What we are seeing is that this power and simplicity has freed users from having to approximate their application environment.  Redundant network interfaces for failover, clustering, multi-tier topologies, policy-based routing and the like were all left out of the topology to live within the many limitations of traditional cloud networking. The result was the end-goal  - whether that is application testing, building a proof-of-concept or other – was only partially achieved.  Not any more.  Our users are deploying sophisticated application architectures in the cloud with multiple subnets, multiple network interfaces, application delivery controllers, routers, WAN simulators etc. By accurately replicating their production environment or their customer’s deployment environment, users are able to emulate, test, or improve their environment in richer ways than before.

If performing all these tasks required the same degree of specialized IT support as in a physical data center, the business value would still be gated by IT’s bandwidth. By providing a default capability that automatically establishes all the network services, we are seeing functional users quickly achieving high productivity – without needing IT help.  In many cases, IT performs the initial configuration according to their best practices and policies. But they do this once and clone these complex environments to replicate them when needed.  The customer feedback we hear is that this is a win-win for both IT and the business in meeting IT policies and business goals amidst resource constraints.

- John Janakiraman

Read the full press release here.

• Support for advanced, multi-tier network topologies
• Ability for users to deploy virtual data centers with multiple networks using Skytap’s self-service Web user interface
• Comprehensive network security and policy management using virtual routers

Click on this 3 minute video for an overview of Skytap’s network automation features.

Here is what’s new for January:

- Per-User Usage Quotas
- Usage Metering & Reporting Enhancements
- Auto-Suspend Configurations at Specific Times
- Specify Access Time Windows for Published VM URLs
- Easier RDP Access to Virtual Machines
- More Multi-Select Operations
- Miscellaneous Usability Enhancements
- API Extensions

The Skytap Release Team

Configuration Management

One-Click Snapshots: Configurations can now be snapshotted with a single click. You no longer need to suspend or shut down your configuration in advance to snapshot your virtual machines.

Snapshot Partial Configuration: Want to snapshot a subset of a configuration? You can now pick and choose which virtual machines will be included in your snapshots.

Power Off Button: You can now forcibly shut off a configuration or virtual machine, much like pulling the power cord from a physical computer, with the “Power Off” button. Additionally, we have modified the behavior of the existing Shutdown button to try to shut down your virtual machine through the pre-installed VMware Tools only.

Assets

Remote Shared Drive/FTP: Remotely access your shared drive account via FTP in order to more simply manage the files your virtual machines can access.

Public Assets: Looking for software on Virtual Lab? We now offer a public assets area where you can find common software: browsers, tools, debugging aids and more.

Projects

Project Improvements: You can now determine the visibility or scope of assets, templates and configurations to determine which projects the items belong to. Additionally, projects now feature an improved layout and a list of all project members.

User Experience

Site Rebranding: Incorporate your logo and company name into Skytap Virtual Lab in order to better provide training, demo, sales, proof of concept and lab capabilities to your users and customers.

New Visual Design and Improved Usability: Virtual Lab’s user interface has been overhauled to simplify common operations, consolidate all actions that can be performed on each page, and reduce the number of clicks necessary to accomplish tasks. Virtual Lab now features a toolbar across the top of every page where you will always be able to find page-wide controls.

- Publish VM URLs
Create universally accessible desktops on demand by publishing access URLs for virtual machines you choose, while securing the VMs with a password if desired. Additionally, you can even manage all of the published desktops from a single console, observing your users’ actions as they progress.

- Clipboard Improvements
Copy and pasting data to and from Skytap Virtual Lab virtual machines is now entirely seamless. Copy data to your computer’s clipboard, open a Virtual Lab VM, and paste the text right in.

- Skytap Virtual Machine Hour Quotas and Reporting
Receive enhanced up-to-the-moment information on your current use of SVM hours over the course of the current billing cycle.

- Usage Reporting
Usage reporting will provide you with detailed information on when, how and where your Virtual Lab capacity is being used. You can even export results to Microsoft Excel to manage more detailed data analysis.

- Web Services/APIs
We now feature a full web services stack to give you programmatic control over the most common features in the Virtual Lab platform. Create rich client applications to programmatically drive your virtual machines, develop rich reporting systems, and more.

- VPN
Connect your Virtual Lab VM configurations to your company’s Microsoft or Cisco PPTP VPN server in order to provide secure connections from your virtual machines to your internal corporate network.

We launched our REST-based Web services API and one-click VPN functionality today which gives  organizations a way to use cloud resources as as an extension of existing onsite IT environments.

View these two screencasts to see how they work!

-Ian

API Screencast

‘One-Click’ VPN Screencast

-Configuration and Virtual Machine Management

1. Automatic Configuration Timeout
Automatically shut down all of the machines in a Configuration by selecting the Automatic Configuration Timeout checkbox. Your Configuration will shut itself down after 30 minutes of idle time.

2. Improved Published Services
It’s easier to set up the most common Published Services with a new dropdown box highlighting available options.

3. Improved ease-of-use
Options to edit a Virtual Machine’s hardware and network settings are now sited along with your other Virtual Machine controls.

-Virtual Machine Sessions

1. VM Desktop Resize
Virtual Machines’ Desktops now automatically resize when you resize the VM Session Window.

2. VM Full Screen Mode
Virtual Machines can be used in full screen mode to provide a more immersive experience.

3. Hostname Display
Hostnames for individual virtual machines are now displayed alongside VM names to help differentiate the machines in your session.

4. Improved performance
VNC sessions are now routed through a secure proxy for significantly improved performance.

5. Copy and Paste
Windows guests created from new Configurations now support copy and paste from your browser through the Clipboard button. Please see the FAQs in Support for more information on adding this behavior to existing Windows guests.

-Library

1. Improved search relevancy
Searching in the Library has been improved so that it’s easier to find the content you’re looking for.

2. More Filters
Filter content in the Library by hard drive size in order to easily find Virtual Machines with large-enough disk sizes to fit your needs.

3. More labels
We have added new labels to help you better categorize your content in the Library.

4. Improved ease-of-use
It’s now much easier to merge a configuration in the Library with an already running Configuration.

-Asset Management

1. Shared Drive
Share data between yourself and other members of your account with the Shared Drive. This network share can be accessed from the Desktop of your Windows guests and through the SMB share \\gw\shared on Linux guests.

2. Asset Upload without Java
You can now upload assets from your physical hardware or your VM guests without installing Java.

Imagine a muddy ocean with little visibility. Your customers are boating on the surface. You can only write code underwater, but you need to come to the surface to ship it (no pun intended). If you dive down for more than a minute you’ll drown, so you need something to keep you alive while you’re underwater. The technology you choose to keep you alive down there will make an enormous impact on what your software looks like when you come back up to the surface.

You can pick a snorkel or a submarine. Most peoples’ instinct would be “duh, give me the submarine!” But think about it for a second. A submarine needs fuel and a crew. It’s also expensive. And when you’re submerged for weeks on end, what happens to life on the surface?
Customers might motor away, they might be shouting “hey come back up here, we changed our mind about Widget X!” The whole world might change while you’re underwater.

In the shrink-wrapped software world, the submarine used to be a necessity. It’s just not possible to ship a new box of software every month. But with software-as-a-service, you can ship as often as you’d like. Our friends up the hill at iLike have a release every week!

That’s why we say “pick the snorkel.” We can dive down and surface quickly, we can swim from customer to customer to get feedback, releasing software unencumbered by excessive process and lengthy development cycles. The net result is customers who are more likely to recommend our virtual lab solution to friends and colleagues. At the end of the day, that’s our goal – successful and enthused customers!

-Joe

Here’s a list of enhancements included in the May Release:

Virtual Machines
1. CD Loader: Load a CD into your Virtual Machines in order to easily install software.

Dashboard
1. Quotas: Quotas for your account can now be viewed directly from the Dashboard, along with current usage information.
a. Storage Quota: Depicts current storage usage, including Assets and Configurations.
b. CPU Cores: Depicts number of running CPU cores, which can be calculated by the sum of CPU cores used by all of your running Virtual Machines.

The Lab
1. List/Tiles Views: Toggle between a list of your running Configurations and a tile view in order to more easily find the Configuration you’re looking for.
2. Suspend/Delete/Shut Down from Lab page: Perform common operations on your Configurations without leaving the Lab page.

Assets
1. Easier to find: Assets are now a top-level tab in Virtual Lab, making them easier to find.
2. Upload in the background: The Asset Uploader now opens in a new window, enabling you to upload large files while working on other tasks.

Library
1. Master/Details View: The Library has been completely redesigned. It now features a master/details view to let you easily drill down into our Configuration Library and view details of each Configuration without leaving the main Library area.
2. Configuration Filtering: Filter through Configurations by Favorites, Project Configurations and Private Configurations, along with Language and Vendor in order to find what you’re looking for even faster.
3. Explore Virtual Machines: Find a specific Virtual Machine you’re looking for, instead of wading through our list of multi-machine Configurations.

Interactive Help
1. Overview: Interactive Help (launched from the Dashboard) provides you with an intuitive, easy-to-understand tool to help you learn how to accomplish common tasks across Virtual Lab without having to read documentation.
2. Upload an Asset: Learn how to easily upload assets and use them from your Virtual Machines.
3. Start and Snapshot a Configuration: Learn how to create a new Configuration of Virtual Machines, add new machines to the Configuration, and Snapshot your changes so that you and your coworkers can use it later.
4. Published Services: Learn how to add a Published Service to your Virtual Machines so that you can easily access them via HTTP, RDP or any other TCP/IP protocol.

Current Issues & Limitations
- Do not run DHCP or DNS services in your configurations as this will conflict with the Virtual Lab software.
- Some versions of Windows 2003 may experience problems connecting to the Skytap Asset Browser from the Desktop link. Please disable enhanced security or install an alternate browser and browse directly in order to use this feature.

We hope you enjoy the release – let us know what you think!

AaronB (Virtual Lab Program Manager)