Matt Lesak presenting.

I’m staying somewhat general…the presenters are committed to calling out positive things about View/vSphere which I appreciate.

Note: being completely upfront, I work with Citrix products as well…what I like the most right now is how VMware + Citrix is driving this space so fast….competition = good.

More after the jump…

View Bundle includes all-you-can-eat vSphere licensing…very powerful.

• View Persona Management — not just folder redirection but very smart profile management. 
  • How does compare to AppSense, etc.? Compares very well but doesn’t support physical desktops (yet)….also some of those products do more than Persona Management.
  • No dependency on Roaming Profiles
• Big Optimizations on PCoIP and also some knobs/dials we can adjust when needed (trade off quality for speed).
  • Potential to reduce b/w use up to 75%.
  • Lossless vs. Perceptually Lossless – when to use.
  • Mention of the PCoIP Log Viewer that came out recently – fantastic debugging tool.
    • http://www.thatsmyview.net/2011/12/20/public-release-pcoip-log-viewer-2-0/
• Linux Client Discussion – # of distro’s is a challenge. Did get on Ubuntu’s store.
• Not really planning in iPhone client b/c the screen is so small — could make tablet client work but not supported.
• Multiple Client Options with Consistent Desktop Experience
  • Soft Client on Desktop PC/Laptop or Repurposing
  • Thin Client/Zero Client – some market leadership around zero clients for View.
  • Mobile Devices – 92% of Tablets supported – iPad and Android basically.
  • Citrix has more checkboxes…but different support levels in different clients (i.e. no HDX but just RDP).
  • When VMware supports a device, they support everything on that device….no features, etc. not there.
    • Personal Opinion – need to be careful on this messaging when don’t support PCoIP on all clients.
  • PCoIP for Mac out in first half of this year (beta is out and works well right now).
• Acquisition Costs
  • Server Costs – View requires 19% less servers than XD – higher VM density, fewer components.
  • Storage Costs – 42% less storage than XD – calling View Composer more efficient than Provisioning Service.
  • Licensing Costs – concurrent user licensing across all packages, Citrix concurrent user license is $600 (list price…be careful as Citrix discounts a lot), View Premier is 30-67% less than XD Platinum
• XenServer has real challenges with I/O in dom0 — known issue and still recurring (I can even confirm some of this personally). This isn’t really XD vs. View….but back to vSphere being best and then at point what do you choose to run on top of vSphere?
• Provisioning Server is by far dominant method with XD…it’s also primarily physical.
  • Matt isn’t knocking Provisioning Server…but it does add complexity from a customer perspective.
  • When he started with VMware, he was like “where is the console for View Composer?” Well…there isn’t one.
  • Provisioning Server probably would have died if VDI hadn’t come along…I agree.
  • If PVS is so easy/great, why do MCS? (i.e. Linked Clones)
  • Some discussion about Kavisa — personally I all say Kavisa hits a lower market segment than View does….there can be value to segmentation frankly if done correctly.
  • Being very clear….View doesn’t bring world peace (neither does XD).
• Back to use cases….make sure we’re solving a real customer problem, etc. etc.
• Looking at Hypervisors – there’s really not much competition here frankly. View is then the most cost effective way to run View.
  • vSphere is closed source (no disagreement) but very open to integration – as proved by how XD/XA can live on top of vSphere.
  • Would say that XenServer is more open source but actually less open/integratable than XS.
• I think this may be the same slide deck that’s available on Partner Exchange – good for market research in general (who knows your weaknesses better than your competitor…I’ll do the same thing with View at times actually).
• MCS gets during PoC to ease/speed deployment….
• View Composer vs. PVS
  • PVS isn’t supported on vSphere 5 – CTX131239
  • Cache disk is typicaly 40% larger than Linked Clone difference disk.
  • No support for user persistence.
  • Scaling can require something like SANsymphony, to scale…not necessarily.
  • To me: this is somewhat about feature/architecture differences.