The VMguy

Last night, VMware released Fusion 4.1.  You can update your installation by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the title bar.  You can also go straight to the download here.  As always, here’s the What’s New section from the release notes:

Smart Full Screen

Full screen mode provides better productivity and consistency with Mac OS X Lion than previous versions.

The Lion full-screen button is used in virtual machine windows.

The Lion full-screen keyboard shortcut (Cmd-Control-F) is now supported in addition to Cmd-Control-Return.

Like other full-screen Lion applications, a VMware Fusion virtual machine moves to a new space when all displays are connected to the virtual machine.

Switching to Full Screen mode on a secondary display uses the whole display but does not create a new space, which enables you to work in other Mac applications while the virtual machine makes full use of the secondary display.

The VMware Fusion menu bar and toolbar are now accessible from Full Screen mode. A short delay in showing the menu allows access the top of the virtual machine screen, particularly when running Mac OS X Lion in a virtual machine.

A redesigned, compact minibar that you can drag for quick access to common actions without leaving Full Screen mode.

Automatic virtual machine power on

Virtual machines can now be powered on automatically when VMware Fusion starts. You can override this setting by holding Shift when VMware Fusion starts. This feature was removed in VMware Fusion 4 but is now available in VMware Fusion 4.1 in the General settings for every virtual machine.

Improved animations

Improved animations for full screen mode, unity mode, library and snapshots.

Fast screen resizing and improved startup time

Faster screen resizing (Microsoft Hotfix 2522761 recommended), faster transitions into Unity and Full Screen modes, and improved startup time with Windows 7 virtual machines.

Improved Mac OS X Lion guest operating system support

Improved Mac OS X Lion virtual machine support including smoother mouse movements and support for File Vault 2 when using Mac OS X 10.7.2 or later. Upated VMware Tools disable sleep on older versions of Mac OS X virtual machines.

Improved graphics performance

Improved graphics performance and correctness for Internet Explorer 9 and Solidworks 2012 and improved graphics performance when using Mac OS X 10.7.2.

VMware Fusion 4.1 also resolves the following issues:

An intermittent problem when plugging in a new USB device that resulted in error 4.

Improved support for resizing NTFS formatted disks.

An intermittent issue connecting USB devices attached via a Thunderbolt display.

An intermittent issue installing Mac OS X Lion from physical media.

Improved compatibility of shared folders for many applications.

An issue installing VMware Tools on Ubuntu 11.10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7.

A graphics rendering issue on some Mac Pro systems with very large amounts of memory

A graphics rendering issue specific to some non-English languages.

An intermittent problem when using the migration assistant on Mac OS X 10.7.2.

Spurious activation messages when using Boot Camp virtual machines on some systems.

Fresh off the upgrade to the vSphere client for iPad comes an updated View client.  You can head right to the download in iTunes here for the upgrade.  As always, here’s the What’s new from iTunes:

What’s New in version 1.2

• Optimized for VMware View 5 with improved performance
• Support for iOS 5 including Airplay
• Presentation Mode for use with external display and Airplay
• Embedded RSA soft token simplifies login to desktop
• Background tasking to move between Windows and iOS apps
• Updated look and feel
• Integrated online help
• Buffered text input for multibyte text entry
• Now in French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese
• Bug fixes

Some nice new items in this one.  If you like, you can proceed straight to the download here.  Here’s the what’s new section from the release notes:

VMware View 4.6 includes the following new features:

• Security servers can now accommodate PCoIP connections – Security servers now include a PCoIP Secure Gateway component. The PCoIP Secure Gateway connection offers the following advantages:
  • The only remote desktop traffic that can enter the corporate data center is traffic on behalf of a strongly authenticated user.
  • Users can access only the desktop resources that they are authorized to access.
  • No VPN is required, as long as PCoIP is not blocked by any networking component.
  • Security servers with PCoIP support run on Windows Server 2008 R2 and take full advantage of the 64-bit architecture.
• Enhanced USB device compatibility - View 4.6 supports USB redirection for syncing and managing iPhones and iPads with View desktops. This release also includes improvements for using USB scanners, and adds to the list of USB printers that you can use with thin clients. For more information, see the list of View Client resolved issues.
• Keyboard mapping improvements - Many keyboard-related issues have been fixed. For more information, see the list of View Client resolved issues.
• New timeout setting for SSO users - With the single-sign-on (SSO) feature, after users authenticate to View Connection Server, they are automatically logged in to their View desktop operating systems. This new timeout setting allows administrators to limit the number of minutes that the SSO feature is valid for.

  For example, if an administrator sets the time limit to 10 minutes, then 10 minutes after the user authenticates to View Connection Server, the automatic login ability expires. If the user then walks away from the desktop and it becomes inactive, when the user returns, the user is prompted for login credentials. For more information, see the VMware View Administration documentation.

• VMware View 4.6 includes more than 160 bug fixes – For descriptions of selected resolved issues, see Resolved Issues.
• Experimental support for Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 RC operating systems

vShield 4.1.0 Update 1 has been released (why not call it 4.1.1?).  You can download the updated release here.  I’ve also copied the What’s New section from the release notes:

vShield 4.1.0 Update 1 adds the following features.

• SpoofGuard: SpoofGuard allows you to authorize or alter the IP addresses of your virtual machines as reported by VMware Tools. Operating separately from the App Firewall rules, you can use SpoofGuard to block traffic determined to be from a spoofed IP address. You must upgrade your vShield App instances to vShield 1.0.0 Update 1 before enabling SpoofGuard.
• vShield Edge Upgrade: You can upgrade vShield Edge software from the vSphere Client or via REST API.

My take on it: SpoofGuard sounds like a nice little feature to have.  I’ll do a little testing in the lab and report back on that one.  Even if the name of the feature sounds like something to prevent you from spilling water on the floor.

I found an interesting issue in the lab today and I think it’s very important that users who have View deployed recognize it.  In researching the issue, I came across this note in the View 4.5 documentation: “View Manager can manage persistent disks from linked-clone pools that were created in View Manager 4.5.  Persistent disks that were created in earlier versions of View Manager cannot be managed and do not appear on the Persistent Disks page in View Administrator.”

Before today, I did not know that.  What this means is that if you have an existing View 4.0 pool of desktops that use user data disks, 4.5 will not recognize them as persistent disks when you upgrade. Read the rest of this entry »