New VAS 5.8 Features and Enhancements

Support for physical machines:
- Physical machines such as Blade PCs may now be logically grouped, pooled, and managed in the same manner as virtual machines.

Non-Power-Managed Operational Mode:
- With this new mode, virtual machine power states are not managed. Instead, virtual machines are always assumed to be powered on. This operational mode does not require the presence of VMware's VirtualCenter and is especially suited for physical desktops, blade PCs, and virtual machines hosted on other hypervisor-based virtualization platforms such as Microsoft Virtual Server and Xen-based solutions.

Improved Management Console:
- Much improved management console delivering a more intuitive user interface, multiple-administrator access, and a more efficient mechanism for assigning resources to end-users and clients by way of access control lists.

Enhanced Discovery Modes:
- Multiple discovery, enumeration, and import mechanisms of physical and virtual machines. These mechanisms include:

1. Enumeration of desktops in an existing Windows domain infrastructure.
2. Enumeration of virtual machines from the VMware VirtualCenter inventory.
3. Manual import of physical/virtual machines by name, name range, IP address, or IP address range.

Distributed Datastore Architecture:
- The ability to enable local datastore caching on all provision-managed servers, including Connection Brokers, Terminal Servers, and Universal Print Servers. By maintaining a locally cached copy of the Provision central datastore, higher levels of availability and service continuity can be achieved in the event of a datastore malfunction. While this feature has always been available in the PMF product line, it was temporarily disabled in VAS 5.7. Local datastore caching has now been re-enabled in VAS 5.8 and enhanced to deliver higher levels of scalability, especially, in hosted desktop environments.

Application publishing:
- Seamless windows enhancements, specifically, support for large and extra large font sizes when displaying remote applications in seamless windows mode.

- The 'module exclusions' feature has been extended to hosted desktops. Like Provision-managed Terminal Services sessions, hosted desktop sessions will now log off more reliably and consistently upon shutting down the remote applications running inside a hosted Windows desktop.

- Applications packaged using Microsoft SoftGrid can be imported into the Provision Console, published on Terminal Servers and hosted desktops, and instantly published to users, groups, organizational units, and client devices. SoftGrid applications can then be dynamically streamed and started on demand inside Terminal Services and hosted desktop sessions without prior installation.

Client Connectivity:
- Support for client connectivity through proxy servers. Win32 clients situated behind a proxy server such as Microsoft ISA and others may now connect to the hosted infrastructure indirectly through the proxy server.

Universal Printing:
- EMF support for network-based and WAN relay printing is now available for both Terminal Servers and hosted desktops.

- New auto-created printer naming conventions are now available for hosted desktops.

Hosted Desktops - VMware-Specific:
- Ability to specify VMware folder under which to create VMs. Previously, VMs were being created in the same folder in which the source template resides.

- Ability to specify the desired target data store for creating VMs. Administrators may now select the target data store under which to create the VMs.

- The VM folder hierarchy is now exposed to the administrator upon importing VMs. Partial enumeration of VMs is now possible by selecting the target folder whose member VMs are to be enumerated and imported.

- New policy feature allowing administrators to specify whether to dynamically grant users "Power User" or "Admin" privileges to their hosted desktops.

Hosted Desktops - General:
- Provision Tools self-upgrade. The 'Provision Tools for the Virtual Desktop' are installed inside each VM. Whenever a new update becomes available, it can be automatically upgraded from within the Provision Management Console.

Connection Broker Enhancements:
- The status of in-progress tasks is now automatically updated in the Provision Console when the Connection Broker service is restarted. For example, if the Connection Broker is stopped in the midst of in-progress tasks, these tasks are not impacted, and their current status is instantly reflected in the Provision Console.

- An event logging panel is now available inside the Provision Console, keeping the administrator abreast of all VM-related events in real time.

New Clients
- Provision RDP client for Linux
   - support for Novell SLED 10
   - support for HP t5125 and HP t5725 thin clients
- Provision RDP client for Window CE
   - support for HP t5520 and t5720 thin clients
   - support for ComputerLab International MT1200c, MT1500g and ET4500g thin clients
   - snap-in for Neoware CE thin clients
   - support for IGEL CE thin clients
- Virtualized VAS web client (powered by Thinstall)
   - access Provision Networks infrastructure from a kiosk or any 32-bit Windows client
without client installation or administrative privileges (no need for Java or specific
versions of JRE)

Next: Virtual Access Suite™ Feature Details