Blog posts tagged with 'citrix'
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.
One of the attractions of virtualization is the ability to deploy applications as pre-built virtual appliances. An article in CIO Magazine describes a virtual appliance as "an application is designed, certified and delivered, with its own little OS, to run as a virtual machine on your existing physical server, or to run in a VM via a "cloud computing" service like Amazon's." Virtual Appliances are expected to provide rapid deployment, simplified support, improved performance (OS and Application Tuned by ISV), and increased security. There are many advantages to virtual appliances. But is this deployment method the best solution to your deployment issues?
With all the buzz about virtualization and cloud computing, the interest level from both IT departments and vendors in virtual appliances is rising rapidly. Citrix has offered an Evaluation Virtual Appliance of XenApp for over a year. It has been downloaded over 11,000 times, according to Kurt Moody. Microsoft nows has virtual appliances for Windows Server 2008, System Center Configuration Manager, SharePoint Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and more. Many virtualization vendors like Marathon Technologies, Platform Computing, Fortisphere, VMLogix, deliver their product as a virtual appliance.
Some application vendors have also jumped on the virtual appliance bandwagon, such as Business Objects and Satori. Several virtual appliance sites have been launched, included rPath, VirtualAppliances.net and JumpBox.com in addition the the existing VMWare Virtual Appliance Marketplace. Even Paralells has started offering virtual appliances from their website.
There are some concerns about this new model. As this article points out, there are questions about licensing of the OS and application (especially for Windows based applications) as well as export and security issues.
With all these new virtual appliances becoming available, I am curious to know if you use virtual appliances, and, if so, for what purposes? What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of virtual appliances?
Please vote in the polls below. Once you have voted, please post in the comments if there is anything else you would liek to see from virtual appliances.-
| Have you ever used any virtual appliance? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Yes |  |
| No | |
| If you have used a virtual appliance, did you use it in test, production or both?? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Test | |
| Production | |
| Both Test and Production | |
I an earlier post, I asked "How do you make Technology decisions?". According to a recent survey, Google is by far the most used tool by technology buyers (83% ALWAYS use Google). The poll on my post found similar results.
Again Google is the clear leader, but not nearly by the same margin as in the external survey. I am curious if the is partly because the question in the poll was phrased a bit differently.
Instead of guessing why, I decided to ask you. Please vote below on whether you always, sometimes, or never use these different resources when researching a new technology before making a decision on a solution to implement.
| Do you always, sometime or never use Google when researching technology? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Always | |
| Sometimes | |
| Never | |
| Do you always, sometimes or never use another search engine (Yahoo, MSN Live, Ask, etc..) when researching technology? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Always | |
| Sometimes | |
| Never | |
| Do you always, sometimes or never use a vendor blog when researching technology? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Always | |
| Sometimes | |
| Never | |
| Do you always, sometimes or never use an independent blog when researching technology? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Always | |
| Sometimes | |
| Never | |
| Do you always, sometimes or never use a vendor product site when researching technology? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Always | |
| Sometimes | |
| Never | |
| Do you always, sometimes or never use a vendor support site when researching technology? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Always | |
| Sometimes | |
| Never | |
| Do you always, sometimes or never use a third party analyst site when researching technology? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Always | |
| Sometimes | |
| Never | |
| Do you always, sometimes or never use a user group when researching technology? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Always | |
| Sometimes | |
| Never | |
| Do you always, sometimes or never use Wikipedia when researching technology? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Always | |
| Sometimes | |
| Never | |
The March of Dimes Walk for Babies
is in full swing. The Citrix office in Silicon Valley and the Citrix Online team have both recently created teams to help the March of Dimes Walk for Babies.
Wes Wasson, our SVP of Marketing, recently spoke at the March of Dimes March for Babies in the Bay Area in Northern California.
This video from the March of Dimes explains why the March for Babies is so important.
I know from personal experience the importance of research into birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. My daughter was born 7 weeks premature after many complications, and weighed about four pounds at birth. She was just about the size of my hand.
Thankfully, our sweet little girl is a very healthy and happy three year old today. Much of the thanks goes to the research supported by the March of Dimes and the March for Babies.
Find a March for Babies in your area.
Do you have an interesting story to tell about your experience with Citrix products? Are you eager to share the wisdom you have gained about the relationship between business and technology? Would you like to discuss the valuable lessons you have learned about delivering applications with the entire Citrix Community?
Submit your session idea and you could get free admission to the conference ($1395 value) and four nights in the conference hotel (over $800 value) at Citrix Synergy in the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston Texas. Submit your session proposal at the Call for Presentations site now.
We are looking for presentations that address trends, technologies, needs and solutions in the following three conference tracks:
IT 2.0 Business Symposium Track: Strategic Considerations for the Business IT Professional
Sessions in this track will cover how application delivery and its underlying technologies - virtualization, application networking and optimization are transforming the IT industry and IT organizations. Topics in this track are intended for senior IT leaders. Sessions such as "The IT Department in 5 Years", "The Talent You Need: Engineers and Architects for the New IT World", and "Key Considerations for Infrastructure Consolidation" should be designed to help IT professionals survive and thrive in today's dynamic.
iForum Track: The Latest on Citrix Products from A to Xen
Sessions in this track will give attendees the latest scoop on Citrix products - from Access Gateway to XenServer. Topics that give attendees architectural insight, tips and tricks, and technical product detail - such as "Extending Virtualization to the Desktop" and "NetScaler for the Enterprise" to Industry Best Practices and Customer Case Studies - are well-suited for the range of Citrix customers who will attend this track.
Application Delivery Industry Track: Hot Topics and Solutions in Application Delivery
Realizing that no single vendor can address all of a customer's application delivery challenges, this track will bring together both hot topics and realistic approaches for making everything from the datacenter to the desktop work in the real world. Topics that provide insight and advice in this area - including "Making it All Work Together" and "VDI Comparisons" as well as "Best Practices in Green Computing" and "Considerations for Data Security and Compliance" - are ideal for the technical and business savvy attendees who will attend this track.
GeekSpeak - Geek Speak Live! Meet industry tech geeks, analysts and bloggers at the ultimate "unconference," where participants choose the topics and run the sessions. It's an informal forum for sharing ideas and learning from one another. Click here to read more about GeekSpeak Live, and here to find out the details of the GeekSpeak BarCamp.
You can get a full list of all the technical sessions at Citrix Synergy at this link.
Tell your story, share your vision, make new connections with others in the Citrix Community, and increase your own visibility. We are accepting proposals at the Call for Presentations site until April 4th. You can click here to register for Citrix Synergy.
Just before Christmas I made a post on CIO Magazine's "10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch" list. My first post was about Cirba and the second one covered VizionCore. I met with both companies at Summit. Cirba was a sponsor of Summit and George Pradel from VisionCore came down as well.
Unfortunately, travel in January to visit partners and Citrix Summit have kept me so busy I haven't had much time to continue this series. Here is the next company from the list with some added background -
Akorri -
Akorri's BalancePoint suite can help solve one of the toughest questions IT teams have around virtualization: How far can I push this physical server by adding on more VMs without affecting application service levels? BalancePoint's analysis tools can see across server, storage and software issues to help you plan and manage workload balancing issues.
Here is how Akorri describes their product on their website -
A true breakthrough in cross-domain data center management, BalancePoint is a new class of agent-less management software for the virtualized data center. It uses advanced analytics so IT managers and business managers can understand how well data center resources are performing. BalancePoint also helps IT optimize server and storage resource utilization. BalancePoint customers are able to reduce IT infrastructure costs, by using servers and storage more efficiently, and manage the environment with fewer people.
BalancePoint's Cross-Domain Analysis™ technology collects information from servers, storage, and infrastructure software, and automatically correlates application performance across these domains. By providing a single view across IT silos, Cross-Domain Analysis shortens troubleshooting, saves money, and helps prevent disruptive outages to business-critical applications.
As with the first two partners on this list, Virtual Strategy Magazine did a podcast on Akorri -
Podcast Summary:
Length: 9:49
- Introduction
- Tom Joyce, CEO and President of Akorri (:10)
- The focus at Akorri (:22)
- Akorri's work with Cross-Domain Performance Management (:50)
- Typical usage case for Akorri's BalancePoint product (3:07)
- How BalancePoint is different from system management tools (5:57)
- What's next at Akorri (7:23)
- For more information (8:47)
- Close
David Marshall of VMBlog.com and the Virtualization Blog on InfoWorld recently wrote a story reviewing the accolades Akorri has received -
- SearchDataCenter.com's Silver Data Center Product of the Year
- VMware's Best of VMworld Gold Award for Performance Monitoring and Optimization
- SearchStorage.com's Product of the Year Finalist
- Five Star Recommendation within CMP Channel's CRN Test center review
- CIO Magazine's 10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch in 2008
- Network World's 10 IT Management Companies to Watch
- Byte and Switch's Top 10 Startups to Watch
- One of American Venture Magazine's 2008 most promising start ups selected for vision, market leadership and technological achievements
I found a few Akorri specific videos on the web.
First, an interview with their CEO (done by TechTargetTV ) regarding their Best of VMWorld award -
I also found these white board videos in the ZDnet "At the Whiteboard" Series done by Akorri's VP of Marketing, Tom Joyce (who has apparently been promoted to CEO since these videos were made).
Managing Application Performance Across IT Domains - At the WhiteBoard Series from ZDNet
Application Service Level Management
Akorri is certainly on the radar, and I personally expect them to be engaged in our Alliance program and Citrix Ready in the near future.
Next up is Platform Computing...
I am going to step away from a moment from my normal blogging topics of XenServer, XenDesktop, and Provisioning Server, and blog about a project I did as a part of my last job within Citrix. This performance testing project hasn't received a lot of airtime with so many other things happening since the project was completed, so I would like to use this forum to highlight these great results.
In the summer of 2007, Citrix and IBM collaborated on joint testing of Citrix NetScaler and WanScaler at the IBM Innovation Center in San Mateo, CA. The goal of this testing was to validate the impact of NetScaler and WanScaler on end user response time for IBM WebSphere Portal, WebSphere Application Server, Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino Web Access. Load simulation was provided by Mercury LoadRunner to simulate multiple users access both WebSphere Portal and WAS over the simulated WAN link.
In this graphic, you see an overview of the test configuration -
Though not shown on this graphic, a Lotus Domino Server was also built for the testing by the staff of the IBM IIC for the testing.
IBM WebSphere
In this testing, we found the following results with WebSphere -
IBM WebSphere Portal
(Click on thumbnail to enlarge)
- Citrix NetScaler reduced login for WebSphere Portal by up to 50%
- Citrix NetScaler reduced standard portlet loading times by up to 44%
- Citrix NetScaler reduced Document Preview and Save time by up to 50%
- Citrix NetScaler and WanScaler combined reduced document preview and save time by up to 90%
IBM WebSphere Application Server -
- Citrix NetScaler reduced end user response time for a shopping cart application running on WAS by up to 70%
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(Click on thumbnail to enlarge)
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NetScaler compression and caching capabilities were utilized in this testing. The SSL and TCP off loading functions, EdgeSight for NetScaler and App Firewall functions can also add significant value to any WebSphere Portal or WAS deployment.
For more background on this portion of the test, see this presentation from the IBM WebSphere Portal Technical users Conference.
WebSphere Portal Technical Users Conference 2007 Presentation
Lotus Notes and Domino Web Access
Lotus Notes and Domino were also tested. Using a simulated T1, the testing measure the time it took for a standard Notes 7 client (with default install) to download and open a 5 MB attachment. This took about 44 seconds. See a video of this test at this link -
The next test was done after the cache on the client was completely cleared and the Notes client restarted. The wan simulator was monitored to ensure the file transfered again while a WanScaler appliance was running on each side on the T1 simulated link. In this test, the download and open time was slashed down to 6 seconds!
The amazing part about this test is that the compression and flow control of the WanScaler provided all the acceleration. Since this was the first time the document was downloaded through the WanScaler appliances, the WanScaler caching was not used at all.
The final test for Notes 7 was done with the WanScaler client. This client is used for individual users, not for an entire site like a WanScaler appliance. The WanScaler client download and open time was 14 seconds (compared to 44 seconds for the Notes 7 client with no wan optimization). Unfortunately there is a problem with this video.
Domino Web Access
Our final test was with Domino Web Access and the Citrix NetScaler. In this test, we downloaded and opened a 7 MB Word document in the DWA client over the simulated T1.
(Click on thumbnail to enlarge)
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The first test was done with the DWA client with the Domino compression disabled (compression is on by default). In this test, it took about 75 seconds to open the document. See the video here -
In the next test, the same 7 mb document was opened (with local cached completely cleared) again, but this time the DWA compression was enabled. This iteration took about 22 seconds to open the document. Obviously compression helps a great deal, but executing compression on the DWA server takes away CPU cycles needed for processing user requests. See the video here -
For our final test, the DWA client cache was again cleared and DWA compression disabled. The NetScaler was placed in front of the DWA server on the Datacenter side of the simulated T1 link. In this test, the document download and open time was a mere 13 seconds. See the video here -
Some certifications were awarded by IBM as a result of this testing -
Citrix NetScaler in IBM Global Solutions Directory - Ready for IBM Lotus and Ready for IBM WebSphere
Citrix WanScaler in IBM Global Solutions Directory- Ready for IBM Lotus and Ready for IBM WebSphere
As you can see, Citrix NetScaler and WanScaler can dramatically ramp up the performance of IBM WebSphere Portal, WebSphere Application Server, and Lotus Notes and Domino Web Access.
Click here for more info on Citrix NetScaler.
Click here for more info on Citrix WanScaler.
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