Being on the west coast of the US typically means I’m a little late on getting to the newest announcements, especially since this one came around 5am PST while I was still dreaming of VMotion, DRS and HA. But here it is, the long awaited VMware View 4 is official, complete with it’s PCoIP goodness.

For the most part you should all understand the concept of VMware View and virtualized desktops.  Virtualized Desktops are simply Virtual Machines with a desktop operating system installed (Windows 7, etc.) running on the VMware vSphere platform.  They are delivered and managed through the VMware View Manager, this utility allows the creation and assignment of these desktop virtual machines.

So, what is new in VMware View 4?

• PCoIP – A display protocol specifically developed for virtual desktop delivery. PCoIP is able to dynamically detect and adapt to the end users network connection providing each user with the best desktop experience regardless of location or task. VMware View with PCoIP is delivered with support for software end points, which include the View Client and a VMware View virtual desktop. In addition to software support, the VMware View solution also supports PCoIP enabled end points to address the requirements of even the highest end users.

• vSphere Support – Provides the foundation for VMware View and helps to extend the power of the datacenter to the desktop environment by delivering powerful business continuity and disaster recovery features such as VMotion, High Availability, Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Consolidated Back Up. Optimized specifically for VMware View desktop workloads, VMware vSphere is able to scale to support 1000s of desktops to meet the requirements of even the largest organizations. In addition vCenter helps organizations to manage more than 1,000 hosts and up to 10,000 Virtual Machines from a single console providing a common platform to manage both servers and desktops from the datacenter to the cloud with unparalleled levels of scale, control and automation.

• Simplified Sign On – Addresses the need for a seamless end user experience when logging into a VMware View virtual desktop from a physical thin client or workstation. With Simplified Sign On user credentials entered into the local client can be reused to authenticate the user as they log into their virtual desktop. This makes the login process simple and efficient.

• Restricted Entitlements – Enables to ability to restrict user access to desktop pools based on the connection server being used for access. With connection servers being deployed across different networks, IT organizations can enforce access based on the user’s location. Depending on how the connection server is configured a group of users can be either permitted or denied access to their virtual desktop according to the connection server being used for access.

In addition to PCoIP VMware View 4 supports ALP, RDP and RGS protocols.  Sadly Offline Desktop is still an experimental feature as well as Windows 7 host and guest support.

For additional details and features available in VMware View 4 please see the release notes: http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/view_pubs.html

Update: VMware View 4 is still not available for download as of the writing of this post, I really expect to see this within the next week or two.  To be notified when the download is available you can sign up for the evaluation at https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?p=default

On a side note, for those of you that haven’t noticed, when you visit the VMware website you’ll now be greeted with the new VMware branding as well as a new color scheme….which I’m not sure if I like.