During Citrix Synergy 2009 last week in Las Vegas I was part of the team which delivered the Learning Labs on XenServer. Besides presenting on XenServer 5.5 (more on that here: [\~joels:/2009/05/21/Citrix XenServer 5.5 and Workload Balancing Video]) I also did a learning lab on Testing XenApp on XenServer and/or a different virtualization platform.

With EdgeSight for Load Testing (ESLT) now included in XenApp, it's really straightforward for partners and customers to do their own testing/bake-off and find out that XenApp is an excellent workload to virtualize on XenServer.

To make it even easier to do this, my colleague Adam Lotz created the XenApp Server Virtualization Test Toolkit, which includes:

• Documentation for setting up a test environment
• Microsoft Office Transform file
• ESLT scripts, including the one we used for our internal testing
• Tolly Group report with the results of the XenApp on XenServer 5.0 vs. VMware ESX 3.5 testing

The Toolkit can be downloaded on the XenServer Resource Kit page here.

On the Resource Kit page you can also find the Web-Based Console for XenServer, which I blogged about [here] as well as the latest version of the XenServer v2xva Conversion Utility. With the upcoming release of XenConvert 2.0 (released together with XenServer 5.5) the v2xva will become obsolete, since that functionality will be included.

We will be starting another round of testing XenApp soon (on new releases) and will update the toolkit if necesarry.

Happy testing!

Joel

With the release of XenServer 5.5 just around the corner, it is time for video demonstrations of some of the new features. In the video below you will see demo's of the following new features:
- Active Directory Authentication
- Enhanced Storage Features
- XenCenter Enhancements

Which will all be available in the free version of XenServer.

Also included in the video is a demonstration of Workload Balancing, which will be part of Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise and Platinum. The demo includes:
- Workload Balancing Installation
- Workload Balancing Congfiguration
- Using Workload Balancing
- Workload Balancing Reporting

The running time of the whole video is approximately 23 minutes.

Other components of Essentials for XenServer are:
- Lab- and Stage Management
- Provisioning Services
- StorageLink Technology
- Workflow Orchestration

Demo's for these features can be found on the Citrix blog as well as on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/citrixdemo

http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/petersc/2009/02/20/Video+Tutorials+Posted

(Workflow Studio)

Enjoy!

Joel

After the Disaster Recovery and High Availabilty videos I posted last week, it's time to show you some more changes in the upcoming XenServer release.

This video is a GUI walktrough and will highlight the changes in the improved XenCenter which will ship with the XenServer "Orlando" release.

For those who want this and the other videos in a slightly bigger format, please visit my page on the Citrix Video Tips site.

Last Monday I posted a video of the new [\~joels:/2008/08/04/XenServer "Orlando" Disaster Recovery] in our upcoming XenServer release.

Today it's time to show another new functionality in XenServer "Orlando": High Availability.

Citrix recently opend up the public beta of the next XenServer release (read more about it [here]). 

One of the new features in this release is a simplified way of backing up and restoring the Virtual Machine metadata for Disaster Recovery. Check out the video below to find out how simple this is.