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Posts Tagged ‘xendesktop’

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.

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.

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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

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User Profile Manager (UPM) is a product currently available for download as a technology preview from Citrix. UPM is Citrix’s answer to one of the biggest challenges facing companies migrating to server based computing (SBC) solutions such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI): maintaining a unique (or persistent) desktop for each user. Virtualizing persistent desktops for all users would normally require excessive storage requirements and numerous virtualization hosts for large user bases.

Today at the Citrix Summit 2008 partner conference in Orlando, FL I listened to David Wagner, Product Manager, and Sascha Juch, Assistant Manager R&D, present how UPM simplifies the separation of unique user settings from desktop sessions. Therefore, UPM enhances XenApp’s ability to deploy multiple desktops from a single virtual machine image. When the user personality can be streamed to a desktop separately from the OS and applications, the VDI infrastructure requirement is reduced yet the multiple unique user desktop experience is still be achieved.

The administrative benefits of UPM are key as the configurations necessary to achieve this type of user mobility usually consist of a combination of managing roaming profiles, enabling folder redirection, keeping track of registry changes, and performing application customizations. Citrix UPM provides administrators the simplicity of a Windows service install and the centralization of a Group Policy ADM template. For the unique user personality, profiles and settings are stored on a network share. UPM then makes sure only the changes in data between user log ons and sign offs are transferred across the network. As a result, the technology is centrally controlled by the IT department, fast and efficient, and transparent to the desktop users.

Since UPM is still a technology preview and parts of today’s session are subject to the Citrix Partner NDA, I’m providing the following links for more information already available about Citrix User Profile Manager on the web today. Read the rest of this entry »

Building on my previous post about the XenDesktop Hands On Lab training I attended last week, this post is dedicated to the real magic of Citrix XenDesktop. Ardence, a software streaming solution aquired by Citrix in December of 2006, is now Citrix Provisioning Server for Desktops with the amazing ability to deliver desktops from a single disk image. Provisioning Server, coupled with the Desktop Delivery Controller as the VDI Connection Broker, delivers complete Microsoft Windows, SUSE Linux, and Red Hat Linux operating systems images from networked storage. These OS images are quickly brokered to bare metal user’s desktops at Active Directory Domain log on. With VDI, the bare metal desktop happens to be the virtual hardware of virtual machines hosted on either XenServer, ESX Server, or Windows 2008 Server Hyper-V.

The Provisioning Server home page (linked above) explains the advantages achieved with the Ardence technology. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I participated in a training event hosted by Citrix titled “Citrix Hands On Technical Workshop – XenDesktop“. The training was very beneficial in that I was not only able to walk through some configuration labs but I also heard first hand experiences from various partners around the Southeast that have already implemented XenDesktop. This post is a summary of my notes about Citrix’s solution and it’s key differentiators from other VDI alternatives.

The complete XenDestop solution consists of the following components:

• XenServer (or VMware ESX or Microsoft Hyper-V)
• Provisioning Server
• The Desktop Delivery Controller
• XenApp
• Citrix Access Gateway
• WANScaler
• EdgeSight
• GoToAssist
• EasyCall

Details on each of the pieces can be found on Citrix’s XenDesktop Technology page. Administrators familiar with the Citrix line of products will recognize several traditional components from their Presentation Server solutions. The “How Desktop Delivery Works” screen shot above is also from Citrix’s web page. Click on it for a larger view of the image.

Like VMware’s Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM), XenDesktop’s solution is centered around a connection broker, or The Desktop Delivery Controller (DCC). Read the rest of this entry »