Rollout: Sentillion vThere Virtualization Suite 2.0

Posted by Bill Silvey on February 16, 2007

Tags: Sentillion,  VMware,  VPN,  Virtual PC,  VirtualPC,  desktop management,  escrow,  review,  security management,  vThere Virtualization,  virtual hard drive,  Access Control,  Access and Authentication,  Antivirus,  Benchmarks,  Bluetooth-enabled Devices,  Data Encryption,  Data Networking & Management,  Data Protection,  Data Security,  Database Management Services,  Enclosures,  Firewalls,  Hardware,  Hotspots,  Java,  Linux,  Other,  Physical Security,  Remote Access Software,  Secure Remote Access,  Security Standards,  Security and Privacy,  Servers & Storage,  Software and Web Development,  Technology,  User Interface,  VPNs ,  Virtualization,  Virtualization software,  WLAN Security,  Windows,  Wireless

Channel: Data Protection, Networking & Mgmt, Other, Servers & Storage, Virtualization, Wireless

The Upshot By putting a virtualized PC in a secure, isolated sandbox environment on a remote user's desktop, Sentillion's vThere 2.0 minimizes security risk and hardware overhead. There's no physical hardware to break, and an instantly replaceable installation of Windows can be customized by administrators, then standardized for all users. A completely secure virtualized machine on a host computer offers a solution to the problems that ensue if a laptop is stolen. vThere 2.0 secures the virtual desktop so that loss of the physical asset triggers near-instant nullificiation of the virtual installation by network administration. Encrypting the guest client's virtual drive, along with the ability to disable lost or stolen assets makes vThere a secure execution environment. This type of virtualization makes it easy to update applications. Sentillion vThere Virtualization Suite 2.0

A Sandbox System, running as a guest operating system on a host machine, only goes so far in preventing data losses and security breaches. If the host system is compromised, the guest system is too. Sentillion addresses this problem with vThere Virtualization Suite 2.0, a guest hosting system that allows for remote control, configuration and security management across a VPN or WAN.

The vThere suite has advantages over emulators such as Microsoft's VirtualPC, particularly if a host computer is stolen or lost. While the guest operating system can be denied network access with VirtualPC, its disk images can be mounted on a different system, exposing the data. VMware has the same Achilles' heel. vThere's Player--the emulated PC workstation that resides in a separate space on a host computer--is different: Immediately after a system that's been reported missing logs into the network, network administration disables the image remotely.

New Player

With vThere 2.0, Sentillion dropped VMware's virtualization engine as its end-user component and adopted Parallels' Player instead. The Player resides on the host, but shares only a few hardware resources--namely, a virtual disk drive and network connection. All other elements are emulated.

Sentillion says the move to the Parallels Player resulted in a tighter codebase for the emulation task; that is, Parallels works closely with Sentillion when it's time to update that engine. Updates are tested with vThere and other applications, to eliminate the risk of a general update to Parallels' software breaking vThere functionality.