Leostream's Connection Broker 7 integrates with VMware View and Apple's iPad and iPhone

Leostream has launched an upgraded version of its VDI connection broker that offers support for VMware View as well as Apple's iPad, iPhone and iTouch devices.

Connection Broker 7, which was officially announced at the beginning of VMWare's VMWorld, also offers new policy-based provisioning, refined cluster services, enhanced OpenLDAP support (eliminates requirement for Active Directory deployment), local user access management, enhanced reporting capabilities and better failover.

It also offers support for remote Linux devices and via a partnership with HLW Software (announced last week) it supports iTap Remote Desktop and thus Windows, Linux desktops and Apple's popular iPhone, iTouch and iPad devices.

The Waltham, Mass' virtual hosted desktop software serves as a "switzerland" of VDI software, and allows customers to mix and match different virtualized clients, servers and resources under one management umbrella.

It accomplished what Red Hat's Deltacloud API proposes -- the ability to integrate different virtualized desktops and platforms. Yet, Leostream's mature offering is available on the market.

Connection Broker already offers a high level of scalability and high availability required by customers and service providers, but the refinements in version 7.0 go a long way to making VDI deployment -- especially in VMware environments -- simple and yet full featured. For example, its provisioning capabilities bolt up to VMware VSphere platform.

Here's how leostream describes the benefits:

VMware View Support – Tight integration allows soft PCoIP connections for View users who require high-performance graphics. This also provides View adminstrators with the versatility of the Leostream Connection Broker, letting them extend VDI to include a variety of different platforms, while providing users with a single login to all resources.

Provisioning Enhancements – Additional configuration options for provisioning substantially improve the scalability of VDI in VMware environments. The Connection Broker allows lower and upper thresholds on pool size, and provides complete control over the virtual machine (VM) lifecycle, including how new VMs are provisioned and when they are deleted.

Linked Clones Management – Leostream can now create new linked clones from snapshots of parent VMs, which optimizes storage, simplifies the creation of new desktop images, and makes image management easier and more efficient.