Wanova is bringing greater scalability and other enterprise-necessary features to its Mirage 2.0 desktop-virtualization solution.
Wanova is
bringing enterprise-level features to its hybrid desktop-virtualization
platform.
Wanova
officials on Jan. 25 rolled out Mirage 2.0, the latest release of its solution,
which is designed to combine the management and security benefits of a VDI
(Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)-where most of the components of the platform
runs on a central back-end server-and the flexibility needed to enable mobile
and remote workers to access the environment, even offline.
The goal is to
balance the needs of a company's IT staff with those of the workers.
With Mirage
2.0, Wanova is bringing greater scalability, a new feature bringing the
desktop-virtualization technology to remote offices, and greater support,
according to Michele Borovac, vice president of marketing.
"This is an
enterprise-ready release," Borovac told eWEEK.
Such features
are increasingly important as more companies embrace the VDI concept and look
for ways to leverage it not only throughout the main offices but also at remote
locations, according to Ady Dagany, vice president of product management at
Wanova.
Mirage
2.0-which comes less than a year after Wanova released the first version of the
software-enables businesses to more easily and quickly scale their desktop-virtualization
environments as need demands, Dagany said. Each server node can now support up
to 1,500 clients, and up to 10 nodes can be dynamically added or removed. The
latest generation of Mirage also supports dynamic server clustering, all of
which is managed through a single console. The solution also can leverage
a company's existing load-balancing software and offers the ability for
customers to provision back-end storage as needed.
In addition,
Wanova's "stateless architecture lets [Mirage 2.0] integrate with the data-center
environment," Dagany said.
New in Mirage
2.0 is Wanova's Branch Reflector, which is designed to make it easier to get
Wanova's desktop-virtualization solution up and running at remote locations.
With Mirage, base images-which include the operating system and applications-are
created in the centralized server and then pushed out to those employees who
need that image. Users can then personalize their images or add files and
applications, all of which is also tracked by the server.
With Branch
Reflector, companies can transfer an entire base image or software packages
without having to add to the hardware infrastructure. The Mirage 2.0 software
can enable any PC to serve the base images or software packages via the LAN,
taking traffic pressure off the company's WAN. Customers should see particular
benefit of this feature as they migrate their desktop environments from
Microsoft XP or Vista to Windows 7, Dagany said. Wanova added support for Windows 7 and migrating capabilities
in August 2010 with Mirage 1.5.
Wanova's Mirage
2.0 also lets IT staffs quickly re-image a PC over the WAN in minutes while
saving user data and settings. There also is the option of preserving or
cleaning user-installed software. Being able to restore parts of the desktop
while preserving other parts is a significant step for Mirage 2.0 over version
1.5, which can restore a desktop from a snapshot, Dagany said.
Mirage 2.0
also enables companies to save up to a year of snapshot history for each
endpoint, and can store the snapshots in Mirage's single-instance store,
important not only for users who want to restore their endpoint to a particular
state, but also as compliance regulations get tighter, he said.
Email
Print
