Still trying to get some of this together but I have been asked before for a history of EMC acquisitions. Figured I would try to put that into a timeline format. I will update this moving forward as best I can working on scripting some of it. But for now take a look and tell me what you think.
This is a multi-part blog where I am exploring and learning about VMware App Volumes. This is part 1 so welcome to my mind crunch.
Another acquisition leads to another IP release for VMware, this is the reality of IT today. In August of 2014 VMware bought a company called CloudVolumes, haven’t heard of them? Not surprising, but the product that this relates to is VMware App Volumes for Horizon suite. It comes packaged for free with the Enterprise edition. So what does App Volumes provide?
As always I am glad you are asking these questions voices in my head. App Volumes delivers applications to virtual desktops via VMDKs. Think persistent disks that we use for user profiles but now with applications? The funniest part of this to me at least is that VMware calls the App Volume deployment an Application Container **cough Docker cough**. Sorry I had a different technology stuck in my throat. So the solution looks like this:
Unless you have been living under a rock you have probably heard about EMC’s Hyper-converged platform announcement that occurred at VMware PEX. I failed to have a post ready to go out the day of announcement for a couple reasons. First I wanted to get some more info, while the team I am on at EMC has received several behind the scenes briefings and I have provided NDA briefs to partners, there are always changes between “projects” and “GA Products”. Before we get to the technical details a couple quick business points, VSPEX Blue will only be sold through EMC Channel partners and not through EMC direct. EMC is leveraging our distributors to configure and quote pricing to partners for the end user sales. This means that I am not privy to, nor will I be discussing pricing in this blog post. With that out of the way let’s get to the meat of this.
I previously posted about Project Mystic, which was the code name for VSPEX Blue. The solution is based off of VMware’s EVO:Rail platform and leverages EMC whitebox nodes that are the same being used in our Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) box.