LoginConsultants is opening up the Beta of its VSI 2.0 application.  Login VSI 2.0 is the second iteration of Login VSI 1.0, the free and specifically designed benchmark for SBC and VDI environments. VSI 2.0 introduces completely new workloads, and an improved and more accurate index called VSImax. 

LoginConsultants said that overall, "VSI 2.0 will be a much smoother experience, many best practices and lessons learned from project VRC are now included in this release."

There will be two versions of VSI 2.0, a free and fully functional version called Login VSI 2.0 Express, and an advanced version called Login VSI 2.0 PRO.  These are the same download, however the PRO version will have additional features that are activated with a license file. 

The new features found in the 2.0 version include:

• Workload(s) re-build from scratch
• New, more realistic, medium workload (now 10 instead of 18 minutes)
• Real-world end-user websites (with rich flash content)
• Windows 7 and Windows 2008 r2 support
• IE 8 support
• New Zip and PDF printer (BullZip)
• Highly improved robustness (even under extreme loads)
• Improved response timer mechanism and index: VSImax 
• VSI 2.0 PRO features
• Multilanguage Support (Express only support English OS and Office)
• Detailed logging
• Runtime calibration of timed events and response time measurement using an external SQL server clock (important for hypervisor comparisons)
• Office 2003 and Office 2010 support
• Customization Support (ad your own apps to the VSI workload)
•  Analyzer Changes
• New VSImax calculation: much more precise
• Automatic renaming of excel files to “testname.xltm”
• Remember settings from last session
• AD Setup Changes
• Split system / user policy objects / added Computers OU
• Improved setup user objects (no password expiry etc)
• Launcher
• New pre-launch naming of test: no more archiving of tests needed