Desktop Repurposing

Late last year myself and a colleague Matt Evans at VMware did an assessment of some of the desktop repurposing options out there. The idea wasn’t to choose a winner, just to assess what’s out there and present the capabilities.

For those not aware, desktop repurposing is the process of turning traditional windows endpoints into easy to manage and more secure endpoints such as Linux for example. These can then all be centrally managed and can connect to virtualised desktops and applications products such as VMware Horizon.

Here is a video of the output from the project

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How VMware and Dell are improving the Windows 10 on boarding experience

I’ve already written a blog post entitled ‘the end of imaging’ which explains how out of the box enrolment can now be used to simplify the rollout of Windows 10 devices.

What’s new in VMware App Volumes 2.15

As the VMware JMP platform gathers pace, App Volumes 2.15 sees some more updates to the app layering technology:

What’s new in Horizon 7.7

 

The latest release of Horizon has arrived in the last week. For more info on what’s included see the following

Workspace ONE reference architecture

If you’ve not seen this yet, I suggest you check the new website at VMware.com called techzone. It has some amazing content and is updated all the time. Here is the link to the VMware techzone site

…and here is a link to the new Workspace ONE SaaS reference architecture

https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/vmware-workspace-one-reference-architecture-saas-deployments

 

Horizon 7.5 what’s new…

I’ve already posted on the new extended service branch feature in 7.5 but the product itself Is available as of today. In comparison to past updates it’s packed full of new features. Please review the link below to see what’s included:

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Horizon-7/7.5/rn/horizon-75-view-release-notes.html#whatsnew

App Volumes 2.14

App Volumes 2.14 is the latest version of the VMware application layering technology and is a key part of the Horizon virtual desktops and apps platform. Compared to some recent releases the 2.14 release contains quite a lot to be excited about:

Horizon Extended Service Branch

There’s a pretty big change coming in Horizon 7.5 which may appeal to some existing and prospective Horizon customers. It’s called Extended service branch. So what does this mean? Well, as of the release of 7.5, customer can choose from 2 tracks based on existing licenses.

Desktop Recoverability and Security with NSX

Hi all,

In the wake of the many ongoing cyber attacks targeted at end users, i thought i’d put something together to help people make their environments more resilient and more recoverable.

Here is a lightboard version

App Volumes 2.13

Last week saw the release of the latest App Volumes instalment. Here are the main two features included in the release

Computer and User assigned app stacks

So for a while now you’ve been able to use computer OR user assigned app stacks. People have mainly used computer stacks for RDSH and user stacks for virtual desktops but this release sees you now able to use both. What’s the big deal? Well, those of you with App Volumes experience will know that the more app stacks you assign the slower the login can become for the user. The same can be said for larger app stacks too.

The ability to assign some app stacks to computers could make a big difference. The ‘core’ app stacks which may include large apps like office can now be attached at computer boot rather than login, leaving just user specific apps at login. This should help speed things up!

One word of warning though. If you do use computer and user app stacks you cannot currently use a writable volume.

App stack limits

You now have the ability to set a maximum number of attachments to an app stack. This may be useful in cases where perhaps you have a limited number of licenses for an application.

Remember though that if you have multiple apps in a stack the limit will apply to all of them. Also, if you go over the limit the user will not receive any notification. Instead the stack just won’t be mounted