VDI & VDM
Having just left the Hands On Lab for the VDI session I can reveal that VMware’s implementation of the Propero software connection broker looks very slick indeed. The new software called VMware Desktop Manager (VDM) was shown to us completely, with installation procedures, configuration etc.
The lab started with the announcement that the software was still in beta and is about 2-3 months away from release. That said it looked very stable indeed and bodes well for a 3 month release date.
There is currently only a Windows native client for the VDM which means that you need to have a fat client running Windows to be able to connect to any of one’s allocated Virtual Desktops. There are however plans, possibly at release, to have Thin Client support for the likes of WYSE thin boxes embedded into the WYSE OS (which the demonstrations were being done on) and to have a Linux VDM client as well.
The VDM connection broker server creates a connection directly to any number of Virtual Center servers. It can also provision connections to the Virtual Desktop pool directly or can act as an SSL proxy with all traffic going through it.
Lots of very cool possibilities have been leveraged by the VDM using Active Directory’s Application Mode (ADAM), of which I knew nothing before this LAB. Lots of interesting information about ADAM can be found here. Essentially ADAM allows VDM manipulation of Active Directory without altering the actual Active Directory schema.
I managed to sneak out a couple of copies of the documentation so will be having a good read about how it leverages all these cool new features.
