VMware's NEW PDF's on VDI:

* using VMware VDI and VMsight for HIPPA/PCI compliance
* VMware VDM 2 load balancing guide
* Windows XP deployment guide
* using the Wyse V10l and S10 thin clients with VDM

You especially want the XP deployment guide for sure.
Read more at the source.

Learn how to Thinstall your Virtual Center Client:

" A colleague of me, Duncan Epping (www.yellow-bricks.com) attend me at the VMware Blog where lots of questions are about the possibility of Thinstalling the VMware Infrastructure Client. Well, I give it a try and it all works fine! If you want to Thinstall your own VMware Infrastructure Client you can follow the following instruction. I Thinstalled using a Windows XP Service Pack 2 machine with Thinstall version 3.300."

See how to do it here.

Plans for 2008: VMware -vs- Cirtix/Xen Strategy:

2008 will be an important year for virtualization with more competition, more automation, and more and more new inventions.


So read up on how Simon Crosby (Citrix/Xensource) and Mendel Roseblum (chief scientist-VMare) see 2008.

VMware's Thinstall Acquisition:

Well seeing is believing in my book..so to learn more on the importance of this technology, see it in action, and try it out yourself...head over to here.

Microsoft buy Calista VDI Vendor..might be looking to buy Citrix:

Read the full story here.

"Microsoft wouldn't disclose how much it paid for Calista, but Kay speculates that the price tag was likely south of $100 million. He also says Microsoft may be interested in acquiring Citrix. "Citrix, on its own, has a small market share," Kay says. "VMware was cleaning its clock." A Microsoft-Citrix combination could present formidable competition to VMware, he suggests. Buying Citrix, however, would be a significant deal: The company has a market capitalization of $6.4 billion."

Even more details here.
"CVD provides support for 100% of all file and streaming media types available for a modern Windows desktop experience without the need for dedicated hardware or software on the client."
"CVD optimizes the RDP protocol to drastically reduce network bandwidth requirements and improve the user experience in bandwidth-constrained and high-latency environments."

New "DESIGN EXPERT" VMware Certification:

Just read this over at virtualization.info. Sound interesting for those invested in a virtualization career like myself.
...

On his personal blog Duncan Epping just published an interesting news about a new upcoming certification from VMware: the VMware Certified Design Exper (VCDE).

A new advanced certification for design architects of enterprise deployments, VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDE), will be in beta toward the end of November. The VCDE measures the consultants ability to design, implement, document and test a VMware Infrastructure data center for the enterprise. Requirements for the VMware Certified Design Expert include:

• VMware Certified Professional (VCP) on VMware Infrastructure 3
• Pass a VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise level exam and a VMware Infrastructure 3 design exam
• Submit, present and defend a successful virtual infrastructure design plan

...

More Info on the new "Stage Manager" VMware product:

Information published here, mentions this about the new beta:

VMware starts a new beta program the 21st of January, the product is called Stage Manager. Stage Manager seems to be some sort of Lab Manager spin off. But it goes way beyond what Lab Manager can do.

• You can easily boot shadow production servers
• Create test environments for infrastructure changes
• Build complex pre-production environments
• Systematically propagate complex system changes through development, testing, staging and user acceptance phases before committing systems into production
• Get a better grip on your change, configuration and release (CCR) management processes

VMware Expands Desktop Virtualization solution with Thininstall:

"Thinstall decouples applications from underlying operating systems, improving isolation and portability for applications across desktop environments. Thinstall’s unique, agentless approach to application virtualization enables the rapid, secure and cost effective delivery of software applications to desktops. Agentless application virtualization, pioneered by Thinstall, requires no pre-installed software on physical or virtual PC’s and no new deployment infrastructure or management tools. Thinstall’s architecture integrates into existing application management systems to deliver virtualized applications across a variety of operating system versions (NT, 2000, XP, Vista) and enables applications to move with users as needed."

Read more where the story broke, or here for the official announcement.

VMWORLD EUROPE News:

Virtualization.info has some really good info on new Lab and products coming from VMware that will be shown first at VMworld Europe next month. See here and here for more info.
Hands-on-Labs at the event are reported to be covering new items and information on:

• VMware Update Manager
• VMware Site Recovery Manager
• VMware Dunes Lifecycle Management
• VMware Stage Manager
• VMware Guide Consolidation
• VMware Consolidated Backup Integration
• Automating VMware with PowerShell
• VMware Lab Manager

VMware VDI Future: On-Demand Streaming:

Interesting articles of the technology preview of the on-demand streaming coming from VMware and a comparison to the Citrix Ardence solution.

"Details are very light at this point, but during one of the keynotes at VMworld this past week, VMware presented a feature called “VMware OnDemand” streaming technology. This technology will allow a VM player to prefetch disk blocks from a disk image file across a network, allowing the VM to boot from that disk image before the image is 100% copied to the player machine.

This is VERY similar—at least in concept—to Citrix’s Ardence OS streaming technology. This can be huge in the virtualized desktop / VDI environment since it means that a user could start using a local desktop VM without having to wait for a multi-gigabyte disk image file to copy to their client device."

Read more at these two links:

Brianmadden.com
SearchVmware.com

Customizing the Sysprep.inf created by Virtual Center:

Scott Lowe, a new contributer to SearchVMware.com and a blogger on virtualization, has a nice article on how to adjust settings dealing with the Virtual Center sysprep process. Could come in handy in some situations like VDI.

Read the full article here.