Wanova Makes Mirage Virtual-Desktop Solution Enterprise-Ready

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.