Desktop Virtualization

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Critical security vulnerabilities fixed in VMware's hosted products

Many of you have probably heard about the recent Core Security findings which resulted in a security advisory CORE-2007-0930, Path Traversal vulnerability in VMware's shared folders implementation:

A vulnerability was found in VMware's shared folders mechanism that grants users of a Guest system read and write access to any portion of the Host's file system including the system folder and other security-sensitive files. Exploitation of these vulnerability allows attackers to break out of an isolated Guest system to compromise the underlying Host system that controls it.

Successful exploitation requires that the Shared Folder's feature to be enabled which is the default on VMware products that have the feature AND at least one folder of the Host system is configured for sharing.

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Microsoft Plans to Acquire Kidaro

Kidaro

Looks like Microsoft is expanding their desktop virtualization campaign with acquisition of Kidaro:

Microsoft Corp. today announced its intended acquisition of Kidaro, a leading provider of desktop virtualization solutions for enterprises. In combining Kidaro’s virtualization technology with its suite of desktop management tools, known as the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance, Microsoft will enable IT professionals to optimize their desktop infrastructure by providing management capabilities for Virtual PCs, streamlining deployments and easing application compatibility issues.

Windows Virtualization Team blog also confirms:

the three founders of Kidaro will be joining Microsoft and play similar roles here, and that the plan is to keep Kidaro's R&D team in Israel.

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Know Your History: Open Source Virtualization Tour

Kris Buytaert has just posted a great post on Virtualization.com: Looking Back at a Decade of Open Source Virtualization. While it's a lengthy article, it's definitely worth your read if you're curious about the history of virtualization, primarily desktop virtualization.

I come from Unix system administration background, and have been in this industry for just over 10 years – long enough to recognize all the names and technologies in the article and to testify: indeed, there were quite a few ways of running graphical desktop sessions remotely long before 2006 or 2007. Some of them are not as simple to use, but almost no technology stays stale – new approaches are being developed daily, and you couldn't be more spoiled for choice of desktop virtualization than you are today.

Have a look at the Open Source Virtualization reivew, I'm sure you'll like it.

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VMsafe – new virtual security technology from VMware

I'm just back from VMworld Europe 2008, and one of the highlights of this event was the announcement of VMsafe – a new security technology introduced by VMware.

What is VMsafe?

VMsafe is a new security technology. What is means is that software security vendors will partner with VMware to develop custom virtual appliances used for protecting virtual machines on a VMware ESX server.

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How To Convert VMware Server 2.0 Beta VMs into VMware Server 1.0.4

I've just finished the first round of VMware Server 2.0 beta testing, and although I quite like the product, it's still not stable enough for my needs, and so I've decided to fall back to VMware Server 1.0.4.

But what happens is that every time you try to use the VMware Server 2.0 virtual machine in VMware Server 1.0.4, you get an error like this:

VMware Server Console error message

"Configuration file was created by a VMware product with more features than this version" may be a correct statement, but chances are that you won't need any of the new features of VMware Server 2.0 to use standard VMs.

Because of this, you can use a simple hack to make the new VMs work with older version of VMware Server: simply change the hardware version back.

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Kidaro Presents Virtual Desktops DR Solution

Kidaro has just announced an enterprise-level disaster recovery solution for virtual desktops.

With the Kidaro Desktop DR solution, enterprises can maximize business continuity by distributing corporate-controlled virtual desktops on DVDs, USB drives, or over the Web. Kidaro's virtual desktop platform enables secure employee access to corporate resources and data from their home PCs or recovery center computers. Because the solution runs locally on existing desktop and laptop computers, without expensive server farms, Kidaro Desktop DR provides a cost-effective and secure method for recovery.

With Kidaro Desktop DR, enterprises can:

  • Implement a cost-effective disaster recovery plan for desktop continuity
  • Get employees back to work quickly and securely, on any computer including home PCs
  • Simply distribute software or USB drives, without deploying expensive server farms

I am a little bit skeptical about the desktop-based approach to DR. Coming from a rather typical enterprise environment, I am only comfortable with the whole DR solution organized within a secure and highly available datacenter environment, but desktop virtualization has already changed many things and set new expectations, so perhaps such an approach is worth a try.

Some of the advantages of Kidaro's approach to virtual desktops DR:

  • Rapid disaster recovery – from any location
  • No server farms required – minimal investment in recovery sites
  • All operations are encrypted to prevent data-leakage

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Disk Performance Tips for VMware Workstation

Lately I've been doing a lot of research with virtual machines created in VMware Workstation. And one of the first things you become conscious about is that disk performance in your virtual machine is far from being ideal. Don't be too quick to blame VMware though, there's quite a few reasons related to poor I/O, and that's why I decided to give you a few tips to achieve maximum performance.

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