Virtualization

With its new Grid VGX software, Nvidia is aiming to tear down the performance barrier that keeps graphics-intensive applications from running on virtual desktops.

Martin Casado, co-founder and CTO of Nicira, pioneer of the OpenFlow virtual networking movement and currently chief networking architect for VMware, discusses how NSX is implemented and what customers should expect from it.

VMware's Horizon Mirage 4.0 allows IT departments to be more flexible when they put together centrally managed desktop images using separated application packages.

Although virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is well recognized, up until now, the technology has over-promised and under-delivered. Many IT departments, lured by better resource utilization and cost savings, have had their fingers burnt as a consequence of adopting a 'lock stock and barrel' approach to VDI projects. For many companies, the project has actually negatively affected users' ability to do their jobs, in turn resulting in outright rejection of the implementation.

After years of venture capital and start-up focus on consumer-focused tech companies, enterprise networks and the data center are back in vogue.

Security firm Qualys has improved the integration of its QualysGuard vulnerability management service with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday, allowing its customers to scan their AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) instances for vulnerabilities more easily and without requiring explicit approval from Amazon.

Juniper Networks this week unveiled software-defined networking products for service providers, designed to enable them to more quickly scale capacity and provision services.

VMware is rounding out its new "software-defined data center" strategy with the acquisition of virtual storage company Virsto Software.

If virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) was a racehorse, it would be one to back. Gartner predicts that hosted virtual desktop (HVD) deployments will reach 15% of professional desktop users by 2014 and Visiongain estimates that the value of the global cloud-based VDI market will reach $11 billion in 2012. But VDI places significant strain upon the WAN due to the amount of data being transferred between the server and the desktop. If the network is unable to provide adequate performance to applications, they are likely to perform poorly, or fail completely.

Startup Ravello Systems launched a hypervisor this week that sits on top of other hypervisors.

Teradici has been forced to delay the release of Arch, which combines VMware and Microsoft server-based desktops using its PCoIP protocol, due to a scalability issue. But a new tech preview will still allow enterprises to familiarize themselves with the product.