Today, I am excited to announce VMware Mirage 5.3, the latest version of the product that includes enhancements that help IT administrators manage point of sale/point of service (POS) machines. The product is expected to be generally available later this quarter and it will be especially helpful to IT administrators supporting retail, finance, healthcare, or other distributed organizations. When we introduced POS support in VMware Mirage 5.2 late last year, we were just scratching the surface of what the product could do for POS device management. Now let’s talk about what’s new in the latest version of the product.
VMware Mirage 5.3 supports the migration to a newer POS operating system. While Mirage 5.2 offered support for OS migration across POS devices and terminals, specifically OS migration from Windows Embedded POS to POSReady 2009, Mirage 5.3 will expand migration support to include the move from Windows POSReady 2009 to POSReady 7.
Organizations could be looking to move to a newer POS operating system for a number of reasons such as the upcoming EMV liability shift, PCI compliance issues, or end of support for older operating systems.
You’ll see the same benefits with POS OS migration using Mirage as you would with OS migration on PCs – accelerated migration for dozens to hundreds of devices per day, built for distributed networks. Minimized end-user downtime and a built-in safety net with revert to snapshot options are also key benefits that our customers love. But even better, with Mirage 5.3, we support full image management for Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 and POSReady 7! This means full image management support for devices and terminals that run those operating systems, including disaster recovery, revert to snapshot, file recovery, restoring devices, provisioning layers, and much more. The same benefits our customers receive from dynamic layering on PCs has been extended to POS terminals. Our customers asked, and we delivered.
Another common feature request we’ve heard over time has been bare metal support. Customers want the flexibility of bypassing a full Windows install when they provision new devices. In Mirage 5.3, this capability is now supported. Using a PXE server, USB key, or bootable CD, IT can bypass a full windows installation when provisioning new Windows 7 or 8.1 devices. Instead of a full Windows installation, Windows PE is now deployed. This results in faster provisioning times, which leads to less downtime for new users, or users who have new devices. With our branch reflector technology, image delivery is even further optimized across distributed environments.
We are also continuing to enhance our API capabilities and Web Manager GUI. For example, we now have APIs for OS migration, applying policies, and archiving CVDs. In the Web Manager, you can provision and manage images, and manage app and base layers as part of the new views that are available.
These are just some of the new enhancements in VMware Mirage 5.3.
In the meantime, if you have any questions about this release, feel free to ping me. And for more updates, please visit us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or discuss in our Communities.
