Join us for the Nirvana Phone webinar February 9, 2010
See the demo!
Download the Nirvana Phone reference document

Citrix and Open Kernel Labs (OK Labs) are collaborating to take smart phones to the next level. Citrix and OK Labs recently announced the "nirvana phone" reference architecture that uses virtualization to enable both mobile communications and office desktop-type productivity on handheld mobile devices. (OK Labs is a leader in virtualization software for mobile devices, consumer electronics, and embedded systems and supports OKL4, an open source microkernel that is deployed on more than 500 million mobile phones worldwide.)

As SmartPhones continue to become more capable, fast networks become more pervasive, and virtual desktops like Citrix XenDesktop go mainstream, it is becoming increasingly possible to use a SmartPhone to perform tasks previously limited to laptops and desktops. Desktop virtualization is a concept that delivers a complete Windows desktop experience as an on-demand service to any user, anywhere on a variety of endpoint devices.

With support for docking to full-sized displays, keyboards, mice and other PC-type peripherals, Nirvana Phones will offer mobile workers a complete "virtual desktop in your pocket," allowing them to take their desktop anywhere without the need to carry around a full laptop. The following illustrates the Nirvana Phone concept:

The Nirvana Phone reference architecture incorporates many emerging capabilities in mobile chipsets and handsets like full resolution video and HD output.

Join us for the Nirvana Phone webinar February 9, 2010.

More on the Nirvana Phone

On February 4 2010, Citrix announced dramatic improvements to the economics of desktop virtualization(http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1862148). Our new test findings show that the capital cost and cost of ownership for virtual desktops continues to pull away from the costs of traditional PCs, making it easier to adopt virtual desktops for every user in the enterprise. In barely two years, the number of hosted virtual desktops you can get on a single server has increased by over 6X! Even more dramatic is the 10-fold increase (up to 5,000) in the number streamed desktops from a single server using Citrix's unique Provisioning Services technology. As a result, IT Pros can now deploy XenDesktop 4 at scale with not just less datacenter infrastructure but also significantly lower operating costs.

These scalability improvements are enabled by rapid advancements in our desktop virtualization software, as well as new generations of hardware, like the Intel Xeon 5500 "Nehalem" processor-based servers. In addition, these improvements are aided by Citrix best practices developed in real-world, large-scale virtual desktop implementations performed by our consultants, systems engineers and partners over the past 18 months. Our new scalability findings and methodologies are captured in reference architecture available online at http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/xendesktop-bdx/cds-scalability-wrapper-bdx.html. Look for updates to this site as we continue to raise the bar on scalability with XenDesktop.

Desktop virtualization adoption is accelerating worldwide. Citrix recently announced strong results for Q4 2009 and growing momentum for XenDesktop that is exceeding expectations on all fronts. In Q4 2009 alone, we acquired more than a 1000 customers for desktop virtualization. Several purchased over 10,000 seats, and many XenApp customers expanded their strategic implementations of Citrix technology by leveraging our Trade-Up program to upgrade to XenDesktop 4. In addition, there were several joint wins on Hyper-V as a result of our ongoing partnership with Microsoft. However, it's not just the growth of XenDesktop customers but also the growing number of use cases that I find interesting. In a recently completed survey, the following drivers/use cases were frequently cited by customers:
• Security and mobility
• Simplify desktop management through centralization
• Reduce PC hardware refresh
• Reduce downtime when upgrading apps
• Lack of IT staff at remote offices
• Application compatibility
• Disaster recovery
• Offshore developers

These are just some of the 60+ interesting use cases we have learnt about.

These exciting developments are kicking off what will be an eventful 2010. Let's take a look ahead at what to expect in 2010 for XenDesktop, and some of the milestones that will drive our strategy over the next year or so.

"Desktop Virtualization Made Easy": Best Practices For Adoption

As I mentioned above, Citrix has published some guidelines on how to design a XenDesktop architecture - but equally important are guidelines on how to adopt desktop virtualization across the organization.

In the early part of this year, we'll see a multi-phase model for adoption that is based on actual implementations and analyst studies. This model will break into steps what use cases to engage first, when to introduce different desktop delivery models, and how to optimize the infrastructure to reach every user in the organization. Think of it as a roadmap for enterprise-wide deployment. And through this journey, you'll be in a great place to leverage this desktop virtualization infrastructure for what may today seem like a very challenging task - upgrading an entire enterprise to Windows 7 easily, quickly and cost-effectively.

The Virtual Desktop Revolution - Coming for Mobile Users

Today, we can address mobile users with HDX technology that enables even 3G wireless connections to deliver a good user experience. We can also enable them to take their centrally managed virtual applications offline with application streaming and integration with Microsoft App-V. The remaining step is to enable a centrally managed, offline virtual desktop - one that is fully isolated and secured, automatically backed-up, and completely portable across hardware. Last year, Citrix announced XenClient, a bare-metal hypervisor that is the platform for local virtual desktop virtualization. This year, it will hit the market and, if early feedback on the technology is any indication, it will fly quickly out of the gates. Centrally managed desktops and apps for mobile users, road warriors- that are also available offline - will be a reality.

Enabling Manageability for Global Deployments

Desktop virtualization, done right, means empowering IT with all desktop and application delivery tools needed to meet any user requirement, on any device, over any network. Today, to meet this requirement involves a certain number of skills and management interfaces. Managing desktop virtualization infrastructure needs to get simpler than it is today - especially for end to end monitoring and delivery of desktops and apps.

We are also seeing a need for a different breed of tools for managing virtual desktops that were not required for virtualized server environments. Even in our larger customers, the number of VMs running server workloads may number in the low thousands. These customers are rolling out virtual desktops worldwide for tens of thousands of users. So, scaling to manage tens of thousands of VMs is a new challenge for these environments.

At Citrix, we see this challenge as an opportunity to raise the bar on manageability in 2010.

So those are some of my picks for the major milestones in the next year. Undoubtedly this will be a tremendous year for desktop virtualization - and for IT organizations.

Looking forward

Raj Dhingra
GM, XenDesktop.

Watch the Citrix and AppSense video podcast on DABCC where we discuss the requirements to create a complete enterprise desktop virtualization solution.  Citrix recommends AppSense as one of the leading User Environment Manager solution and together we are promoting XenDesktop 4 and the AppSense solution for large enterprise environments. 

Derek Cheung, Citrix Sr. Product Marketing Manager gives us an overview of Citrix XenDesktop 4 and the "When, Why and How" AppSense can benefit your company.  Gareth Kitson, AppSense Sr. Product Marketing Manager and Jon Wallace, Principal Consultant at AppSense will give us a demonstration of AppSense running in a Citrix XenDesktop environment.  

Watch Now!

We've been getting a lot of requests for information about a new Receiver for Windows Mobile devices. Can't give you all of data you want just yet, but here's a Sneak Peek of what the team is working on. We'll let you interpret what you're seeing for now, and give us your feedback on where you'd like to see the Roadmap for WinMo Receivers go, what you see that you liked, what you didn't see that you want.

Did you know that Citrix has a private, online Customer Advisory Community where global Citrix customers serve as virtual advisors, providing their perspectives and feedback to Citrix each week?  The Customer Advisory Community is comprised of 400 Citrix customers who span more than 30 countries and represent a broad cross-section of industries and organizations.

The Customer Advisory Community has a limited number of openings right now for Citrix customers who have either implemented, piloted, or plan to deploy Citrix XenDesktop.

Unlike technical support forums, the Customer Advisory Community offers members the opportunity to provide feedback to Citrix on a wide range of topics, including hot industry trends such as desktop virtualization; input into XenDesktop and other Citrix product roadmaps; feedback on Citrix marketing, education, licensing and technical support offerings; and insight into business topics, such as the impact of the economy on IT.
  
As a member of the Citrix Customer Advisory Community, you would also have the ability to: 

• Provide insight into your organization's needs and challenges
• Share your thoughts on a variety of technology industry topics
• Learn early on about new Citrix initiatives and influence their direction
• Interact and network with your peers in a private, online forum
• Receive periodic rewards in exchange for your participation (if your organization's policies allow)
  

Those chosen to participate in the Citrix Customer Advisory Community will be asked to complete a click-through Non-Disclosure Agreement, create an account, and then log in and contribute your thoughts (via surveys, bulletin boards, etc.) an average of 10-15 minutes per week. Citrix partners with Communispace Corporation, a professional community management firm, to host and moderate the online advisory community.

To be considered for membership, please click here to complete a brief, 10-minute questionnaire by February 17, 2010. Your responses will be kept confidential, and will be used only to determine your membership in the community. You'll then be notified within the next few weeks about the status of your membership.

We hope to see you in the community!

Yes, I am saying it...the cost of desktop virtualization is finally going in the right direction! For those of you who know me from my Forrester Research days, you will know that I was a huge proponent of desktop virtualization for reasons of security, manageability, compliance, flexibility, business continuity...the list goes on. However, I was quite vocal that desktop virtualization should NOT be considered for cost reduction, as the infrastructure costs were just too high.

By way of introduction, my name is Natalie Lambert and I am a new director of product marketing for Citrix XenDesktop. I came to Citrix in November of last year from Forrester where I covered desktop virtualization, among other things. While I loved being an analyst, I really wanted to jump over to the "other side" to start truly getting involved in the technologies that I have been consulting on for the past 7 years.

Given that I have only been at Citrix for 2 months, I still consider myself unbiased. So, when I say that the cost of desktop virtualization is going down, I really mean it. Yesterday, Citrix announced dramatic improvements in the scalability of XenDesktop. So, what does this mean? Let me compare this with what I found when I was at Forrester and wrote the report Inquiry Insights: Client Virtualization, Q3 2008. At a high level, I estimated that it costs organizations approximately $1,760 per user for hosted VM-based desktop virtualization (VDI). I got this number by assuming the following: 1) $300 per thin client; 2) $10,000 per server that can accommodate 10 users; 3) $200 storage costs per user (20 GB at $10 per GB); 4) $110 per device for the Windows VECD license (assuming the customer was not a Microsoft Software Assurance customer); and 5) $150 per user for the virtualization license. What I want to highlight here is the server cost: 10 users on a $10,000 server cost organizations approximately $1,000 per user. That was common back in July 2008 - especially for users getting started with desktop virtualization.

However, with the latest Intel® Xeon® processor™ 5500 technology, Citrix can now support 125 users per server when delivering hosted VM-based desktops. If we use the servers that Citrix just verified, the Dell PowerEdge R710, at $8,886 per server, the cost for the server infrastructure drops to $71 per user - instead of $1,000! Just that small change cuts the cost of desktop virtualization in half, if not more!! Now, I am aware that storage costs have changed as well, as cost per GB per user is not an accurate way to measure storage costs, I will leave this for another day and only say that those costs are going down as well.

In the end, desktop virtualization is still expensive (especially VDI), however, the costs are much more in your favor than ever before.

Junior Achievement of South Florida (JA) has launched the "Are You Faster Than a Football Player?" campaign. In conjunction with the Jason Taylor Foundation, this effort will raise up to $50,000 in donations from Citrix Systems, Inc.

The campaign features a video with Broward County fifth grader Kevin Hautigan in a head-to-head competition with Miami Dolphins All-Pro Jason Taylor. The tongue-in-cheek contest using Citrix solutions is posted on YouTube and Citrix will donate $1 each to JA and the Jason Taylor Foundation, up to $25,000 for each organization.

"The Jason Taylor Foundation is dedicated to supporting the education and empowerment of South Florida's youth so the decision to partner with JA for this campaign was a natural choice," said Seth Levit, executive director of the Jason Taylor Foundation.

For JA, the donation will go toward funding financial literacy programs like Finance Park and BizTown™. Every year, 40,000 Broward County fifth and eighth graders participate in JA programs. The BizTown programs provide a simulated community where students assume the roles of workers and consumers. Finance Park curriculum and subsequent experience involves role playing an adult who has a salary and a family; the students must create and live on a balanced budget. Emphasizing hands-on, experiential learning techniques, Finance Park and BizTown curriculum educates the community, children and adults alike, about the free enterprise system and how to successfully and responsibly manage their lives.
With the grand opening of the JA World Huizenga Center last fall, JA programs are now held in a new, state-of-the-art facility. Citrix donated all of the technology for the center.
"Our core mission is to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy," said Melissa Aiello, president of Junior Achievement of South Florida. "The money raised by 'Are You Faster Than a Football Player?' will be invaluable to supporting our work."

"Junior Achievement and the Jason Taylor Foundation are dedicated to empowering the students of South Florida in a creative and fun way." said Tony Dinkins, vice president of human resources for Citrix and JA board member. "Educating future generations, especially in the community we work in, is an important corporate citizenship objective for Citrix, so we're excited to help foster their innovative spirit with this campaign."

To see if Kevin is faster than Jason Taylor, play the video below:

For more information, please contact:
Kathryn Cousins
Junior Achievement of South Florida
Kathryn@jasouthflorida.org
(954) 979-7110

Seth Levit
Jason Taylor Foundation
seth@jasontaylorfoundation.com
(954) 424-0799

To learn more about the technology used in the video, visit http://www.citrix.com/faster.

Or any Application for that matter.

Chris Fleck gave fair warning. I'm here to tell you that it works and its here, now. The computing model just got turned on it's ear.

Why would you want this? Because it increases your mobility without having to reboot your laptop everytime you want to use it, it saves time and money, and it delivers any Windows platform or application to your iPhone, iPod or iPad.

What was previously just a future scenario is now a reality.

Citrix runs Windows and Windows Applications from a central server, called XenDesktop, and pipes it out to your mobile device through the NetScaler AGEE. This is perfect for the iPad which has a screen size of 1024x768. Now the touch, squeeze and pinch is available for all of your Enterprise applications, making them usable on an iPad.

The small form factor of the iPhone was a little hindering for Enterprise applications. Now, with the iPad and Citrix Receiver, Enterprise Apps are usable. Although, while putting together this POC the Product Manager sent me an eMail from Microsoft Office 2010 running on a Windows 7 Desktop ... from his iPhone. This confirms that form factors and the computing model is about to be rocked.

The magic is in the way that Citrix hosts the Windows desktops and delivers them to the mobile device. The advantage is all of the computing power of multi-core processors and large memory can still be utilized by Windows, while all of your touching and pinching power is localized at your mobile device.

All of the communication is done over secure tunnels, so all of the information is secure.

For this Proof of Concept, We started with XenServer, installed XenApp and XenDesktop, built a NetScaler to Front-end and secure the infrastructure, and fired up our iPhones and iPads. Its fast, easy and cool. We used the Citrix Web Interface for authentication to keep it simple. You can also use LDAP or any other type of authentication method.

Guides

You can have this setup, by following the guides we wrote up as a result of this testing.

Download the Deployment Guide - ICA Proxy for XenApp & XenDesktop for Citrix Receiver for iPhone, iPod and iPad.

Download the Deployment Guide - ICA Proxy for iPhone, using LDAP authentication.

Delivery Center has arrived.

Products

XenServer is free

Get XenDesktop here.

Download NetScaler VPX here

Citrix Receiver is available for Free on the App Store

Get an iPhone, iPod or iPad from Apple.

Watch it live

Tap into the power of AppExpert!

Ok, tell me if you've heard this one before? How big can my XenDesktop farm be? The response is "It depends. . . Blah, blah, blah"

I've had many people ask me this exact question. I don't like saying "it depends", but it really does.  But how can anyone design their XenDesktop environment with an "It Depends" answer?  Well, the answer to that is It Depends Enough joking around. Let's take a look at XenDesktop and understand what goes into approximating the size of the farm.

The one component that will have the greatest impact on the size of a XenDesktop farm is the XenDesktop controller. The Controller is used to:

1. Maintain proper level of idle desktops (in hosted VM-based model)
2. Monitor the state of virtual desktops (idle, online, offline, in use, etc) for hosted VM-based VDI and hosted Blade PCs.
3. Authenticate users
4. Enumerate virtual desktops for the user
5. Connect a user to their appropriate virtual desktop
   

Now that we know the determining factor is the controller, one would think that it would be easy to figure out the max size of the farm.  One thing we need to completely understand is that there is no number at which point the XenDesktop farm will simply stop functioning.  There is no defined limit.  The limit is defined based on the environment like:

1. XenDesktop Controller Architecture: Is the XenDesktop Controller implemented as a single server or are the functions split across multiple controllers?
2. Logon storm: How fast and long will users logon during the start of a shift or a workday. I discussed this in a previous blog.
3. Logon Latency Acceptance: How long will a user accept their long time being?  10 seconds? 20 seconds? 60 seconds?
   

Controller Architecture

Looking at different implementation examples, I know that one will get the best logon speeds and farm sizes by separating out functionality within the controller.  For the large XenDesktop implementations, we recommend 3 controllers:

1. Master: Responsible for idle desktops and connecting users to a desktop
2. Brokers (x2): responsible for authentication, enumeration and virtual desktop state monitoring
   

By separating out theses loads, I've seen farms scale over 5000 hosted VM-Based desktops. Read about this architecture in the Modular Reference Architecture for XenDesktop.

Logon Storm

Like I stated earlier, the logon storm will have an impact on the environment.  During a storm, users will authenticate, enumerate, and connect to their desktop. For each connection that is made, a new idle desktop must take the place of previously idle desktop.  As you can see, by separating the XenDesktop Controller functionality across multiple systems, the logon storm's impact is spread across multiple systems, thus helping to negate the impact. The impact of the storm is explained in the blog How User Patterns Impact a Desktop Virtualization Infrastructure

Logon Latency

How long are you willing to wait for a logon to complete?  As the number of users connecting during a logon storm increases, the logon latency will also slowly increase. At some point, the logon latency will become too great for users to accept.  At that time, it is often appropriate to start distributing your load across multiple XenDesktop farms.

OK, OK, Just give me the answer!!!

So how big can my XenDesktop farm be?  2,000-20,000 users. 

1. Smaller: If I don't separate out my controller functionality, and have thousands of users connecting within a short duration, and expect sub-10 second logon times, my farm size will be limited in size
2. Larger: If I separate out my controller functionality, have tens of thousands of users connecting over 1 hour,  and my users will accept 20-40 second logon times
   

When you are asked about how large can your XenDesktop farm be, you need to ask a few questions before you can give an educated guess:

1. Will we be able to separate out our controller functionality?
2. How many users do you expect to login within a 10 minute period?
3. How long will users accept their logon times becoming?
   

I've seen logon rates of 2,000 users in 10 minutes, with separated controller functionality and 20-30 second logon times occurring in XenDesktop farms of 5,000-6,000 users. 

I hope this helps shed some light on how big is too big for your virtual desktop infrastructure.

Daniel

Lead Architect - Worldwide Consulting Solutions
Follow Me on twitter: @djfeller
Blog for Next-Gen Desktop: Ask The Architect
Questions, then email Ask The Architect
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Alessandro Perilli noted our recent change to the number of supported virtual machines per core for Intel Nehalem (Xeon 5500 series) CPUs. In case you're wondering, we support up to 16 VMs per core on XenServer today, for XenDesktop workloads.

The new support level is based on exhaustive testing with the Project VRC 2.0 workload for virtual desktops. Bernie Hannon, who has conducted our experiments, has discovered some interesting comparative results for XenServer versus other hypervisors too. You can read about his testing here.

Suffice it to say that XenServer 5.5 is the hands-down leader in performance for hosted virtual desktops. This remains true even in the presence of memory overbooking and common code page sharing, neither of which helps to increase the maximum number of useable VMs per server. Because comparative results require careful testing and even permission from other vendors before they can be published, we have simply elected to raise our own support levels, and to note that our competitor has not yet managed to do the same.

If you are interested in this topic, you should plan to come to Citrix Synergy in San Francisco, in May, where we plan to demonstrate the scalability of Citrix XenDesktop 4, and show what's coming on the technology roadmap as we drive towards being able to scalably and affordably deliver tens of thousands of virtual desktops.

Most people know by now that XenDesktop supports three virtualization platforms with VMware ESX being one of them.  However, there are at least four different editions for ESX.  Even if you have decided to use ESX for all or part of the XenDesktop deployment, which edition do you really need?  Can you stick with 3.5, or should you use 4.0?  As part of the CSC Dynamic Desktop offering, we have researched what virtualization features are useful in a XenDesktop deployment and here are the results.   

Before I continue further, I want emphasis that I am focusing on which version and edition is needed to host the XenDesktop virtual desktop VMs.  The XenDesktop server infrastructure components such as the DDC, XenApp and Web Interface should follow the same policy as your other server VMs.  Since server and desktop VM requirements differ quite a bit, it can make sense to use one virtualization platform for servers and a different one for desktops.

Since your virtual desktop VMs have different requirements, what ESX features are beneficial in a XenDesktop environment?  The following is a list of those features with a brief description of their functionality and what ESX edition is required.   Except where listed, each feature is available in both ESX 3.5 and 4.0.

In summary most of the features are available in ESX Standard which retails for around $1590 for a dual-socket server.  Paying an extra $2900 gives an administrator the ability to manually rebalance VMs across the ESX hosts via vMotion and an extra $4160 (compared to standard) provides automatic load balancing of VMs.  Taking a ballpark conservative estimate of 50 users for the latest dual-socket server the cost per user is about $32 retail per user for ESX standard, $90 for ESX Advanced and $115 for ESX Enterprise. 

The next logical question is if it is worth an extra $83 per user to be able to dynamically load balancing running virtual desktop VMs across ESX hosts?  In some cases it will be, but for most cases if you need to use ESX in a XenDesktop deployment, ESX Standard is the better choice.   The additional thin provisioning functionality in 4.0 does not usually justify an upgrade from 3.5 especially if this functionality is supported in your storage device.

If you are using XD with ESX, what version and edition are you using?  Are there any other features that you find useful for managing your virtual desktop VMs?  Feel free to leave a comment or you can contact me via email.  

Sunil Kumar
Principal Architect, Desktop Virtualization
CSC Consulting

Since I wrote my blog post about delivering VoIP apps with XenDesktop 4 and HDX RealTime, numerous readers have kindly posted comments or emailed me about the great results they're getting with our new optimized-for-speech audio codec. And don't forget, XenDesktop 4 introduced isochronous USB support, too. One customer wrote to share their experience using a federated Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) infrastructure with Wyse HDX Ready thin clients, HP server hardware, Polycom USB handsets and Microsoft webcams. Without naming this major telecommunications company or disclosing any confidential information, here are some of the juicy details I can share about their experience delivering Microsoft Office Communicator from XenDesktop 4.

The configuration:

• XenDesktop 4 using FlexCast delivery technology and VM-based Windows 7 VDI desktops
• Wyse R90LW HDX Ready dual-monitor thin clients running the Citrix 11.2 online plug-in
• HP ProLiant DL380 G5 server with XenServer 5.5
• 100 Mbps LAN and 5 Mbps ADSL Internet connection
• Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2
• Microsoft Office 2007 and Office Communicator 2007 R2
• Polycom CX200 "Catalina" USB telephones
• Microsoft LifeCam NX-3000 webcams

Their experience:

"IM, voice chat and video conferencing, desktop sharing and even voice-chat-over-federation are all functioning perfectly well without any issues and with a very good quality (as good as on a normal PC). We were very excited about it... We were pretty astonished about the stability and quality even over federation!"

Derek Thorslund
Citrix Product Strategist, HDX

We recently conducted a series of tests to determine the limits of VM density for a single XenServer 5.5 host running XenDesktop VMs (XenServer Single Server Scalability with XenDesktop). Previously, our VM-per-host limit for typical server-based workloads had been only 50. We knew, as did our customers and partners from their own experience running XenDesktop workloads on XenServer, that the real number of desktop VMs possible on a single host was considerably higher. The results of our tests were better than expected---130 Windows XP desktops on a 72GB, dual socket, quad core (Xeon x5570) Intel Nehalem host. 

Commenting in his blog Desktop Virtualization Performance Testing, Simon Bramfitt said of these results "This is a significant improvement on Citrix's previously published results, and certainly enough to bring it back into line with results VMware previously published". No argument there. It's significant in that it puts to rest the question whether or not XenDesktop together with XenServer can stand up to its competitors and achieve similar ROI based on real-world scenarios. He also noted that as important as the numbers are themselves, our decision to use a third party test program from Login Consultants (Login VSI 2.0) as the basis for these tests was the right one. We agree. Login VSI is the benchmarking tool behind Project Virtual Reality Check (http://www.virtualrealitycheck.net/) and is poised to become the standard for virtual desktop performance benchmarking (if it hasn't already done so). Using Login VSI, we were able to establish not just the number of XenDesktop VMs we could run on a XenServer host, but more importantly, how many of these VMs could run under a considerable workload while meeting the standard for acceptable performance at the same time. We knew that by choosing to use Login VSI vs. an internal test program, these results would be better able to stand up to scrutiny in the market, the truest measure of performance.  

Incidentally, 130 Windows XP VMs on a dual socket, quad core Nehalem server translates to 16.25 VMs per physical CPU core. VMW made it known just a few days ago that they had set their own sites on achieving 16 VMs per core VMware to increase consolidation ratio to 16 VMs/core?, but has yet to actually demonstrate that it can be done. Citrix, on the other hand, already has.

Beyond the hype the of the iPad by Apple lovers and the nay sayers who say "who needs it " the iPad is likely to impact company IT practice more than anticipated. For many CIO's and IT Directors there is a growing interest in minimizing the expense and support of endpoint devices. Many companies have taken the fist step to allow access to company apps from unmanaged home PC's utilizing Application and/or Desktop Virtualization, however very few have taken the leap to allow employees to really bring there own computer to work "BYOC".

The reasons for the hesitancy typically revolve around security, compliance, local data and risk to internal networks. These concerns have been reason enough for most companies to not to move beyond where they are today. The policy is either a company provided PC/Laptop only, or the next level of enablement allowing controlled access from outside the company network.

What frequently changes IT's priority to move from the status quo is a management decree or revenue generating employees. Enter the iPad. Regardless of current IT policy the iPad is going to be purchased by Executives, Sale Managers, Physicians, Traders and other money makers. In increasing numbers these employes are going to bring the devices to work and ask IT to support them. Although the first reaction may be no way, the current obstacles of BYOC don't necessarily apply. If IT allows access from a Receiver equipped iPad with a XenApp/XenDesktop backend the following issues and concerns easily can be managed.

Exposure to Internal Networks - The iPad has no Ethernet port to plug into office RJ45 jacks exposing the internal network. Many companies already provide an isolated guest WiFi network that only allows a secure remote SSL/VPN connection. Alternatively no WiFi access could be enforced and only allow controlled access from the independent 3G carrier network completely isolating the device from the company network.

Company Data on Employee Devices - With Citrix Receiver for iPad no data is stored or runs on the device. Email can be limited to company hosted XenApp sessions of Outlook or Notes and disallow the local native email.

Mixing Personal and Business Data - IT does not want to deal with iTunes, personal music and photos, licensing issues etc. With an employee owned device all these issues are the responsibility of the employee and IT can define a "virtual" wall between IT delivered Desktops and apps that never mix with the employees device.

Replacement Issues - Most BYOC iPads will be secondary devices that won't kill the employee's productivity if its out of commission, they can just go back to their primary PC. For some users like Physicians who may depend on an iPad, keeping loaners on-hand can be easy, and set up / configuration can be done in minutes.

Support of Non Company Devices - Aside from replacement issues IT would prefer not to be in possession of employee devices for set-up causing logistical and asset control issues. With Citrix Receiver IT can simply send an email or have an Intranet site that employees only need to click a link to configure the iPad for company apps and desktops.

IT Security Policies - Most companies have specific policies in place for allowing controlled secure remote access. This may include 2 Factor Authentication, 128 SSL Encryption, and password protection enforcement. A Receiver enabled iPad can support all of these requirements.

So for the many companies who are thinking BYOC is an interesting concept but " not for us " , it could be worthwhile to consider the Citrix Receiver enabled iPad as a safe way to allow employees to Bring Their Own Computer.

Have you been asked to support the iPad already ? Do you think the iPad is a door opener to BYOC?

XenApp Expert Series - Informational, News, Interviews (2010) The show where we interview the experts to get you the latest news in on-demand application delivery with XenApp. Host Vinny Sosa (@vinnysosa) interviews Product Manager David Wagner on new User Profile Streaming technology planned for availability in XenApp for R2. Episode 4, Season 2.

As of late, indicators are starting to point to the beginning of a recovery in the economy. As the economy picks up momentum and credit markets thaw further, the next mergers and acquisitions movement will start gaining steam. Question is, is your enterprise ready for the next business cycle? Can your infrastructure adapt to the rapid fire pace of change that is going to happen?

I had a discussion with a CIO of a major insurance company a while back and I asked him, "what are the top five technology priorities for 2009?" His answer was, "Expanding IT infrastructure to keep up with growth." He was being told by the CEO that IT needed to be more "agile" to keep up with what was going on in their industry. I asked him what he was currently doing around that priority and he mentioned virtualization in general terms and some other ancillary items, but not once did expanding their current Citrix environment get mentioned. I asked him about this and he said that it didn't even register with him that Citrix could do more than just "remote access to applications". This is truly the typical response I get from most executives around the "Citrix question". Winners in these economic times are the companies that are making judicious investments to prepare for the upturn. In the past, the greatest changes in companies' relative positions in their respective industries have occurred during times of economic turbulence.

This company was already a significant user of XenApp but was just stuck at that one product, using Web Interface to facilitate external access, etc. They had no idea what to do or where to go after that. I asked him if "delivery of IT services" was a strategic priority within his environment. The answer I got wasn't surprising, but he said "partially". I asked him how fast they moved the last time a new application had to be rolled out, how fast could they bring on the latest acquisition the company just completed, how were they handling an ever-increasing mobile workforce? I got the "tilted head" look. I knew he was thinking at this point. His answer again wasn't surprising.

This meeting quickly went to the discussion of operating IT "like" instead of "as" a business and that using his current investment in Citrix technologies and expanding the usage of the platform can help meet the demands of the CEO. One of the key challenges for most CIOs is the need for their organizations to achieve excellence as a mainline business service delivery organization. Many IT organizations are already quite proficient at providing infrastructure and application services; far fewer are equally proficient at providing business services, except to the extent that these are embedded in applications. But when business services are embedded in applications, there is typically limited flexibility in reusing these services as part of end-to-end business processes that cross organizational boundaries.

Operating IT as a service-delivery business means providing clear and compelling value to the enterprise and includes:

• aligning IT priorities dynamically with business priorities and demonstrating timely progress against commitments
• taking the initiative to propose IT-based solutions to new business challenges

To make the service delivery organization a success companies need a few things to put it on the right track. One of those first steps is to establish an Enterprise Architecture initiative. The overall goal of the enterprise architecture is that it must enable IT's capacity to adapt quickly to changes in business strategy, processes, and environment. It must encompass an enterprise's business goals, strategies, processes, and information, as well as the IT system that supports them.

In order to build anything of great substance you need a solid base from which to start building. You can see by this graphic that Citrix plays in the base level of EA:

From XenServer to XenDesktop, you have everything you need to create a dynamic IT organization that can provide the following benefits for your organization:

• Simplicity: reduce IT complexity and associated operational costs
• Agility: adapt in real time to business needs, drive change, and accelerate time to market
• Value: reuse assets, free up resources for innovation, increase revenues and profitability, and use change as a competitive weapon

In order to ensure that your IT infrastructure is ready for the next upturn is to make sure that you are using your current investments in technology in new innovative ways to make IT dynamic and create that competitive advantage. In an increasingly nonlinear world, only nonlinear ideas are likely to create competitive advantage.

We found this exciting product from StudioGPU called MachStudio Pro. It takes 3D geometry and animation from most leading 3D programs and gives a full real-time workflow for doing lighting, materials, camera and rendering. They do all of this on the desktop using the GPU with no render farm needed and can output final frames or layers for composite. What if we could put the application and its output in the cloud to allow the user to have access to the tools to compete with major studios without the prohibitively high costs?

A niche market you say?  How about using the same cloud based graphics engine for Computer Aided Design (CAD) programs or Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) design.  There are thousands of small and medium businesses who use these types of programs but many of them can't afford the hundred grand for a high end graphics machine and the software to run it.  Check out this video to learn more about the product.  And if you are a CSP or Micrsoft SPLA partner, maybe you'll want to pick it up and run with it!

We found another high end graphics software for the healthcare industry called "CapSure".  Imagine having a video conferencing and collaboration product in the back of an ambulance.  The Doc back in the ER doing triage on a patient before he/she even arrives at the hospital?  Sound futuristic?  Not so much.  GlobalMedia, based in Scottsdale, AZ is an ISV who has been working on this technology for the past nine years.  And now they've perfected it to be used in production at hospitals around the world.

Take this idea one step further and you can imagine consults from a Doc at Mayo clinic to a hospital in Haiti where a catastrophic earthquake has just taken place.  Doctors can see what is going on, take realtime images, measure, consult and even diagnose.  Think that is futuristic?  Well I spent an hour talking Joel Barthelemy, the CEO of GlobalMedia and he told me they just shipped the hardware and software to Haiti to make it a reality.

All of this done over the Internet through Citrix Service Providers?  Well why not?  Citrix provides the only technology in the market to enable these types of applications to run just like they would on the local desktop... to any subscriber, anywhere on any device.  Check it out! 

In the words of Brad Paisley, "Welcome to the Future".

Well, OK, that's a bit fanciful but we can certainly help.

Citrix Worldwide Consulting Solutions is focused on gathering and compiling information from the field so that we can share the information with you, the hardworking men and women tasked with bridging the gap between the CIO's vision and IT's reality. Where the "desktops hit the ether" as it were.

Working closely with our team of worldwide consultants we have put together a Modularized Reference Architecture for XenDesktop that can be used as a blueprint for architecting successful XenDesktop implementations. This is the real thing. All of the design considerations and methodologies in this document have been proven in the field and verified in the Citrix Solutions Center lab.

The concept of a modularized approach is built on the notion that each customer is unique but that many share a core set of requirements and objectives. A modularized approach solves for these core requirements by creating a platform that is highly resilient, flexible and scalable. With the platform in place we use a set of discrete modules to customize the platform to suit each customer's individual needs and objectives. Sounds simple enough, right? Check it out and let us know what you think.

The document "A Modular Approach to XenDesktop Architecture" is available for download here.
To learn more about the companion Citrix Consulting Offering "90 Day XenDesktop Implementation Methodology" click here.

Al Grandville

Continuing the effort to provide more free Citrix Workflow Activities here is another
one that is targeted at bringing easy SQL Server database access into the workflow studio
designer.

Background:

So let's provide a little bit of context. If you have been following the workflow studio developer network here on community.citrix.com, you probably have noticed that there is already an existing SQL Server Activity library available for download coded up by Ed York.
Those SQL Libraries are available here and are excellent if you have some TSQL skill. They are generic activities and can be used with pretty much any SQL statement you can think of. What I wanted to achieve with this updated set of activities was to take Ed York's original idea and extend it into multiple activities, each performing a
specific function. In addition to getting more specific activities I thought it would be interesting
to explore the idea of providing a custom editor for some properties, making for a richer user experience when using the activities.

Download Information

Lets break this post up into two areas, first an overview of the activities and some screen shots showing what
can be done with them, second lets review the custom property editor that enables a ritcher UI experience.

Activity Overview:

The SQL Server activity library currently consists of 12 activities. This library was designed with the goal of providing multiple activities, each with a very specific function and to be easily used without knowing much of TSQL.

Below is a listing of the activities available in this library.

Custom Property Editors:

Now lets jump into custom property editors and how they are used within this library, specifically to make adding columns to a table easier.

So what is a custom property editor? At a high level, a custom property editor is a way for you to add your own UI for editing a specific property. This enables you to control what/how the users enters the information into your custom property even more than the standard property validators within workflow studio. These also come in helpful when you have a complex property of an activity that you will almost certainly want to edit that property with your own editor.

Below you can see the custom property called "Columns". That property has a custom editor on it which when the "..." property button is pressed will display the custom editor form as shown below.

Property Grid

Custom Property Editor

So how exactly is this done? If you want to write your own custom property editor you will have to implement a couple of things.

• Create a class that inherits from System.Drawing.Design.UITypeEditor (this will allow you to spin up whatever UI you want to to edit your property.
• Create a windows form UI that will allow you to edit your property.
• Specify on the property that you want to use a custom editor. You can do this by adding and attribute like the following to your property. This lets the property know what editor to spin up when the user hits the button.
  [Editor(typeof(SQLColumnTypeEditor), typeof(UITypeEditor))]
• Potentially, depending on how complex your property might be, you might have to implement your own property serializer. I didnt have to do that in this case, but you might if your property is of a complex type. There is an example of this is the source code attached to this post if your interested in how to accomplish it.

There are a few more tidbits in this library that i thought were fun to develop, one being the use of "[OutputAttribute]" on the connection property of the sql connection activity. What this means, is that you can put one connection activity on the workflow and set its connection string. Once that is done, every other property, can then use the sql connection activity's "Connection" property to perform their function.

As always, let me know what you think. You can find me at john dot mcbride at citrix dot com or you can catch my on twitter at @johnmcbride

As Architect of Application Streaming, one of the things I do along with the other Citrix architects is worry about how to build the layers of cake.  Operating system on the bottom, Applications in the middle and user profile on the top.  We gathered a few months back to work on this problem and some pretty cool stuff came out of it.  The concepts apply to XenApp and XenDesktop.  Here's the high level view:
I'm going to focus primarily on XenDesktop.  The same ideas apply to XenApp hosted on Virtual Machines as they do to XenDesktop running virtual desktops.  One way or another, the "system" has to be put together and that means assembling an operating system, applications and user data.

Starting at the top: User data.  With Roaming Profiles or Citrix Profile Manager, the application settings are already roamed as a common occurance.  This is the least interesting of the layers in this post.

The quick version is that if a user visits machine A today and machine Q tomorrow, the profile manager will move the applications settings from A to Q.  At logon/logoff the user profile is synchronized to some central machine, where it is later copied from to the new execution machine.  This kind of technology has been around for a very long time, though there still exists some art to "doing it properly".  The "properly" part says that you cannot ASSUME that a user will not be logged on to multiple machines at once.  This is the classic "last logoff wins" problem.  Thankfully, the Citrix Profile Manager does not suffer these problems, so this top layer of the layers of cake is already baked and ready for icing!

A side note is "user data" is over stated, the user profile is really worrying about Application Settings.  The user's data, as in DOCUMENTS, will normally be redirected to some network server. 

Next, the "bottom", the operating system:

Notice I skipped apps for the moment.  Apps are the point of this post, so I'm saving them for last.

Every machine, virtual or real, needs an operating system.  For real machines, no problem, INSTALL IT locally and it will still be there the next time you power the machine on.  For Virtual Machines, this same INSTALL IT solution could be used with one disk image per machine.  Store the image away at "power down" and bring it back at "power up".  This will RUN, but it will sure be a PIG on disk usage.  It will also be harder to maintain as there will be a separate disk image for every virtual machine.  The whole appeal of bringing things into the data center is that it makes things easier to maintain.  If all you do is convert physical hard disks to virtual hard disks, you haven't really worked on the problem of simplifying maintenance!

A side note: With real machines, you can also get to the ONE to Many maintenance aspects, Provisioning Services does this for real hardware just as it can for virtual hardware.

Back to the virtual world:

To get this "right", we need ONE Operating System image and ONE image for each application to go along with ONE user profile.  In this world, the operating system maintainer, maintains the OS and each application owner maintains their respective application.  In some environments, these are the same person, but in concept, they are all separate and even if they are the same person, we do not want application content to pollute the OS image.  If that happens, then every time ANY application needs update, the OS image must be updated and versioned => inefficient.

Cashes, caches and more caches!

With a virtual machine, the virtual machine manager maintains a "write back cache" for the "machine".  Pooled desktop here, there is ONE image for the operating system and each VM as it runs has disk space that holds the changes to the disk as the machine runs.  When the user logs off, the machine powers down and the virtual machine manager THROWS AWAY everything that was written to the base machine.

This "throw away" is necessary as the disk is a "block" entity and the only way that the single base image can be updated is if it is updated in ONE place.  On a future logon, the pool manager will have queued up a pristine machine, with the LATEST AND GREATEST version of the operating system image, which will bring the virtual machine to life - while implementing yet another write back cache for the machine. 

Applications, the point of this post

Application Streaming in the graphic above is the Application Virtualization system bringing in application content.  This is the artist correctly now titled the "plugin for offline applications".  I'm getting used to it.

The App Virtualization system could also be Microsoft App-V or potentially even some other solutions though I do find it easier to manage the caches for systems that have installed agents.  As Architect of App Streaming, I'm working the Citrix side today; the concepts are the same.

Given a virtual machine is running and you want to get apps onto it, what are your choices?

1) Install them into the base image.  We covered this already - it's a losing gig.

2) Presentation delivery.  Publish from XenApp and deliver to XenDesktop; HDX gets it to the user.

3) App Virtualize the applications to get them "into" the hosted desktop.

Today, we're worring about "3".

Given we have a virtual machine, anything we populate into the virtual machine will be a DISK WRITE.

The fundamental guiding principle: Disk writes are BAD!  We want everything to be a "read".

When the OS runs, we want the system to populate pieces of the OS as needed via block based fills from the virtual machine manager or disk subsystem.  When we run applications, we want the virtual machine manager to READ data from the application store and ... (finally getting to the meat of this post) ... NEVER perform a disk write.

Application Streaming has a long history of delivering application content to physical machines.  On physical machines, disk writes are fine, they are a one time cost and the up front cost actually has long term benefit to minimize network activity on future executions.  With virtual machines, disk writes are evil and they are a recurring "every logon" cost. 

We need disk writes to go away, which leads me to one of my favorite statements related to layers of cake.

• We gotta get Application Streaming out of the STREAMING business.

This task much better to hand off to the virtual machine manager or to Provisioning Services, or to the enterprise disk subsystem.  Whatever the the technique of mounting disk space, all of these folks will do a more efficient job, if the streaming system somehow makes everything a "read".  

In the layers of glass, the streaming system populates stuff into the execution cache, which is called RadeCache, named after the directory that holds the application execution content.  I have also previously described that deploy should never happen on a virtual machine based execution, so thankfully we can avoid all of that disk activity.

How do we get application content into a virtual machine?  Answer: MOUNT IT!

The Application Hub is the file server that holds the execution content.  In a physical world, the streaming part of application streaming deals with COPYING content from the Application Hub onto the physical execution machine.  In a Virtual World, we want everything to already be in place, so that application execution is based on disk reads and the disk write generating "streaming" aspects of Application Streaming, never occur.

One complication to date has been that the streaming system stores stuff on the Application Hub in compresses container files, CAB files.  These are going away ([link|http://community.citrix.com/display/ocb/2009/12/04/App Streaming - CAB to DIR]) in a future release, to be replaced with decompressed directory images of the same content.  

Putting it all together

Once we know that we don't want the streaming system to "stream", it can instead focus on application isolation and application delivery; delivering "installed" applications to single instance machines, but letting other pieces of the puzzle take care of the streaming aspects.

The Deploy space is not used; the RadeCache - is necessary.  Stick with me on how we make it go away too.

Given that the RadeCache space and the streaming profile execution content on the App Hub have the same format, there are things we can do to "mount" the Application Hub directly into the execution space.  With the "next" streaming client, this is easier because the App Hub storage format is changed to match the execution format commonly found in the RadeCache.

This can STILL be accomplished NOW using the released 5.2 version of the streaming client.  

The example App I will use is Textpad.  To follow along, profile this up and store it some place convenient.  I'm using Windows 7 machine with the 5.2 level offline plugin and skipping all the publishing aspects.

Start up a command prompt (run as administrator).  I follow with a cut / pasting of a bunch of commands which I entered to prove this can work with 5.2.  After that, we'll talk about what each of them do.

c:
md \apphub & cd \apphub
icacls . /grant:r Ctx_StreamingSvc:(R)
icacls . /grant:r Ctx_StreamingSvc:(OI)(CI)(IO)(R)
mkdir textpad
xcopy \\ConvenientPlaceFromEarlier\textpad textpad\. /s /e
cd textpad
md guid_v
cd guid_v
extract ..\guid_v.cab *.*   (Extract is from Microsoft CAB SDK and requires *.* rather than *)

cd \program files\citrix\radecache
mklink /d guid_v c:\apphub\textpad\guid_v   (Creates a JUNCTION to the mounted App Hub)
exit (close the command prompt window)
Finally run the thing (a really short version of publishing the the AMC).

start "" "%PROGFILES%\Citrix\Streaming Client\RadeRun.exe" /package:"c:\apphub\textpad\textpad.profile" /app:"Textpad"

WOW!  That was alot of stuff.

Given you did the start above, you've already seen the application run and come to life, with minimal disk writes!  Drum roll.

Here's what happened.  

The MKDIR of C:\AppHub simulated the MOUNTING of the App Hub onto the local machine.

The icacls commands gave the streaming service READ privilege to this space.  The streaming service runs on a named user account and by default it can only modify a few places on disk, like RadeCache and Deploy.  I think this is unnecessary as all users on the machine will automatically get read access to this space due to inherritance from the root.  Still, I stuck it in there in case it is a required element.  If so, you'll need this in the system configuration when the mount point is created.

The streaming service will "believe" that this space is local when it is really backed up by some XenServer, Provisioning Server, Hyper-V, ESX, Disk magic system.  One way or another, it's a MOUNT POINT and the streaming service has privilege to read it.

Why local?  The isolation system looks at all disk activity at the start and if it is "network", it jumpts out of the way and doesn't mess with it.  So, the streaming system MUST believe that this space is "local".  For all these virtual worlds, this is "easy".

Next trick is that the streaming sytem will want to populate the RadeCache at runtime, we don't want this to occur.  Instead, we want the streaming system to BELIEVE that the RadeCache is "fully populated".

Creating the JUNCTIOND at the RadeCache space, the streaming system will believe that the RadeCache space is already there, when it looks inside, it will see that the files are already in place and it won't have any reason to want to write more to this space.  Notice that with the "linkd" commands in place, when the streaming system looks into the RadeCache space, we will have LIED to it to instead sent it to the C:\AppHub space.

Lying to the Lying system - wonderful!

Deep down in the streaming streaming, the device driver that does the file system filtering isn't fooled by any of this application level nonsense; it sees the "real" location, C:\AppHub.  The isolation system insists that the RadeCache space for the application content be on local storage, and it is, as far as it knows.

C:\AppHub is "local" as far as this virtual machine is concerend.

With the call to RadeRun, the application is launched and comes to life; skipping publishing.

The application comes to life and things are happy.

Publishing

When publishing applications in the Access Management Console, one of the fields is the UNC path to the App Hub.  This can be a UNC path or a HTTP path, but either way, the AMC is told where the App Hub is located and when applications are enumerated via PNAgent/Web Interface, this information is relayed to the streaming launcher for app launch.  This means that the publishing has to reference C:\AppHub or possibly a local host based reference of local machine based UNC reference.  The AMC and the execution machine both have to believe that C:\AppHub is local storage.  You can also create a LINKD based junction on the AMC machine that reflects to the "real" app hub on the network.  The AMC will believe that this is the local machine space and will relay this to the execution machine.

I dream of a future where the streaming client could override what the AMC says to use and instead use a fixed location that the administrator says to use.  Just dreaming... 

House cleaning 

One of the things that the streaming system does is clean house in the RadeCache.  If it exceeds high water mark in size, the streaming system will launch a reaper thread that deletes things until the house is clean.  Here's a link that describes how this works.  Since we only granted the streaming service "(R)" Read access to the local machine AppHub, the streaming services' attempts to house clean in RadeCache space that is really the AppHub space will be unsuccessful - it will have no choice but to "push on" to look for some other file to erase.  

For this reason, in a XenDesktop space, we should either put everything into the read-only space where the Streaming Service can't delete it or we should set the cache high-water mark sufficiently high that the house cleaning thread will never trigger; in reality, we should do both.   Leaving the RadeCache space writable by the streamign service allows it to run applciations that haven't been published or managed into the App Hub, so this is good - though that space would be loaded on each logon to the virtual machine.

Hope this is useful.

Joe Nord

Product Architect - Application Streaming and User Profile Manager 

Citrix Systems