I got an interesting item in my inbox from a friend who was speaking with VMware about their VDI solution.  He asked me if the information VMware was telling him was true. He was especially curious because he knew I wrote the Citrix XenDesktop Enterprise Design reference architecture that VMware was referencing to talk about how much better View was. VMWare's approach is laughable.  They are taking a detailed consulting design document  and trying to compare it to the VMware View reference architecture, which if you read it like I have (wasted 2 hours of my life), you will quickly see it is high-level and full of marketing spin and provides no insight.  I, on the other hand, was trying to provide all of you in the community with insight into how to design a large, and complex customer environment with XenDesktop.  Anyways, I told him the angle they were using and he thought it was ridiculous.  I was going to leave it at that, but I've been seeing and hearing more about it from others so I thought I would provide all of you with the same information.  Let's break it down: 

Scalability:

• Misconception: VMWare says that XenDesktop has poor hypervisor scalability. They say that on a 16 core server XenDesktop can only support 40 users (3 users per core). 
• Truth: The XenDesktop reference architecture for the hosted virtual desktops is 8 cores, not 16.  In the design phase, we estimated 40-50 VMs per server, which averages to 5-7 virtual desktops per core.  We were a little conservative as we were not sure how the unique applications would impact the system.  But you can look at Project Virtual Reality Check scalability white paper to get a good comparison of XenServer and ESX.  Although the design VMWare references was for XenServer, the same estimates would have been used if the hypervisor was running ESX.

Storage:

• Misconception: VMware likes to say that XenDesktop is a storage pig in that we need a lot of storage associated with each virtual desktop. 
• Truth: This particular design had a requirement to keep a few system items persistent across workstation reboots so we recommended the creation of a local, persistent disk of between 3-5GB to store items like event logs, performance metrics, antivirus definitions, etc.  This is not NAS/SAN storage; it is the storage on the physical XenServer.  Think about it. You buy an 8 core server, install XenServer, which is small, and the rest of the local storage is wasted.  We utilize that for the persistent store of the virtual desktops.  This means we cannot do XenMotion on the virtual desktops, but most customers I've spoken to do not have this requirement.  After looking at VMware's reference architecture I don't see any level of detail as to the amount of storage they require.  I wonder why not. 

Workloads:

• Misconception: VMware states that they can get more users on a hypervisor than we can.
• Truth: This is all around scalability tests, which I'm not a fan of.  I can easily find you 5 tests that show XenServer is better and another 5 that shows ESX is.  The VMware reference architecture had users connected for 14 straight hours, seems like a long workday to me. I have a question for VMWare: What company did you create this architecture for where users would work for 14 hours? Please tell me as I do not want to work there.  As we all know, the most typical system hit is during startup and logon. So by expanding the session time from a few hours to 14, the overall average utilization rates can be significantly lowered, thus providing an inaccurate estimate to the hardware
• Truth: The Citrix Reference Architecture made estimates based on the applications and expected real user workload, not simple apps and 14 hour workdays.  VMware's reference architecture was based on standard scalability samples shown below. If this was an actual user workload, I totally want to work for that company because that job looks so easy:
  • Microsoft Word - Open/minimize/close, write random words/numbers, save modifications.
  • Microsoft Excel - Open/minimize/close, write random numbers, insert/delete columns/rows, copy/paste formulas
  • Etc

RAM:

• Misconception: The amount of RAM that VMware recommends in their reference architecture is nuts.  They say they can get 96 users on a server with 96GB RAM.
• Truth: If you subtract the hypervisor overhead you are looking at "USABLE" RAM of about 800MB per virtual desktop.  I say usable because ESX has probably enabled memory ballooning.  It is true that XenServer does not have memory ballooning, but I would recommend customers disable this feature for virtual desktops.  On XenDesktop projects that use the ESX hypervisor, I also recommend disabling this feature.  Users and desktops are more dynamic than server workloads, meaning the RAM consumption is going to fluctuate greatly.  If RAM starts to decrease to the critical threshold, what happens to the hypervisor?  It must free up memory by paging this to disk.  Isn't this an intensive system process that consumes more resources at a time when resources are scarce?

End Points:

• Misconception: Vmware talks about the end points and only focus on thin clients and end points that we can repurpose with a Linux OS or locked down Windows OS. What about the newer end points that organizations have already spent money on? 

• Truth: With VMware View you still will connect to the VDI desktop and idle your local hardware. Seems like a lot of wasted desktop resources to me.  XenDesktop, on the other hand, allows you to re-use those desktops as a local streamed virtual desktop. Don't be fooled, there is more to desktop virtualization than VDI.

Provision:

• Truth: Closer to the end, the reference architecture talks about the time to provision X number of linked clone desktops.  I'm not sure if this is automated or if an admin has to do each desktop one-by-one. I'll give VMware the benefit of doubt here and say it is automated, but taking 161 minutes (2 1/2 hours) to provision 500 virtual desktops seems long to me.  I personally don't think this metric is important, even though XenDesktop is measured in seconds.  If it is automated, you do all of this in the build out phase and not in production. So the time it takes is irrelevant to me. Why did they choose to include it? No idea

So my advice to anyone who is still reading this blog... Take everything you get with a level of skepticism.  Do your own due diligence and look at the details to see if things were glossed over or if an in-depth analysis and design was completed.  That recommendation even includes the materials I post.  I try to be open and honest in my blogs, white papers, TechTalks and videos, but I am a little biased to Citrix because they pay my bills. 
If you want to discuss more, or have further questions, then Ask the Architect

Daniel - Lead Architect - Worldwide Consulting Solutions

• Twitter: @djfeller
• For the latest desktop virtualization information visit the Ask the Architect - Next-Generation Desktop site
• Questions - Then Ask The Architect

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Citrix XenDesktop: The Clear Choice for Desktop Virtualization

If you're looking for the best virtual desktop solution or want to improve your existing one, you should know that Citrix XenDesktop™ delivers a host of benefits that VMware View can't, including:
 

* 10X lower bandwidth requirement for LAN or WAN
* Unmatched user experience on any device
* Unique performance monitoring of desktops
* Scalable, single image management                                            
* Lowest TCO with both hosted and streamed desktops
 

Come see XenDesktop in Action - See dual monitor support, apps delivered (streamed) with XenApp, including multimedia, USB device support, virtual remote technical support. And then see the experience when working from home - see the desktop session resumed exactly where it was in the office, and automatically refactored for single display.
        -------------------------------------------------------
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Thursday, August 13^th, McCormick & Schmick's Pier 5 Inner Harbor
 

Agenda
11:30 - 12:00 - Registration
12:00 - 1:30 - Presentation, product demonstration and lunch
1:30 - 2:00 - Q&A and Wrap-up 
 

**All attendees will receive the "VDI Comparison Kit". It includes expert reviews and industry insights into what you should consider in choosing a VDI solution.

"Citrix Systems' XenDesktop is a state-of-the-art product for hosted desktop virtualization and may be the gold standard by which other products are judged in a feature-for-feature comparison."  Virtualization Review, April 2009

Government, healthcare and financial organizations are heavily evaluating virtual desktops, and due to the nature of these industries, one of the big requirements is for secure authentication via smart cards. Frankly, when XenDesktop first came out, it didn't have the goods in the smart card + VDI department, but no one else did, either. There was no integration to speak of, from either Citrix or VMware, and this meant these industries could only deploy VDI in limited use cases.

Citrix quickly addressed this in product updates, and the newly released Feature Pack 1 for XenDesktop 3 includes even more functionality. VMware has been kinda quiet on the smart card integration front - so I was curious, how are the two products faring in head-to-head evaluations in customer accounts? So I went and polled several of our SEs, some partners and some customers and learned a few interesting tidbits in some key categories:

-          Seamless integration of authentication: With XenDesktop, you get the typical black "carbon fiber" log in screen on boot-up, then you insert the Smart Card and are prompted to enter your PIN. Just like a normal desktop. We've heard reports that for some reason View is requiring PIN entries for the broker, then the desktop - and for every desktop subsequently. Seems complicated for end users.

-          Active Directory object clean up: With XenDesktop, when virtual desktops are opened and closed, the AD objects are created and removed cleanly. We've seen customers struggle with how View creates the objects for each virtual desktop, but then fails to clean them up and leaves them orphaned. So in a typical enterprise, this can result in thousands of AD objects being created every day and clogging up the works.

-          Coffee breaks: If a user leaves for a coffee break and takes their card with them (as proper policy would mandate), the desktop should lock. When the user returns and enters the PIN, it should unlock with the and return the user to their desktop as they left it. XenDesktop handles this, but it seems that customers have reported View "loses" the Smart Card when it is withdrawn during a session. Re-inserting the card does nothing, and the desktop has to be fully shut down and the user has to start from square one to get back into the desktop.

-          Multi-card reader roaming: A lot of organizations don't have identical readers at each endpoint, but the user needs the same desktop. Feature Pack 1 adds the ability to roam between different devices even when different readers are attached.

-          Endpoint device support: With Feature Pack 1, XenDesktop offers both Windows and Linux endpoint support for Smart Card readers. At this time, View's ability to support Smart Cards (with the above integration challenges) is limited to Windows endpoints.

Obviously, with these considerations taken into account, XenDesktop is winning these bake-offs. But I don't think it's just about smart card integration. It's a fundamental understanding of the virtual desktop experience that is burned into the Citrix DNA - the smart card functionality is just a manifestation of that know-how.

Many of us in the IT industry recall the old adage  "you'll never get fired for buying IBM" this held true for quite some time while IBM provided a comprehensive albeit expensive set of products that got the job done and provided the safe bet vendor selection. As the PC era took hold and the introduction of credible alternatives became available, the pendulum began to swing the other way. IT started being challenged about the "safe bet" choice and in many cases the assumption became if you were only buying IBM you were probably paying too much. This phenomena also translated into many purchasing processes that forced spec & price comparisons, in other cases it came about by users inside and outside of IT making departmental decisions to purchase PC's and other IT solutions from alternative vendors.

Wind the clock forward to today's situation in the server virtualization industry. The so called "safe bet" is to keep buying VMware regardless of the alternatives. And it's probably true today, you won't get fired just for buying VMware, however in today's economic climate this may not be the best alternative for your company or for your career. No doubt, VMware does offer a comprehensive server virtualization solution that gets the job done, albeit at a premium cost. You can continue to build your experience and expertise solely on VMware and be recognized as the company's "VMware guy/expert/fanboy/bigot/etc". Or, you can expand your horizon and expertise by carving out some time to install and evaluate XenServer and Hyper-V. The great news is you can now test and even deploy in production without spending the companies money, only your time which is valuable but so is the experience. As you drill into the capabilities of each virtualization platform you can develop your own first hand knowledge of the features, capabilities, and limitations of each. Equipped with this information you can build your own pro's and con's list as well as cost comparisons.

So before your management asks you if you have considered the alternatives, or the finance department cuts your budget again, you can now proactively develop your own proposal for a virtualization solution that gets the job done and saves the company significant money. Even if the decision is to stay with the status-quo, chances are you will be recognized as someone that takes initiative and looks for new ways to benefit the company. If you do start to carve out some area's to deploy XenServer or Hyper-V you will also be building your experience and resume as a "Virtualization guy/expert/guru/etc" that also knows how to save money. That has to be a good thing for your career in this economy.

Download XenServer for free here.
 

Recently we've seen a report circulating that our friends at VMware sent out. It's a report that they contracted the Tolly Group to write. The document attempts to provide a comparison of VMware View 3 with Citrix XenDestkop 2.1. Ironically, this document is being released just after we've launched XenDesktop 3, making the report immediately obsolete.

There's a prominent sidebar that in the report that states that Citrix declined to participate in the testing - this is true, and I was the one that actually made that call and discussed it with Tolly Group. To their credit, Tolly Group did call us prior to beginning the testing and informed us of the project and shared the statement of work prepared for VMware. We asked some questions and provided some feedback about the testing methodology. I had serious concerns that the proposed tests did not reflect true customer use cases. For example, the user experience testing was only for a few productivity applications in a LAN environment - that was all that was planned, and it didn't seem to realistic based on what we've seen in real customer environments. Tolly took note of our concerns and asked VMware as the sponsor of the paper whether they would alter their approach.  Later we learned that VMware (not surprisingly) had rejected our suggestions and was not open to changing the proposed tests. At that point, it was clear that it made no sense to participate because:

a)      The test would not be based on our current product at the time of publication

b)      The proposed testing environment did not reflect real world customer requirements 

c)       Critical elements of a virtual desktop solution were not going to be included in the test, things like application management, service level assurance, diversity in client endpoints, WANs, etc.

We've been having great success with XenDesktop, and we're winning consistently in competitive situations. And we've been winning based on precisely the types of scenarios and solution capabilities that were excluded from this testing.

Despite these fundamental issues with the report, people will still ask questions about the claims within it. So here's some brief responses to the 5 highlighted claims in the report.

Claim 1 - Complex Installation - This claim would hold some merit if the two products were comparable in terms of overall functionality. A spreadsheet is easier to install than an enterprise CRM or ERP solution - but that doesn't make it better suited for the job at hand.

Claim 2 - Simple Image Management - VMware claims that XenDesktop requires dedicated images in order to support persistent desktops, and that it needs third-party products to manage the user's personal environment. Both these points are invalid with XenDesktop 3. The report doesn't mention that VMware recommends or requires third party add-ons to achieve similar functionality that is built-in to XenDesktop.

Claim 3 - Manual Configuration of Active Directory & DHCP - Again this is not a valid claim for XenDesktop 3. Manual configuration of Active Directory is not required.

Claim 4 - Management of ALL VDI functions through a single, Web-based GUI - Xbox 360 game controllers have a lot of buttons. The Atari 2600 controller had one button.

Claim 5 - Equivalent end-user experience on LAN as Citrix for Microsoft Office applications - How about when the users start to use other apps, move to other networks, and access desktops from other client devices? Check out www.citrix.com/xendesktop3 and  www.citrix.com/hdx for information on our approach to user experience experience - be sure to check out the videos.

We fully understand that The Tolly Group's role is to validate the results of a testing methodology designed by the sponsor. We've commissioned several similar reports ourselves, and made every effort to make them as valuable to customers as possible.

To wrap this up: We didn't participate in this study because we knew it would be outdated at the time of publication. We also felt that the testing environment did not provide an accurate representation of customer requirements. Finally we didn't participate as the scope of the project only evaluated a subset of the functionality needed for a complete solution.

One of the most requested features from Service Providers and Enterprises is IP Address Management (IPAM). I can't tell you how many times I have listened to customers ask for a platform that manages IP Addresses effectively on a large scale, even to the point of managing disparate classes and subnets. What happens when two companies merge, do you munge spreadsheets or do you have this software yet? It's not only the software that is unique but that it runs as a XenServer VM in Para-Virtualized mode, meaning it is high-performance. Even better is these run in linux.

Nixu Software specializes in software designed for DNS, DHCP and IP address management. To run Nixu Products in a virtual machine environment, simply download the ISO installation media from their website and boot up a new virtual machine. The installation media auto-installs the entire server stack.

Unlike traditional computing appliances that require specific hardware to run on, Nixu Products provide a quick and cost-efficient way to migrate and consolidate core network services such as DNS and DHCP to virtualized computing environments. By streamlining tedious network and system management routines, Nixu Products offer exceptional availability and ROI.

Here are some of the Highlights of using NIXU DNS and DHCP in a XenServer VM:

• Centralized IP Address Management
  • Merge/Join IP Blocks
  • Split IP Blocks
  • Subnets in use – report
  • Subnets free – report
  • Addresses in use – report
  • Addresses free – report

• Runs in XenServer as a VM, optimized for Para-Virtualization
  • Supports pv-ops

• Supports IPv6
• Uses secure communication between secondary name servers, using keys
• Role based administration
  • Assign subnets to administrative domains

• Supports BIND syntax
  • For the BIND junkies

• Has a configuration checker
• Automated installation and maintenance reducing management overhead
• Centralized management of all nameservers
• Hardened design for security

WATCH this video tip:

Download the Nixu / XenServer Integration Guide.

Read about Nixu Software here.

Download Nixu Software here.

Read about Citrix XenServer 5.0 here.

Download Citrix XenServer 5.0 here.

Tap into the power of AppExpert!

The soon to be released Citrix Workflow Studio Customer Tech Preview might have Workflow Tasks for VMware included in the Customer Tech Preview.

What The? Yes you read that right, Citrix might be going to include support for VMware in Citrix Workflow Studio. I am not saying they are or are not going to, but it is a very real possibility!

Stay Tuned Here: Citrix Developer Network - Citrix Workflow Studio

Get Updates Here: Citrix Updated - Citrix Workflow Studio

Presentation server 4.5 added some cool features to optimize ICA performance. The improvement is most visible over slow links. To set up a test environment to see the difference requires multiple machines and some ways to control the network characteristics such as bandwidth, latency, packet loss rate etc. Products such as Shunra can be used to simulate the network. http://www.shunra.com/vedesktop desktop version costs $499 dollars though the last time I checked.

I just found out that vmware workstation has the team feature that allows virtual machines to be grouped together and connect using a virtual LAN. You can specify the virtual LAN bandwidth and packet loss rate. You can change the latency of the virtual LAN though. The ability to change latency would be a nice feature to add I think. This allows a relatively quick way to conduct some comparison testing in a controlled environment.

am using vmware workstation 6.0. I am not sure about vmware workstation 5.5.

is an example of what I tried.

a new team

an XP VM to the team

a CPS 4.5 VM to the team

a new virtual LAN for the team

both vms to use the virtual LAN

Since vmware workstation doesn provide automatic DHCP server for the virtual LAN, I configured static IP addresses for both VMs. You can configure static IP addresses in the Guest OS. Make sure you set the network mask and default gateway correctly.

vms can now communicate with each other. They are not directly connected to the outside network. Now you have an isolated environment to conduct your test. Optionally you can enabled shared folders or/and host only networking to move data between your vms and your host machine.

an ICA connection from the XP VM to the CPS VM. Launch a test application. I used google earth from http://earth.google.com/. It worked really well for me. When the internet connection is not available, google earth will use cached data. If you would like to run your test in an isolated environment to reduce variables caused by internet connection, you may want to enable only the private network. Google earth worked really well for me. You can try rotating the 3D globe. Such operation is typically a challenge for remote display protocols.

Shut down the team, change the virtual LAN characteristics and try again. Note that you will need to restart the team before the changes to the virtual LAN takes effect. I wish VMWARE would remove this restriction in the future.

make some changes to CPS settings (create new policies for example) to see for yourself how well the new features work! Please note that you will need to open the old Citrix management console to configure policies. I heard the development team is still working on moving all features to the MMC based Access management console.

also possible to add another virtual network card to allow one or more VMs to gain access to external networks. I will try to write more on that topic in a separate post.

also tried RDP connections and compared the results.

it yourself and share your experience with the rest of us...