eWEEK - April 18 2011

VMware vSphere is not supported.

The Nx Top Center is designed for use in an open-minded Microsoft shop. It uses a database to track users and machines and requires either Microsoft SQL Express or SQL Server. The center needs to be integrated with Active Directory and uses the directory data to provision users and groups.

At the same time, the Nx Top platform is a heavy user of open-source technology. The platform installs an Apache Tomcat Web server to provide the administrative console, and the user-client components use Linux open-source products to provide basic services.

Thus, the NxTop Engine is a Linux-based, bare-metal hypervisor. I installed the Nx Top Engine on several Dell, HP and Lenovo (and older IBM) laptops, as well as on an HP dc7700p desktop system. The Nx Top Engine hosts the centrally created and managed virtual desktops on the local hardware. It also provides underlying management services, such as policy-based check-in with the Nx Top Center.

The engine also provides a basic virtual desktop called the NxTop Connect, which includes a Google Chrome Web browser, a Skype client and an assortment of other simple applications. Administrators can use policy to exclude the Connect desktop from being presented to users.

There is a one-time connection process between the engine and the center that was a little tricky. Users had to enter their credentials and a server name. Once the registration process was completed, I was pleasantly surprised by the polished user interface, which presented the virtual desktop systems that were published to my account.

How NxTop works

Nx Top provisions centrally cre-
ated and managed virtual desktops
to user systems based on user and
group credentials. My test virtual
desktops ran Windows XP SP2
and Windows 7 SP1, although
Nx Top can also deploy Linux-
based virtual desktops.
After installing the NxTop
Engine on a desktop or laptop
system and making a connection
to the Nx Top Center, the virtual
machine and applications appro-
priate to my user credentials were
hosted on my local system. My
user experience was nearly identi-
cal to using a similar desktop as
if it were installed on the local
hardware.
Using the central policy engine,
I mandated that AES 256 full-
disk encryption be used for the
ª localº hard drive. That added a
further layer of protection in case
the hardware on which the Nx Top
virtual machine was running was
lost or stolen.
Using the policy component
of the NxTop Center, I was able
to specify how often Nx Top sys-
tems were backed up, when they
expired, when they would be
locked out, how often to check
for an operating system profile
change and what USB use would
be permitted.
These policies also enabled
remote wipe and kill that allowed
me to disable NxTop when they
reconnected to the Nx Top Center.

IT managers will need to spend some time mastering these policy settings to control the Nx Top desktop life cycle. The policy engine is straightforward, and IT managers should have little trouble implementing policy changes that customize Nx Top operations. «