In the diagram below, the green layers are managed by IT operations and the orange layers are unmanaged; however they are continuously backed up to the Mirage server.
I go into more detail of Horizon Mirage's capabilities in the following posts Horizon Mirage, Mirage Windows 7 Upgrade, and Mirage Endpoint Protection. Today, I wanted to share some of the new features that were announced with Horizon Suite 6.
Horizon Mirage now provides the capability for image management of virtual desktops. This offers single image management to physical workstations, virtual desktops, and local virtual desktops utilizing VMware Fusion Pro. It has become a single tool for IT professionals to manage desktop images, and update images without wiping out user installed applications and data.
Mirage 4.3 and above provides a specific Horizon View policy for virtual desktops.
Also new to Horizon Mirage is the Mirage Edge Server, which helps support centralized management of branch offices and remote endpoints without the need of a VPN. It supports up to 1000 endpoints per server. This simplifies endpoint management of distributed users across the WAN and provides enterprise-grade scalability.
Below is a scalable design demonstrating the Horizon Mirage Edge Server. The design uses load balances to provide fault tolerance; this is very similar to the approach recommended by VMware when deploying Horizon View Security Servers.
Horizon Mirage is a great product, not only does it provide layered image management, endpoint protection, and OS migrations with minimized downtime; it now extends past its original foundation of management of physical devices to including centralized virtual desktops and local virtual desktops. Mirage isn't very complex to setup, and you don't need expensive hardware to get started.
Go check it out!
