So I finished a round of reboots from having my demo/lab systems up for around 3 weeks. Of course, like any competent admin, I upgraded to the latest MS patches, butt (pun intended) like an incompetant admin, I didn't test (but I don't have a test lab at this point....hmmm, sounds like an excellent use case for XenServer Platinum!).

During the update, I also allowed .Net 3.5 SP1 to update itself. BAD MISTAKE! Read the notes...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951847
You see, this contains patches to ASP.Net 2.0, which integrates into some of the technologies Citrix provides.

Eventually what occurred is that the following systems failed, due to the dependencies on ASP.Net v2.0.50727:

Access Gateway Advanced Edition 4.5 HF04
XenDesktop DDC v3.0
Edgesight 5.1

The CPM Service also relies on ASP.Net v2.0, but so far looks stable after the update.

Now I don't fault our products at all, however, I would like is to be able to selectively choose which .Net framework gets updated via Windows Updates, instead being forced to update the entire family. It restricts my choice as an admin. Since MS chooses to bundle the entire family of updates now, I won't be installing .Net updates ever again.

To correct the problem, I went to each server and:
1. Open CMD
2. Navigate to \Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727
3. "aspnet_regiis.exe -i"
4. Reboot

I've also heard this breaks Sharepoint as well until you run the above commands....so go figure, it breaks MS products too!

By now you probably have viewed the Keynote(s) from Day 1 and 2 of Synergy. Pretty exciting to see a couple of demos and announcements. Particluarly the Open Kernel Labs agreement, and the XenClient demo on the Mac.

Now that they have been shown and announced, it was inspiring to see that you can make a difference...small as it may be.

Last summer, I had been thinking of ways to improve the experience of desktop virtualization from both the user's perspective, as well as the administrative perspective. I get my best ideas in the shower of all places (TMI, right?).

It occurred to me that with all these ubuquitous client hypervisors running "amuck", there needs to be a better way to get at my apps inside them.

I was tired of firing up the Type 2 VM software, launching the desktop, signing into the desktop, launching the apps, then finally setting to Coherence/Unity/Seamless mode. This came after doing presentation after presentation on the Mac. (by the way, way to go Sun on the acquisition of VirtualBox, my personal favorite of the major Type 2 players).

Citix had this awesome AppReceiver concept, so why not make it "Transparent" from the host to the guest VM?

You would have this notion of a "Host Receiver" and "Guest Receiver", right?

So I started drawing out this method of access for various scenario types, and the more I drew, the more it expanded. Here's a picture of it.

Now keep in mind, this was before Project Independence was announced, and I was thinking about Type 2's only. By the way, I'm also not on any steering committees, any technology acquisition/forward looking committees either, so not drawing from other concepts either.

Maybe the rest of it will happen, as I think we are just at the begining stages of all of this, only those in the know, know. Wouldn't it be really awesome to see a System Center packageable OVF for consumption of the Type 1/2 client hypervisors? Admin picks Citrix, Sun, MS, Parallels packages that include the needed PV tools, and the user self services the VM for offline consumption using dazzle. That would be pretty cool!

Disclaimer these concepts above were probably being worked on by other groups at the same time, and I just happened to have separate similar ideas, but it's exciting and definately fulfilling that you can have the same essential forward thinking concepts as your company. Where they drive towards ensuring its longevity, burst the envelope, and improve the lives of application access and usability for its customers all at the same time.

Go Citrix!

The simple solution is to leverage XenApp Feature Pack with XenServer.

Then give our friends at Marathon a call and say "I want High Availability for XenApp".....and soon complete level 3 Fault Tolerance...all provided on XenServer virtualization.

For reference, I worked with a talented coleague of mine, Barry Flanagan to produce a series of videos back in late 2007 for posting in early 2008, with Presentation Server on physical servers protected by Marathon.

Barrys Blog and Gabes Videos

Fast forward a year + and check out this video of what you could achieve with the only solution for virtual techologies that provides lock-step protection of users and their apps.

Be sure to attend the Citrix and Marathon webinar March 18th!

Marathon and Citrix XenApp Webinar

Just got word that SCVMM has been updated and released to support RC1 release of Hyper-V!

http://blogs.technet.com/aralves/archive/2008/06/10/scvmm-2008-beta-hotfix-for-hyper-v-rc1.aspx

Two things I'm going to do; then post by this weekend:

• Upgrade inplace Hyper-V RC0 to RC1, SCVMM (Betav1) to (Betav2), and the effects on the XenDesktop components...
  • How will the DDC behave?  Will I have to reinstall the DDC if the SCVMM component has been upgraded?
  • We know we have to update the hypervisor and the paravirtualization drivers, but just what doI need to do to update everything?  I'm hoping for an "autoupgrade" of the drivers.  That's the holy grail with virtualizing guests, in my opinion. Anybody listening?
• Fresh reinstall of Server Core (it's so much sexier and less to manage than the full install), comparing notes to the RC0 setup, and see if there are any Delta changes.  I would imagine there would be zero...but we will see.

See you this weekend!

So I was tinkering around with Hyper-V, and thought I'd give this a go.

Server Core installation was completely new to me, and I was thinking it would be fairly "simple".  I was right, but kinda not right.  I'm not used to CLI commands, so I had to do some hunting around for a bit.  I found some great articles, and unsupported tools that really accelerated setting this system up.  Maybe this will help you get XenDesktop up and functional with the latest releases of Hyper-V, and if you choose to, use Server Core.

 EDIT:  Please note that Citrix does not yet officially support XenDesktop on Hyper-V and SCVMM 2008.  We expect to within a release time frame surrounding MS' official release of SCVMM.

Using Windows 2008 EntEd Server Core with Hyper V.htm

So, this is my first ever blog post.  Thought I share a diagram that I been using since December when the two products were married together. It been passed around, so you may have seen it before. It is also starting to get awefully busy, so things like CRL are left off.