Hands-on with Office Mobile for iPhone

By now, you've no doubt heard that Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone is now available for iPhone. (Yup, you read that right: It's iPhone-only.) The question is: Should you care?

That depends largely on whether you're already a subscriber to Microsoft's Office 365 and Skydrive services, which (for personal use) cost from £79.99 annually. (If you want to give the app a test run, Microsoft offers a 30 day free trial of Office 365, which you can set up at the Office 365 website.) Because, really, Microsoft Office Mobile is a front-end to that service, not a standalone productivity suite.

Getting connected

Office Mobile does give you access to the three legs of the Microsoft Office suite: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Each of the three iOS apps is able to read and edit documents created using their related PC, Mac, or Web applications; if you want to create new documents on the iPhone, Office Mobile lets you do so with Word and Excel, but not PowerPoint.

When you sign in with your Office 365 account from the mobile app, you should also have access to your SkyDrive folder and be able to see any of the files you have stored there. But, after installing the app on two different devices, I found that only one automatically connected to my SkyDrive. For the second install, I needed to use the app's Add a Place tool and choose SkyDrive. Add a Place is also the way you connect to your business' or school's Office 365 SharePoint.

Once connected, Office Mobile displays a file browser with buttons at the bottom which you tap to see your recently used documents, open existing documents, create new ones, or change the app's settings. To create new documents, you tap the app's New button and choose a starting template, either the blank one or one of the three templates provided for Word and Excel, and the app opens a fresh document based on your selection.

Oddly (and inconveniently) the app only lets you create documents; you can't create folders for organizing your documents. You can't add or save files to existing folders, either; they all go in the root directory of your SkyDrive. You can still manage documents using SkyDrive's Web-based interface or your Mac.

You'll be surprised to discover that Office Mobile eschews iOS' autosave features and expects you to save your documents manually--this despite the fact that every other iOS app since the beginning of iOS-time automatically saves anything you're working on. Also, when you do save changes, even on the smallest of documents, it can take several seconds before the SkyDrive save completes.

Word

Working with Word documents in Office Mobile is...interesting. Typing is simple, easy, and works as it should. In fact, Office Mobile feels like a very basic text editor.

Although it isn't obvious until you start using the app, there are two editing modes when working with a document in Word. There is a Preview mode that allows you to select and make changes to formatting of your selected text and an editing mode that allows you to type new text. These two modes use two different methods for selecting text, so you need to change the way you work depending on the mode you're in.

In editing mode, Word uses a non-standard means of text selection: You double-tap a word to select it then use the selection tool as you normally would. Given that this deviates from the way you normally select text in iOS, I found this difficult to discover. Once text is selected you can change its formatting, copy, paste, or add a comment to the selected text, but there is no option for cutting the selected text. Using editing mode you can also change formatting where your cursor appears in the document, so anything new you type will reflect the changes you've made.

In Preview mode, select your text the way you normally do in any other iOS app, tap the text formatting tool, and make your formatting changes. But, once you've made changes this way you are once again working in the app's editing mode, so you can no longer select your text the way you did in Preview mode, instead you have to double-tap the text to make further formatting changes.

Excel

Of the three Office Mobile apps, Excel is the most polished. Office Mobile's spreadsheet tool offers over 125 built-in functions, the ability to select spreadsheet cells to create charts, and, when editing functions, supports tapping cells to add their contents to the function field you're creating. But it has a frustrating lack of intelligence when it comes to the type of data you're editing in a cell. So, while it's possible to change the format of a cell to date, percentage, or currency format, the app's keypad doesn't automatically recognize those differences.

It also fails to differentiate between text and numbers. So, even if you have a spreadsheet cell containing numeric data, you still get a standard QWERTY keyboard; that means tapping a couple of keys before you can enter the data you need. Contrast this with Numbers, Apple's spreadsheet app, which is aware of the kind of data being entered in a field and adjusts the keyboard accordingly.

Office Mobile's Excel app has the added benefit of letting you create charts by selecting a range of cells, choosing the formatting tool, and then selecting Create Chart. The app offers six different chart types; when you select the type of chart you want to create, the app adds a new sheet containing the chart type you've selected. Updating your spreadsheet data adjusts the chart accordingly. Unfortunately, once you create a chart, or if you are working with a chart created using any other version of Excel, it is not possible to change the chart type, delete the chart, or sheets created when creating a new chart. In fact, you can not delete any sheets using the iOS app.

PowerPoint

As noted earlier, you can not create PowerPoint presentations using Office Mobile, but you can edit any of your existing presentations and, if you connect your phone to a projector, display, or television, you can use the app as a presentation tool. Editing is limited to changing the order in which slides appear in your presentation and making changes to the content of text and comments that appear in existing slides and to your slide notes. You can not make changes to transitions, images, or create new text boxes. But, as a presentation tool, it works pretty well. It's the kind of app that, if you're in a pinch and have the necessary adapters, could save your bacon if something happens to your computer.

If you've used PowerPoint or any other presentation tool in the past, you know presentation files can be behemoths. Unfortunately, I found that my connection to SkyDrive consistently timed out when I tried to upload changed presentations. In many cases, that was because my phone went to sleep before the save finished. But even when I made sure the phone stayed awake, Office Mobile had difficulty getting large files from my phone to my SkyDrive.

SkyDrive integration

In my initial testing I found that the Office app's SkyDrive integration was spotty at best. (To be fair, this is also true of Microsoft's SkyDrive app.) Most documents created using the app or Microsoft's Web apps synchronized with SkyDrive, but depending on their size, uploading files from my phone, had those timeout issues.

Documents created on my Mac and saved in my Mac's SkyDrive folder often took hours to appear on my phone. This may be a limitation of SkyDrive on my Mac, but, if you're accustomed to Dropbox, which synchronizes immediately, it will be an unwelcome surprise to anyone who thinks the doc they just saved in SkyDrive will be available on their phone.

I also found that when saving changes to an existing document, SkyDrive often reported conflicts with an existing copy of the document on SkyDrive. This, despite the fact that I was the only one editing the document and only on my phone. Subsequent saves worked, but it almost never allowed me to save changes to documents the first time I tried.

Final impressions

While these are only initial impressions, and fuller use may turn up solutions to some of these problems, on first look this app does not impress. Yes, it's Microsoft Office on your iPhone, but it's Office in air quotes--which is to say that, while you can create and edit Office documents on your phone, there isn't much here in the way of added value and, in fact, may only introduce frustration to your daily grind. Also, the fact that it's an iPhone-only app seems like an unnecessary limitation on Microsoft's part. While it's possible to use the Web-based version of Office on your iPad, a native iPad app seems like a more obvious solution.

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Dell UltraSharp U3014

A 30-inch desktop giant of a display, the Dell UltraSharp U3014 offers resolution of 2460 by 1600 pixels on a matte IPS screen with environmentally friendly LED backlighting. The U3014 boasts several nice-to-have features and a long list of on-board controls for tuning your image on screen. 

You might need to enlist some help in attaching the heavy monitor to its stand. But once you've done that, you can connect it to your computer using your choice of DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, or Mini DisplayPort.

The Dell UltraSharp U3014 supports DisplayPort 1.2, including multistreaming, so you can daisy-chain two or more monitors and display independent images on each one (provided your video card also supports DisplayPort 1.2).

The Dell UltraSharp U3014 also supports picture-in-picture mode, but only with certain combinations of connections. DVI and HDMI can't be used together, nor can the two types of DisplayPort connections (DisplayPort In is used only in daisy-chain scenarios). I was also surprised to discover that the monitor doesn't scan all of its inputs on power-up, so I had to manually select the input I was using the first time. There is an input-scan button, but you must engage it by pushing a button.

Dell typically includes a four-port USB hub on its professional displays. This model sports two downstream USB 3.0 ports on its left side, along with a handy memory card reader, and two more downstream USB 3.0 ports (plus an upstream port) in the back. The display does not have built-in speakers, but you can attach Dell's optional speaker bar to the bottom of the unit.

The display is calibrated at the factory for both colour and brightness uniformity, but the U3014 offers a comprehensive set of onscreen menus if you'd like to make your own tweaks. The panel on which the U3014 is based is a "wide gamut" model, which means it's capable of delivering more colours than you might be accustomed to seeing. To me, the Dell UltraSharp U3014 rendered some colours so oversaturated that they looked fluorescent. An orange hat from DisplayMate's test photos, for instance, look bright red on Dell's monitor, while objects that looked lime green on other displays looked as though they'd been doused with a fluorescent-green highlighter pen. Photographs looked better, although skin tones looked too red, and a piece of orange furniture from my living room shifted toward red on the U3014.

After consulting with Dell, I configured the U3014 to use the Adobe RGB colour space, which provides a narrower gamut, and then Adobe sRGB, which uses an even narrower colour space. These values helped rein in the colours. You can also manually adjust colour-temperature values from the standard 6500K down to 5000K or up to 10000k, and you can independently adjust the hue, saturation, and sharpness. Finally, you can perform in-house calibrations using Dell's UltraSharp Colour Calibration Solution software with an X-Rite i1Display Pro colourimeter (the hardware is sold separately).

All LCDs, including IPS panels, are somewhat susceptible to image retention. When a static image remains on the screen for a long period of time, a ghost image can remain behind. This usually isn't a permanent problem--since LCD technology, unlike old-school CRTs, doesn't rely on phosphors--but it can be distracting. If you detect ghosting on the U3014, you can push a button to launch an LCD Conditioning routine to get rid of the problem. I didn't encounter any image retention during my evaluation, so didn't have an opportunity to test this feature's effectiveness, but you can typically avoid the problem by using a screensaver or by allowing the display to go to sleep during longer periods of inactivity.

The U3014's matte IPS panel has a very wide viewing angle, which is important for a display of this size as you'll be looking off-axis at the top, bottom, and sides when you're sitting directly in front of it. Glossy screens can render photographic images with richer blacks and shadows, but they're also more susceptible to reflections and glare from lights and windows. In my work area, I experienced much less glare using the U3014 than with the Apple 27-inch Thunderbolt Display that I generally use.

With a 16:10 aspect ratio, the screen is just a little more square than the Apple Display, which has an aspect ratio of 16:9. The Dell is about an inch wider and 3 inches taller, and those extra few inches of real estate are very noticeable. I have four windows open as I write this, and I've found myself spending less time moving them around the screen as I switch between them.

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HP OfficeJet X551dw

According to HP, its new Officejet Pro X printers are the fastest inkjet printers in the world – an achievement that has been officially ratified by the Guinness Book Of Records.

There are several models in the Officejet Pro X range, including multifunction models costing as much as £700. However we tested the X551dw model, which is a conventional, single-function printer priced at £480, and which claims to offer speeds of up to 70 pages per minute for both mono and colour printing.

The X551dw is a bit of a beast, measuring a full 414mm high, 517mm wide and 399mm deep. It also weighs in at a hefty 17.1Kg, so it’ll definitely need a sturdy table or desk to support it. The printer should earn its keep, though, as it is equipped with both Ethernet and wifi networking, as well as a standard USB interface. It supports Apple’s AirPrint for iOS devices, along with HP’s own ePrint feature, which allows you to print remotely over the Internet by emailing documents to the printer.

The main paper tray holds 500 sheets of A4 paper, with a second tray holding a further 50 sheets for photo paper or envelopes., and it’s suitable for monthly print volumes of up to 4,200 pages, which should be more than enough for most small businesses.

The X551dw is claimed to be the world’s fastest inkjet printer

The X551dw uses the four standard cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks for printing and HP quotes a speed of 70ppm for both mono and colour documents when using the printer’s ‘general office’ mode, or 42ppm using ‘professional’ mode. Our test results weren’t quite in that league – although they were still pretty impressive for an inkjet printer – and we did notice a big difference between printing speeds for mono and colour documents.

Mono printing hit a frankly jaw-dropping 55ppm using general office mode, which produced smooth, crisp text output that genuinely rivaled that of a laser printer. Professional mode dropped to a still-impressive 40ppm and produced slightly bolder text, but we think that the general office mode would be perfectly adequate for the vast majority of day-to-day printing tasks.

Colour printing was considerably slower, though – mainly because the X551dw seemed to take quite a bit longer to download and print the first page of colour documents. We achieved speeds of 35ppm with general office mode and a relatively modest 15ppm with professional mode.

Running costs are good too, especially if you use HP’s high-capacity XL cartridges. The Black XL cartridge costs £88.99 but can produce an impressive 9200 pages, which works out at a very reasonable 1p per page (0.96p to be precise). The XL cartridges for coloured inks cost £86.99 – or £261 for all three – and last for 6600 pages, which comes to 4p per page, which is definitely below average for an inkjet printer.

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Dell XPS 12 convertible Ultrabook

The XPS 12 isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly one of the more successful attempts to create a hybrid mobile device that can function as both a laptop and a tablet. 

Dell describes the XPS 12 as a ‘convertible ultrabook’. Certainly, it ticks all the right boxes on the ultrabook side of things. The smart black and silver case measures just 20mm thick and the XPS 12 weighs only 1.52kg, so it’s easy to carry around with you. It’s sturdily built, though, with a layer of tough Gorilla Glass (the same as used on many smartphones and tablets) to protect the screen.

That 12.5in touchscreen is a real eye-catcher too. Its 1920x1080 resolution is very bright and sharp and looks great when watching HD video or browsing your photo library. The use of an IPS panel also ensures that it has really wide viewing angles – close to 170-degrees.

That's crucial on a device that can be used as a tablet as it needs to work in various positions, from flat on the desk to vertical. Our only minor complaint is that glass (as you might expect) is highly reflective and that can be a little annoying at times.

Prices start at £999 for a model with an i5 processor, but we tested the flagship model with a Core i7 processor running at 1.9GHz (3GHz with Turboboost), 8GB of memory and a 256GB SSD.

That combination produced a strong score of 4854 in the PCMark 7 benchmark suite, so it won't break a sweat when running Microsoft Office. It should handle more demanding tasks such video- or photo-editing without a fuss too.

Battery life is good too, providing a full five hours of streaming video, so you should get close to a full day’s work done between charges. The XPS 12 can even handle a spot of gaming action when you’re off-duty.

The integrated HD 4000 graphics struggle at the screen's 1080p resolution, only managing 9fps in Batman: Arkham City with DX11 and high graphics settings. But drop to 1366x768 resolution and low graphics settings and you’ll get a far smoother 34fps.

And when you want to use the XPS 12 as a tablet, you simply flip the screen in its frame and close it against the keyboard. The screen is highly responsive and the high-resolution display means that the XPS 12 works really well for a spot of casual web browsing and using Windows 8 apps, of course.

Naturally, the big screen means it’s larger and heavier than a conventional tablet. You can’t pick it up with one hand whilst browsing the web, as you would normally do with most tablets, so you’ll need to hold it in both hands or rest it on your lap whilst using it in tablet mode.

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HTC First Facebook phone

The HTC First has launched in the US, and is set to come to the UK on EE this summer. Here we've reviewed the HTC First and Facebook Home on an AT&T handset in the US. The HTC First is one of the more intriguing Android phones we've had the chance to review. The result of a collaboration between HTC and Facebook, the First is the first phone to ship with Facebook Home preinstalled--doing away with the traditional Android home screen in favour of a continuous Facebook news feed. For more on Facebook Home, see 'Facebook Home FAQ: What you need to know'.

Apps such as Gmail and Maps are hidden away, while the official Facebook and Messaging apps take centre stage. The phone is aimed at fans of the social network, but the First's unassuming design and modest price tag should prove enticing to anyone looking for a smartphone on a budget. (The HTC First costs only $100 in the US and although UK pricing hasn't been announced you can expect it to be priced to shift.) 

The first thing you'll notice when handling the phone is its size: Measuring 126 by 65 by 9mm, the First has roughly the same dimensions as the Apple iPhone 5. The phone is composed primarily of a soft-touch plastic that makes it pleasant to hold, and the device's smaller stature makes it easy to use one-handed. Like the HTC One, the First boasts a simple design that helps keep the phone from feeling overly complicated. The buttons on the First all feel sturdy and responsive, though I had trouble keeping the phone's MicroUSB cable securely in the charging port.

The phone lacks a user replaceable battery, and there's no MicroSD card slot, which means you're stuck with the 16GB of on-board memory for storing your apps, photos, music, and movies. Most won't care about these missing features, but it's something worth considering if you're someone that likes to have Michael Jackson's entire discography with you at all times. The First's 4.3-inch display packs an impressive 341 pixels per inch (ppi), making it sharper than the Retina display on the iPhone 5, though the screen looks unusually dark even on the brightest settings.

The First lacks the Beats audio software found on pretty much every other current HTC phone, and as a result, audio played through the phone's speaker sounds hollow. The speaker's location is also inconvenient--when holding the phone in landscape mode, your hand often covers it up, which leaves you with muffled sound while watching videos or playing games.

Although the First has a 5-megapixel camera, photos taken with the phone came out very grainy with a lot of digital noise. The phone can shoot 1080p video, which looked okay, but suffered from minor stutters and tears. The camera is painfully mediocre, but if all you are doing is uploading your photos to Facebook then it should suit your needs just fine.

Aside from its low price tag, the First's other big selling point is its deep integration with Facebook Home. Facebook Home is available for download on a handful of other Android handsets, but HTC worked closely with Facebook to optimize the launcher for the First. Notifications from third-party apps show up on the home screen alongside Facebook notifications, and the app ran surprisingly well on the First's dual-core 1.4GHz Snapdragon processor.

Though I consider myself a very casual Facebook user (I usually only check the damn thing two to three times per week), I found my activity on the social network increased dramatically while using Facebook Home. The app made it effortless to like and comment on my friends' posts--photos and status updates I wouldn't have seen had Facebook Home not shoved them in my face.

After some time, however, Facebook Home's downsides became much more apparent: Doing anything that wasn't related to Facebook, such as playing music or browsing for apps, took more effort than it did on other smartphones, as you'd have to dig through the app drawer to find the appropriate apps. You can't put app shortcuts or widgets on your home screen, and the status bar is hidden away until you swipe down from the top of the screen to reveal it. (You can check out Caitlin McGarry's review of Facebook Home for more details on the app, but if you don't live your entire life on Facebook you probably won't benefit from it in any meaningful way.)

So why should you even consider picking up this seemingly mediocre smartphone? For all of its flaws, the HTC First has one thing going for it: You can easily turn off Facebook Home to access a stock version of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, giving you all the benefits of Android without any of the added bloat-ware that usually plagues the OS.

This is a big deal. The only other phone currently shipping with raw Android is the Google Nexus 4, and stocks of that phone can be hit and miss (it's also cheap if you buy it outright, but expensive on contract). Granted, the Nexus 4 runs a newer version of Android Jelly Bean, but HTC's offering can still access most of the major Jelly Bean features, such as Google Now and the performance improvements brought by Project Butter.

Another of the First's hidden strengths is its battery life. The embedded 2000mAh battery in the phone may not sound all that impressive next to the 3300mAh battery found in the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD, but I managed to squeeze a full 8 hours of use out of the First before I had to seek out a charger. With Facebook Home disabled, however, that number increased by another hour or so. Obviously these times will vary depending on how you're using your phone and the types of apps you install, but I found them impressive nonetheless.

The HTC First excels at being a tool to quickly access and interact with your friends on Facebook, but it also falls short in a few other key areas. Millions of people use their smartphones to upload photos to Facebook, so it's a shame that HTC skimped out when it came to the First's camera and camera functionalities. Facebook Home's strong emphasis on Facebook's apps is great if your whole existence is on the social network, but it interferes with actually using the phone as... well... a phone. Still, if you're someone that can't get enough Facebook in their lives - or crave using stock Android - then the HTC First is worth checking out. See also: Facebook Home review; HTC First smartphone hands-on review. For more on Facebook Home, see 'Facebook Home FAQ: What you need to know'.

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Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D

Following on the heels of the FS-4300DN comes this slimmed down mono laser printer from Kyocera, the Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D. The difference in price may be significant – at the time of writing, the FS-4300DN costs around £870 to the £270 of the FS-2100D – but in many respects these two models have much in common.

For a start, there's the overall look of the two printers. Kyocera's Ecosys range have a unified design, so the various models resemble each other very closely. The casing of the Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D is chunky and robust, but not overly heavy. At 13.5kg it's only 1.1kg lighter than its big brother. Nonetheless, 13.5kg is by no means weighty for a business laser at this price point.

The black-and-cream casing makes the Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D look more like an architectural experiment from the 1960s, especially with a curved turret comprising the front right corner. This turret is mirrored in the optional paper trays, so as you build up the Kycoera's paper handling, the overall look remains consistent.

And those paper handling facilities deserve mention. Just like the FS-4300DN, the Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D comes with a sizeable 500-sheet tray as standard, along with a 100-sheet multipurpose tray. You can add up to four additional 500-sheet paper trays, for a maximum of 2600 sheets. That figure was decent in the high-end FS-4300DN, but in the sub-£300 FS-2100D it's outstanding.

As with the FS-4300DN, the top-mounted control panel is wide-ranging and highly detailed, giving you full control over most aspects of the printer's operation, while the strong monitoring facilities give network managers easy control of the Kyocera. You can access files from USB drives for added security.

Connectivity options as standard are rather lacking on this model, with only USB 2.0 offered. You do have the option of upgrading to gigabit ethernet for £125, although should you want such facilities, you're better off just paying an extra £72 for the FS-2100DN model, which comes with gigabit ethernet as standard.

Either printer can be upgraded to wireless 802.11/b/g/n facilities for the exorbitant fee of £289.

The N-suffixed Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100DN also has more memory than the Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D, matching the FS-4300DN's 256MB.

The Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D, on the other hand, comes with just 128MB as standard. The FS-2100D also has a lower maximum memory of 1152MB, as opposed to the 1280MB of the FS-2100DN.

Up to 40 pages per minute is boasted by the Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D. In real-world printing, you're unlikely to get to that due to the printer needing around 10 seconds to get started.

Once the first sheet has come out, though, subsequent sheets are almost instantaneous, and this is a reasonably fast model. Even with the 10 second startup, we were able to achieve figures of 29.7ppm, and if you're printing large jobs then you can expect that to increase to the mid-30s.

Duplexing is provided, although the speed here does fall to a rather more sluggish 15.4ppm – a drop of close to fifty percent, which isn't ideal.

Even with experimentation, the Kyocera's output isn't as dark as we'd ideally like. This was a slight complaint of the FS-4300DN as well, and seems to be common to the Ecosys printers. The characters also fell just short of the crisp perfection we expect of the best laser printers. Neither is this the best model for graphics reproduction.

The running costs aren't quite as low as on the FS-4300DN, with the Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D's toner generating only half as many pages at a time. They are a little cheaper to compensate, although the cost per page is still almost 0.3p more.

Nonetheless, close to 0.7p remains very cheap for a page of text, with few other printers able to get anywhere near such low running costs.

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VMware vSphere 5.1 looms large

With the release of VMware vSphere 5.1, VMware's product line underwent some naming and positioning changes. In the past, there were two different bare-metal hypervisors, one free and one sold as part of the vSphere suite. Now there is just one. The new standard is ESXi 5.1, which still comes in a free version. However, the free version is now limited to 32GB of physical RAM.

The ESXi hypervisor is required for all vSphere installations starting with version 5.0. ESXi does not use Linux, as did ESX, for the service console that executed scripts and provided hooks for third-party agents. The new ESXi code base has shrunk, presenting a smaller attack surface and requiring less maintenance and patching. Higher reliability and stability in the hypervisor translate to fewer headaches for IT administrators and longer uptime for mission-critical applications.

VMware has also introduced three different offerings under the label vCloud Suite, which include bundled products targeted at specific use cases. They are licensed on a per-CPU basis and come in Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise editions. These products provide the functionality to implement infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds for large data centres or service providers. For this review I focused on the basic VMware vSphere functionality along with the VMware vcentre Server management system.

Installation and configuration: For the purpose of this review I used a Dell PowerEdge R715 server as the primary VMware ESXi host. Dell is a longtime VMware partner, and it has many convenient features, such as the ability to boot the base ESXi image from either an SD card or a USB disk. Dell provides this image on its website, and I used it to create a bootable USB device. Installing and configuring an ESXi host is pretty simple for most any supported hardware.

Configuring a vSphere environment is a different story. If you plan on using any of the more advanced features available from VMware, you will need to install vcentre Server. Here you have several options, such as using an existing Windows Server or deploying the vcentre Server as a virtual appliance (VA). The VA option uses Suse Linux as the base OS and a local database for small installations of less than 50 VMs. For larger installations you must use an external Oracle database. If you go the Windows Server route, you'll also need to have SQL Server installed to house the inventory database.

You must configure a separate network for all vMotion traffic before any virtual machine migrations can be accomplished. Each host participating in vMotion must have a minimum of two Ethernet adapters with at least one supporting Gigabit speeds. Each host must have a port group designated for vMotion traffic with source and destination hosts on the same subnet. That's quite a bit of configuration required to accomplish a migration -- especially when compared to Microsoft's Hyper-V live migration feature, which requires almost no configuration.

New and improved in vSphere 5.1: VMware vSphere 5.1 brings a number of capabilities to the table specifically aimed at the high-end, high-volume virtualisation customer. These include features like Storage DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler), introduced in vSphere 5.0, which automates load balancing across storage devices just as DRS balances VM loads across hosts. With Profile-Driven Storage and tight integration with the new vCloud Director, you get a new level of storage automation not previously available.

With the vSphere 5.1 release also comes a new version of the virtual machine format (version 9) that supports larger virtual machines. Another nice enhancement means the end of reboots when upgrading VM guests to newer versions of the VMware Tools. On the networking front are enhancements to the VMware vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) in support of link aggregation (LACP support) and expanded virtual MAC address assignments for large implementations. Other improvements to VDS beef up network monitoring and troubleshooting and even rollback and recovery.

In terms of raw scalability, vSphere 5.1 increases the number of distributed switches per vcentre Server from 32 to 128. It also ups the numbers on static port groups (5,000 to 10,000), distributed ports (30,000 to 60,000), and hosts per VDS (350 to 500).

Managing vSphere 5.1: The traditional management tool, available as a free download, is the VMware vSphere Client. This option is being phased out with the new Web client available with version 5.1 of vcentre Server. In reality, there probably aren't many VMware installations of any size running without vcentre Server. At the lower end, Microsoft makes life easier, as you can manage small Hyper-V deployments with Hyper-V Manager and the new Windows Server Manager tool. (See my review of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.)

That said, VMware's vcentre Server provides the glue that holds large VM deployments together. It's required for many of VMware's advanced features such as the cloning or migrating of VMs. With the new Web client you can easily perform almost any task required to manage your entire vSphere infrastructure. With VMware vSphere PowerCLI, you get the full scripting capability of PowerShell and more than 370 cmdlets to automate almost any repetitive task you need to accomplish in day-to-day operations.

Performance and scale: When you look at vSphere 5.1 from a big-picture perspective, you see a number of enhanced capabilities that directly affect performance. Storage is a key part of the VM puzzle, and the enhancements in vSphere 5.1 for vMotion deliver new capabilities such as using multiple NICs. Using the right type of storage for different workloads can have a significant impact on overall performance as well. vSphere 5.1 supports automated storage management to include different classes of service, allowing you to direct high-IOPS workloads to more expensive SSD storage while allocating lower-cost storage to lower-throughput needs.

Performance and scalability both depend on efficient usage of other resources like network bandwidth and CPU. VMware provides granular control over all of the above, making it easy to implement the likes of Quality of Service (QoS) for the network and limit CPU resources based on service-level agreements. While these considerations are not always part of the performance discussion, they influence how a virtual environment performs overall -- VMware delivers these features in spades.

Final analysis: VMware continues to deliver features and enhancements that make vSphere the obvious choice for any large-scale virtualisation deployment. The new vCloud suites bundle together previously separate pieces required for building a large-scale private, public, or hybrid cloud. While Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 and other solutions may be chipping away at VMware's lead, vSphere still has a number of features -- such as rules-based load balancing for VMs and storage, as well as advanced virtual networking capabilities -- that the competition can't match. These features will certainly make a difference in large settings, and some will make a difference in smaller shops with more complex needs.

Now read:  virtualisation showdown: Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 vs. VMware vSphere 5.1

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