By Sachin Sharma, Product Marketing, End-User Computing, VMware
I’m delighted to announce the general availability of VMware Mirage 5.4! This is the second release of Mirage this year and includes many enhancements that our customers have been asking for. Feel free to download the latest bits from my.vmware.com or trial the product for free here.
While Mirage 5.4 has many new enhancements and features, I’d like to leverage this blog to highlight a few unique updates. First, we have updated the Mirage backend to start utilizing a MongoDB database. Why? Well with a MongoDB, we’re able to optimize centralization times for desktop and POS devices, which results in faster upload times. Customers can save 3x on storage requirements based on IOPS with this new MongoDB setup. Small files and metadata are uploaded into CVDs and now stored on the Mirage installed MongoDB. SQL Server is still required for other Mirage database functions.
Our customers have also been asking us to support hosting Mirage “in the cloud”. In 5.4, we have extended support to host Mirage on VMware vCloud Air. The backend components for Mirage, such as the Mirage Server, Mirage Management Server, and databases, can be hosted on vCloud Air. Keep in mind the proximity and bandwidth requirements of the devices being managed; however, this new hosting option frees up the old requirement of needing an on-premise server infrastructure for desktop management with Mirage. This type of setup is easy, secure, and provides all the benefits associated with infrastructure-as-a-service. Customers can now manage their desktops and POS devices, including managing images, delivering layered applications, backup and recovery, and OS/HW migration, while hosting Mirage on vCloud Air.
We are continuing to enhance support for POS (point-of-sale or point-of-service) device management. In this release, we are supporting provisioning of POSReady 2009 operating systems to existing Windows Server 2003 operating systems. This allows customers to reuse old hardware for POS purposes, which is helpful in areas such as retail or financial shops. We’ve also added a number of enhancements to our web console, including new Image Manager and System Administrator roles. These roles allow IT to provide OS migrations, manage and update drivers, assign base and application layers to collections, and much more – all from the web console.
Mirage 5.4 is an exciting release that packs in many new features and enhancements, with the most notable updates highlighted above. For more information on Mirage 5.4, please be sure to read the release notes. And for more updates on Mirage in general, please visit us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or discuss in our Communities.
