Oracle has released version 4.1.8 of its virtualization platform VM VirtualBox. This version which can be considered a maintenance release can be installed on top of any VM VirtualBox 4.1.x installation and is the follow up of version 4.1.6. which was released in November this year.

This version fixes a couple of issues which are described in the changelog.

VKernel, recently acquired by Quest Software has released version 4.5. of its vOperations Suite (vOps). vOperations is a suite of products providing Performance Analysis, Capacity Management, Resource Optimization, Reporting and Chargeback functionality for VMware and Hyper-V environments.

This version lacks the support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), which the company announced in August and promised to deliver in Q4 this year.

vOperations Suite 4.5 adds the following new features:

· Added Automation features

o Auto deletion of abandoned VM images

o Auto-merging of unused snapshots

o Automated remediation for performance issues

o Auto-calculation of future resource requirements

o Automatic generations of alerts of abnormal metrics and trends

· Automation processes can now be more specifically controlled

· Support for VMware vSphere 5 storage DRS and storage clusters, new HA methods and inclusion of data from the VASA storage interface

· Reporting enhancements, like new reports, customize data tables, reporting widgets, dashboards

· Virtualization Cost Index now calculates the base cost for operating a VM

Teradici is the developer of the PC-over-IP (PCoIP) remote desktop protocol, which is leveraged in software (by VMware view) and provided with Teradici hardware solutions which are OEM’ed by several vendors. Teradici announced the release of firmware version 3.5.0. for its PCoIP zero client devices and version 1.7 of it’s Management Console which it announced in April last year, providing USB peripheral, login and security enhancements.

PCoIP firmware release 3.5.0 provides the following new features:

• USB 2.0 support with VMware View Sessions
• Support for combining PCoIP clients with VMware view and Imprivata OneSign Virtual Desktop Access.

• 802.1X Network Authentication, using EAP-TLS certificate-based authentication

• IPv6 Support
• Help Desk mode, allowing administrators to enable a login screen link which allows users to log into a particular VM of the administrators choice
• Support for up to 25 View Connection Server addresses
• Support for fast Ethernet over optical fibre (100BASE-FX)

Citrix has released a whitepaper titled:"Windows 2008 R2 Optimization Guide For Desktop Virtualization with XenApp 6 / 6.5", the paper which contains 23 pages outlines optimization for XenApp 6 and 6.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2.

The paper starts with recommended GPO’s which can be applied to Windows Server 2008 R2, secondly it provides some recommendations on to be modified registry keys, which preferably can be set using Group Policy Preferences (GPP). It will then provide some registry keys to modify for images deployed using standard disk mode vDisk images using Citrix Provisioning Services.

After that the document recommends to disable some of the Services available on Windows Server 2008 R2, as they significantly increase the memory footprint of the OS. It also provides some recommendations on tuning SMB on Windows File Servers.

The second part focuses on general settings for users, preferably set using GPO or GPP. And then focuses on XenApp specific settings for users.

In November Microsoft released a public beta of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) version 6.5. Today Microsoft announced its release, which is the follow-up of version 6.0 which was released in July this year.

Version 6.5 provides the following new features:

CONTINUE READING ON CLOUDCOMPUTING.INFO…

Open source vendor Red Hat has released version 6.2 of its Linux distribution, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This version is the follow-up of version 6.1 which was released in May this year.

Version 6.2 consolidates all patches, enhancements and security updates released after version 6.1. Some of the new features provided are:

• PCI-e 3.0 and USB 3.0 support

• Ability to set upper limits for CPU consumption providing better overall control of CPU allocation

• Introduction of Control Groups (cgroups), which are used to create and manage slices of computing resources for specific processes. cgroups can be used as part of SLA management.

• Inclusion of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 beta, announced in August this year, which will leverage the RHEL enhancements

• KVM, Virtual CPU timeslice sharing for multiprocessor guests

• KVM, reduced network related CPU utilization on the host
• Enhanced network drivers in KVM which process UDP traffic faster
• Ability to monitor and audit the entire boot sequence including the boot process before a guest is actually booted
• Linux Container virtualization technology, in Technology Preview status providing application level containers.

Microsoft has released version 3.2 of the Linux Integration Services for its hypervisor Hyper-V. This version is the follow-up of version 3.1 which was released in July this year.

The Linux Integration Services enable synthetic driver support for Virtual Machines running one of the supported Linux Distributions, currently the 32 and 64 bit versions of:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 and 6.1 (up to 4 vCPU)
• CentOS 6.0 (up to 4 vCPU)

Users of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 en Red Hat Enterpise Linux 5 should still use version 2.1. of the Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V.

Version 3.2 provides the following new features:

• Integrated mouse support, no longer a seperate package to get integrated mouse support
• Updated network drivers which work with Hyper-V provided with the Windows 8 Developer Preview
• Issue fixed with System Center Virtual Machine Manager compatiblity.

The tool is developed by Login Consultants and is provided for free as an Express Edition, there is also a Pro edition which is supported by Login Consultants consulting services.

Some of the new functionality provided by Login Virtual Session Indexer version 3.5:

• Zero Footprint Launcher, no longer a need to install Login VSI
• Pre/Post actions

• Command Line Usage Console, enabling fully automated test cycles

• Possiblity to pause a test

• Encryption of logfiles
• Improvements to workload Mash up mechanism
• RemoteFX Host Performance Counter Support, giving insight into GPU bottlenecks, issues on the RemoteFX protocol level, and insight into the performance on both VM and Hypervisor level

• Analyzer enhancements, like scatter chart, compare wizard, zoom and pan and command line usage analyzer.

VMware has released version 4.1 of its desktop virtualization platform for Apple Mac: Fusion. This release is considered an minor upgrade for version 4.0 which was released in September this year.

This version now supports running Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard as guest OS additional to running the already supported OS X Lion, OS X Lion Server, Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server and Mac OS X Leopard Server.

New features and improvements:

• Smart Full Screen, providing full screen mode
• Automatic Virtual Machine power on
• Improved animations

• Fast screen resizing and improved startup time
• Improved Mac OS X Lion guest OS support

• Improved graphics performance

Update: VMware stated in a blogposting that the support for running Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard will be removed in a future update for Fusion, mainly because they are not complian to the licensing terms stated by Apple.

In September VMware released a new major version of its virtualization platform Workstation 8.0 and in October it released Player 4.0. Now VMware released an update for its virtualization platform Workstation and Player. Workstation gets updated to version 8.0.1 and Player to version 4.0.1.

Workstation 8.0.1. and Player 4.0.1. now support Ubuntu 11.10 as a guest OS and provide improvements in creating and using shared VMs and remote VMs and graphics performance. Disk and Memory management issues have been addressed and this version provides some compatibility enhancements.