Sean Whetstone, Head of IT Services at Reed Managed Services in the UK, is a big fan of going green. By using a combination of Citrix XenApp, NetScaler and XenDesktop, Reed Managed Services was able to reduce operating expenses by over 20%, centralize and secure data from over 300 offices, and reduce their carbon footprint by 2500 tons. According to the post on Sean's blog, Reed Managed Services was able to cut utility usage by 5,500,000 kilowatt hours to save over 100,000 pounds as a result of this project.

Sean recently posted a video interview he did at a Citrix event in London on his blog.

You can view Sean's presentation on this topic here.

Part I of the Deep Dive into XenDesktop series reviewed the architecture. Part II covered the install and management tools. Part III reviewed an example XenDesktop Pilot Architecture. Part IV reviewed the Virtual Desktop Delivery of Dan Feller's "XenDesktop Pilot Implementation Guide". Part V reviewed the integration with XenApp for application delivery to the virtual desktops. Part VI covers User Personalization with Citrix User Profile Manager. This is the third section from Dan's Pilot Implementation Guide.

This embedded presentation covers the "Personalization" section of the Pilot Implementation Guide.

Click here to view the presentation in full screen at Slide Share.

This presentation does have several slide notes that provide additional detail. You can view the slide notes here.



Frank Anderson on the XenDesktop team has created a few screencasts covering the features of XenDesktop. You can watch his short screencast covering the provisioning and lifecycle management features of XenDesktop here. Frank's screencast on user experience is available here.

Download the free XenDesktop Express Edition here

Part I of the Deep Dive into XenDesktop series reviewed the architecture. Part II covered the install and management tools. Part III reviewed an example XenDesktop Pilot Architecture. Part IV reviewed the Virtual Desktop Delivery of Dan Feller's "XenDesktop Pilot Implementation Guide". Now in Part V we review the integration with XenApp for application delivery to the virtual desktops. This is the second section from Dan's Pilot Implementation Guide.

This embedded presentation covers the "Application Delivery" section of the Pilot Implementation Guide.

Click here to view the presentation in full screen at Slide Share.

This presentation does have several slide notes that provide additional detail. You can view the slide notes here.



Frank Anderson on the XenDesktop team has created a few screencasts covering the features of XenDesktop. You can watch his short screencast covering the provisioning and lifecycle management features of XenDesktop here. Frank's screencast on user experience is available here.

Download the free XenDesktop Express Edition here

Part I of the Deep Dive into XenDesktop series reviewed the architecture. Part II covered the install and management tools. Part III reviewed an example XenDesktop Pilot Architecture. Part IV reviews the first section of Dan Feller's "XenDesktop Pilot Implementation Guide". Dan goes through each step of configuring a pilot from start to finish.

This first embedded presentation covers the "Virtual Desktop Delivery" section of the Pilot Implementation Guide.

Click here to view the presentation in full screen at Slide Share.

This presentation does have several slide notes that provide additional detail. You can view the slide notes here.



Frank Anderson on the XenDesktop team has created a few screencasts covering the features of XenDesktop. You can watch his short screencast covering the provisioning and lifecycle management features of XenDesktop here. Frank's screencast on user experience is available here.

Download the free XenDesktop Express Edition here

Citrix EasyCall provides a simple and intuitive way communication enabling your existing applications with the flexibility of using any telephone.

EasyCall enables:

• Click-to-Call from any application
• Any telephone (mobile, office, home)
• Click-to-Call enabled directory & call-log
  
  The embedded presentation below reviews the features of Citrix EasyCall.
  
  

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  Click here to view the presentation in full screen at Slide Share.
  
  

Here is a short demo video that covers how to use EasyCall and reviews briefly how it works.

EasyCall Demo video

EasyCall is a standard feature on:

• Citrix XenApp Platinum Edition
• Citrix NetScaler Platinum Edition
• Citrix XenDesktop Platinum Edition
  
  

You can find the EasyCall Administrator's Guide here and the Getting Started Guide here. The EasyCall User Guide is at this link.

There are several Systems Integrators Guide for various phone systems -

Nortel

Avaya

Bandwidth.com

Part I of the Deep Dive into XenDesktop series reviewed the architecture. Part II covered the install and management tools. Part III reviews an example XenDesktop Pilot Architecture. This presentation is based on the "XenDesktop Pilot Reference Architecture" document by Dan Feller. Here is the the introduction to Dan's white paper -

Dan put together a list of requirements for this Pilot Reference Architecture -

I have broken the great content of the pdf into smaller, bite size chunks to make it more digestible within a slide format (especially the step by step tables). Before each step in the tables, I added in the reference diagram with a big arrow that points to the step within the diagram. There are a lot of slides, but the amount of content on each slide is much easier to swallow in this format IMO.

Click here to view the presentation in full screen at Slide Share.

This presentation does have several slide notes that provide additional detail. You can view the slide notes here.

Frank Anderson on the XenDesktop team has created a few screencasts covering the features of XenDesktop. You can watch his short screencast covering the provisioning and lifecycle management features of XenDesktop here. Frank's screencast on user experience is available here.

Download the free XenDesktop Express Edition here

Thanks to Dan Feller for putting together an excellent whitepaper and allowing me to convert that content into this format. I hope you find this useful.

In the first Deep Dive into XenDesktop post, the embedded presentation covered the architecture of XenDesktop. This next presentation reviews the install of the the Desktop Delivery Controller and the Virtual Desktop Agent, then reviews the Management Console, Desktop Groups, and the Citrix Desktop Toolbar.

Click here to view the presentation in full screen at Slide Share.

This presentation does have several slide notes that provide additional detail. You can view the slide notes here.

Frank Anderson on the XenDesktop team has created a few screencasts covering the features of XenDesktop. You can watch his short screencast covering the provisioning and lifecycle management features of XenDesktop here. Frank's screencast on user experience is available here

Download the free XenDesktop Express Edition here

Thanks to Richard Nash on the SE team for providing much of the source material for this slide presentation.

Andrew Renne, a Solution Architect with Microsoft Services UK, recently blogged about Microsoft VDI and Citrix XenDesktop at the Deployment Guys blog on TechNet. Andrew writes "In this second blog entry on VDI I will explain the benefits that using Citrix Xendesktop as the connection broker can bring."

Bob Muglia and Edwin Yuen of Microsoft demoed Citrix XenDesktop as part of the Microsoft VDI solution with Hyper V and SCVMM at Citrix Synergy. You can watch he video here (scroll down to the bottom). Brian Ehlert made his own video of the XenDestop/Hyper V/SCVMM integration for his entry into the XenDesktop Beta Video Tips.

Citrix and Microsoft announced our first joint appliance this year at Citrix Synergy. The new Citrix Branch Repeater combines the powerful WAN optimization of WANScaler with several key native infrastructure services from Windows Server. The embedded presentation below provides a technical overview of Citrix Branch Repeater.

(click here to see the presentation in full screen)

You can watch a brief demo of Branch Repeater (from the Synergy keynote) below -

The Branch Repeater Admin Guide is available here. Download the Installation Guide here. You can read a Tech Note on how to discover Citrix Branch Repeater with Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager here.

When Citrix Technical Support released the Brief Troubleshooting Guide late last year, it was a very popular download. As I read through the pdf, it reminded me a great deal of a document that I used extensively when I started out as a Citrix SE in 2000 - Rick Dehlinger's Metaframe Tuning Tips.

Rick was a very well known and respected SE for Citrix when I joined the team in April of 2000, and his Tuning Tips document was a fantastic resource. People all over the world contributed to and used Rick's document. It was by far the most popular "unofficial" Citrix technical resource of its time.

Another Citrix SE, Vinny Sosa, told me he was burning the Tuning Tips document and many of the tools and documents it recommended on a single CD and distributing that CD to his customers and resellers as he visited them. After discussing this idea with Vinny, I began to do the same thing in my territory in Atlanta. I quickly realized that I did not have nearly enough time to burn all the CD's I needed. I decided to combine the CD idea with another idea I learned from Rick - creating my own eGroup (now Yahoo Group) mailing list for the Citrix customers and resellers in my area.

My new list became known as the CitrixSE mailing list (as in Citrix Southeast, my territory). I set the group up so that as soon as any one joined the list they automatically received a copy of Rick's Tuning Tips and several other documents and tools. This helped the list grow very rapidly. By the time I left the SE team in 2004, the CitrixSE mailing list had over 5000 members.

The Brief Troubleshooting Guide (BTG) is a very comprehensive and technical resource. The Citrix Technical Support team did an excellent job on this guide. In many ways the BTG reminded me of the original Metaframe Tuning Tips document. One big difference is Rick's document had contributors from all over the world, both inside and outside Citrix. You could say that Rick's document was a community built mashup, a derivative work created from many other documents and by many people for a specific purpose. Rick drove the creation of the document, but worked with people all over the world to create content that was extremely useful to anyone working with Citrix software. The community aspect ensured that many different types of information and tools were included.

One of the first things I did when I downloaded the Brief Troubleshooting Guide was to begin to slowly create a mindmap based on it. I began building a mind map on the XenApp chapter as a reference document (using MindJet's Mind Manager). A mind map gives you the ability to build an organizational structure and link to graphics, web sites, videos and other documents. I find mind maps a very effective way to organize information. The combination of the two dimensional structure, additional graphics, color and links to other content often lead me to come up with new perspectives I would never find in a standard linear document. I came up with a few new ideas as I built this mind map as well.

I worked on this side project while on hold for conference calls or sitting in airports. After working on the mind map here and there for several weeks, I decided to add in links to several of the webinars on the Citrix site related to XenApp. Later I added in links to some of the technical videos on the Citrix site. Soon I was adding in links to some of the Citrix presentations I posted on Slide Share. As I did this, I began to wonder how could I take this XenApp mashup mind map I was creating and add in some of the magic of Rick's Tuning Tips document. I realized the best way to do that was to post the mind map here on the blog and ask for your feedback and help.

I have completed the first draft. Here is a screenshot of the top level structure of the XenApp Troubleshooting Guide mind map -

As you can see, the top level categories are Product Docs, Questions to Ask, Troubleshooting Tools, Relevant Knowledgebase Articles, Videos and Presentations. The first four categories come straight from the BTG. I added in the Videos and Presentations categories.

For the Troubleshooting Tools section, I added in screen shots of several of the tools.

One of the nice features on Mind Manager is you can add in Notes to any object inside the mind map. I did this extensively as I cut and pasted in the content and created links to the web documents referenced in the BTG.

You can download the latest full version of this XenApp Troubleshooting mind map here. You can download a free Mind Manager viewer here. The new browser plugin viewer is available here. You can download a free 30 trial of Mind Manager Pro here.

I hope you find the mind map useful. I greatly appreciate any feedback or any assistance in continuing to build this mind map into the most effective XenApp troubleshooting reference possible. You can post in the comments or email me at citrixblogger @ citrix.com (remove the spaces).

I hope that together we can build this document into a resource that approaches the value of Rick Dehlinger's original Tuning Tips document.

In this next two minute video screencast posted on UTipu, James Millington covers a great new feature of EdgeSight 5 - the user Troubleshooter.

James Millington has made a new video screencast on UTipu that outlines the changes in the user interface for EdgeSight 5. Watch the five minute screencast with James below.

A few weeks ago I came across an interesting new web site called Wordle. A Wordle is "a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text." Wordles give the both the author and reader a different perspective on a document or blog site.

After looking at the wide variety of Wordles available in the Wordle Gallery, I was curious to see how a Wordle of the first page of the Citrix blog would look (Wordle pulls the rss feed which only includes the first page). See the results below -

There is no surprise works like "Citrix", "XenApp", "Presentation", "Applications" and "virtualization" figure prominently on this Wordle. I see many other words that are often used when talking about our products such as "savings", costs", "management" and "scalability".

One big thing that stands out to me that is missing are the names of applications. I only see one actual application name listed - "AutoCAD". That comes from a recent post by Derek Thorslund. It seems like we should spend more time on the Citrix blog writing about how to use our products to deliver specific applications, instead of applications in general.

But that is just my opinion. What do you think of this Wordle? What strikes you about this Wordle of the Citrix blog? Which words should figure more prominently, and which should be less prominent? Which words are missing?

Please post your thoughts in the comments.

The new XenApp template for XenServer has generated a great deal of interest. There have been a several posts about XenApp on XenServer on the Citrix Blog (read Dan Feller's posts here, here, here and here). You can listen to an interview with Dan about this topic as part of the Citrix Delivery Center podcast here.

Recently Laura Whalen in our Solutions Marketing team put together an excellent slide presentation that covers the reasons why you would want to virtualize XenApp on XenServer.

One of the first few slides of the presentation reviews the business case for virtualization based on data from IDC and Gartner. It occurred to me as I reviewed this slide that this might be a good opportunity to add in some slides I recently put together for a different purpose.

A couple of months ago I was asked to give a presentation to some non-technical business leaders in my area about virtualization. As I thought about how to explain to these CEO's and CFO's why virtualization gets so much buzz, it seemed obvious to focus on the costs savings. In my opinion, the server consolidation and costs savings created by server virtualization are a primary driver in most companies first foray into server virtualization. Rapid deployment, high availability and disaster recovery obviously play a huge role in expanding the reach of virtualization, but in my experience the costs savings of consolidation are the biggest initial factor. The ridiculously high costs of energy these days make this costs savings even more important.

After making that decision, I decided to take some data I saw in a webinar by John Humphries of IDC and Simon Crosby of Citrix (archive here) to use as the basis for the presentation to these business leaders.

Of course, a slide presentation full of numbers is no more effective than a presentation filled with technology jargon. I decided to use as many visuals as I possibly could so I did not put the audience to sleep in the first two minutes. I added in numerous stock photos (mostly from istockphoto.com), some public domain pictures from USA.gov and a few photos and screen shots of my own to make a very visual presentation. I have taken a few slides from that deck and added them into the deck built by Laura Whalen.

The template for the other slide deck included a black background. I was not able to get the graphics to work properly in the standard Citrix template (with a white background) without many hours of pixel by pixel editing. I was able to use the transparent re-color feature of PowerPoint 2007 to convert the graphics from Laura's presentation to work with a black background, however.

My Frankenstein presentation creation is embedded below.

(click here to see the presentation in full screen)

Scalability of XenApp on other virtualization products has prevented many from using server virtualization with XenApp. One of the highest priorities after the acquisition of XenSource was to improve this scalability. The new XenApp template does this. You can virtualize the management components of your XenApp farm and individual XenApp servers to gain the availability, management and disaster recovery benefits. We have found that for many resource intensive applications a one vm to physical server provides the best scalability. You can still gain the availability, management and recovery benefits for those servers.

Since there are many notes included with this presentation (mostly from Laura) I have uploaded a pdf of the notes pages (in a zip file to shrink the size a bit).

EDIT: The posts and podcast interview I did with Dan Feller provide much more in depth coverage of this topic. To avoid any confusion, the x64 version of XenApp is recommended for use with XenApp on XenServer. The server utilization number referred to in the slide deck is from an IDC estimate of all servers, not just XenApp servers. As I mentioned in the post and you can see from the documentation provided by Dan, most XenApp servers running applications for users will be the most scalable when one vm is running on one physical server. The cost savings from reduction in servers comes into play with those servers because XenApp running on XenServer is much more scalable than any other virtualization platform based on our testing. That greater scalability will lead to a reduction in servers when using server virtualization. Further, the ability to consolidate license servers, data collectors, and other components offer additional consolidation savings. All of this is in addition to the deployment, support and high availability savings possible with server virtualization.

Edit #2: I have received a few emails asking to see the slides I created for the non-technical audience of business leaders. You can find the presentation "The Buzz on Virtualization" here. This is a very high level overview. One technical person told me it was so high level his grandmother could understand it (I do not think he meant that as a compliment ... ). It did work very well for the audience where I presented it. I like to experiment a great deal with slide design and you can see that in this deck.

Acresso Software recently put together a project to study the impact of using their products with the Application Virtualization feature of Citrix XenApp.

Preparing applications for a virtual deployment can be one of the largest hurdles in an application virtualization project. In lab tests conducted by The Tolly Group, AdminStudio decreased the time needed to prepare an enterprise-level application for streaming via Citrix XenApp by up to 60%. Learn more about how AdminStudio can reduce the time needed to prepare applications for deployment in this benchmark study.

Acresso Software and Citrix commissioned The Tolly Group to test and illustrate the benefits of implementing Acresso's AdminStudio® packaging solution with the application streaming feature of Citrix XenApp™. The results of this study showcase how AdminStudio combines powerful application virtualization with Web-based process management tools to reduce an organization's IT costs and increase application reliability. When deployed in a Citrix XenApp environment, AdminStudio enables virtual applications to be deployed quickly.

• Decreases the time to package virtual applications by up to 60%, with a minimum savings during tests of 28%
• Reduces hourly packaging costs by up to 47% for large-sized enterprise-class applications
• Integrates AdminStudio with XenApp to increase efficiency when packaging applications for virtual deployment
• Requires no extra learning curve to prepare virtual applications compared to traditional applications
• Ensures best practices when migrating to a virtual environment by using tools designed to pre-package applications

Read more here

In my eight and a half years at Citrix, one constant I have seen in successful large rollouts is extensive detailed testing both during a pilot and prior to final rollout. In my opinion, it is essential to test the applications running with actual work flow processes (including file transfers and printing) over the same networks as production (or a simulated network with the same characteristics).

Ideally, after a detailed pilot program is completed and a final architecture design is built, the entire load should be simulated prior to moving into production. This approach reduces the risks of a rollout by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the design prior to putting real users on the system. In the past, many companies avoided this step because load simulation tools were often very expensive. In many cases the available tools were extremely difficult to script to work with applications running on Citrix XenApp.

EdgeSight for Load testing is designed to overcome these issues to allow you to reduce the risks of your production rollouts of XenApp. EdgeSight for Load Testing is built specifically for Citrix XenApp and simplifies the process to build workflow scripts with a wide variety of applications.

The presentation below gives you a brief overview of EdgeSight for Load Testing.

(click here to see the presentation in full screen)

You can find the EdgeSight for Load Testing Installation Guide here and the User Guide here. You can get troubleshooting help for EdgeSight for Load Testing at this link.

There are literally hundreds of features built into XenApp 5.0. In my opinion, three of the features are critical to success in almost every single XenApp farm. View the embedded presentation below for more info on the three keys to success with XenApp.

(click here to see the presentation in full screen)

Click here for the XenApp Web (aka Web Interface 5.01) Administrator's Guide. You can find the ReadMe here.

Click here to watch a video with one of the developer's of Preferential Load Balancing, Prasanna Padmanabhan (the video covers the beta version). You can listen to an audio interview on PLB here.

Go here to watch a video interview I did with Gary Barton (Citrix Printing developer) at Citrix Synergy.

You can view the schedule for archived and upcoming XenApp 5.0 webinars here.