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Propalms Enters VDI Market With TSE 6.0 Beta

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Last January, Propalms announced that it would be entering the desktop virtualization market this year with the launch of its Virtual Desktop Manager technology within its new TSE product. Last week, the company launched the beta version of its new TSE 6.0 (register here), with a final version coming out before the end of June.

TSE 6.0 (PDF) sits on the new Microsoft Server 2008 product, and provides customers with additional functionality in Windows 2008 Terminal Services, such as Easy Web Based Management, Virtual Desktop Management, Hyper Print PDF printing utility, Content Publishing and Redirection, Virtual IP, plus additional features.

Propalms recently announced that it had completed the acquisition of vFortress, a leading security solution company. The acquisition gives Propalms the rights to all vFortress customers and property; including the worldwide IP rights and source code of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution.

Microsoft Hyper-V RC1 Now Available Through Windows Update

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A little over a week ago, Microsoft announced that Hyper-V (RC 1) was available through MS Download Center. The company has now let us know that the first Release Candidate for the much anticipated hypervisor is now also available on Windows Update.

“To install the update open the Windows Update control panel and click “View available updates” under the “Install Updates” button. Then check the Update for Windows Server 2008 (KB950049) and click install.”

Microsoft Publishes Guide for Testing Hyper-V and Failover Clustering

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Microsoft has published a new 18-pages guide to setup virtual machines fail-over between two Hyper-V (now in Release Candidate 1) virtualization hosts. The step-by-step guide shows you “how to make a virtual machine highly availableby creating a simple two-node cluster and a virtual machine, and then failing over the virtual machine from one node to the other”.

You can download the 216 kb file here.

Hyper-V

[Source: Techlog]

Native Support for Virtual Hard Disks To Be Added To Windows 7?

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A team at Microsoft is hiring developers to work on adding native support in Windows 7 for Virtual Hard Disks (VHD) – Microsoft’s semi-proprietary specification for single-file virtual machine hard disks, reports the istartedsomething blog.

The job posting reads:

Do you want to join the team that is bringing virtualization into the mainstream? In Windows 7, our team will be responsible for creating, mounting, performing I/O on, and dismounting VHDs (virtual hard disks) natively. Imagine being able to mount a VHD on any Windows machine, do some offline servicing and then boot from that same VHD. Or perhaps, taking an existing VHD you currently use within Virtual Server and boost performance by booting natively from it.

Do you want to have the opportunity to work on a great Core OS team at the heart of Windows? If you have big ideas and want to implement them, if you love writing code, if you love delving into operating system internals, if you want to work on high visibility projects with direct consumer and customer impact and still work in a very technical environment, then you will feel right at home in this team.

Virtualization technology has been a great success with Virtual Server and Hyper-V. With native OS support on the horizon it will become an even greater hit. Our team is making this a reality in Windows 7. Consider the simplicity of backup using a VHD, or the portability of a virtual disk backed by a single file. These are a few reasons why this technology is poised to be one of the greatest features in Windows 7–come help us achieve this goal.

Now, the question is, will Microsoft allow booting from virtual hard disks?

Please comment with your opinion!

Parallels’ Marketing Director Ben Rudolph Moves To Microsoft (Updated)

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Ben RudolphBenjamin Rudolph, the charismatic Director of Marketing at Parallels (see the interview we had with him at VMworld Europe 2008), has apparently made the move to Redmond to help Microsoft with its forray into the virtualization arena, says Virtualization.info. Rudolph is still listed on several Parallels blogs and his LinkedIn profile still displays his position at Parallels, so this is a very recent development. We’ll update as soon as we can confirm what Rudolph’s plans are for the future.

Update: we’ve just received word from Ben that he will be leaving Parallels at the end of this month. His role at Microsoft will be heading Enterprise PR for Windows Vista.

Jenny Ellis, who formerly managed PR for Parallels in the UK will be replacing Rudolph as Worldwide PR Director.

Microsoft Finalizes Kidaro Acquisition, Bullish On Expansion In Desktop Virtualization Field

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Microsoft on Thursday said it has now sold 6.5 million licenses of its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) client-level virtualization software, more than double the total of 3 million licenses that it had sold as of January.

Microsoft

MDOP, which is available only to customers that have volume Windows licenses and Software Assurance maintenance contract, offers a variety of technologies supporting desktop virtualization and application streaming.

Shanen Boettcher, Microsoft’s General Manager of Windows client product management for enterprise users, included the updated sales total for MDOP licenses in a (relayed) post on the software vendor’s Windows Vista blog. MDOP costs between $7 and $10 per license annually, according to Boettcher.

Boettcher also said in the blog post that Microsoft has completed its acquisition of Kidaro Technologies, which sells technology designed to make the desktop virtualization experience more invisible to end users and easier for IT to manage. Kidaro‘s technology is scheduled to be incorporated into MDOP by the first half of next year, with the combination getting a new name: Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization.

Boettcher said Microsoft has invested more than $400 million in developing MDOP and expanding it through acquisitions of virtualization vendors such as Kidaro and Softricity Inc.

[Source: ComputerWorld]