Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

F5 Cozies Up to VMware; Clears Up Two VMware View Shortcomings: Page 2 of 2

F5 also announced feature enhancements supporting VMware View:

Single Namespace: VMware View doesn't use a single namespace across more than one pod, which means if a user's pod isn't available, the user has to select a different pod to connect to. It's an extra step that could result in them selecting the less optimal pod. F5's Single Namespace presents a unified namespace to users so that once they log in, they're directed to the best pod for them based on response time and availability. Frankly, VMware should have provided a unified namespace in View, but didn't.

Username Persistence: F5's other new feature ensures that users have a consistent experience. When a user logs off View or the connection is dropped, he or she has to log in to the connection broker that set up the View session. There's no guarantee that a user will be connected to the same View connection broker, and he or she will be presented with a new desktop. The experience is similar to closing your laptop lid only to have it shut down, losing all of your current work. Username Persistence can keep track of users' sessions and, when users log back in, direct them to the last connection brokers they used and reconnect to their existing View sessions. Of course, if a user's View session expires, then a new session needs to be set up, but at least with temporary disconnections users will have a better experience overall.

If you're already a VMware and F5 customer, the partnership and enhancements to View will be welcome news. The application delivery market is competitive, with products like Brocade's ADX, Cisco's WaaS and Citrix's NetScaler vying for your business. Adding programmatic controls to prominent private cloud products like VMware's vCloud makes the transition from a virtualized data center to a private cloud possible for organizations. Vendors making cloud software, orchestration and automation products need to follow VMware and F5's lead and work together.