Blog posts tagged with 'xenserver'

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.

Provisioning Server 5.0 was recently released. Provisioning Server 5 is included in the Platinum versions of XenServer 5 and XenDesktop.

See earlier posts (here here and here) for other deep dive presentations.

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

Live Webinar: "Citrix & Hyperic: Best Practice for Successful Virtualization Systems Management"

Hyperic's enterprise-class management and monitoring software for the popular Citrix XenServer virtualization software provides users with a single view into their virtual and non-virtual infrastructure. Join Citrix and Hyperic for their upcoming webinar to learn more about this best practice solution for successful virtualization systems management. Reserve your space today, register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/999023087

One of the features of the Citrix Delivery Center Podcast is called the Citrix Countdown. The Citrix Countdown is focused on giving insight into our Knowledgebase articles and Citrix Technical Support in top five countdowns.

In the first Citrix Countdown on Episode One, Jim West from XenServer Technical Support counts down the top five most popular XenServer Knowledgebase articles over the last 30 days.

Here is the list from the first ever Citrix Countdown -

Listen to the Citrix Delivery Center Podcast to hear Jim cover each article in brief.

This is the first episode of the Citrix Delivery Center podcast. Vishal Ganeriwala and I interviewed Daniel Feller of Worldwide Consulting Solutions on the topic of deploying XenApp on XenServer. In part 1 of this topic, Dan talks about where, why and how XenServer and XenApp integration makes sense to deploy in your environment. Scalability will be covered in part 2.

Thanks to Jim West in Citrix Technical Support for voicing the Citrix Countdown and Steve Greenberg of Thinclient.net for the CTP Minute. A special thanks also goes out to Doug Brown for his podcasting advice and help.

MP3 File Download

Subscribe to the Citrix Delivery Center Podcast Feed

UPDATE: Click here to vote on topics for future podcasts.

Here are the documents Dan created regarding XenApp on XenServer -

Reference Architecture: Explains why a 100% physical architecture was reconfigured to include both physical and virtual systems and deciding factors of why XenServer is the best server virtualization solution for XenApp servers.

Implementation Guide: A step-by-step guide showing how to incorporate a XenApp Farm into a XenServer Platinum environment. Demonstrates how to create a golden XenApp image to be provisioned to any number of virtual machines.

Design Considerations: To meet the needs of the business, a solution like XenServer for XenApp must allow for design decisions. This article focuses on a few of the major considerations when integrating these solutions together.

Simon Crosby has been very popular in the "podosphere" of late. Here are three recent podcast interviews with Simon.

First, Simon did a very interesting interview with Doug Brown of DABCC.com.

Next, Simon participated in a two part interview with Mitchell Ashely of Converging on Microsoft at Network World.

Part 2 of the Network World podcast is entitled "Why Simon Loves Hyper-V".

As part of their coverage of Citrix Synergy,Virtual Strategy Magazinerecorded a video interview with Simon Crosby, the CTO of our VMD division, at Citrix Synergy. In this interview Simon talks about our virtualization products Citrix XenDesktop, XenServer and about great partners like Marathon Technologies.

Thanks to VSM for the link back to the Synergy Underground site as well.

The Citrix Federal Sales team is planning a XenServer webinar for tomorrow at 1:30 pm EST. See below for more information -

Make the Virtual Data Center a Reality

Citrix XenServer is the simplest and most efficient way to virtualize servers and deliver a dynamic data center. Citrix XenServer is a proven, powerful and feature-rich server virtualization platform with a real-world price point. XenServer combines comprehensive server virtualization capabilities with unparalleled scalability, performance, economics and ease of use. As a core component of the Citrix Application Delivery suite, XenServer offers unique strategic value for organizations with an eye on Desktop Virtualization.

Attend webinar and learn:

• How to optimize your infrastructure
• Improve ROI with improved hardware utilization
• Save time and money while achieving more with
  the resources you already own
• How Microsoft and Citrix are joined to provide customers
  with best-of-breed solutions

When:
Thursday, May 29, 2008
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM EDT

Click here to register. UPDATE:You can watch the archived recording at the same link.

All attendees to the live event will receive a copy of the book "Running Xen: A Hands-On Guide to the Art of Virtualization". UPDATE:This offer was for attending the LIVE EVENT ONLY.

http://www.amazon.com/Running-Xen-Hands-Guide-Virtualization/dp/0132349663/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211899964&sr=1-1

Simon Crosby, the Chief Technology Officer of the Virtualization and Management Division of Citrix, participates in a recurring podcast with Virtual Strategy Magazine called "10 Minutes to Xen".

Here is a list of the topics discussed in the most recent edition -

You can listen the full podcast here.