VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘citrix’

I’ve had the luxury of staying away from the math of the new vSphere 5 licensing. Honestly, I haven’t read the new guide, and I’ve only skimmed through posts that explore the pros and cons of different upgrade costs and future growth impact scenarios from virtualization admins, consultants, and architects of  various size VMware virtual infrastructures. My opinion to date – VMware’s goal is to be a total Cloud solution, and this change in licensing reflects and fosters that plan. If you are able to correctly size you infrastructure, or if you can oversubscribe it so that you can offset the costs, then the hypervisor with the most features, the best performance, and the best partner ecosystem (in terms of available third party products leveraging vSphere APIs) is still a no-brainer. That would be vSphere 5.

Storm Clouds

I’ve also read the virtualization pundits’ predictions year after year. They usually go something like “this year is the year of VDI”, “sixty something percent of all servers can still be virtualized”, and “VMware’s market share will shrink to the advances of Microsoft and Citrix”. Is the record skipping? (does anyone know what a skipping record is anymore?). Personally, I’ve always felt a balanced market of hypervisor vendors would be the most likely prophecy for the datacenter, but VMware has always managed to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. Feature-wise, they continue to do so. But, the recent announcement of licensing changes may have changed things.

Whether right, wrong, misunderstood, reluctant to change, or just emotional, many VMware shops initially viewed the new licensing announcement like dark, thunder clouds approaching. Some reactions were as hot as a flash of lightning. Virtual warning sirens sounded across the community, but after a few days and some damage control from VMware, eventually calmer heads prevailed. But, like in the aftermath of any large storm, people began to build for the future. More so than ever before, public discussion of future plans seem to include a new possibility of alternative vendor virtual datacenters.

An Opening In The Clouds

My hunch is that current VMware shops will  Read the rest of this entry »

Citrix CTO Simon Crosby was our very special guest for VIRTUMANIA Episode 23! The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 23 – The Citrix Virtualization Safari. Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC and Marc Farley (@3parfarley) of 3Par and StorageRap.com with guests and Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com and Greg Knieriemen (@knieriemen). This week’s special guest is Citrix CTO Simon Crosby (@simoncrosby / Citrix Blogs). This episode’s conversation covers almost everything going on at Citrix for virtualization. From Citrix Receiver on the iPad, HDX with VDI, development of the Citrix XenClient, XenServer strategy, partnership with Microsoft, to Citrix in the Cloud, Crosby offers inside thoughts and experiences.  VIRTUMANIA is a Infosmack Production.

Before, between, and after the important stuff we also have some fun with Rick’s picture of the wrong end of a giraffe and Dell’s rumored acquisition of 3PAR

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player or subscribe to get a weekly copy so you can listen when convenient.

Check out the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page to listen to past episodes as well as episodes of Infosmack.

In the “lucky” thirteenth episode of VIRTUMANIA Rick, Marc, and I engage very special guest Chris Wolf in a interesting discussion about Citrix XenServer and the recent cloud announcements from the Synergy 2010 Conference. The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 13 – Analyzing Citrix Cloud Synergy. Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC and Marc Farley (@3parfarley) of 3Par and StorageRap.com with guests and Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com and Gartner Virtualization Analyst Chris Wolf (@cswolf) of chriswolf.com and blogs.gartner.com/chris-wolf. Citrix Synergy 2010 wasn’t just about the the virtual desktop, and Chris Wolf joins us to discuss the server virtualization content of the recent conference in San Francisco. Citrix is definitely making strides with XenServer and their Cloud offerings, but amid all of the exciting announcements there were arguably some conference disappointments as well. We get Chris to analyze the good, the bad, and the ugly! Thanks to Greg Knieriemen (@knieriemen) of Chi Corporation for this Infosmack Production.

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player or subscribe to get a weekly copy so you can listen when convenient.

Check out the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page to listen to past episodes as well as episodes of Infosmack.

The following links offer more information on some of the topics mentioned in VIRTUMANIA Episode 13:

Read the rest of this entry »

This week at the Citrix Synergy 2010 Conference in San Francisco, CA ,Citrix announced their new client hypervisor and established itself as the first to provide what some desktop virtualization experts believe is a critical missing piece in the VDI remote worker mobility puzzle. The bare metal XenClient was previewed introduced during the conference’s opening keynote session on stage in front of thousands of attendees.

Citrix describes the XenClient hypervisor as “a high-performance, bare-metal hypervisor that enables users to run multiple instances of an operating system simultaneously, side by side, and in complete isolation.” A key feature necessary for running virtual corporate desktops provided by a centralized IT department is the Citrix Synchronizer. According to Citrix, Synchronizer will “add centralized control, deployment, and backup of local virtual machines to your XenClient environment.”

Since I was not in attendance at the Keynote, it is unclear to me whether the version of XenClient available for download today is in fact a production ready release. It is available as open source and free to download for those that want to try it out.

There is only a short list of hardware supported, however.

Read the rest of this entry »

The virtualization community, my employer, and every Virtualization Service Provider I know is neck deep in virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Already important because of Windows 7 migrations, the announcements last week from Microsoft and Citrix seemed to have raised the intensity of an existing white hot spotlight on VDI. When Microsoft, the world’s leader in the desktop operating system market, decides to change their position to make it easier to implement and license virtual desktops then we all have to stop and understand what has happened. There has been a significant change, and there are good things in the future for those moving to virtualized Windows desktops. However, understanding exactly what these changes are and how they impact us continues to be a moving target changing rapidly each year.

This post is my summary of research about the latest Microsoft and Citrix announcements. I’m linking and quoting several bloggers and analysts to help VM /ETC readers (and myself!) digest the details of the new licensing and promotions. I also the outline the actual products that make up the Microsoft and Citrix VDI solution, and then finally point to some interesting reactions and perspectives published over the last several days. 

New Microsoft VDI Licensing

Most importantly, Microsoft declared a new licensing policy where Windows desktops will no longer need a separate license to be accessed via VDI by companies with Software Assurance. Although I could not specifically find it stated anywhere I looked, I assume this means whether accessed on any Microsoft VDI solution, VMware View, Citrix XenDesktop, or any other vendor’s VDI product. Here’s some additional information on the new licensing as intrepreted by others:

Desktop Virtualization: Microsoft, VMware in Cost Smackdown

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/031910-desktop-virtualization-microsoft-vmware-in.html?page=1

“One key part of the sweeping announcements, covered in an hour-long Webcast, is a simpler and cheaper model for licensing Windows in a virtual desktop environment. Specifically, on July 1, Software Assurance customers will no longer have to buy a separate license to access Windows via a VDI.

Moreover, for customers that use devices that don’t qualify for Software Assurance, such as thin clients and PCs used by contractors, there will be a new license called Windows VDA (virtual desktop access) available for $100 per device per year. This license will allow users to still have access to their complete virtual desktop outside the corporate network on devices such a personal laptops and airport kiosks.”

Maybe Microsoft is finally starting to abandon the concept of anchoring a Windows license to hardware and hopefully beginning to consider introducing virtualization editions of their operating systems? We are definitely not there yet, but at least it’s movement in the right direction.

Microsoft and Citrix VDI Promotions

Along with the new VDI licensing Microsoft and Citrix has also introduced some competitive promotions not only stimulate VDI migration but hopefully capture back some market share in the process. A new web site, citrixandmicrosoft.com, details these new offers.

First is the VDI Kick Start

Read the rest of this entry »

Burton Group analysts Chris Wolf and Richard Jones have recently both blogged about certification of Citrix XenServer 5.5 combined with Citrix Essentials Platinum Edition as an enterprise ready solution. Citrix XenServer 5.5 is available as a free download, but managing XenServer via Citrix Essentials requires the purchase ($5000 per host list price) of the Essentials Platinum Edition product.

It’s Official – Citrix XenServer 5.5 with Citrix Essentials 5.5 Platinum Edition is Enterprise-Production Ready is a post by Chris Wolf from his personal blog announcing the certification of Citrix XenServer 5.5 managed by Citrix Essentials Platinum Edition as “worthy of the demands of large scale enterprise environments.”

Citrix has an enterprise-grade virtualization platform says the Burton Group is a post by Richard Jones also from his personal blog that declares “This is a great milestone for the industry as it marks the first time that the x86 market has more than one vendor (VMware) offering an enterprise production worthy virtualization solution.”

Read both posts for more details.

The Burton Group report requires a subscription to access, but Wolf promises to detail the findings at the upcoming Catalyst Conference where he will speaking.

Jones’ blog provides an interesting caveat to the enterprise ready comparison of VMware vSphere and XenServer Platinum:

“However, this is not to say that Citrix XenServer 5.5 exceeds VMware vSphere 4 in features and function.  Burton Group’s production class hypervisor requirements specify technical and product features that fall into three buckets:  Required, Preferred, and Optional.  While Citrix now meets 100% of the Required features, it still falls behind the x86 virtualization leader in the Preferred and Optional criteria.”

Hyper9′s David Marshall officially announced the General Availability release of Virtualization Mobile Manager (VMM) recently

“Hyper9 Unleashes Virtualization Mobile Manager

Industry’s First Heterogeneous Hypervisor Mobile Management Tool Includes Up to Five VMs for Free and Special Introductory Pricing of $199

Austin, TX (June 9, 2009) – Hyper9, Inc. (www.hyper9.com), the leading provider of virtualization management solutions, released today a browser-based management and monitoring tool that allows Virtualization administrators to control their virtual infrastructures from a mobile device.

The Virtualization Mobile Manager (VMM), which was created by Andrew Kutz, a well-known developer in the VMware community, has been in beta for the last month, where hundreds of virtualization administrators have used the product in the field and provided positive feedback to Hyper9.

During the beta period, VMM demonstrated its ability to work with VMware Server 2, VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware vSphere 4, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer 5. The application will also work with almost any mobile device, including the Apple iPhone, Blackberry, Google Android and Windows Mobile Devices.”

Read the entire announcement at the link above.

A special thanks goes out to the VM /ETC readers that participated in the Beta. Marshall sent me an email expressing appreciation on behalf of all the folks at Hyper9, and I want to relay the same sentiment as well.

For an overview of VMM’s installation and required Tomcat configuration with screen shots check out my post Hyper9 VMM Installation: Tomcat Configuration Notes.