On Wednesday, October 1st, I attended the Rocket Science 2008 and 2008 Application Virtualization Group (AVG) Engineering Expo. A few of the demos covered super top-secret innovations to improve the Engineering/Test process*, others were examples of demos for Summit and then there were four stations that really peaked my interest. That's not to say that everything else wasn't ubercool or that everyone that presented doesn't deserve MAJOR kudos for all the work they've done above and beyond their regular duties, but if you're attending Summit you can and should see those demos for yourself, and I think these particular entries deserve some notice.

Automating VM provisioning

Andy Zhu presented work for a virtualization initiative. The large-farm/scalability test team is employing XenServer in order to use virtual servers instead of physical servers for every test. The XenServer PowerShell Kit allows the team to quickly and easily deploy predefined templates to XenServer in a large scale. Using more virtual servers means no more brown-outs when System II powers up that 1001st server!

Cloning XenApp just got easier

Shannon Ma demonstrated the latest version of XenAppPrep, a tool that helps clone XenApp servers. In Shannon's words, it's basically the equivalent of sysprep for Windows, except it's for XenApp. Since I had just finished a round of virtualizing XenApp Server on XenServer Platinum utilizing the current tool and in the past I've helped create documentation about cloning XenApp Server, I know the manual process can be tedious so I really wanted to see "What's next?" XenAppPrep should be available on the web October 26th, and you're going to want it.

UPDATE: XenAppPrep is now available for download - http://community.citrix.com/display/xa/XenAppPrep+Tool

XenPool On-Demand Data Center

Kailas Jawadekar presented his latest work created for the internal XenPool initiative. Configured similarly to the public MyCitrixLab used by the Citrix Ready Program (more info on MyCitrixLab here and here,) the Citrix AVG XenPool is a project to demonstrate the benefits of pooling hardware resources in a lab environment and offering a set of dynamically configurable VMs to a broader set of customers. Kailas demonstrated a working model of a customer self-service frontend where someone that needs access to a VM can go to a webpage, choose from a selection of available templates and request a VM. When the VM is ready, the user gets an email to notify them. To ensure people aren't taking up resources they're not really using, the VMs come with a timed lease so a user receives prompts when the VM is about to expire and when the VM has reached it's expiration date so a user can elect to extend the lease time if they are still utilizing the VM.

Eating your own dog food can make you rich and thin

This last demo was the one that really put the cherry on top for me and reminded me just how much Citrix products can rock. Steve Dillon and the AVG Build team used our own technology to provide themselves High-Availability, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, reduced power consumption, reduced hardware and improved turn-around times. By incorporating XenServer Platinum Edition into their infrastructure, AVG Build went from 40 single CPU 32-bit servers to 2 16-core x64 servers running XenServer (4 quad-core CPUs per server.) By virtualizing on multi-processor machines and switching to x64-bit compatible software they were able to:

• Reduce hardware ($aves space, reduces cooling costs, electricity, money . . .)
• Speed the build machine provisioning process (what took hours now takes minutes)
• Created a cost-effective DR solution instigated by Hurricane Wilma - there's now XenServers in the UK with Provisioning Server disk images ready to deploy and continue Build if local Build servers become unavailable.

Way to go, Citrites!

Finally, one last "Congratulations!" to everyone that participated this year - I can't wait to see what turns up next year - and "Thank you!" to David Pope, Gagan Singh and everyone that helped them put this event together for us.

* OK they're not all super top-secret, but thanks for reading down this far!

Wanting to eat our own dog food and wash it down with a big tumbler of kool-aid, my team recently held a meeting of nationally dispersed attendees and used the GoToMeeting VoIP features. I'm not kidding when I say I haven't heard that much reverb, distortion and echo since the last time I listened to "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn." As our first attempt, we spent quite a bit of time complaining to each other about the sound quality and asking each other to place our devices on mute. By the way, did you know that the default setting in the GoToMeeting preferences is to always save chat logs? The following is an extract of the recorded GoToMeeting chat that occurred. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

B (to All - Entire Audience): the voice quality is terrible
K (to All - Entire Audience): you have a lot of reverb and I can't understand what you're saying
R (to All - Entire Audience): can someone mute their mic
R (to All - Entire Audience): massive echo
V (to All - Entire Audience): Click on the green mic icon and you can mute it
B (to All - Entire Audience): cant understand a word this other speaker is saying

I don't have specific stats yet as to how many people were on "regular" phones vs. using computer mics, but judging on the icons in the attendee list it was a nice enough mix of what one would probably reasonably encounter in this scenario at other companies.

Now, I'm used to using our stuff before it's released and dealing with the intricacies of things that don't quite work yet, but in this case it's not the application - it's the settings. In this case it's just a matter of understanding that one-size does not always fit all. Turns out if we had done a little pre-meeting training and all made some quick and easy settings adjustments to our individual GoToMeeting installations, we could have had a much more satisfactory experience.

When in doubt, read the friendly manual

If you've experienced similar issues or haven't tried this feature yet, there's a good article in the GoToMeeting online help to mitigate this -

GoToMeeting VoIP Audio Best Practices

First, what device are you planning to use? Check out the chart in the link above for recommendations. A USB headset connected to your computer will offer the best quality experience, while using your laptop's built-in microphone and speakers will give you a poor experience, especially if your mic is picking up what's coming out of your speakers - echo city.

And here's an additional excerpt that may help:
VoIP Audio Setup - PC

1. Right-click the GTM icon in the PC system tray and select Preferences.
2. Select Audio.
   Microphone Setup - It is recommended that you test your microphone. To test, select your microphone device from the drop-down menu and speak into your microphone; if it is connected correctly, the sound meter will light up green. If the green meter does not light up, select another device listed in the drop-down menu and repeat this test.
   Speakers Setup - It is recommended that you test your speakers. To test, select your speaker device from the drop-down menu and click Play Sound; if connected correctly, you will see the sound meter light up green and hear a soundtrack through your speaker device. If you do not hear sound after clicking Play Sound, select another device listed in the drop-down menu and repeat this test.
   Advanced - GoToMeeting automatically adjusts audio levels. We recommend you keep this checked. If you uncheck this selection, you must manually configure your audio settings through Windows Sounds and Audio Devices. If your attendees can't understand you because your voice is distorted, try unchecking "Microphone boost."
3. Click OK.
   
   

I strongly recommend that you read the rest of this article, consider using a USB headset and adjust your microphone and speakers settings before joining your next GoToMeeting VoIP call for a much better experience.

If all else fails, the meeting organizer can mute/unmute all participants by selecting *5

Have a happy meeting!

It was a long time in the making but it's finally here! I think I've been seeing requests for how to do this since IE7 came out and up until now many people said it couldn't be done. Once again the "impossible" has been captured and documented. "Isolating Internet Explorer 7.0 for Safe Surfing" is now available in the Application Delivery Best Practices Wiki.

Here's an excerpt:
"You can use application isolation to isolate and publish Internet Explorer 7. You can create a rule that forces all downloaded files to reside in the user profile root. This provides users with the freedom to download files if they wish to do so, but it also prevents them from running downloaded executables on the enterprise network.

Administrators can enforce cleanup policies that delete all session artifacts when the user logs off. Application isolation also enables you to publish multiple instances of Internet Explorer with different configurations, which is very useful when you have users with different usage requirements."

The full article is publicly available here.

Instructions to isolate Internet Explorer 6.0 are available here

Hello, and happy Earth Day! As a "tree-hugging" Citrite I'd like to share with you some of the technologies and information we have available to help you "Go Green."

Turn it off with Citrix PowerSmart Utility

First, there's our new PowerSmart Utility. Released at iForum 07, (by the way, you're going to Synergy in May, right?) this tool can be used to power-off idle servers, potentially reducing energy costs for a Citrix XenApp farm by up to 50%. Sample scripts are included to support powering on/off HP servers with ILO2support. Support to power on other types of servers can be added with scripting and simple configuration changes. The following are links regarding PowerSmart:

• Citrix PowerSmart Utility for XenApp (Presentation Server) FAQ
• A White Paper from HP: Energy-efficient computing using Citrix PowerSmart Utility for Presentation Server (Beta) with HP Integrated Lights-Out
• To download PowerSmart: Citrix PowerSmart Utility for Presentation Server (Beta)
• Powersmart user guide
• Support is available from the MFCom CDN forum.
• Have an idea or request for a new feature? Enhancement Ideas for PowerSmart Utility

What are Other Citrix Customers Doing?

From our Green Computing Solutions page, check out the Green Computing Case Studies to see how other customers, such as winner of 2007 Citrix Innovation award Cox Communications are using Citrix to reduce the environmental impact of IT.

More Green Documents

Finally, here's a quick list of more whitepapers and brochures that discuss this important concern and how our products can help you facilitate green computing initiatives, save energy, save money, reduce your waste and carbon footprint, and save the Earth:

• From the Customer Newsletter: Grow a Greener Data Center
• Citrix Hot Topics Brochure: Green Computing
• White Paper: Green IT: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint with Citrix
• White Paper: Increasing Data Center Density While Driving Down Power and Cooling Costs

And don't forget to Reduce, Refuse, Reuse or Recycle. This Blog was produced from %100 recycled electrons.