Mid September Teradici released new firmware for their zero clients and on October 1st released an update to their free management console.

Teradici Firmware 3.4.1

Biggest New Feature:
Added Support for pre-session user authentication using .NET smart cards
Biggest fix: Fixed a memory leak from 3.4 that caused the network card to become non-responsive.

Release Notes 3.4.1Notes

PCoIP Management Console 1.6

Biggest New Feature: The management console using the hostname instead of the default name is the biggest one for me. Teradici introduced Remote Power Down feature but I think this will confuse more users than it’s worth.
Biggest Fix: Fixed an issue where AutoConfig could not find a correct rule when multiple IP matches found

PCoIP_Management_Console_Release_Notes

NOTE: You can support up to 2000 devices per management console

You shouldn’t have more than 7 connection brokers for any one pod of VMware View desktops. VMware allows for 7 but 2 are should used for maintenance tasks and should not be accepting connections.

Let’s start pumping out those ThinApps! Most of the information below is directly from the hands on lab from VMworld. I haven’t see a lot of information on ThinApp factory so I thought I would share with the folks that couldn’t attend VMworld. Lots of videos about Project Octopus and AppBlast though.

ThinApp Factory is a Virtual Appliance you install wither on your vSphere environment or on a VMware Workstation. It uses ThinApp to create the Virtual application for easy deployment for easy deployment to end-users. Applications can be deployed by giving access to a file share that has msi’s available or by using feeds. You are able to make your own feeds are use ones provided from 3rd parties. When a new version of an application is made available via feed, ThinApp factory can automatically download and covert into a ThinApp package without any user intervention.

ThinApp Factory offers a self-service portal so end-users can choose which application to deploy.

ThinApp factory also includes a GUI for changing the advanced ini and regisrty settings. It’s very similar to the work done at ThinApp Helper. Sorry for the blurry image but there wasn’t any tools to capture any better while working on the lab.

I hope there is some View intergration and the ability to pick the source type for the packaging machine; for example, to ability to pick Windows XP to ThinApp or the ability to select Windows7. Since it was just a preview, time will tell.