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VMWare Fusion

VMware Online Store Now Has Academic Discounts on Workstation and Fusion

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For current students, prospective university students, or academic faculty and staff, VMware has just made it easier to purchase VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion at an academic discount. Through the all new academic portal, students can get a discount to up to 50% off the commercial list pricing if they purchase VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion for personal use.

Previously, the only way to get access to VMware Fusion or VMware Workstation at their academic prices was to purchase at an outlet like a campus book store that happened to stock the software.

LiveTime Software Ships New Service Desk Virtual Appliance for Sun xVM and VMware

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LiveTime Software, a provider of ITIL certified Service Management and Help Desk Software, today released version 2.0 of its integrated virtual appliance consisting of its Java technology based JeOS (Just Enough Operating System) and ITIL Service Management software. The new release features support for both Sun xVM and VMware, and aims to leverage the power of both virtualization architectures at both the desktop and server levels.

The combination of LiveTime’s ITIL based Service Management and Sun xVM gives customers and SaaS providers a way to leverage their existing resources. LiveTime says it has improved the performance of its JeOS by approximately 20% and has decreased the memory overhead to 128Mb, enabling higher concurrency and increasing the number of virtual machines per server. This is particularly important for SaaS providers who deploy separate LiveTime instances per client and for multi-tenant requirements. The appliance also includes support for symmetric multiprocessing for optimal performance across virtualized CPU’s.

LiveTime’s virtual appliance includes built-in debugging, configuration and management utilities. Guided menus provide easy access to networking, upgrades and general system utilities. The LiveTime Virtual appliance currently supports all Sun xVM and VMware virtualization platforms, including Sun xVM VirtualBox, VMware Player, Workstation, Fusion, Server and ESX Server.

The LiveTime Virtual appliance supports Sun xVM VirtualBox, enabling developers to easily build, test and run cross-platform, multi-tier applications on a single laptop or desktop computer.

Organizations can now leverage LiveTime’s ITIL Service Management software with the ease of installation of traditional software. The virtual appliance should provide the necessary scalability and security that is difficult to achieve when deployed on existing hardware and operating systems. Since the system has been hardened at the operating system layer, LiveTime provides Just Enough Operating System for its needs. This makes the system easy to update and maintain and provides a very small footprint and a 160MB download.

Next VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta Will Support Mac OS X Leopard Server

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Last January, at Macworld, VMware delivered a preview of Mac OS X Leopard Server installing and running as a virtual machine on Mac OS X. In honor of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the VMware Fusion team has announced that Mac OS X Leopard Server support will be available in VMware Fusion 2.0’s next beta.

This is a result of changes in Mac OS X Leopard Server’s license agreement, which now allows users to run multiple copies of Mac OS X Server on a single Apple computer.

“Virtual Leopard Server is a huge leap forward for Mac server administrators, developers, and more, and we’re truly excited to bring this to the Mac community, in VMware Fusion 2.0, which will be a free upgrade for all VMware Fusion 1.x customers.”

Here’s a short video the team put out:

[Source: VMTN Blog]

VMware Patches Security Vulnerabilities In Multiple Product Lines

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Several critical security vulnerabilities have been addressed in the newest releases of VMware’s hosted product line. Relevant releases include VMware Workstation 6.0.3, VMware Player 2.0.3, VMware ACE 2.0.3, VMware Fusion 1.1.1 and earlier versions of the before-mentioned products.

Users of VMware hosted products VMware Workstation 5.x, VMware Player 1.x, and VMware ACE 1.x should note that although they are not vulnerable to these issues, they will reach their end of general support on 2008-11-09. Customers should plan to upgrade to the latest version of their respective products.

Some of the security issues:

  • VMware HGFS File System Heap Overflow
  • Windows based VMCI arbitrary code execution vulnerability

A full update on the VMware Security Advisories (VMSAs) can be found here.

[Source: VMBlog]

VMware Releases Fusion 2.0 Beta 1

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VMware has announced VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1, the first beta of the second iteration of their virtualization product for the Mac.

The video below gives you a tour of Fusion 2.0 Beta 1’s top new features, including:

  • Multiple monitor support (up to 10 displays!)
  • Improved networking and printing
  • Support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 (this is experimental, and it might not work on your Mac)
  • A refined UI for settings and VM management

There are more videos available on the product page.

Fusion 2.0 Beta 1 is available now, and the upgrade to the future version 2.0 will be free to all Fusion users.