Blogs: desktop virtualization

Virtualized desktop service OnLive seems to have resolved its licensing differences with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT). Amazingly, a few tweaks under the hood seem to have been all it took, although Microsoft is saying it's still checking. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers fire up their iPads and Android tablets.

Here's a quick and dirty summary of virtual desktop infrastructure, how it works, and what it's good for.

Virtual desktops without VDI: So what's the catch? Insider (registration required)

Suspending active virtual Windows desktops and the applications running within them may let users get back to work faster but it's not exactly a recipe for stability.

Those involved in desktop virtualization have underestimated the significance that browser-delivered applications will have in the future. We have been so busy looking at ways of virtualizing client operating systems and applications that we have not been paying sufficient attention to a shift that will have a very significant effect on what we do in the future. INSIDER (registration required)

While desktop virtualization implementations are moving forward rapidly, it is not an economic solution for all users, as Microsoft has shown with a recently published paper. As always, the devil is in the details.

Multiple technology cycles have added infrastructure that is now legacy. Use desktop virtualization as a catalyst to consolidate and eliminate systems that are holding you back.

A Citrix upgrade gone bad shows why virtual PC environments must be held to a higher standard of performance and availability than the desktop computers they replace.

In the data center, virtualization is becoming the underlying technology for many different IT needs, from high availability to disaster recovery, which takes it from being a way of controlling costs for under-used applications to becoming a strategic part of how IT is managed.

Microsoft has announced Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. For Windows 7, it looks like a quick roundup of patches, but Windows Server gets two interesting new features. No official release date for the SP1 upgrade, but read on for a believable rumor. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers prime the download pumps in anticipation. Not to mention Nataly and Jack are back...
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