IT has a number of options to enable remote access for employees wanting mobile access to email and work applications from their iPads. There are however pros and cons for each option as well as some prerequisite questions to consider. Considerations Company iPads - For company owned iPads a likely scenario is to treat iPads similar to mobile phones. If company apps or email are allowed to run... (more...)

Citrix XenDesktop Delivers Cost Efficiencies for Hospital Needed to streamline desktop delivery while supporting multiple campuses. Construction of new main hospital limits staff onsite, therefore remote access for staff are remote sites are critical. “…without the centralized management capabilities of XenApp and XenDesktop, I would need twice as many people.” Alameda County... (more...)

This is the second blog in a two-part series to respond to the remaining unanswered questions from my Citrix, Microsoft, HP: Best Practices for Scaling Virtual Desktops webinar on June 17, 2010. I covered the first half of the questions in XenDesktop Scalability Q&A Part 1. Some questions with similar content have been combined into a single question and others have been adjusted for typing errors.... (more...)

Partners and Citrix Certified Instructors (CCIs) are now able to learn about the latest technologies with two new FREE Learning Labs for XenDesktop and XenApp. Citrix Learning Labs provide a great opportunity to explore new releases of Citrix products and integrated solutions through a video tutorial and hands-on lab exercises. Now Available: CLL-003-1W Customizing Virtual Desktops with Citrix XenDesktop... (more...)

For those of you who missed the June 18th TechTalk on the design for a 20,000 user environment, missed out. Well, not really.  Luckily, we recorded the presentation so you can watch it whenever you desire.  As you know, the webinar was based on a reference design for a 70,000 user school district.  Links to the materials are as follows: TechTalk Webinar for 20,000 User Design Reference... (more...)

Building a virtual desktop is simply a matter of installing the Windows operating system. Right?  Slow down… although this will work, it won’t give you the best performance and scalability.  One of the items that many people mistakenly forget to accomplish is to optimize the base operating system.  This is the 7th mistake out of the top 10 mistakes made with virtual... (more...)

Two days ago I provided a PowerShell script that could be used to generate an import CSV file for Provisioning Services (PVS). However, after importing the devices, a vDisk still needed to be assigned (if you didn’t configure a template) and more importantly, an account still needed to be created in Active Directory for each device. These extra steps increased the complexity of the import process. I... (more...)

Delivering a graphically rich user experience over a Wide Area Network (WAN) is a challenge.  HDX utilizes several technologies to provide a “like local” experience for 2D Graphics over a WAN.  Built-in technologies like image acceleration, progressive display, frame rate control, queuing-and-tossing, super cache and persistent cache work together to provide the user with high... (more...)

This blog is to respond to questions from my Citrix, Microsoft, HP: Best Practices for Scaling Virtual Desktops webinar on June 17, 2010. I received 22 questions during the webinar and unfortunately did not have time to answer them all. I will cover the first half of them in this blog and address the remainder in a follow-up blog. Some questions with similar content have been combined into a single... (more...)

All I want is a list of documents that will help me design my XenDesktop environment.  Who else wants the same thing?  I bet many of you are saying “Yes, Me too!!”  That’s great and everything but how do you know when a new white paper is released that relates to XenDesktop design?  Do you keep your own personal library of white papers for XenDesktop... (more...)