After last year’s successful event, VMware officially kicks-off VMworld 2011 today in Las Vegas, Nevada. For starters, you can view schedules of our live coverage here, a list of the few topics that will be covered here, and the five startups to watch out at this year’s VMworld here.

At this year’s VMworld conference, EMC, which is VMware’s parent company, announced new support for VMware View 5.0 for its new VNX storage. The new system is the new replacement for Clariion and Celerra.

The VNX product line, which includes both the VNX and VNXe (capacities are different), is aimed at midrange business systems yet supports VMware View deployments of any size and scale, ranging from hundreds to thousands of desktops, EMC said.

The entry-level VNX and VNXe storage systems feature a starting price of about $10,000, EMC Vice President of Marketing Shane Jackson told eWEEK. Jackson said the machines can be configured in a few minutes using a wizard interface to provision email boxes and storage allotments, storage targets, access controls and other policies for up to hundreds of email users.

According to EMC, no advanced IT experience is required for the installation, provisioning, and maintenance of the VNX line. Some of the new system’s features are:

• Boosted performance during log-in storms. Early test results have shown the ability to boot 500 VMware View 5.0 desktops on VMware vSphere 5.0 over NFS to steady state in 5 minutes.
• Maximum efficiency by using the EMC FAST Suite to deliver high performance and capacity efficiency for VMware View 5. EMC FAST Cache allows customers to reduce the number of drives used in a View environment while providing fast boot time performance.
• Simplifies management by deploying VMware View 5.0 with confidence whether in NFS or Fibre Channel environments.

EMC also announced that Dec. 31, 20011 is the end-of-life (EOL) date for products like Clariion CX4 series, Celerra NS integrated platforms (including the Clariion CX4 and Celerra High Density Rack systems) and associated models.

Also launching a new service is Dell, which officially joins the cloud computing industry, with the unveiling of its new IaaS cloud services.

Dell has officially become a cloud computing provider with the launch of an Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud built atop VMware technology. The move is just the first in Dell’s three-pronged IaaS attack, which will soon include clouds based on the Microsoft Windows Azure and OpenStack platforms. While Dell is busy adding a strong software play to its flagship server business, it looks to be rebuilding that business model in the cloud.

The new cloud services, which is based on the cloud management product vCloud, is part of Dell’s goal in offering customers private and hybrid clouds.

Meawhile, Juniper Networks extended its cloud computing protection with the new version of vGW Virtual Gateway.

Today at VMworld 2011, Juniper Networks introduced significant additions to the Juniper Networks vGW Virtual Gateway solution for customers looking for a comprehensive virtualization security platform. New functionalities will provide virtualization-specific antivirus (AV) protections and continuous monitoring against malware and hackers, while simultaneously ensuring that security does not impede virtualized workload performance or present a barrier to implementing large-scale virtualized environments.

Juniper will be showcasing live demos of the vGW Virtual Gateway 5.0, which will be available by early fourth quarter of this year.

Cloud computing is rapidly gaining traction nowadays, especially with growing big data demands ranging from popular social networking sites to mobile applications.  And to quote HP Vice President of Marketing for Cloud Solutions and Infrastructure Steven Dietch, “This is not a fad.”  It’s no surprise then that HP is amongst VMware’s partners this week too, with a new server offering.