VCE, the Virtual Computing Environment Company created by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware in 2010, announced several enhancements to its virtualization management and automation solution, VCE Vblock FastPath. VCE Vblock FastPath Desktop Virtualization Platform helps administrators automate VDI deployments and centrally manage many other aspects of the desktop virtualization platform. At this week’s annual Cisco Live conference, VCE revealed new features designed to make administration even more efficient.

FastPath now includes additional support for VCE’s converged Vblock Series 300 Systems, which can support up to 5,000 virtual desktops. VCE also added support for VMware View 5, released in May, to FastPath. Other new features include:

• Support for grouping (pools) virtual machines in a Vblock system. Pools are groups of virtual machines with similar features or policies that administrators can manage as group
• A new licensing wizard that automates the steps necessary to add a VMware View virtual desktop appliances.
• A new high availability desktop virtualization solution for the healthcare market, VMware AlwaysOn Point of Care
In addition to the changes in FastPath, VCE also integrated Cisco’s load balancing appliances with VCE. The addition allows requests to be routed to the server that can best handle the demand in a Vblock system, which can improve responsiveness and reliability.

VCE’s announcements joined the continuous stream of news coming from Dell at its Dell Storage Forum. The momentum this week is just another sign of the increasing competition in the market for virtualized and converged solutions.