Following on to our desktop innovation blog yesterday, I’m pleased to expand on the details of VMware Mirage 5.2 which is now generally available! A big part of what we have been working on is actually now available as a part of VMware Horizon FLEX. Horizon FLEX provides the flexibility IT needs to serve end users, while maintaining security and compliance with centrally managed, containerized desktops. With Horizon FLEX, you can deliver a reliable Windows experience to BYO users, Mac users, contractors and road warriors – whether offline or online. Mirage plays the role of centrally managing, patching, and backing up the local Windows virtual desktops that is delivered with Horizon FLEX.
Mirage 5.2 also introduces more features that are significant. The POS (point of sale or point of service) market has always been a nice fit for Mirage because of the natural support Mirage provides for distributed environments. Many retail, financial, and healthcare environments are looking for next-generation image management solutions across distributed networks. In Mirage 5.2, we’ve introduced OS migration support for POS devices and terminals. The main focus of this release is supporting OS migration from Windows Embedded POS to POSReady2009. Many IT environments are migrating to newer POS operating systems, due to end of support or related PCI compliance issues. Mirage now helps accelerate OS migrations across distributed POS environments, matching the many benefits IT already receives when using Mirage for Windows 7 or 8.1 migrations. These benefits include minimized end-user downtime, a built-in safety net with revert to snapshot option, and the ability to migrate dozens to hundreds of devices per day.
We introduced API extensibility and a new reporting framework in Mirage 5.1. Since then, we have been working to enhance these two areas. For example, in Mirage 5.2, we have introduced centralization support through Mirage PowerCLI cmdlets. This gives IT the API control to centralize devices. New features have also been added to our reporting framework. For example, IT can now export web reports into XLS format. IT can also select a specific time range when displaying or running reports. We’ll continue improving the API framework to make other Mirage commands easy to use in API format, and we’ll also continue adding options to the reporting framework.
Mirage 5.2 is available now, so I hope you get a chance to download it from my.vmware.com. If you have any questions about this release, feel free to reach out to us.
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