Pressroom

Event Information:

  • Tue
    28
    Jan
    2014

    CloudVolumes Extends Management and Performance for VMware ThinApp

    CloudVolumes, the company that virtualizes everything above the OS, today announced a partnership with VMware (NYSE: VMW) to enhance ThinApp management and performance. CloudVolumes’ new ThinApp Edition integrates with ThinApp technology to leverage any VMware vSphere datastore and make individual ThinApp packages instantly available to users logging in to virtual desktops, Citrix XenApp, or Microsoft RDSH, in real-time and on demand through a service catalog. The combined solution and benefits are explained in details in a newly published VMware whitepaper.

    “CloudVolumes not only delivers centralized management, but also significantly boosts the application performance by eliminating the need for network streaming. Furthermore, by using CloudVolumes full Desktop Edition, customers can support user-installed applications as well as deploy and manage applications that cannot otherwise be virtualized.”

    VMware® ThinApp® is designed to deliver virtualized instances of applications in order to help IT administrators with software migration to a newer operating system and eliminate specific conflicts and compatibility issues. The integration with CloudVolumes will enhance the ease of management, speed of deployment, and performance of applications, all while leveraging customers’ existing storage infrastructures. It will also allow IT to scale up without sacrificing the benefits of application virtualization and centralized management.

    “Since the acquisition of Thinstall by VMware, ThinApp customers have asked for centralized management of ThinApps,” said Henrik Rosendahl, the former CEO of Thinstall and former director of application virtualization at VMware. “CloudVolumes not only delivers centralized management, but also significantly boosts the application performance by eliminating the need for network streaming. Furthermore, by using CloudVolumes full Desktop Edition, customers can support user-installed applications as well as deploy and manage applications that cannot otherwise be virtualized.”

    CloudVolumes has broad applicability beyond just enhancing ThinApp. CloudVolumes enables a hybrid-persistence model: the desktop pool is non-persistent, saving on hardware and storage; however, the user has a persistent desktop experience with their profile and user-installed apps managed and delivered separately. CloudVolumes can also deliver complex server applications such as databases, Web servers, and middleware. These virtualized applications and data are placed into one or more virtual disks (VMDK and VHD files), which are dynamically attached and shared across all virtual machines. This approach provides the fastest and most scalable way to deliver applications to any virtualized datacenter or cloud.

    CloudVolumes’ shared volumes significantly decreases I/O traffic from the network and improve application performance, while maintaining isolation between the applications and the operating system. This turnkey solution provides predictability in performance and removes the network as the limiting factor, allowing companies to leverage high-speed and SSD-based storage.

    To ensure simplicity, IT can utilize its existing ThinApp packages with CloudVolumes ThinApp Edition. It complements ThinApp’s dense application environment by dramatically enhancing the responsiveness of applications for end users. It enables IT to scale while leveraging existing infrastructure without sacrificing the benefits of application virtualization and centralized management.

    Key features of CloudVolumes ThinApp Edition include:

    • Flexibility of deployment: Deploy ThinApp packages from shared VMDKs on any datastore that VMware vSphere supports and scale as needed.
    • Centralized management: Manage a single virtual disk containing one or many ThinApp packages and share them across all users. Assign one or more CloudVolumes virtual disks to any active directory user or group. Searchable activity logs for compliance, analytics and audit.
    • Dynamic delivery: Security administrators and IT helpdesk can quickly respond to issues or helpdesk requests by updating or delivering new applications to a running VM.
    • Access to file automation: Automatically create file associations and shortcuts at log on for all ThinApp packages the user is entitled to.
    • Enterprise scale: Solution is design to support over 5,000 ThinApp packages and 10,000 users per Manager with the ability to scale out to 50 CloudVolumes Managers.
    • Increase VM density and simplify hardware support: Increase user density per VMware ESX host by decrease the amount of hardware required to support end users
    • Reduce network usage: Significant reduction of network I/O dramatically increasing the performance and responsive of ThinApp packages by 100% compared to hosting ThinApp packages on a CIFS file share.
    • Freemium license: ThinApp Edition will be available to qualified customers in US and EU free of charge. A support fee will be charged to those commercial customers needing support and maintenance or who have 1,000 or more users

    “We are extremely happy to extend our partnership with VMware and provide a complementary solution to ThinApp which allows users to enjoy a completely persistent and native desktop experience, while IT continues to manage the environment as non-persistent and centralized, including automated entitlement and analytics,” said Raj Parekh, CEO, CloudVolumes. “CloudVolumes ThinApp Edition will significantly reduce the time required to provision, maintain, or decommission ThinApp packages.

    Pricing and availability

    CloudVolumes ThinApp Edition is currently available as a freemium product, with and without support. For more information, visit http://www.cloudvolumes.com/products/thinapp-edition.

    Supporting Resources

    About CloudVolumes 

    CloudVolumes helps businesses solve their complex management, scale, and performance problems with the cloud and virtualized datacenters by virtualizing everything above the OS. Customers rely on CloudVolumes to provide solutions for terminal servers, desktops, and servers, eliminating lock-ins of service providers and hypervisors. CloudVolumes works with a customer’s existing environment to dynamically deliver server or desktop workloads to any generic virtual machine providing instant access to applications, data, and profiles. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. For more information, visit http://www.cloudvolumes.com.