DCO 2.0: Virtual Desktop Administration for the Rest of Us
I recently accepted an offer to be Product Manager at V3 Systems, not only because I would be able to geek out with some seriously cool hardware and hang with some of the best and brightest in the VDI community— but more importantly to be part of a team that likes to build great things.
At V3, we always ask ourselves two questions when researching, creating, and refining both hardware and software products: A) “Can this provide an end-user virtual desktop experience that is as good or better than a physical Windows desktop?” and B) “Does this make a Desktop Administrator’s job easier?”
We don’t always get everything right on the first try—in fact we plan not to. We’re not afraid to make mistakes while discovering new ways to improve on old conventions. We’re willing to push the envelope and optimize standard VMware deployments—all in the name of driving a better experience for end users and desktop administrators.
V3’s Desktop Cloud Orchestrator software, for example, was created to aggregate key features that a desktop administrator would need from VMware’s View, vCenter, and vSphere while leaving out the overly complicated and unnecessary items that a desktop administrator doesn’t use.
The latest version of DCO, version 2.0, is the perfect example of the V3 executive team’s vision and engineering team’s hard work combined to produce a significant update that makes life better for both end users and desktop administrators.
While there are a huge number of new features and bug fixes we could talk about with DCO 2.0, I’d like to focus in on three new items:
1) Faster and nicer UI/UX:
We made a number of changes under the hood that improve not only the look and feel of DCO, but also its speed. You’ll notice a faster, better looking, and much more responsive interface.
2) New Information Panel
We’ve added a pull-down Information Panel that shows you critical stats and other information at-a-glance including a list of currently running processes.
3) Pool Movement and Failover
Starting with version 2.0, DCO uses a brand new method to handle both failover and pool movement in general. We’ve developed from the ground up a new way to backup and quickly move desktop pools that takes full advantage of the V3 performance-tuned VMware environment. While vMotion was originally created for server failover, DCO uses V3’s proprietary method of Optimized Desktop Allocation to allow a desktop administrator to efficiently move pools of desktops from one V3 appliance to another. To the end user, the whole process is transparent; however, behind the scenes, we’re doing some creative and inventive tasks to backup and move entire desktops (complete desktop copies down to the same MAC addresses and drive IDs).
This new method for pool movement is just the start for V3 as we move toward completely stack-agnostic hardware and software in the future.
We’ll be showing off DCO 2.0 at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco. If you are in town, stop by booth No. 1809 and check it out. It will also be a great chance for you to get a hands-on experience with V3’s superfast appliances and what we call the Desktop Cloud Computing experience.