On a flight to San Francisco, of course!
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working with our product teams to pull together the most compelling Summit content yet. Over 60 breakout sessions to complement our Keynote presentations will help you transform the way your customers value virtual computing, which means more sales for you!
From technical sessions like design principles for large-scale hosting and cloud infrastructure to sales sessions on how to drive greater account penetration through the explosion in mobile devices, we’ve got sessions to give you something new and valuable to talk about with your customers.
If you want to learn how to position and sell Citrix OpenCloud to enterprises, accelerate PoC testing and unseat the competition, or get the most from our alliances with Microsoft and Cisco, this is the best investment you can make to be ready to sell new deals when you get home. And, of course, we’ll show you all of the latest enhancements to desktop, application, and server virtualization.
The registration site is open now! Take a minute to sign up and secure your spot. The session catalog will go live soon so you can pick and choose the most valuable sales and technical sessions for your business. Remember the Hands-On Labs and TechEdge sessions too!
I look forward to seeing you in San Francisco. I’ll be at our Partner Transformation Center – next to registration, so stop by and say hi. We’ll show you how to get the most out of your Citrix Partner Network membership.
It seems like months have passed since we shipped XenDesktop 5, but in reality, it has only been weeks. As the new year began, I’ve spoken to a number of customers about XenDesktop 5, and I am excited about what I’m hearing.
In a recent conversation, I was briefing a room full of architects and administrators at a manufacturing company. I was showing them how the XenDesktop 5 hosted-virtual desktop delivery infrastructure (One of several FlexCast desktop and on-demand app delivery models) has built-in provisioning that leverages a single instance of a gold image to “boot” thousands of desktops. I showed them how MCS uses an identity disk and then a separate differencing disk at runtime to enable administrators to apply patches to a single image and update the entire deployment.
They were very impressed with the story and were excited about reducing the need for expensive storage and asked about how to configure this provisioning service. I asked them if they had installed XenDesktop 5, and they responded that they did and had gone through the steps in the wizard to create 40 VMs. I explained that they already had installed and configured the most powerful virtual desktop provisioning infrastructure in the industry.
XenDesktop 5 delivered a number of powerful new features. These include the ability to securely deliver Windows, web and SaaS apps from a single infrastructure to a range of new devices like iPads and smartphones. Also, a fully scriptable management interface, Desktop Studio… and, Desktop Director, a powerful web-based tool for the service desk. Under the covers, however, lies one of the most interesting innovations in XenDesktop 5, designed to forever change desktop lifecycle management.
Citrix calls this Machine Creation Services (MCS).
The name is misleading. Machine Creation Services is about far more than just how to “kick off” new hosted virtual machine desktops. Instead, it is designed to:
1) Think about the entire desktop and application lifecycle and workflow with the ultimate goal of allowing the enterprise to manage single instances of the operating system and applications
2) To only store it once with a complete history of patches and updates
3) Apply those changes to existing VMs,
4) …and work with the hypervisor and storage layer to minimize both storage capacity AND IOPS for maximum performance and efficiency.
The scalability of XenDesktop 5 hosted VM desktops is highly modular, taking the stress off of any one Desktop Delivery Controller (DDC) by keeping the state in a database that can scale as high as 40-50 thousand desktops in any one site. DDCs front end the database and now each single instance (a virtual or physical server) of a DDC can handle 10-20k desktops out of the box; so you just add more virtual or physical servers in front of the database for HA and to scale to obscene size deployments.
This blog series will feature a collection of design architects and deployment experts who have been involved in the most rigorous laboratory and field testing program to date. Check back here for links to some real-world best practices for design.
Table of Contents: (Current and upcoming articles)
MCS or PVS, What should I be using? by Ken Bell
How do I migrate my existing XenDesktop environment to XenDesktop 5? by Simon Plant
I need some rough Sizing Guidelines to get started by Dan Feller
What happended to the PVS setup tool? by Patrick Carey
Storage considerations for XenDesktop by Vishal Ganeriwala
Show me the numbers! Large scale performance testing by Martin Rowan and Bernie Hannon
MCS and Intellicache – XenServer optimized for XenDesktop by Sam Webster
Apple hat Anfang 2010 als erster Hersteller mit dem Apple iPad ein völilg neuartiges Konzept für Tablets mit Touchscreen vorgestellt. Eine Geräteklasse, die bisher auf hohes Interesse stoßt und in kürzester Zeit auch zu starker Nachfrage in den Chefetagen von Unternehmen geführt hat.
Doch Apple ist hier nicht mehr der einzige Anbieter auf dem Markt. Die Android-Fraktion hat in den letzten Monaten reagiert und Hersteller wie Samsung haben mit diesem Betriebssystem ebenfalls erste Tablets erfolgreich vertrieben.
Nun ist es Citrix’ erklärte Philosophie, Kunden über jedes Endgerät (mit einem signifikanten Marktanteil) durch Citrix Receiver den Zugriff auf virtuelle Anwendungen und Desktops möglich zu machen.
Es gibt bereits Receiver zum kostenlosen Download für die neuartigen Smartphones und Tablets wie Apples iPhone und iPad, Android-, Blackberry- und Windows Mobile-basierte Geräte, und im vergangenen Dezember hat Citrix gemeinsam mit Google auch schon den Receiver für das Google Chrome OS Betriebssystem präsentiert, das noch 2011 erscheinen wird.
Ein weiterer Meilenstein ist nun die Präsentation des Citrix Receiver für die neuen webOS-basierten Tablets, die von Hewlett Packard Anfang Februar vorgestellt wurden. Diese sollen Hewlett-Packard zufolge “noch in diesem Frühjahr” auf dem Markt erscheinen, und zeitgleich ist die Verfügbarkeit des Citrix Receiver dafür geplant.
Benutzer haben Citrix Receiver bereits mehr als 2 Mio. mal heruntergeladen und machen ihn damit zu einer der erfolgreisten Business-Anwendung.
Attention New York City area users and administrators…
Just a reminder that the next New York Citrix User Group Meeting will be held at the Microsoft New York Metro District tomorrow, February 17th!
Date: Feb. 17, 2011 (Thursday)
Time: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM EST
Register Now
The goal of a User Group is simple: To foster dialogue and an exchange of ideas within the Citrix community, allowing users and administrators to share information and best practices, hear from the experts, and grow their body of knowledge and expertise.
Agenda:
During this meeting, you will:
- Find out about the architecture and design of XenDesktop
- Hear customer stories
- Hear from a technology partner, WYSE
- Collaborate with top Citrix consultants and peers
You are the key to a successful Citrix User Group community! So come out for some technology collaboration and fun with the Citrix experts.
Attend and you’ll have the chance to win some great prizes!
Location:
Microsoft
1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10104
(212) 245-2100
If you’ll be in or around NYC tomorrow, I hope you can attend! Stay tuned to the Citrix User Group Community site for news and information about upcoming Citrix User Group meetings and activities.
Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Follow me on Twitter
Attention Boston area users and administrators…
Just a reminder that the next Boston Citrix User Group Meeting will be held at the Citrix offices in Bedford tomorrow, February 16th!
Date: Feb. 16, 2011 (Wednesday)
Time: 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM EST
Register Now
The goal of a User Group is simple: To foster dialogue and an exchange of ideas within the Citrix community, allowing users and administrators to share information and best practices, hear from the experts, and grow their body of knowledge and expertise.
Agenda:
During this meeting, you will:
- Find out about the architecture and design of XenDesktop
- Hear customer stories
- Hear from a technology partner, WYSE
- Collaborate with top Citrix consultants and peers
You are the key to a successful Citrix User Group community! So come out for some technology collaboration and fun with the Citrix experts.
Attend and you’ll have the chance to win some great prizes!
Location:
Citrix Offices
14 Crosby Drive
Bedford, MA 01730
(781) 301-8000
If you’ll be in or around Bedford tomorrow, I hope you can attend! Stay tuned to the Citrix User Group Community site for news and information about upcoming Citrix User Group meetings and activities.
Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Follow me on Twitter
Everyone associated with virtualization is obsessed with storage! Well, it may be hyperbole to some but it cannot be ignored as one of the key challenges in desktop virtualization.
But why so much talk about storage? After all, the concept of storage has been there for ages. Yes it existed before digital storage, in the form of physical files. Later on the concept caught-up for digital storage when the PCs invaded the households. This is precisely the reason for the noise and confusion! Everyone assumes they understand storage. After all, how complicated can it be when every computer user has knowledge of storing digital data on HDD/DVD/CD/USB/external drives etc? However, the fact remains that storage is least understood and taken for granted by many, even though it is complicated, especially for desktop virtualization which requires a specific expertise to configure it.
The reality in virtualization is further complex for storage. Things were simpler until Direct Attached Storage (DAS). However, since the introduction of NAS and SAN in the virtualization environment it has become more complex. We are faced with issues including RPM, RAID, IOPS, file vs. block, thick vs. thin provisioning etc. which are all relevant for desktop virtualization.
The key drivers for desktop virtualization are reducing the capex/opex and increasing the agility of the business environment. The TCO gets impacted heavily if the storage is not configured correctly for desktop virtualization, specifically for NAS/SAN. There are numerous challenges to overcome for optimizing the storage in the desktop virtualization environment. For example, sizing, cost, performance and skilled storage resources are a few key ones. Few desktop administrators have been trained on NAS/SAN storage configuration. The skilled storage resources are more focused on storage provisioning for server virtualization mainly to optimize the database, ERP or exchange applications. Storage is one of the highest item impacting TCO for infrastructure, and even more so in desktop virtualization. Optimally configured storage can significantly increase the number of virtualized desktops supported. Storage and virtualization vendors working together should provide guidelines including best practices and configuration / sizing guides etc. so that the end users reap all the benefits and feel more confident to embrace desktop virtualization.
Citrix has invested considerably in the Citrix Ready program and is working with key storage vendors to address these market needs. Storage partners can make use of the Citrix Ready program to certify their products and validate their offerings with Citrix products. Citrix has introduced StorageLink for better management and seamless configuration of storage. StorageLink also provides site recovery automation capabilities. Citrix’s introduction of Intellicache will also help in reducing TCO.
To conclude, I am hoping that even though the storage and virtualization vendors have been showing greater cooperation day-by-day, there is still an immediate need for storage vendors to focus their attention to address the market needs of desktop virtualization, which has its own specific storage issues to deal with.
The views expressed here are mine alone and have not been authorized by, and do not necessarily reflect the views of, Citrix.
Attention Pittsburgh area users and administrators…
Just a reminder that the next Pittsburgh Citrix User Group Meeting will be held tomorrow, February 15th!
Date: Feb. 15, 2011 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM ET
The goal of a User Group is simple: To foster dialogue and an exchange of ideas within the Citrix community, allowing users and administrators to share information and best practices, hear from the experts, and grow their body of knowledge and expertise.
Agenda:
During this meeting, you will:
- Find out about the architecture and design of XenDesktop
- Hear customer stories
- Hear from a technology partner, WYSE
- Collaborate with top Citrix consultants and peers
You are the key to a successful Citrix User Group community! So come out for some technology collaboration and fun with the Citrix experts.
Attend and you’ll have the chance to win some great prizes!
Location:
Rivers Casino
777 Casino Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
(412) 231-7777
If you’ll be in or around Pittsburgh tomorrow, I hope you can attend! Stay tuned to the Citrix User Group Community site for news and information about upcoming Citrix User Group meetings and activities.
Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Follow me on Twitter
Don’t worry we can help you! Just get your new Citrix and Microsoft marketing templates on the Citrix Marketing Concierge Demand Gen site. In this seminar in a box you’ll find: email invitations, email reminders, scripted power points, welcome letters, surveys and much more. You just need to customize the materials with your information and send it out to your customers and propects. Putting an event together has never been easier… It’s ready to go and it’s Free! Check it out.
At Citrix, we have been advocating virtual computing as a simple and easy, and effective and efficient way to enable “workshifting” – moving work to the most optimal place, time and device.
There was a time when most of us were anchored to the office (place), tethered to the physical workstation or PC (device) and bound to the 9-5 office hours (time). The boundaries were clearly – but rigidly – drawn around where we work, when we work and what devices we use to perform our work. Fast forward to 2011: A recent Citrix survey underscores that working anywhere and everywhere is the new normal:
- 87% of organizations allow working outside of your office
- 79% of you work outside the office one or more days a week
- 98% are “much more” or “just as” productive working outside of the office
- 64% use three or more devices on a daily basis.
As we choose to perform our jobs at the time and location and on a device of our choice, we are becoming the “Everywhere Employee”. Working remotely is no longer something just a few of us do… it’s become part of everyday life for MOST employees. An insurance agent will work at his optimal place – closer to her customer. An executive may respond to his CEO’s request using her Android or iPhone without leaving her kids’ soccer game. A consultancy firm will setup a temporary office closer to client’s location, enabling consultants to access their apps, desktop and data at the new location faster than they put up the tents and cubes! A mining company or an offshore drilling firm will allow their employees access their apps, desktops and data in hostile, unfriendly locations… certainly not your typical IT cubicle. A multinational corporation will set up branch offices closer to where resources and skills are available, markets are growing faster and cost structures are friendlier.
With over 60% of employees working outside the traditional headquarters, these everywhere employees are no longer chained to a place, device or time. They want to feel right at home whatever place they work from, on any network they connect to, on whatever device at a time of their choice. This certainly drives increased productivity, employee work-life balance and customer experience.
To make the everywhere employee “feel” right at home everywhere, she needs a virtual desktop that looks, feels, acts and performs like her physical PC, even over a wide-area network (WAN). Desktop, app and network performance all become critical to deliver a delightful experience for such employees.
Virtual computing makes all of this possible. It encompasses a broad gamut of computing paradigms: virtual meetings, virtual desktops and apps, virtual servers, virtual networks, virtual storage and the uber virtual infrastructure… the cloud.
Today, Citrix is taking another major step toward making these “everywhere employees” feel right at home… even when they are working miles from headquarters over a wide area network. To make this a reality, Citrix today announced an updated XenDesktop Platinum Edition that now includes HDX WAN optimization, powered by the breakthrough Citrix Branch Repeater VPX technologies. For millions of employees who increasingly depend on the WAN to get things done, this is very good news indeed.
Sai
Related blogs:
In the world of desktop virtualization, user experience is everything… it is what makes or breaks a successful desktop virtualization strategy. Today, Citrix raised the bar again, announcing a new addition to its popular Citrix XenDesktop that promises to juice performance even further for employees accessing their virtual desktops, apps and data over a wide area network (WAN).
Starting today, any customer who buys the Platinum Edition of XenDesktop gets a powerful new WAN optimization virtual appliance at no additional charge that can be deployed quickly and easily in any branch office to boost XenDesktop performance for branch users. The new solution, powered by the breakthrough Citrix Branch Repeater VPX virtual appliance, is specifically architected for accelerating and optimizing the delivery of virtual desktops, apps and data for end users, while reducing bandwidth utilization for IT administrators. 
The March 2010 launch of Citrix Branch Repeater VPX captured the imagination and interest of networking customers around the world by delivering the power of WAN optimization with the flexibility and agility of a software-based virtual appliance. Citrix customers were further intrigued by the fact that Branch Repeater went beyond the kind of WAN optimization offered by the likes of Riverbed to offer specific optimizations for the ICA protocol that plays such a big role in the HDX technologies that have placed XenDesktop at the head of the virtual desktop market. The fact that thousands of XenDesktop customers downloaded Branch Repeater VPX in 2010 to try it out for themselves, prompted us to make HDX WAN optimization a standard feature for our most strategic XenDesktop customers.
Adding this capability to XenDesktop Platinum Edition seemed like the obvious answer. More than 70% of our XenDesktop customers already choose our Platinum Edition to deliver a wide mix of different virtual desktop technologies to a diverse range of employees – from task workers and office employees, to road warriors and contractors. And increasingly, these large XenDesktop customers have been turning to Branch Repeater to enhance performance over the WAN. Gartner1, in fact, credits Branch Repeater’s top three market share position in the advanced-platform WAN Optimization controller market to the strong acceptance of XenDesktop.
We think these early adopters are on to something ─ Citrix XenDesktop, combined with the HDX WAN Optimization technology from Branch Repeater – accelerates the delivery of virtual desktops and provides a high definition experience to branch office workers (See 3rd Party Performance Report: XenDesktop vs View with and without WAN Optimization). They have led the transformation of desktop virtualization and WAN optimization markets with innovative and integrated use of these technologies.
That’s why we’re moving aggressively to accelerate this adoption even further – making it easy for ALL strategic XenDesktop customers to deliver any type of virtual desktop and app to any user with the best, high-def experience. Specifics of today’s announcement include:
- Effective February 14, 2011, XenDesktop Platinum will include the new HDX WAN optimization feature, powered by Branch Repeater VPX – at no additional charge. You can deploy the new HDX WAN Optimization virtual appliances in unlimited number of branch offices with WAN links up to 45Mbps, if you buy XenDesktop Platinum, are current on XenDesktop Platinum SA or trade up to XenDesktop Platinum. This will allow XenDesktop Platinum customers to accelerate and optimize, on WAN links of up to 45Mbps bandwidth, delivery of virtual desktops and virtual apps, as well as native apps such as Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, SharePoint, and other data or application traffic.
- The new HDX WAN Optimization feature runs as a virtual appliance on either Citrix XenServer of VMware vSphere. In related news, the standalone Citrix Branch Repeater VPX virtual appliance is also now available for both XenServer and VMware hypervisors.
While this is great news for XenDesktop customers, it doesn’t mean the rest of the world can’t enjoy the benefits of Branch Repeater to get more out of their wide-area networks. Branch Repeater hardware and software appliances will both continue to be available for standalone purchases to ANY customer who wants blazing fast WAN performance and lower bandwidth costs from the vendor who brings virtualization, networking and cloud computing together.
For more information, please read Customer FAQ: Updated XenDesktop Platinum includes HDX WAN Optimization, powered by Branch Repeater VPX.
Try putting the pedal to the XenDesktop on wild wide-area networks… and feel the exhilarating XenDeskop ride!
Sai
1 Market Share Analysis: Application Acceleration Equipment, Worldwide, 3Q10 ( Dec 15th, 2010)
Related info:
Citrix Makes the “Everywhere Employee” Feel Right At Home…Even Over the WAN
3rd Party Performance Report: XenDesktop vs View with and without WAN Optimization
