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It's no wonder that the recent announcement of Citrix XenDesktop 4 is the hot buzz around town. Citrix XenDesktop 4 delivers optimized delivery for every user, making it the best way to manage applications and the best user experience. It is the first-ever solution to provide all the desktop and application delivery technologies needed to bring desktop virtualization to every user.
So now that you've heard the news, it's time to get geared up with partner Sales Tools designed especially for Citrix XenDesktop 4. This includes a whitepaper about the future of desktop virtualization, a whiteboard, technical overview presentation, proof of concept quick demo kit, a product reference card, and a whole lot more.
Also, in store for you is a FREE Citrix XenDesktop 4 training offer, where you can gain an overview of the Citrix XenDesktop 4 technology in less than an hour! In this training course, you'll learn about key product features, editions, strengths, and how XenDesktop addresses traditional desktop management challenges. Also covered are the key aspects of FlexCast delivery, architectural diagrams, and the steps to move to desktop virtualization.
For added insight, get the complete 411 at the Citrix "Secrets, Lies and VDI" event being held tomorrow, Oct 13 just for Citrix partners. This is not-to-miss event that will unravel the myths and uncover the truth about VDI to give you a clear, strategic view of desktop virtualization today. You'll get a complete understanding of what desktop virtualization really means. Some of the event features include a Keynote Address and sessions, as well as Ask the Expert Q&A. Registration is still going on - don't miss out!
Okay, now you have it - complete sales tools, free training, and a super, hot event!
Virtualization - it's a Citrix world now!
Join us for breakfast at the Microsoft Offices in Waukesha for information on how Citrix and Microsoft are lowering your desktop costs and enabling a complete virtualization solution from our desktop to your datacenter.
Reduce your Desktop management by 40% and save on Microsoft Licensing!
Learn how:
- Windows makes VDI work
- Microsoft and Citrix have an OS capable of managing all your assets
- An in-depth comparison of the Microsoft/Citrix solution VS VMware products
VDI is a tool, not a solution. Come hear how, through a multi-vendor partnership and our 20-year relationship with Microsoft, we are giving you a superior VDI solution that is cutting your TCO by 40%!
Seating is limited. Reserve your space now!
Date: 8/26/2009
Time: 8:30am CDT - 12:00pm CDT
Location:
N19 W24133 Riverwood Drive
Suite 150
Waukesha, Wisconsin
Hosted by: Citrix Systems
Venue: Microsoft Offices
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1856299
In this session, we'll discuss Best Practices for Simplifying Implementation of Provisioning Services using new features of Provisioning Services 5.1.
You'll learn about:
- Read-only vDisk Storage
- Multi-Partitioning Imaging
- Offline Database Support
- User Assigned vDisks
Register Below:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/232926936
Join the discussion and get the answers you need on virtualizing your servers and how Citrix® XenServer™ gives you...
- Server Virtualization enterprise-class features at no cost for XenApp customers
- 70% more users per Citrix XenApp™ server than any other server virtualization solution
- Centralized multi-server management with the intuitive XenCenter console
- Live migration with XenMotion
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1855869
Learn how to provide maximum availability, automatic disaster recovery and secure remote access to your Citrix XenApp™ environment with the seamless addition of Citrix® NetScaler™ and Citrix XenServer™.
Register now for this informative seminar — you'll discover how
NetScaler and XenServer can make your XenApp environment
even more robust by providing:
- Fast, proactive XenApp server recovery — even at remote sites
- Continuous app availability across multi-site environments with Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB)
- Secure remote access to applications
- Zero-downtime XenApp server maintenance
Don't miss out on this opportunity to make your XenApp
environment more dependable than ever. Sign up for this
complimentary seminar today!
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1856259
If you are seeking to learn more about the most effective way of delivering Windows applications as a service then you don't want to miss this. Join us as we chat about what makes XenApp a logical choice for application management and virtualization. You will learn about functionality that enables you to centrally manage a single instance of each application and deliver it to users for online and offline use, while providing a better than installed user experience. Attend this webinar and get the answers and insight you need about purchasing or upgrading to XenApp 5.0. Grab your coffee and be part of the discussion!
- Discuss application and functionality
- See how it works
- Learn about XenApp Fundamentals for small business
- Gain insight on other technologies that make XenApp 5 a logical choice
Attendees will receive a Starbuck's gift card valued at $5.00
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1856255
If you are seeking to learn more about advanced application delivery controllers that improve upon Load balancing and help ensure application availability, increased security, and reduced TCO for web application delivery and cloud computing environments, then you don't want to miss this. Attend this webinar and get the answers and insight you need about network load balancing technologies. Grab your coffee and be part of the discussion!
- Leveraging multi-core processing to improve performance
- Advanced web-application delivery with easy to use virtual appliances
- Ensuring High Availability and security
- Gaining High Availability and ensure 100% uptime for all users
Attendees will receive a Starbuck's gift card valued at $5.00
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1856254
Don't let your basic load balancer hold back your network infrastructure any longer. Join us for this webinar and find out how you can get a smarter, more efficient application delivery network to ensure app availability, increase security and reduce TCO for web applications and cloud computing environments.
Learn how Citrix® NetScaler® delivers more applications to more users including advanced Web 2.0 apps without increasing network & server costs.
In this webinar learn how Citrix NetScaler:
- Delivers 7x increased in performance and scalability with new nCore™ technology
- Ensures 100% app availability with L4-7 load balancin
- Slashes server costs by up to 60%
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1856101
Join us for this Webinar and hear firsthand from experts at Citrix and CSC how you can cost-effectively implement a more secure and accessible enterprise desktop environment for your workforce. Find out how Citrix and CSC have joined together to deliver desktop virtualization as a managed service to their clients. Also, learn how this technology has transformed the operations of both commercial and public sector enterprises and provided quantifiable business value.
Register now to learn how CSC & Citrix:
- Reduce desktop management, hardware, and support costs
- Ensure greater data and system security
- Achieve increased organizational and workforce flexibility
- Simplify IT Management
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1856100
Recently, Guy M Turner, Inc. consolidated their IT infrastructure with XenServer and NetApp and added disaster recovery for servers running everything from specialized trucking to crane management applications.
Join us for a live Webcast to learn how they used NetApp with Citrix XenServer and XenApp to address their challenges.
Specifically, you will learn how Guy M Turner was able to:
- Virtualize XenApp server farms, reducing support calls and improving user experience
- Save over 60% on future storage system maintenance and support
- Gain faster "rollback" capability for application update testing and deployment
- Disaster-proof the company's IT systems and operations
- Consolidate and better manage existing XenApp, server and storage infrastructure
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1856107
"Once organizations have determined to implement a virtual desktop solution, and the environment has been designed to align with business and user requirements, users must be seamlessly migrated from their physical endpoints to their new virtual desktop. Ideally, users should be unaware their desktop is now virtual. Without building a proper environment and migration plan, users will be forced to learn a new system, reconfigure their application settings, and re-build their personal environment.
This TechTalk focuses on the process, options and recommendations for successfully migrating users from their physical endpoints to virtual desktops."
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1855107
"When an organization identifies the need for a VDI solution, infrastructure architecture must be carefully designed. Virtualizing a user's physical desktop and migrating the image into the data center will provide a VDI solution, but requires different management, maintenance, and support from a local desktop to meet the needs of the users.
This TechTalk focuses on the core design decisions that impacts the overall virtual desktop design. These decision areas include understanding the users, organizational layout, current organizational infrastructure."
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1855106
"Everyone uses a desktop device, regardless if they are running virtualized applications on XenApp, web-based applications or locally installed applications. While virtual desktops are all the rage in IT, many organizations are trying to figure out where VDI fits within their infrastructure. Some organizations are following an all-or-nothing route where every user is converted to a virtual desktops but many others are trying to align the VDI solution to specific user requirements. When does a user need a full-blown virtual desktop vs. a desktop appliance vs. an offline desktop?
This TechTalk, which is part 1 in a 3-part series, will look at understanding and identifying how organizations should align their users with the correct desktop solution."
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1855105
Do you have questions about the best way to rapidly and efficiently deploy virtual desktops; how to handle VDI boot storms; or how to meet demanding recovery requirements necessary to make desktops continuously available? Get answers in real time and watch a brief VDI demo.
Join us for a live online Q&A/chat session with a panel of NetApp and Citrix experts who can answer basic and expert-level questions. You'll have the opportunity to ask specific questions, as well as see the answers to questions asked by your peers.
Register Below:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1855038
VM hosted apps will be a new way of virtualizing applications that will be available in the next Feature Pack for XenApp. Harry Labana blogged about it yesterday. Bring yourself up to speed and then register for the TechTalk scheduled for September 23rd.
You can also stay updated on XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 by tuning in to our twitter account (@xenappjunkie) and by keeping an eye on our blog feed. This month, you can expect a XenApp Expert Series video with one of the developers on the project (Modesto Tabares). Stacy Scott, one of our resident experts has also let me know that she'll be entering the blog foray on this topic so stay tuned for her (WARNING: She's super sharp so be prepared for some serious stuff). I'll be announcing everything on our blog feed and on Twitter.
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You may have seen an earlier blog post on application virtualization with VM hosted apps from Harry Labana, CTO of XenApp (@harrylabana) titled "Seamless applications beyond Terminal Services, does it help?". You probably have some questions on this technology as well. Well, let me be the first to give you a bit more background on this feature. Your comments and feedback are always appreciated.
Why VM hosted apps for application virtualization?
Today, you use XenApp to deliver virtual applications in 2 ways - hosted or offline. With offline delivery, you use application streaming technology to place the app in an isolated container running on the users PC. With hosted delivery, you stream or install an application onto XenApp servers and users connect to these servers to access the application via a highly optimized protocol (e.g. Citrix ICA powered by HDX technology). Each user gets their own memory space but they all share the same instance of the operating system - that being Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008. Now, with VM hosted delivery, you stream or install an application into an image or virtual machine and users connect to their own instance of the virtual machine in order to access the application (pooled VM's are the best way to do this). Applications virtualized with VM hosted apps are run in a dedicated environment for each user with dedicated memory AND their own instance of the operating system such as Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7.
Why is this important? Well, as the folks who invented application virtualization and who have been doing it the longest, we've learned throughout the years that not every application can run in a server-hosted or Terminal Services environment. There are some apps that users needed to take offline with them and others that simply wouldn't run well in a multi-user environment for a number of reasons. This is why we added application streaming technology to XenApp a few years ago. Still, there were some applications that customers wanted to host in the data center but which didn't run well in Terminal Services. An example could be a custom application that had proprietary data in it and putting the app on the desktop would put the data at risk. Another example could be an application that is unsupported by the ISV in a Terminal Services environment. And yet another example might be a health care application that is certified to run on the desktop and putting it in a multi-user environment would lead to a breach of HIPAA compliance. Whatever the reason, VM hosted applications provides another alternative.
Application management with VM hosted apps
With VM hosted apps, you'll create a virtual machine or desktop image (vDisk) into which you install the given application and any helper apps needed. This image can be running Windows XP, Vista or Win7. There are some configuration steps you need to go through to set up the image properly but they are minor (e.g. placing a shortcut to the app in a special folder, installing a software agent, etc.). Once the image is created, you'll use our management tools to publish the application. Basically, what you are doing is publishing a desktop pool, assigning it the icon of the application you want to make available, giving it a friendly name, and defining the users and conditions that the application will run in. You can configure the application to run as a VM, on a blade PC or even a PC running in the datacenter. The only reason I see for running it on a blade or a PC is for applications that require a GPU or have specific hardware requirements that can't be virtualized at this time. You'll get better ROI if you can virtualize.
One thing to note is that this is being done in an independent console snap-in for this release so you'll want to use the MMC to bring everything together. In addition, the control mechanism for VM hosted apps requires and independent farm. Not to worry though... this is all hidden from the user because it all comes together via XenApp Web and XenApp Services or what our old-timers know as Web Interface and PNAgent sites. You simply add the VM hosted apps farm to your Web Interface or PNAgent site and when a user logs in to Citrix Receiver or to Web Interface they'll see all of their apps in a single list - VM hosted, server hosted or streamed. When users open an application, it will appear in seamless mode with no components of the remote desktop showing - just like other server-hosted applications delivered with XenApp. In this release, users can access a single published application within a virtual machine instance but we are investigating ways to improve on the flexibility here for future releases.
From a licensing perspective, the plan is to make this feature available to XenApp Enterprise or Platinum customers. On the Microsoft side, you'll need a Microsoft VECD license to stay in compliance with hosting Windows virtual desktops. It's important to note that VM hosted apps DOES NOT allow you to run a full virtualized desktop session such as what you would have with XenDesktop. It wasn't built for such a purpose and it doesn't work technically. You can, however, leverage the same infrastructure for VM hosted apps to deliver virtual desktops if you purchase XenDesktop licenses and you can use same VH hosted apps console to manage the delivery of those desktops to users. One of the best things about this is that if you choose to extend your XenApp deployment with VM hosted apps you're essentially putting yourself in the position to easily adopt Essentials for Xen and Hyper-V as well as XenDesktop in the future.
If you're trying to figure out if VM hosted apps is for you, it'll become pretty obvious very quickly that there is a decision tree involved here that has variables associated with it like application compatibility, criticality, overall cost and ROI among the many. We'll reveal the elements of this decision tree in future posts but one thing your should certainly take away is that server hosting (XenApp on Terminal Services) is still your best bet for the lowest cost application delivery. In fact, you'll probably find yourself using this is a stop-gap for some of your apps that you'll need to deliver quickly to give you some time to do proper validation and testing for hosting on XenApp servers. In any case, stay tuned for more information on this topic as I'm sure it will be sought after.
Availability of VM hosted apps
We're planning to release the VM hosted apps feature in the next Feature Pack for XenApp which is planned for Q3 2009. In the meantime, you can learn more about it by staying tuned to our twitter account (@xenappjunkie) and by keeping an eye on our blog feed. This month, you can expect a XenApp Expert Series video with one of the developers on the project (Modesto Tabares) and Cris Lau will be doing a TechTalk scheduled for September 23rd so reserve your seat today. Stacy Scott, one of our resident experts has also let me know that she'll be entering the blog foray on this topic so stay tuned for her (WARNING: She's super sharp so be prepared for some serious stuff). I'll be announcing everything on our blog feed and on Twitter.
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Download technology previews for other XenApp technologies
UPDATED July 31, 2009 - Clarified that pooled VM's are supported, separate farms are used not separate IMA database, consoles come together via MMC.
Microsoft, Intel & Citrix: Dynamics of Enterprise Virtualization
An interactive discussion led by Doug Brown
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Attend this lively discussion with virtualization experts David Greschler, Iddo Kadim & Simon Crosby on the dynamics of enterprise virtualization. Register here.
Topics include:
• Virtualization in the enterprise & upcoming technologies
• Moving beyond consolidation & getting to Dynamic Datacenters
• Cloud computing & how does virtualization fit in
• Desktop Virtualization opportunities, barriers & adoption challenges
Date: Monday, June 22, 2009
Time: 1:00 PM Eastern; 10:00 AM Pacific
Don't miss this opportunity to hear perspectives on the current & future virtualization landscape and what this means for the enterprise.
Register here now.
Follow me on Twitter.
Citrix iForum Benelux 2009 is in Antwerp on June 9th and 10th. The Citrix Benelux team put together a little promo video for the event and posted it on YouTube.
You can register here. I hope to see you and the Citrix Angels there.
Follow me on Twitter.
Twitter is obviously growing rapidily in popularity. According to a recent TechCrunch article, "Twitter's global unique visitors in April, 2009 was a whopping 32 million, up from 19 million in March, 2009". Many different groups within Citrix have begun to embrace Twitter. I use Twitter quite a bit, and have found several different Citrix Twitter accounts that I follow. Below are several recent Twitter accounts started by different departments within Citrix -
@citrixsupport - Mike Stringer, a Senior Director in Technical Support, created this account to provide updates from Citrix Technical Support.
@citrixreadiness - David McGeough from our Dublin office has been very active recently on this account.
@xenappjunkie - Vinny Sosa just started this Twitter account about XenApp.
@xdsupport - XenDesktop support. I have not yet found out who owns this account.
@citrixpartners - This twitter account is specifically for info related to Citrix partners.
@nssupport - Julio Rodriguez recently started this NetScaler related account.
@citrixblogs - This is an automated rss feed account that posts links to every new group blog post on the Citrix Community blogs.
@citrixonline - This account is dedicated to info on GoToMyPC, GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, and GoView from Citrix Online.
@go_view - This account by Brenda Dentinger focuses on the new GoView product from Citrix Online.
@ctxs - This account is an rss feed of Citrix press releases.
@xenserverarmy - This account posts info specific to XenServer and Essentials for XenServer.
@citrix_synergy - This account posted live updates from Citrix Synergy.
There are several other new accounts that have no or few updates yet.
@xasupport
@xssupport
@citrixeducation
You can also follow me on Twitter, and other Citrix employees such as Chris Fleck, Tedd Fox, Matt Lesak, Lauren Whalen, Rich Crusco, Vishal Generiwala, Dan Feller, and Pete Downing.
If there are other Citrix accounts or Citrix employees you follow on Twitter, please post them in the comments.
I wanted to you to let you know that the Citrix TechEdge event being held on Monday, May 4th at the MGM Grand Convention Center in Las Vegas at Citrix Summit and Citrix Synergy, will be a day packed with in-depth knowledge on the latest troubleshooting tools, methodologies and fixes for your Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure.
If you can't make it to the show, don't worry, you'll be able to join the
conversation online:
- Twitter at http://search.twitter.com
- Enter: #TechEdgeP (Partners)
- Enter: #TechEdgeC (Customers)
- Enter: #TechEdgeP (Partners)
- With each Tweet you can reply to comments, ask questions, provide event feedback, broadcast key takeaways, post links, news, photos, etc.
- If you already use Twitter, you can simply use #TechEdgeP or # TechEdgeC
- Feel free to begin to participate now on what you expect from Citrix TechEdge 2009.
Note that Citrix TechEdge is encouraging both show attendees, colleagues that can't attend and online enthusiasts to join the conversation on Twitter, so we expect a large turn-out. We hope that you will not only participate, but that you will also spread the word about Twitter: #TechEdgeP or #TechEdgeC.