Fwd: FW: Horizon 6 Launched

      VMware announced that they're Challenging Citrix head on in the XenApp space by adding RDSH session support and published apps to VMware Horizon, all accessible via PCoIP

      VMware just entered a race that Citrix started many years ago. Yesterday VMware announced Horizon 6 Few Features includes:

o   Hybrid cloud, enabled by our acquisition of Desktone last year and now our Horizon DaaS offering, allows you to easily deploy virtual desktops on-prem, off-prem, or whatever combination suits your fancy.

o   Combining Horizon View, Horizon Mirage, and VMware Fusion, we can offer integrated and centralized desktop management across virtual, physical, and bring-your-own devices.

o   We've upped the ante for enterprise management with enhanced image management features in Horizon Mirage and integrations into vCenter Operations Manager, vCenter Orchestrator, and vCloud Automation Center.

o   Virtual SAN is now integrated and supported, helping to drive down storage costs while maintaining performance and SLA.

o   The biggest and most exciting part of the announcement is that Horizon View now supports application publishing.  This has been a feature request long-requested and long in the making.

http://cto.vmware.com/introducing-horizon-6/

 

      VMware has finally shipped a SBC product , SBC stands for Server-based computing aka RDSH (Remote Desktop Session Host) or RDS (Remote Desktop Services) or TS (Terminal Services).

      So why should anyone care about VMware releasing a product that has been around forever. For one, we all know VDI is not a silver bullet technology. Right now VDI adoption is teetering around 5% of total enterprise market share, and if you are in the group of orgs using it you tend to find a sweet spot of usage for about 20-30% of your organization. SBCs market is much bigger and VMware just entered it… but Citrix created it.

      The story goes that somehow in the 90s Citrix has able to secure the source code for Windows NT and they redesigned the OS to support multiple sessions on the same OS. This was typical in Unix mainframes but had never been done for Windows. Microsoft then bought the code back from Citrix and released Windows NT Terminal Services. Microsoft and Citrix spent the next decade being best of buddies.

      What VMware has done in Horizon 6 is create a true competitive product to XenApp. The reason Horizon 6 is a true competitor to XenApp is that they are the first product  that has done the  work to create a 3rd Party Protocol Provider for RDS.

      What is a 3PPP, it's the official way to create a protocol that works with RDSH. It's how ICA works with RDSH to bring you XenApp, or how RDP works (but RDP wouldn't be third party). Up until now, any vendor in this space has not done the work to create a true 3PPP interface instead most products have just either used virtual channels on RDP or they've done some transcoding of RDP.

 

 

      How this works is that Windows talks to a graphics driver which then takes all the content being created and encodes it into a protocol. Microsoft uses its own protocol, RDP, Citrix uses ICA/HDX, VMware uses PCoIP/Blast

GPS

GPS relies on at least 24 satellites flying 20,000 kilometers overhead in one of six different orbital paths, tracing out what looks like a toy model of an atom. With their solar panels extended, each of these 1-ton satellites is about the same size as a giraffe. At any given moment, each satellite beams out a signal identifying itself and giving its time and location.



Your GPS-enabled phone or car captures that signal and compares the time it was received to the time it was transmitted. A quick calculation involving the speed of light allows the device to figure out the distance to that satellite. If you have your distance to two or three satellites, you can triangulate your position on the Earth.

The idea behind GPS comes from the very beginnings of the Space Race. In 1957, the Soviet’s newly launched Sputnik satellite emitted a characteristic radio beep that could be tuned in to as the object passed overhead. While the rest of the U.S. was freaking out, two scientists at the Applied Physics Laboratory realized they could use those transmissions to pinpoint where the satellite was. As Sputnik approached, its radio signals would get compressed a little, shortening their wavelength, and as it receded, the wavelengths would lengthen. This is known as the Doppler effect and can easily be heard as an ambulance speeds toward you, the pitch of its siren getting higher.

The full GPS fleet was completed in 1994 and now at least 32 satellites are in orbit to provide redundancy. During the same time, the Russians developed and launched GLONASS, which works on principles similar to GPS, and is currently the only alternative location-finding system in the world.

Putting the Next Generation of Brains In Danger

http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/02/15/1243224/putting-the-next-generation-of-brains-in-danger

"The number of chemicals known to be toxic to children's developing brains has doubled over the last seven years, researchers said. Dr. Philip Landrigan at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and Dr. Philippe Grandjean from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, authors of the review published Friday in The Lancet Neurology journal say the news is so troubling they are calling for a worldwide overhaul of the regulatory process in order to protect children's brains. 'We know from clinical information on poisoned adult patients that these chemicals can enter the brain through the blood brain barrier and cause neurological symptoms,' said Grandjean. 'When this happens in children or during pregnancy, those chemicals are extremely toxic, because we now know that the developing brain is a uniquely vulnerable organ. Also, the effects are permanent.'"

Norwegian shooter threatens hunger strike to get a PS3 in prison

Anders Breivik, the 35-year-old right-wing extremist who is serving a 21-year sentence for killing 77 people in a 2011 rampage, is threatening to go on a hunger strike to protest what he calls the "torture"-like conditions that he's endured during his confinement. Among his demands: an upgrade from his current PlayStation 2 to a PlayStation 3 "with access to more adult games that I get to choose myself."

Yes, seriously.

In a copy of a November complaint to prison authorities sent to AFP, Breivik, who is held separately from other prisoners for his protection, complained that his entertainment choices are being limited differently than other inmates.

Citrix Infrastructure Visio Stencil Set

Latest set of 3D perspective stencils for your Citrix Delivery Center or Networking diagrams compatible with Microsoft Visio 2007/2010/2013. The  set contains icons for some of the more common components of any Citrix or Application deployment.

http://blogs.citrix.com/2014/02/13/citrix-infrastrucutre-visio-stencil-set/

Endpoint security management

    Endpoint security management is a policy-based approach to network security that requires endpoint devices to comply with specific criteria before they are granted access to network resources. Endpoint devices can include PCs, laptops, smartphones and tablets.

    Endpoint security management systems, which can be purchased as software or as a dedicated appliance, discover, manage and control computing devices that request access to the corporate network. Endpoints that do not comply with policy can be controlled by the system to varying degrees. For example, the system may remove local administrative rights or restrict Internet browsing capabilities

The ChromeBook

Ø  Google also has a cloud-based "management console" for ChromeBooks which adds the expected enterprise management options, including:

[  Asset tracking

[  Pre-installing Chrome apps

[  Blacklisting & whitelisting of Chrome apps, extensions, and URLs.

[  Group configuration options (so you have different policies for different users and groups)

[  Centralized network configuration (proxies, WiFi, etc.)

[  Enabling, disabling, or pre-configuring all the other Chrome options, like bookmarks, wallpaper, account sync, etc.

Ø  Accessing remote Windows sessions from a ChromeBook is certainly not new. Citrix has their Receiver for HTML5. There are Chrome extensions from Ericom's HTML5 client and Google's own Chrome Remote Desktop. dinCloud also has their WebHVD Chrome extension which connects directly into Windows desktops running on their DaaS platform.

Architectural Concerns

• Serviceability,
• Scalability,
• Manageability,
• Usability,
• and Reliability