Blog posts tagged with 'training'

Citrix Online is going to host a series of three training webinars on GoToAssist Express, register to attend one of the following:

Tuesday, July 15 at 11 AM PDT
Click here to register

Wednesday, July 23 at 4 PM PDT
Click here to register

Thursday, July 31 at 9 AM PDT
Click here to register

During each of these Webinars, they will hold a drawing for a pocket camcorder, here are the details:
- 5.0 Megapixel Video Pocket Camcorder Value: $175
- DXG-567V HD
- 1280 x 720 Video Pocket Camcorder
- Flip USB Connector

I took a netscaler basic training a while ago. The class is very informative. And I would recommend it if you have an opportunity to take it.

For more information about this product, see

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=21681

You can find more information about this training class at

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=21768

Note that the course is being updated for 8.0 release.

Netscaler is great for network, application administrators and most articles have focused on this audience. Not much has been said about Netscaler benefits to application developers and its impact to application designs (particularly web applications). As a developer, I will try to give some examples from a developer perspective based on what I learned from the class.

Load balancing:

Netscaler offers powerful load balancing capabilities. In a multiple web server deployment scenarios, you will probably need a load balancer to load balance web servers. If your web server requires all requests associated with a session to remain on one server, Netscaler can be configured to do so easily and there are multiple methods to choose from. So a simple web application may simplify its design by maintaining its session state on the local server.

Some more complex applications use a separate group of application servers to run business logics. One example of such application is the MSAM product I worked on. (MSAM is an enterprise portal product for those who don know). Making sure the requests from web server to these application servers are load balanced efficiently was a challenge for us. And we spent lots of efforts on it. With netscaler, I now wonder if it makes more sense to eliminate application servers. Instead, host business logics on web servers as well and use netscaler to load balance web servers. It would simplify the design quite a lot and would have more flexible deployment options since the load balancing is separated from the application itself. Such design would be easier to debug, easier to scale up and perform better (less network traffic, simpler code)

For example, Netscaler has a slow start feature to avoid a newly added server to be overloaded. Many of the applications I seen don have this load balancing feature.

Content redirection:

Netscaler has this feature of redirecting requests to different backend servers based on flexible policies. For example, you can configure it to redirect HTTP traffic to a mobile web site if the request headers indicate the client device is a small form factor device. A use case for example can be as follows:

Web interface users can type the same URL they are familiar with from either small form factor devices such as blackberry (we have a blackberry ICA client now!http://citrixcommunity.com/blogs/cdn/archive/2007/03/26/Idokorro-Launches-new-Citrix-ICA-Client-for-BlackBerry.aspx) or a regular PC. A Netscaler can be put in front of web interface servers and redirect requests to different web interface sites that are designed to serve appropriate published applications.

Sure, the applications can do similar things themselves. But it not only require additional code but also difficult to make it as flexible as netscaler can do. Plus it is easier to reconfigure netscaler than changing the applications. Netscaler has a nice GUI to help with this task. Not to mention some applications such as web interfaces currently don have such capabilities yet.

Integrated caching:

For example, Netscaler can cache even dynamic content for specified period of time. Thus it can reduce the load to application server. For certain applications, it means, application developers can focus more on solving business problem and leaving the hard job of caching to NS.

It can be a challenge to design a high performance application. In MSAM and later AAC (advanced access control) products I worked on, we spent tons of development and testing effort to improve the web applications performance. It difficult because tasks such as converting word documents to PDFs do take relatively long time. We improved performance by caching the conversation result. But it is difficult to do and is application specific. If we could rely on Netscaler, we could have delivered the products much quicker.

There are many other benefits to developers. The above are just some examples. We love to hear your experience with netscaler.

I recently tried the new XenServer on line technical training. It's great. Not everyone has the hardware to install XenServer. The on line training will get you started with XenServer quickly.  I heard the training is available for free to XenServer partners. For more details and to sign up please see Citrix education web site

You will even be able to experience with the "10 minutes to Xen" joy by installing XenServer from scratch.

One thing I found most valuable in this training is that it allows me to try XenMotion myself. XenMotion which requires shared storage which I currently don't have in my lab. I've seen demos of XenMotion. But it's really cool to be able to try it myself.

In general the step by step instructions are very good although I did find the following that may require some clarification. It seems you will need to install xen tool into the vm first to enable xenmotion. Also you may need to remove network0 and replace it with the vlan created in the first step.  Neither seems to be in the instruction.  I could have missed something.

Did you run into the same issue?	Choose
Yes
No

Anyway I thought I should share my experience.

If you are new to XenServer, it may work best if you follow the lab orders. However if you would like to repeat labs or jump to the labs you are interested, you can do so too. Each lab will independently have everything you need to complete the lab.

Performance is generally good because it uses ICA. RDP also seems to be used to allow connection to XP desktops. When XenDesktop becomes ready, I am sure the performance will be even better. The virtual machine console portion seems to be a little bit sluggish. But it is probably because VNC is involved on top of ICA and RDP. You can experience yourself the performance difference between ICA and other display protocols.

You can click the "Ask an Expert" button from within the course or labs and get a real live person to chat with.  It's essentially a GoToAssist session. I didn't notice this feature when I took the class though.

The training seems to be very popular. I had to try hard to get into the class although I work for Citrix. The citrix partners have priorities. The training is active only for 5 days. So be prepared.  

I wish more people could have access to such a training/demo. Citrix has a test drive program http://www.citrixtestdrive.com/testdrive/where  you can try the XenApp (formerly known as Presentation Server) over Internet. It would be nice to extend that program to XenServer. What do you think?

Enjoy your Xen experience if you can. Please let us know what you think. Survey:

Have you tried the XenServer on line technical training?	Choose
yes
no

Would you like to take the training?	Choose
yes
no

Don't miss out on the great new Presentation Server Platinum training opportunity just announced at Summit this week!  See details below.....

StayCurrent, a promotion offering accelerated, in-depth technical training on Citrix Presentation Server(TM) Platinum Edition. Intended to encourage partners to update their skills, the promotion features an accelerated training course that combines several courses adding up to 11 days of training in five days. The course is offered at the promotional rate of $2,500, which is 55 percent off current pricing. This offer is also valid through the next Citrix Summit partner event (October 2008).

Partners may access further information on this training program and others by going to www.citrix.com/partnertraining and logging in with a valid My Citrix account. 

Go for it!!!!