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VMware has today released the VMware Horizon Suite which they are calling “The platform for workforce mobility.”

The Horizon Suite was initially announced at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco and is VMware’s integrated product suite for End User Computing which comprises three main components:

• VMware Horizon Workspace
• VMware Horizon View
• VMware Horizon Mirage

This is a big step for VMware by providing a far more integrated End User Computing suite for customers rather than perpetuating the old tiring battle of VDI brokers between VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop. VDI is important but only a part of the overall “delivering applications to users” so VMware is providing  a lot more in this suite by bringing together traditional VDI with applications and data. This is the initial release with some things that don’t integrate yet or as well as they should so hopefully the Suite will become more tightly knit down the road. It will be interesting to see how customers respond.

VMware Horizon Workspace
VMware envisions VMware Horizon Workspace as a “Multi-device workspace for IT services” and sees three trends that are changing IT. New device platforms with less reliance on Windows, new apps with more SaaS and mobile apps and new user expectations including better collaboration and productivity.

Read more…

VMware has released PowerCLI 5.1 Release 2 which is  the latest update to its PowerShell interface which includes support for Virtual Distributed Switches, vCloud Director 5.1 and PowerShell 3.

Virtual Distributed Switches

This new release now includes 14 new cmdlets to manage VMware Virtual Distributed Switches, something people have been waiting eagerly for:

• Get-VDSwitch
• New-VDSwitch
• Remove-VDSwitch
• Set-VDSwitch
• Export-VDSwitch
• Get-VDPortGroup
• New-VDPortGroup
• Remove-VDPortGroup
• Set-VDPortGroup
• Export-VDPortGroup
• Add-VDSwitchPhysicalNetworkAdapter
• Remove-VDSwitchPhysicalNetworkAdapter
• Add-VDSwitchVMHost
• Remove-VDSwitchVMHost

There are also enhancements to existing cmdlets such as Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter and Set-NetworkAdapter to support distributed port groups.

vCloud Director 5.1

vCloud Director 5.1 support has also been added with a new snap-in which include cmdlets to:

• Connect to a vCloud Director Server
• Create, Manage, Modify and Retrieve Organizations
• Create, Manage, Modify and Retrieve Organization Virtual Datacenters
• Create, Manage, Modify and Retrieve Organization Networks
• Importing vApps & Creating vApp Templates
• Create, Manage, Modify and Retrieve a vApp
• Create, Manage, Modify and Retrieve vApp Networks
• Create and Manage Access Control Rules

PowerShell 3

PowerCLI 5.1 Release 2 also now includes support for PowerShell 3 which is Microsoft’s latest update to its phenomenal scripting environment. Version 3 enhancement include Workflows & Scheduled Jobs, simpler where-object formatting, a new web-based console, persistent sessions, enhanced IDE,  Module Auto-Loading and plenty of new and enhanced cmdlets.

Missing

Something I have spotted that is still missing is support for the new vSphere Web Client tags which would be useful.

Documentation

It’s worth look at the release notes for some of the Known Issues and also understanding which PowerCLI cmdlets only work with the 32-bit version.

Also of use is the User Guide .PDF which has some example scripts.

Great update, VMware, keep ’em coming!