Symantec starts to become VDI friendly

Symantec has announced that its endpoint security, messaging security and endpoint management solutions have been optimized for density and performance in virtual environments.

By randomiing virus definition updates and scheduled scans across the VM’s hosted on the virtualisation platform, Symantec minimizes the impact of these tasks on the hardware resources. This randomization feature is available from Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 Maintenance Release 3 making Symantec the last Security Software vendor providing a VDI friendly security solution.

The randomization feature is detailed in a white paper titled: Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 Securing Virtual Environments Best Practices White Paper. The paper mentions how the client policies can be set so that this randomization takes place. The settings aren’t orchestrated from a central point though, so that real randomization can’t be guaranteed, which makes the solution sub-optimal compared to what the competitors are doing at this moment.

Symantec says it will also support the VMware VMsafe API in the future just like VMware which is going to release an introspection antivirus framework by partnering with TrendMicro, and McAfee which will release solutions optimized for Citrix XenClient, XenDesktop and XenServer. Introspection means that the AV vendor provides a Virtual Appliance which calls the hypervisor’s security API in order to protect the guests running on top of it.

Source: virtualisation.info

Citrix Named HP AllianceONE Converged Infrastructure Partner of the Year

Citrix Systems, has announced that it has been awarded the HP AllianceONE Partner of the Year Award in the Desktop Virtualistion category. The recognition highlights the achievements of Citrix XenDesktop in extending the benefits of HP Converged Infrastructure to solve real business issues in the enterprise.

“As long-standing partners, Citrix and HP have collaborated closely to develop proven solutions that will help our customers transform their IT infrastructures into the dynamic, flexible, on-demand services of the future,” said Raj Dhingra, group vice president and general manager, XenDesktop product group at Citrix. “We are honored to be recognised for our efforts in this arena, and look forward to working with HP to enable our vision of a world where users can work from anywhere, anytime, using any device.”

HP is a Citrix Ready partner and the two companies have collaborated to offer enterprises a variety of software, hardware and service solutions that are jointly tested, certified and tuned to deliver optimal server performance and the best user experience. Enterprises are given the opportunity to choose from recommended configurations, architectures and services to create a solution that will meet their particular business needs and technical requirements. HP reference architectures for XenDesktop help customers build a comprehensive virtualised infrastructure based on the proven power of XenDesktop with FlexCast and HDX technologies on the HP platform.

“When considering the implementation of virtual desktops, enterprises look for best-of-breed solutions that offer them proven methods for efficiency and scalability,” said Paul Miller, Vice President, Solutions and Strategic Alliances, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, HP. “Citrix has been named the AllianceONE Converged Infrastructure Partner of the Year in the category of desktop virtualisation for its efforts to help us jointly provide the best end-user experience and solutions.”

Symantec Plug-in for VMware vCenter

Symantec has made announced the development of a management plugin for its Backup Exec 2010 products which integrates into VMware vCenter.

The Backup Exec Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter Server works with the core Backup Exec virtualisation features to provide a consolidated protection status view of all virtual machines within the VMware vCenter Server or VMware vSphere Client. 

Customers can view:

• The last run of backup and next scheduled backup
• The type of backup (full, incremental, differential) and backup policy

• Specific information on the backup job logs

• Potential risky policies such as unprotected virtual machines.

Source: Symantec