Mobile Thin Client is designed to meet the security and reliability needs of remote and mobile workers.
• HP’s desk-based thin client line now features expanded multimedia capabilities.
• HP has worked with Citrix to develop new virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) reference architectures for XenDesktop and XenServer that help reduce the threat of potential data loss or theft, lower the complexity and cost of desktop management, and provide end-users with the functionality of a stand-alone desktop.
• The HP Compaq Elite 8000 Business Desktop and HP EliteBook 8440p Notebook PC are the first Citrix Ready platforms expected to support the recently announced Citrix XenClient hypervisor technology. Citrix XenClient support provides the power to deliver the most demanding business applications, while offering the protection of a secure, centrally managed virtual machine for business customers.

As desktop virtualization adoption accelerates, there is an increasing demand for reliable mobile thin clients for remote users.

The new HP 4320t Mobile Thin Client enables secure access to server-based virtual or blade PC computing solutions while providing the mobility of a reliable notebook PC. Users store data on a secure, centralized server – rather than on an internal hard drive – ensuring data is protected in the event a thin client is lost or stolen.

Adding to HP’s broad client virtualization portfolio of thin clients, VDI and blade client hardware, the 4.3-pound HP 4320t features a brushed-aluminum metal finish for refined simplicity and durability with a clean appearance. Its sleek design includes a spill-resistant keyboard and integrated touchpad. Additional features include:

• Low-profile, 13.3-inch diagonal LED-backlit 16:9 high-definition (HD) display for improved brightness, contrast and clarity
• HDMI port for connections directly to HD displays
• Flexible battery options include 6-cell Li-Ion battery for lighter weight or the HP 9-cell Li-Ion Primary Battery for extended battery life
• Preinstalled Windows® Embedded Standard, File Based Write Filter and Enhanced Write Filter, and HP Virtual Client Essentials deliver greater ease of use for IT staff and mobile professionals
• Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) helps prevent undesired writes to solid-state modules such as application installations and downloads
• USB storage security options provide automated administrator control over USB attached memory device read/write access

The HP 4320t helps reduce the workload of IT staff with manageability features such as HP ThinState tools, HP Device Manager and preinstalled Altiris Deployment Solution software. Extensive integrated wireless technologies, such as WLAN and LAN, help mobile workers stay productive with ease.

Enhanced thin client multimedia experiences at the desktop

From corporate training to YouTube, Adobe® Flash-based video is abundant in business today. Yet Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) 6, one of the most common VDI protocols used by VMware View and Microsoft® Remote Desktop Services environments, does not natively support Flash. The new HP RDP Enhancements for Adobe Flash Redirection decodes and plays embedded Flash, enabling customers to enjoy enhanced productivity and communication benefits.

Available for HP Flexible and Performance series thin clients, HP RDP Enhancements for Adobe Flash Redirection decodes Flash media by taking advantage of client processors rather than server processors, thereby lowering the CPU load on the server. This also increases scalability by allowing customers to add more users per server, and lowers the total cost of ownership.

Reducing the complexity of designing a VDI environment

The new HP and Citrix VDI reference architectures provide the functionality of a stand-alone desktop, while enabling unified management of both physical and virtual infrastructures from the same centralized console.

HP’s comprehensive reference architectures are built using the company’s extensive experience testing and simulating real-world workloads to reduce risk, deliver predictable results and accelerate time to deployment for new VDI environments.

The VDI solution developed by HP and Citrix supports more than 1,000 users of XenDesktop 4.0, XenServer 5.5 or Provisioning Server 5.1. It includes HP BladeSystem c-Class or HP ProLiant servers along with Flex-10 virtual connect technology, HP storage and networking, and a choice of HP t5740 or HP t5325 thin clients, depending upon end-user experience requirements.

Each reference architecture can be scaled to meet changing business needs and can be complemented by a full portfolio of HP services including planning, implementation, support and hosting.

Pricing and availability

The HP 4320t Mobile Thin Client is expected to be available in the United States this month.

The HP 4320t Mobile Thin Client will be on display at Citrix Synergy 2010. A hands-on demo of HP’s industry-leading thin clients and software, the new XenClient architecture and other HP client virtualization solutions is available in HP booth 204.

HP RDP Enhancements for Flash Redirection is available today as a downloadable add-on at HP.com for $15.

Oracle today announced Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder and Oracle WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option to help make running Java applications in a virtualized environment easy and practical.

• Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder is a new product designed to help organizations quickly and easily deploy multi-tier enterprise applications in virtualized environments. It also enables administrators to quickly configure and provision these applications.
• Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder provides a framework for automatically capturing the configuration of existing software components and packaging them as self-contained building blocks known as appliances.
• In addition, Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder enables administrators to easily connect appliances as pluggable building blocks, known as assemblies, which can be used to create multi-tier applications.
• Oracle WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option brings together Oracle WebLogic Server with JRockit Virtual Edition in a new release of the world’s #1 application server. This release is optimized for virtualized environments and able to deliver higher application performance and increased hardware utilization.
• Oracle WebLogic Server can now run directly on Oracle VM without an operating system, a unique capability enabled by Oracle JRockit Virtual Edition.
• Oracle VM server virtualization helps make enterprise software easier to deploy and manage, and is highly optimized to run business-critical database and application workloads efficiently and cost-effectively. The only x86 server virtualization certified for all Oracle software, Oracle VM is available as a free download.
• In a virtualized environment, Oracle JRockit Virtual Edition handles essential operating system functions including TCP/IP, hardware device interaction, file I/O, and process scheduling, while freeing up hardware and management resources by removing operating system capabilities that are not essential for enterprise Java applications.
• Together with Oracle JRockit Virtual Edition, Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder can drive deployment and runtime efficiencies. This combination can deliver significant value through both operational and capital cost savings.

Operational Efficiency and Agility

• Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder enables the creation and configuration of multi-tier applications and provisions them onto virtualized resources.
  • Application-Aware Physical to Virtual: Captures the configuration of each software component in an existing application environment and packages them into a collection of customized software appliances.
  • Standardized Building Blocks: Creates multi-tier application assemblies using virtualized appliances.
  • Simplified and Rapid Provisioning: Single-step, template-based deployment of multi-tier applications to virtualized environments.

Higher Density and Performance for Virtualized Environments

• Oracle JRockit Virtual Edition enhances the performance and functionality of Oracle WebLogic Server 11g in virtualized environments. This enables organizations to maximize server virtualization investments through:
  • Improved Server Density: By eliminating the operating system, Oracle WebLogic Server on JRockit Virtual Edition frees up system resources to run more application server instances on the same hardware.
  • Higher Performance: Oracle WebLogic Server on JRockit Virtual Edition can increase the performance of virtualized Java applications by up to 30 percent compared to deployments that include an operating system.

Xen.org, the home of the open source Xen hypervisor, today announced the immediate availability of Xen 4.0, the most advanced open source hypervisor software available.

The release is the collective effort of a global development team representing more than 50 leading technology vendors, universities, and virtualization experts. Leveraging the latest network cards optimized for virtualization, Xen 4.0 provides users substantial performance and scalability gains for any level of enterprise or cloud application workload.

Xen 4.0 adds significant memory and security optimizations that will drive virtualization infrastructure to an entirely new class of performance. As a result, virtualization is made suitable for all workloads, even network intensive and high performance computing applications that would have previously experienced compromised performance on any hypervisor. Xen 4.0 enables virtualization to be deployed ubiquitously, across every server in a datacenter, bringing ease of management, secure architecture, high availability, agility and efficiency to all applications.

Key Facts and Highlights

• Fault Tolerance – Xen 4.0 now supports live transactional synchronization of VM states between physical servers as a basic component, enabling administrators to guarantee a high degree of service reliability without requiring additional software solutions.
• High Availability – Xen 4.0 leverages the advanced reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) features in new Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors.
• Netchannel2 – Xen 4.0’s NetChannel2 takes full advantage of significant advancements in networking hardware such as SMART NICs with multi-queue and SR-IOV functionality, which provides virtualization infrastructure with superior data processing capabilities.
• Blktap2 – A new virtual hard disk (VHD) implementation in Xen 4.0 delivers high performance VM snapshots and cloning features as well as the ability to do live virtual disk snapshots without stopping a VM process.
• PVOps Domain 0 – Xen 4.0 is the first release from Xen.org to formally support PVOps in the Domain0 (Dom0) Linux kernel; this new kernel option allows administrators access to the most recent devices supported by the Linux kernel.
• Memory Enhancements – New algorithms, such as Transcendent Memory and Page Sharing have been introduced in Xen 4.0 to enhance the performance and capabilities of the hypervisor memory operations.
• A full list of features can be found on the Xen Community web site

Xen 4.0 is available for immediate download from the Xen community site: http://xen.org/.

Worldwide IT spending is forecast to reach $3.4 trillion in 2010, a 5.3 percent increase from IT spending of $3.2 trillion in 2009, according to Gartner.

The IT industry will continue to show steady growth with IT spending in 2011 projected to surpass $3.5 trillion, a 4.2 percent increase from 2010.

“Following strong fourth quarter sales, an unseasonably robust hardware supply chain in the first quarter of 2010, combined with continued improvement in the global economy, sets up 2010 for solid IT spending growth,” said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner. “However, it’s important to note that nearly 4 percentage points of this growth will be the result of a projected decline in the value of the dollar relative to last year. IT spending in exchange-rate-adjusted dollars will still grow 1.6 percent this year, after declining 1.4 percent in 2009.”

Worldwide computing hardware spending is forecast to reach $353 billion in 2010, a 5.7 percent increase from 2009 (see Table 1). Robust consumer spending on mobile PCs will drive hardware spending in 2010. Enterprise hardware spending will grow again in 2010, but it will remain below its 2008 level through 2014. Spending on storage will enjoy the fastest growth in terms of enterprise spending as the volume of enterprise data that needs to be stored continues to increase. Near-term spending on servers will be concentrated on lower-end servers; longer-term, server spending will be curtailed by virtualization, consolidation and, potentially, cloud computing.