Summer is almost over and that means Synergy Berlin is nearly here!  We're busy making final arrangements for our first pan-European show to be held from October 6-8.  In advance of the program,  I want to draw your attention to my favourite part of the program - the Citrix Innovation Award. 

Every day, companies experience the tangible business benefits of virtualisation, networking and cloud computing. Benefits include savings in operating expenses, enhancing productivity and flexibility, cutting power consumption and reducing carbon emissions, to name a few. But there are also a number of organizations that have embraced the power of virtual computing to think about, and to do, business differently.  These include companies like Cocamar in Brazil that have used virtualisation technology to expand their market reach;  government agencies like Fairfax County, Virginia, that have used the technology to offer cloud-based computing services to cities and townships within the county; and ND SatCom that expanded its offerings to include a satellite-based solution for business continuity and connectivity. These are but a few examples of business innovation, and I know that there are thousands of stories about organisations around the world that have embraced virtual computing to spearhead change.

The Citrix Innovation Award highlights the stories of enterprises that are using virtualisation, networking and cloud technologies in exciting ways to drive innovation in their businesses. As we did for Synergy San Francisco, we've thrown open the doors for Synergy Berlin and invited everyone in the industry - partners, customers and employees - to nominate companies that are using virtualisation, networking and cloud technologies in innovative ways  to create a dynamic, agile business environment.

Once again, I'm amazed at the diverse range of businesses that implement these technologies, and use them in new and innovative ways.  Dozens of nominations were received from all over the globe; from those nominations twelve companies that best embody the spirit of the Innovation Award were shortlisted.

The winner is chosen by popular vote of peer organisations (that means all of you!) and members of the IT industry and will be announced at Synergy Berlin.

The full list of Innovation Award finalists is:

• Chemtura Corporation
• Codan Trygg-Hansa
• CZ Healthcare Insurance
• Derby Public Schools
• LG CNS
• MATERNA
• Medical University of South Carolina
• O'Neill Europe
• Perfetti Van Melle India
• Telecom Italia
• TeleComputing
• The Co-operative Group

Check out their stories of innovation and vote for your three favourites today.

And don't forget...you can still register for Synergy Berlin!  For more info go to www.citrixsynergy.com.

Security has been blamed as the biggest barrier to cloud adoption. Organizational leaders are walking into IT departments with their brand new iPads and demanding access to the network from these convenient devices. And, the beast known as compliance continues to breathe down our necks.

Whether you're primarily concerned about the cloud, endpoint protection or data security, one thing is for sure - security is broken. Organizations routinely spend way too much on security measures that mostly serve to frustrate users, while contributing little to the overall security of truly sensitive data. And, legacy security practices such as end-to-end ownership, malware signatures and full physical isolation continue to be challenged by end-user demands, highly evolved attacks and new usage patterns.

All is not doom and gloom though - virtualization presents some innovative ways to respond to these business challenges and transcend security challenges that have plagued computing for decades.

In the CTO Crystal Ball session at Synergy Berlin, I'll be demonstrating the following security trends and more:

• Situational Security - protective measures that are fine-tuned to specific data needs and context
• BAOC (Bring Any Old Computer) - providing realtime device control to take endpoint security concerns out of the equation
• Flying through the Clouds - architecting true multitenant and mixed-mode data cloud security

Please join me along with Harry Labana, Martin Duursma, and Simon Crosby from the Citrix CTO office as we look into the future at Synergy Berlin!

More info on this demo-filled session and the CTO team's prognostication can be found at:
http://citrix.g2planet.com/synergyberlin2010/public_session_view.php?agenda_session_id=305

Thank you to all those that attended the Essentials for using Windows PowerShell with XenApp and XenDesktop Tech Talk on August 24, 2010 - we had a fantastic turnout! For those of you that missed it, both the recording and presentation have been posted.

• Tech Talk Recording
• Tech Talk Presentation

Mike Bogobowicz and I co-presented this session where I led the XenDesktop PowerShell SDK side, and Mike let the XenApp PowerShell SDK side. This blog will focus on just the XenDesktop SDK questions that came from the session. Mike will have a separate blog post on the XenApp SDK questions.

XenDesktop SDK Q&A
Here's the list of questions we received specific to the XenDesktop PowerShell SDK. In no particular order:

Q: Are you going to post the scripts you used in today's session?
A: All the scripts we demonstrated are contained in the blog series that was posted prior to the session. You can find links to the blog series at the bottom of this article.

Q: What does "DDC" mean?
A: First, this is a great question!! If you are a XenApp admin that hasn't touched XenDesktop, DDC is a brand new term. DDC stands for Desktop Delivery Controller. It is the component of XenDesktop 4 that brokers virtual desktops to end-users, much like how the XenApp Zone Data Collector (ZDC) brokers published applications to end-users.

Q: This looks a lot like the PowerShell SDK for XenServer, just different commands. Is it similiar?
A: Yes, I believe Engineering made the PowerShell SDKs for XenServer, XenDesktop, and XenApp similar in structure on purpose. In that way, once you learn one, learning the others will be much simpler.

Q: The 4th XenDesktop PowerShell script from the Tech Talk showed how to shut down a single virtual desktop session. How would you modify this script to interact with an entire Desktop Group or multiple users?
A: The key here is to play with the parameters of the Get-XdSession cmdlet. If you provide the -User parameter, you can get specific user sessions. If you provide the -Group parameter, you can get all sessions from a particular desktop group. If you don't include either of these parameters, you'll get back all sessions across the entire farm. To get started, I would encourage you to check out the full help details for this cmdlet.

Get-Help Get-XdSession -Full

Q: With the virtual desktop session shutdown script, is there a way to allow the user to prevent the shutdown?
A: I don't believe so. Once you call the Stop-XdSession cmdlet to shut down the session, it's going to perform an immediate shutdown of that virtual desktop. That's why in the demo I mentioned sending a warning message to the user to give them a heads up of the shut down, perhaps 10 to 30 minutes prior for them to save their work.

Q: Do we need to provide some credential (i.e. username/password) in order to be able to run the PowerShell script from a remote domain machine?
A: You can execute all of the scripts I'm providing in the blog series from a remote domain machine. I did some additional research on this and it looks like your logged on account to that remote machine needs to be both a XenDesktop admin and have access to the XenDesktop database. This would make sense from a security perspective to not allow any domain user to manipulate your farm. So the security is performed with your logged on machine account. We don't need to pass a XenDesktop credential to the XenDesktop cmdlets.

Q: Can you create a desktop group in a specific folder?
A: I checked the New-XdDesktopGroup cmdlet that is used for creating a new desktop group and I couldn't find a parameter for specifying a folder as part of the desktop group creation process. It does appear, however, we can move a desktop group to a new folder immediately after it's been created. You would use commands like below:

#************************************************************
#Move desktop group to a different folder
#************************************************************

#Add the XenDesktop snap-in to the current Powershell session
Add-PSSnapin "XdCommands"

#Set up variables for the script
$strDDCAddress = "10.10.10.56"
$strDesktopGroupName = "Windows XP"
$strTargetFolderName = "Folder1"

#Get the target XenDesktop folder 
$xdfolder = Get-XdFolder -Name $strTargetFolderName -AdminAddress $strDDCAddress 

#Get a particular desktop group 
$xdgroup = Get-XdDesktopGroup -Name $strDesktopGroupName -AdminAddress $strDDCAddress -HostingDetails

#Display the current folder assignment for the desktop group
echo $xdgroup.Folder 

#Change the folder assignment for the desktop group
$xdgroup.Folder = $xdfolder

#Apply the change to the DDC
Set-XdDesktopGroup $xdgroup

#Verify the update 
echo $xdgroup.Folder

Q. Is it possible to enable the "User-driven desktop restart" setting for a desktop group as part of creating the desktop group with PowerShell?
A. Just as with the last question, I checked the New-XdDesktopGroup cmdlet for creating a new desktop group and couldn't find a way to enable this setting as part of executing that command. However, you can enable this setting immediately after creating the new desktop group. You would use commands like below:

#*************************************************************************************
#Enable "User-driven desktop restart" setting for a desktop group
#*************************************************************************************

#Add the XenDesktop snap-in to the current Powershell session
Add-PSSnapin "XdCommands"

#Set up variables for the script
$strDDCAddress = "10.10.10.56"
$strDesktopGroupName = "Windows XP"

#Get a particular desktop group 
$xdgroup = Get-XdDesktopGroup -Name $strDesktopGroupName -AdminAddress $strDDCAddress -HostingDetails

#Enable user-drive desktop restart
$xdgroup.AllowUserDesktopRestart = $true

#Apply the change to the DDC
Set-XdDesktopGroup $xdgroup

#Verify the update 
echo $xdgroup.AllowUserDesktopRestart

Q: If you have multiple DDCs, do you have to specify each, or just the master DDC to run against?
A: In a multiple DDC environment, if you point your scripts to the "master" DDC you should be fine. My XenDesktop farm only has one DDC so I can't verify this one, but I'm thinking you might be able to point the scripts to any of the DDCs in the farm. If someone has a larger farm out there that can verify for us, please post a note at the bottom. Essentially, check out the scripts from the blog series and look for the -AdminAddress parameter I've been using for several of the XenDesktop cmdlets. If you have multiple DDCs, experiment putting the different IP addresses for that parameter and see if the script runs fine against each DDC in the farm.

Q: How can you check for disconnected sessions? Can you tell how long they've been disconnected?
A: The code snippet below explains how to get all the disconnected sessions for the XenDesktop farm. It looks like the properties of the $xdsession object will tell you the start time of the session, but not when it was disconnected.

#*****************************************************************
#Checking for disconnected virtual desktop sessions 
#*****************************************************************

#Add the XenDesktop snap-in to the current Powershell session
Add-PSSnapin "XdCommands"

#Set up variables for the script
$strDDCAddress = "10.10.10.56"

#Get all disconnected sessions for the XenDesktop farm
$xdsession = Get-XdSession -AdminAddress $strDDCAddress -SessionDetails | where { $_.State -eq "Disconnected" }

#Display the disconnected sessions
echo $xdsession

Q: Can you monitor what is happening on the virtual desktop through PowerShell?? Or interact with a specific session (SendKeys style)?
A: The XenDesktop SDK doesn't provide much in way of getting the details inside the session. In the Tech Talk, I demo'd how you can send messages to the session. You can also get some attributes for the session such as the client name and client IP that launched it. This blog goes into some of that. You can probably run other types of PowerShell scripts from within the virtual desktop session to get some additional metrics or details. Plus, there's Citrix EdgeSight as well to have an agent running on the virtual desktop to collect performance metrics and other details!

Q: When doing an automated desktop deployment using MDT or other image deployment tool, what is the best way to have the desktop imported into it's appropriate Desktop Group as part of the post install task sequence? These desktops are not pre-staged in AD and would prefer not to have the SDK installed on each VM. Can it execute a script on a remote server to do the import?
A: The XenDesktop PowerShell scripts do not need to be executed on the virtual desktops nor the DDC for that matter. They can be executed from any domain machine that can reach the DDC. You can use this blog for a sample script on adding virtual desktops to a desktop group. As part of your MDT automation process, you are going to want to install the virtual desktop agent (VDA) software on the virtual desktops prior to adding them to the desktop group. You'll also want these machines added to your domain prior as well.

Q: Is it possible to create an advanced presentation for those comfortable with PowerShell and SDKs?
A: This is something that we've been discussing for a bit. Now that we have laid out the groundwork for the XenDesktop 4 SDK Primer, we can now think about adding in some more complex scripts to build on top of that knowledge. If you are experienced with the XenDesktop SDK and have some suggestions for what you would like to see, please post a comment below. For the more complex stuff, it's always good to have a goal in mind for something practical that is needed out in the field.

Q: Do you cover VMware as a hypervisor in your blogs?
A: I didn't cover VMware specifically, but the scripts I provided in the Tech Talk and blogs should also work with a VMware ESX host. If you are using VMware ESX to host virtual desktops, you are still considered to be using a VM-based desktop group. In the blogs I created, they were focused on interacting with VM-based desktop groups with XenServer as the host. My understanding is that the syntax should be very close if not identical. If anyone has used the XenDesktop PowerShell SDK for a VMware host, feel free to provide a comment at the bottom regarding your experience. Were the commands pretty much the same? Did you find any differences with using the SDK compared to my scripts with a XenServer host?

Tech Talk Resources
As a reminder, we based the Tech Talk on the blog series we posted prior to the session. You can find all the sample scripts we demonstrated in the Tech Talk within these blogs.

XenDesktop 4 PowerShell SDK Primer blog series - by Ed York

• Getting Started
• Retrieving the XenDesktop farm properties
• Creating a new desktop group
• Enabling/disabling a desktop group
• Updating the idle pool settings of a desktop group
• Adding virtual desktops to a desktop group
• Adding AD users and groups to a desktop group
• Disconnecting and stopping virtual desktop sessions
• Restarting virtual desktops and series wrap-up

XenApp 6 PowerShell SDK blog series - by Mike Bogobowicz

• Getting a XenApp Farm Inventory
• Checking XenApp Application Setting Consistency
• Checking Server Availability

About the Presenters
Ed York - Senior Architect - Worldwide Technical Readiness
Ask-the-Architect Site: http://community.citrix.com/p/product-automation#home
Follow Ed on twitter: http://twitter.com/citrixedy

Mike Bogobowicz - Principal Consultant - Worldwide Consulting Solutions
Blog Site: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/michaelbog
Follow Mike on twitter: http://twitter.com/mcbogo

Have you thought about charging your "customers" for IT services you are providing? I bet you have and I thought about that model for quite some time.
The promise of cloud computing, virtualization, usage metering, and IT as a Service often spawn the thoughts of billing the end customer, i.e. business units in a corporation. This is a world where super flexible infrastructure can flip the switch on applications, server workloads, entire desktops and user accounts in a heart beat.
Niel Nicholaisen writes about the topic in this article?
Let me add a few of my own thoughts:
• IT departments can count on (or hope for) a small percentage of a company's annual revenues as a budget for capex and opex. IT is asked to provide literally the entire workspace and infrastructure for all users and often has to do more with less compared to the previous year. In the healthcare industry, that number stands at roughly 3% of revenues in the US and only about 2% in Europe.
• IT departments often get frustrated, because they have to provide expensive and complicated applications to a handful of users that chew up a large portion of resources and expenditures to do so.
• With the dawn of desktop and broader application virtualization, IT departments are tempted to charge for their services on a per user or per application basis. $30 per month for a desktop, $20 per month for Internet access, $5 per month for anti virus, etc.
• The model is obviously tempting for two reasons: It discourages the use of complex and expensive applications and brings the true cost of computing back to the business and it also holds the promise of increasing the IT budget linearly with the services that are provided.

However, as Niel points out, this can alienate the users. First of all, as a user I may find that I get really shoddy service for the $70 per month or so for basic services per user. As a business, I don't have the choice to go get my Internet access or email service from someplace else . Sometimes (as a business) I think I can, and I may go to a cloud-based email service or attempt to buy my own backup service, but all of that comes at the cost of increasing complexity and introducing expensive integration points.
Keep in mind that IT is just another corporate service. I am not getting charged for payroll processing, legal support, marketing support, etc. Larger companies tend to cross charge for internal consulting services and sometimes for recruiting activities, but that's pretty much it.

So, here is my recommendation for IT: Go ahead and charge your business units. Be aware of the pushback this may generate. In order to prevent backlash, do the following:
• Be the best in the industry. That's right. Users will be tempted to compare the service you are providing (at the price you are charging) to consumer-grade services that are available online and that are provided by much larger organizations with better economies of scale. The expectation for the quality of your service goes up as you start charging for it.
• Virtualize applications and desktops. This will not only centralize the data, but make cost more transparent and predictable. If you do this right, you can reduce costs. If you don't, you can end up driving up your costs, so choose wisely.
• Consider using third party, cloud based services for certain types of apps. Just because you managed something in-house in the past, doesn't mean that this is the best modality going forward. CRM and web hosting services are examples of apps that have been pushed (or elevated) to the cloud for a while now in the industry.
• Monitor your resource use and utilization to get a grip on the human cost of environment support. The smaller your organization, the more difficult this is going to be. After all, you can't hire a fraction of a SQL Administrator.
• Ensure that you explain (via your executives) that you have much higher data availability and reliability standards to meet than any publicly available service and that the company is required to provide the services internally to maintain control and ensure compliance.
• Consider implementing a "Bring Your Own Computer" model. We've had it at my employer for a while and it's great. I own the endpoint, and I can manage my computer just fine, thank you very much. I can now have my own desktop, anti-virus, and other consumer grade services to dabble around and get a corporate Windows 7 image (a virtual desktop) from IT with the key apps I need to do my work.
• Expect to get charged by your accountants for the support they may need to lend to you as part of this process

Questions? Comments? Let me know what you think and how you have been managing the cost of providing IT services.

Florian Becker
Twitter: @florianbecker
Virtualization Pulse: Tech Target Blog
Ask the Architect - Everything Healthcare

At Synergy San Francisco we held the inaugural Citrix CTO crystal ball session where a number of the CTO Office team presented ideas and demos of future technologies and directions. At Berlin we'll be doing the same thing and raising the bar again on the demo's and topics covered. Look forward to seeing Simon Crosby, Harry Labana, Kurt Roemer and I present with some pretty cool demos.

I'll be covering mobility, and specifically some new directions we are taking that may surprise you. For example Citrix has had a strategy where we have provided a version of Receiver for practically any mobile device and we continue on that path. However in the last three years the explosion of new smartphone platforms has enabled numerous new possibilities as to how we can deliver enterprise content to these new phones. The always on connectivity and decent screen real estate are key drivers.

In the session I'll demonstrate how an Enterprise developer can write a touch enabled application that is published from a XenApp server, and accessed from a range of devices, both Smartphone and tablets. So if you have a problem with your CIO or CEO demanding support for iPhones, Blackberry, Android, WebOS and other yet to be invented tablets and Smartphones, then this is the session for you.

You can find more information on the CTO Crystal Ball session here
Looking forward to seeing you in Berlin!

Learn more about Citrix Synergy Berlin

In less than an hour, get an overview of the essential features, benefits and architecture of exciting, new virtualization solutions. Free technology overviews are available for the following Citrix solutions. Click on each product name to access free training or visit www.citrix.com/freetraining.

• XenDesktop 4
• Branch Repeater
• XenApp 6
• NetScaler 9.2
• XenServer 5.6
• Essentials for XenServer 5.5
• Essentials for Hyper-V
  

Looking for more?
Gain solid knowledge, from virtualization administration to architecting, through a wide range of Citrix training. Flexible delivery methods are available including instructor-led, live virtual and self-paced online training.

For more information, visit www.citrix.com/freetraining.

One of the most exciting things I'm looking forward to in the Citrix booth (#1219) at VMworld this week in San Francisco is the demonstration of OpenStack integrated cloud management and orchestration on XenServer, using XenCenter as the console.

OpenStack is open source cloud computing management and orchestration software. It enables cloud providers and enterprises to build highly scalable, easily deployable cloud infrastructures. It includes both compute and object storage subsystems. Citrix is proud to join Dell, Rackspace, NASA, and dozens of other companies in contributing and fostering this open solution. Unlike purely proprietary approaches, OpenStack will accelerate community-driven standards, eliminate lock-in for enterprises, and create an open solution ecosystem that spans cloud providers.

Specifically, if you come by the booth, you'll be able to see what you'd expect to see in a XenServer demo — a XenCenter desktop managing virtual machines. But this XenCenter will be different from the one running on your own desktop: it includes a plug-in that shows the servers, virtual machines, and storage being orchestrated by OpenStack in our demo datacenter. And it uses OpenStack methods — API calls — to drive the creation of virtual machines, and to power them on and off. (This is an early proof-of-concept — OpenStack, and the interface, will do lots more in the future.)

In setting up our demo environment, we've taken ease of adoption very seriously, which is something you might expect from the "ten minutes to Xen" team. The OpenStack node controller software is packaged as a virtual appliance — so all we need to do (and all you'll need to do once it is widely available) is download the virtual appliance, import it on the managed nodes, and — voila! An OpenStack-orchestrated cloud!

The source of the two initial primary contributions to OpenStack is significant in illustrating this commitment to openness. The object storage subsystem – codenamed "swift" – is being advanced from a baseline contributed by Rackspace, one of the leading providers of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Rackspace wisely understands that the value of increasing the development community for the software as well as enabling enterprises to use it in-house and enhance it greatly outweighs any risk to their business posed by allowing their competitors to use it — that, in fact, wider availability makes their service and expertise more attractive to customers. And as for the compute subsystem — codenamed "nova" – its heritage is the Nebula cloud deployed by NASA. Nebula is leading the way for cloud computing efforts in the federal government, which has a mandate to adopt cloud computing for economics and adaptability. Nebula was selected as the baseline for OpenStack "nova" because it offers scalability unmatched by other options, proprietary or open-source.

One of OpenStack's great strengths is its hypervisor-independence. Even before its initial release, it supports orchestration of Citrix XenServer as well as KVM and Oracle VM VirtualBox; it's not unlikely that cloud providers, government agencies or enterprises with investments in ESX or Hyper-V will develop and contribute OpenStack support for those platforms as well. This multi-hypervisor support is a characteristic of true openness that OpenStack shares with the Citrix OpenCloud™ platform — and that makes it a great complementary component.

Another openness characteristic that OpenStack and the OpenCloud platform share is openness to innovation — that is, extensibility. Organizations are developing capabilities that extend OpenStack and contributing them back to the community — just as cloud providers can integrate their own expertise and intellectual property into Citrix OpenCloud solutions, differentiating their services while providing an open, compatible platform. And these solutions — leveraging Citrix and partner technology plus provider expertise — in the areas of on-boarding, compliance, disaster recovery, dev/test, and on-demand services (including apps, desktops, and demos) – enable providers to offer enterprises turnkey approaches that can accelerate and smooth their adoption of the cloud.

The open source community-driven development process is one factor that contributes to the attainment of "cloud economics" – both reduced cost and pay-as-you-go charging. With Citrix OpenCloud, there are many other factors, from the buy-what-you-need aspect of the platform virtualization element (whether free XenServer or the simple per-server cost model of the premium editions) to the Pay-As-You-Grow pricing model of NetScaler MPX boxes or NetScaler VPX virtual appliances in the edge networking component. And when these savings can be accrued by the cloud provider, they can bring lower costs to the customer, without forcing cloud providers into the unsustainable "race to the bottom" that is the result of undifferentiated commoditization.

Our demonstration of OpenStack is just one part of the advancing of the Citrix OpenCloud strategy. OpenCloud delivers a powerful platform including virtualization and edge networking choice, support for desktops and applications, and new technologies that will help enterprises extend their datacenters into the cloud securely and efficiently. It then uses flexible orchestration interfaces, including OpenStack, to make the infrastructure service the dynamic needs of users. And it provides workload-aligned solutions that help businesses choose the work most suited to the cloud and deploy it there.

The keyword is "open" – offering cloud providers and enterprises a rich set of choices at every tier of the cloud platform, not just the ability to pick identical product offerings from a legion of "vClones."

To understand the need for the Open vSwitch, you have to realize that while CPU virtualization, including hardware support, has evolved rapidly over the last decade, network virtualization has lagged behind pretty badly. The dynamism that virtualization enables is the enemy of today's locked down enterprise networks. For example, migrating a VM between servers could mean that network based firewall and intrusion detection systems are no longer able to protect it. Moreover, many enterprise networks are administered by a different group than the servers, so VM agility challenges an organizational boundary. What we want to achieve is seamless migration of all network-related state for a workload, along with the workload. The obvious place to effect such network changes is in the last-hop switch - which now, courtesy of Moore's Law and virtualization, is on the server itself, either in the hypervisor or (increasingly) in smart hardware associated with a 10Gb/s NIC card. The Open vSwitch enables granular control over traffic flows, with per flow admission control, the option for rich per packet processing and control over forwarding rules, granular resource guarantees and isolation between tenants or applications, and enables us to dynamically reconfigure the network state for each VM, or for each multi-VM OVF package, as it is deployed or migrated. Network state for each virtual interface becomes a property of the virtual interface, and as a VM moves about the physical infrastructure, all of the policies associated with the VIF move with it. Suddenly the network team is no longer required in order to move a VM between servers.

The Open vSwitch, answers many of the shortcomings of our original hypervisor bridge code, which grew up from the Linux bridge code, and adds powerful features traditionally found only in dedicated switching infrastructure, such as packet filtering, flow admission control and programmable forwarding. It permits us to take advantage of the incredible price/performance benefits of packet processing on standard CPUs, and the near term addition of so-called Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) to the edge packet processing feature set will enable the most profound changes in data center and cloud networking architecture since the invention of the router. Most importantly, the Open vSwitch is open source, and will serve multiple hypervisors. I fully expect the community to make it available as a drop-in replacement for the VMware vDS, and to deliver versions of it for a future release of Hyper-V. This then raises the exciting prospect of an entirely open and programmable architecture for networking in the cloud, that is hypervisor independent. As a result, the richness of both private and public cloud networks (and hence their ability to support a greater proportion of enterprise workloads) will not be hypervisor dependent. Open vSwitch offers the ISV ecosystem an enormous opportunity to innovate in edge networking, free of the constraints of traditional network-appliance centric approaches to application delivery, with new, automated management and control plane functions that simplify, accelerate and ease the management of scalable cloud networks.

From a Citrix-specific perspective, Open vSwitch permits us to dynamically instantiate instances of NetScaler VPX, Branch Repeater VPX, or Access Gateway VPX as value-added networking functions withn cloud based networks, and it will enable us to facilitate the seamless extension of the enterprise network to service provider operated clouds. If, as we expect, the Open vSwitch is more broadly endorsed as a common element of future clouds, with open APIs for dynamic control of the data center fabric, it will catalyze an opportunity for all vendors - including those in the network infrastructure business today - to deliver powerful, secure and differentiated cloud architectures.

Many people wonder if the Open vSwitch is "competitive" with the ambitions of traditional networking vendors or with the Cisco Nexus 1000v virtual switch. The answer is "No - indeed the opposite": The Nexus 1000v from Cisco provides Cisco customers with a powerful distributed switch architecture that brings the value of the full Cisco edge processing capability to virtualized environments, including Cisco management and toolset support. I would have no hesitation in recommending the Cisco product to Cisco customers. It delivers a value-added proposition on top of the basic concept of a dynamically controllable forwarding plane, very similar to OpenFlow and the Open vSwitch.

It would be easy to implement the Nexus 1000v both in parallel with, or on top of, the Open vSwitch. Indeed the value of OpenFlow has been recognized by one Cisco research group, and HP, Dell and NEC are active participants in the development and use of OpenFlow. Startups, such as Netronome and Solarflare are leading the way toward extensive hardware support of the Open vSwitch, permitting native multi-10Gb/s speed switching on server hardware that also hosts virtualized enterprise workloads.

Open vSwitch can be used to replace the VMware vDS, which is a proprietary, rather prosaic implementation of a modestly richer networking stack for vSphere / vCloud. Unfortunately vDS does not separate forwarding and control plane functions clearly, and therefore limits the ability of the ISV ecosystem to innovate on VMware infrastructure. It is tied to the notion of VLANs as network isolation structure, and provides little in the way of differentiated per-application flow treatment. It also has no mapping onto SR-IOV based hardware functions, and therefore has no clear value in a world where increasingly sophisticated second generation SR-IOV NICs are becoming available, with richly programmable forwarding hardware.

The Open vSwitch is a reminder of the incredible power of open source: It catalyzes the contribution of numerous aligned vendors, commoditizes legacy architectures, accelerates the pace of development, and enables a robust ecosystem of value-added providers to exist around a common core feature set. We can look forward to enabling an ecosystem of many value-added networking vendor products around the (commoditized) forwarding function found in all switches and NICs today.

Broadly, BusinessDictionary.com defines customer centric as:

"An approach to doing business in which a company focuses on creating a positive consumer experience at the point of sale and post-sale. A customer-centric approach can add value to a company by differentiating themselves from competitors who do not offer the same experience." 

Clearly this is a "big tent" definition with lots of nuances that can be pursued- from demand generation to post-sale support and services.  

Here at Citrix, the teams across the globe are in a constant state of conversation with our customers. On the XenServer side, we wrapped up our latest round of these conversations in August and were both heartened and, frankly, a little surprised by what XenServer customers had to say.   

Overall, we are very happy to hear that of those who had downloaded and installed free XenServer, over 90% ranked it as good or better then alternative platforms. Additionally, 97% of the 2000 organizations to which we talked said they would recommend XenServer to a peer. This is great news as it validates all the development work that has gone into the project, but also shows Citrix is poised to continue disrupting the datacenter. To me, in a nutshell, customers are saying XenServer has not only reached parity but as a result they plan to pull back on their VMware investment strategy. 

In terms of the surprises, the biggest one by far was that nearly half of those we spoke with said they chose XenServer specifically because it an open platform.  Upon reflection, this should not have come as a big surprise given that companies like Accenture have been reporting a marked rise in the acceptance of open source in the enterprise.  Also, Citrix partners like Egenera are demonstrating that openness and simplicity do co-exist and XenServer customers, including companies like Rackspace, Tesco, TomTom, had already told us that openness of the platform is top criteria that drives their investment decisions. I guess what surprised me was how broadly these views are held - companies from all over the globe and of all shapes and sizes participate 

So...for those who love openness, want to avoid lock in and, perhaps most importantly, are preparing to capitalize on cloud computing, today's XenServer and cloud announcement is for you.   

This announcement provides tangible evidence and roadmap for how Citrix is furthering its leadership in cloud computing by embracing openness.  Specifically by openness in the platform (with XenServer), in the fabric (with an open virtual switch) and in the management layer with open lifecycle automation (via the VMlogix acquisition and the incorporation of OpenStack), customers can be assured that is Citrix is committed to provide choice - while avoiding lock-in.   

And ultimately, it is this ability to avoid lock-in that will not only drive the migration from on-premise datacenters, but also unlock the economic potential of cloud.

In the continuing effort to help our Customers with self-service articles for non-technical related material, the following top 10 Customer Service articles have been posted to the Citrix Support Knowledge Center. We hope you find the articles helpful, quick and easy to use.

Feedback is important! Don't forget to let us know if the articles you use help by answering the question, "Did this article resolve your problem/question?" at the end of every article and provide any comments you may have.

The next meeting of the Atlanta Citrix User Group will be held on September 1st. All local Citrix users and administrators are invited to attend!

Atlanta Citrix User Group meetings provide members with an opportunity to share and learn information and best practices for using server virtualization, desktop virtualization, and other technologies. Find out about troubleshooting tips, technology trends, vendor solutions, upcoming activities of interest, and more!

Date: Wed., September 1, 2010
Time: 11:00AM - 1:30PM EDT

Register Now

Agenda:

11:00 am: Registration
11:15 am: Opening Remarks and Organization News
11:30 am: Citrix Announcements - Product Updates, Beta Announcements & Tech Releases
11:45 am: Lunch
12:00 pm: Citrix XenDesktop - Jonathan O'Brien, Citrix Systems
1:00 pm: Open Discussion

Location:

Microsoft Southeast Regional Office (Alpharetta)
1125 Sanctuary Pkwy., Suite 300
Alpharetta, GA 30009
(678) 629-5700

Register Now

If you are located in or around Atlanta, GA, I hope you can attend! Stay tuned to the Citrix User Group Community site for news and information about upcoming meetings and activities.

Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Follow me on Twitter

There's an ongoing kerfuffle in the press about VMware's treatment of partners and competitors at VMworld. It all started last year when VMware restricted Citrix and Microsoft to a 10x10 showfloor booth each, because they claimed our products compete with theirs. Even as a sponsor of the event, and a VMware partner, Citrix was treated as a third class citizen. But it gave us a good opportunity to have some fun at their expense. But it was also surprising to see Red Hat with a huge booth, red Fedoras everywhere, proclaiming the benefits of KVM. Competitive? You'd think so. But then the penny dropped: Red Hat is so far behind in virtualization that it just isn't competitive with VMware. So they got a big booth.

Now, with that realization in mind, let's re-examine the Citrix position for 2010: Citrix is a VMware partner. Indeed, we announced XenDesktop 4, feature pack 2 today, to coincide with the show. XenDesktop will be on demonstration in our luxurious 10x20 booth at VMworld 2010. But doesn't VMware View compete with XenDesktop?. Clearly the answer is no:

• The Burton Group has uniquely declared XenDesktop 4, feature pack 1 to be the only enterprise class desktop virtualization product on the market. In rigorous assessment of over 100 requirements, including the ability to scale and secure virtual desktops, XenDesktop 4 reigns supreme.
• XenDesktop 4 FP2 contains solutions for the broadest set of end-user use cases:
  • Session based desktop virtualization - using Citrix XenApp - for which VMware has literally no answer.
  • It now also supports Microsoft App-V app streaming to rich clients or hosted desktops, and integration with Microsoft System Center.
  • It supports, via Citrix FlexCast, three additional rich client virtual desktop use cases: OS Streaming, App Streaming with the Citrix XenVault encrypted data plugin, and Citrix XenClient - the industry's only type-1 client hypervisor that delivers all of the benefits of security and isolation of a hosted virtual desktop - but running in a secure VM on an Intel vPro laptop, whilst empowering users by offering them a customizable personal VM for their own use.
• Then there's Citrix HDX - the industry's only remoting solution to deliver a true high definition desktop experience over the WAN, including comprehensive USB virtualization, video and media support, powerful policy based controls, and incredibly efficient network utilization that is robust to delay and jitter. VMware's answer - PC over IP - uses UDP and by its own admission can only be used on a corporate LAN, where it consumes as much as 10x more bandwidth.
• Citrix Receiver is the industry's only universal client for secure access to enterprise applications and desktops that runs on just about every mobile device, thick and thin client to deliver a compelling, secure, measurable single point of delivery to all users, combined with the self-service Dazzle that empowers users to .
• Citrix and McAfee have exclusively partnered to deliver unique security solutions for desktop virtualization, including optimizations within XenDesktop that are independent of any hypervisor, and optimizations to the Xen hypervisor that enable the hypervisor to enhance security and attest to the state of guest VMs.

So, does VMware View compete with XenDesktop? No, it simply doesn't. Moreover XenDesktop runs superbly on VMware ESX, so if you have already invested in VMware virtual infrastructure, Citrix can use it deliver you the best in desktop virtualization. While there are certainly cheaper, more secure and better optimized alternatives to ESX, we won't be demonstrating them.

So, by VMware's own criteria Citrix qualifies for a bigger booth at VMworld 2010.

Calling all South Florida Citrix users and administrators...

The next Fort Lauderdale Citrix User Group Meeting will be held on September 1st! You'll get technical content and participate in technical discussions from 3-5PM at Citrix HQ, followed by happy hour with appetizers at a nearby restaurant.

Date: Wed., September 1, 2010
Time: 3:00PM - 5:00PM EDT (happy hour @ 5:30PM)

Register Now

The goal of a User Group is simple: To foster dialogue and an exchange of ideas within the Citrix community, allowing users and administrators to share information and best practices, hear from the experts, and grow their body of knowledge and expertise. 

Agenda:

During the meeting, you'll learn how to setup a Citrix XenDesktop Proof of Concept (PoC) including:

• Creating a new XenDesktop environment
• A technical overview and best practices
• How to implement XenDesktop
• Wyse solutions optimized to work with Citrix desktop and app virtualization solutions
  

Citrix experts will be available for questions and answers after the meeting.

Location:

Citrix Ft. Lauderdale Office
851 W Cypress Creek Rd
Ft. Lauderdale FL 33309
954 267-3000

Then...
Join us for appetizers at Champps following the meeting at 5:30PM:
Champps Americana
6401 N. Andrews Avenue
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309
(954) 491-9335

Register Now

I hope you can join us! Stay tuned to the Citrix User Group Community site for news and information about upcoming meetings and activities.

Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Follow me on Twitter

Don't miss the chance to take FREE XenServer 5.6 training! CXS-100-1 Citrix XenServer 5.6 Technology Overview will introduce learners to Citrix XenServer 5.6 technology and provide the knowledge needed to perform basic configuration tasks. Through the online learning interface, students will explore the benefits, key components and the architecture of XenServer 5.6. Also covered are XenServer 5.6 features, licensing changes, use cases and best practices.

Course Details:

• Language: English
• Type: Self-paced online
• Length: 60 minutes
• Cost: Free!

Get Started! Take training now

I can't wait for VMworld, next week. It will be fantastic to meet good friends in the virtualization industry, and to feel the freezing fog of San Francisco. And with any luck, I'll be able to breeze through the halls of the virtualization glitterati undetected, even though my accent bears similarities to that of Mr. Maritz. While on that topic, I sometimes wonder why the Southern African subcontinent has such a striking presence in the world of virtualization: many of the EC2 crew, Paul Maritz, the chaps at Nimbula, and, far behind, me.

I'm also excited about some VMworld sessions. One in particular caught my attention. It's being run by the VMware minister of misinformation, Eric Horschmann. I've crossed swords with him before, and the only thing that's remarkable is that he's still hard at it, peddling his view of the future of IT. I call it Horsch-IT. So, if you want to know which will be the hottest session at VMworld, here it is:

PA9449 - Session Title: Winning Against Server Virtualization Competitors: Leading with VMware Strengths, Handling Objections, and Setting Traps

Schedule Information: Tuesday, 2:00 PM (Room: Moscone West Room 3014)
US Speaker: Mark Chuang Group Manager, Product Marketing, VMware, Inc.
Eric Horschman Product Marketing Director, VMware, Inc.

Abstract: (VMware Partners only) Attend this session to learn how to clearly articulate VMware's advantages in the datacenter and put the competition on the defensive. We'll demonstrate VMware's cost advantage against so-called "free" offerings and debunk the most common claims made by competitors. We'll also show you how to set RFP/POC traps for Microsoft and Citrix that will make it impossible for them to win the deal.

For those (VMware Partners only) that attend this session, I'll be looking forward to meeting you at XenServer customers, where, it seems (given our download rates, and the number of clouds over 10,000 servers that we've built this year) there appears to be no issue understanding that Free = Free always. I love springing my friend Mr Horschmann's traps. To be perfectly honest, I'm looking forward to seeing him fall into his own trap.

Find out what the other guys don't want you to know about XenServer - our powerful feature lineup available today in XenServer 5.6!

Join me in Syn201 - What's new in XenServer to learn more about how XenServer can enhance your datacenter while saving you money!

What are you missing out on if you haven't looked at XenServer lately?

• The best performance for XenApp
• High Availability
• Dynamic Workload Balancing
• Role Based Administration
• Performance History and Alerting
• Storagelink Site Recovery
• ..and much more!

You can try XenServer for Free today, then come to Synergy Berlin and check out the rest of our great XenServer breakout sessions. We'll have experts on hand at the Citrix booth to answer questions and give demos throughout the show.

Calling all Citrix users and administrators located in or around Kansas City, Missouri...

There's still time to sign up for the next Kansas City Citrix User Group Meeting on August 24!

Date: Tues., August 24, 2010
Time: 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM CDT

Register Now

The goal of a User Group is simple: To foster dialogue and an exchange of ideas within the Citrix community, allowing users and administrators to share information and best practices, hear from the experts, and grow their body of knowledge and expertise. 

Description:

You'll learn more about Citrix XenDesktop including:

• Best practices for adding XenDesktop to a XenApp environment
• Get a technical overview of Flexcast
• Discuss a comparison of key features against the competition
  

Citrix experts will be available for questions and answers after the meeting. Attend and you might win a Netbook!

Location:

Boulevard Brewing Company
2501 Southwest Boulevard
Kansas City MO 64108
(816) 474-7095

Register Now

I hope you can make it! Stay tuned to the Citrix User Group Community site for news and information about upcoming meetings and activities.

Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Follow me on Twitter

Looking to update your technical knowledge and skills on Citrix XenServer 5.6? Attend the XenServer 5.6 beta class August 31 - September 3, 2010 in Cambridge, UK. Seating is limited to 12 students, so sign up today! In beta training class CXS-202-1I XenServer 5.6 Administration (Beta),you will learn skills necessary to configure and administer XenServer 5.6, XenCenter, and Provisioning Server 5.6.  Through hands-on labs, you will learn to:

• Configure XenServer
• Manage XenServer using XenCenter
• Create Windows and Linux virtual machines
• Create XenServer resource pools and connect to remote storage
• Use XenMotion and automatic virtual machine placement
• Design a Provisioning Server farm
• Create, assign and administer virtual disks
• Manage target devices
• Configure high availability

This course will prepare you for upcoming exam A24 XenServer 5.6 Administration, the requirement for the Citrix Certified Administrator (CCA) for Citrix XenServer 5.6. Take advantage of this opportunity to share your feedback on XenServer courseware and get a head start on your CCA for XenServer 5.6! To sign up, please e-mail XenServerTraining@citrix.com.

Attention Citrix users in or near Denver, Colorado...

The next meeting of the Denver Citrix User Group will be held on Wednesday, September 8th, and the agenda will be a recap of everything you need to know from Citrix Synergy San Francisco 2010!

Date: Wed., September 8, 2010
Time: 11:30 AM to 4:30 PM
Register Now

Location

Downtown Aquarium (Denver)
700 Water Street
I-25 / 23rd Ave (Exit 211)
Denver, CO 80211

Agenda

The discussions will include a comprehensive examination of the following topics:

• Client Virtualization (local virtual desktops)
• Desktop Streaming
• Self-Service On-Demand Applications
• Application Virtualization (6.0)
• User Virtualization
• Storage Virtualization
  
  

You'll get case studies of successful implementations, best practices, technical demos and architecture designs from Citrix, AppSense, Microsoft, Dell and Wyse.

For more details, click here.

Hope you can attend! Stay tuned to the Citrix User Group Community site for news and information about upcoming meetings and activities.

Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Follow me on Twitter

The last task that we'll discuss in this blog series is how to automate the restarting (rebooting) of virtual desktops within XenDesktop. I've provided two different scripts in this article - one for restarting a single virtual desktop, the second for restarting multiple virtual desktops at the same time. As you'll find in the scripts, they look almost identical, making this one of the more easier actions to perform.

This is the 9th and final blog in a series on how to use the XenDesktop 4 PowerShell SDK. In the first blog, I provided info on how to set up your XenDesktop PowerShell environment so that you could run these scripts. If you haven't done that yet, please visit that article first. In the last blog, I discussed how you can disconnect and stop virtual desktop sessions using PowerShell. For a complete list of topics that I have covered in this blog series, see the bottom of this article.

PowerShell script for restarting a single virtual desktop
The sample script below demonstrates how to restart a single virtual desktop in the XenDesktop farm. Please note the two options provided here for retrieving a reference to the virtual desktop.

#************************************************************
#Restart a single virtual desktop 
#************************************************************

#Add the XenDesktop snap-in to the current PowerShell session
Add-PSSnapin "XdCommands"

#Set up variables for the script
$strDDCAddress = "10.10.10.56"
$strDesktopADName = "xpvda1"            #Active Directory machine name
$strDesktopVMName = "WINXP_XD4_VDA1"    #Virtual Machine name

#Option 1 - retrieve a particular virtual desktop by Active Directory machine name
$desktop = Get-XdVirtualDesktop -AdminAddress $strDDCAddress -HostingDetails | where { $_.Name -match $strDesktopADName }

#Option 2 - retrieve a particular virtual desktop by Virtual Machine name
$desktop = Get-XdVirtualDesktop -AdminAddress $strDDCAddress -HostingDetails | where { $_.HostingName -match $strDesktopVMName }

#Restart the virtual desktop 
Restart-XdVirtualDesktop -force -desktop $desktop

PowerShell script for restarting all virtual desktops from a desktop group
The sample script below demonstrates how to restart all virtual desktops for a desktop group at the same time.

#************************************************************
#Restart all virtual desktops in a desktop group
#************************************************************

#Add the XenDesktop snap-in to the current PowerShell session
Add-PSSnapin "XdCommands"

#Set up variables for the script
$strDDCAddress = "10.10.10.56"
$strDesktopGroupName = "Windows XP"

#Retrieve all virtual desktops within a desktop group
$desktops = Get-XdVirtualDesktop -AdminAddress $strDDCAddress -Group $strDesktopGroupName -HostingDetails 

#Restart all virtual desktops within the group that are currently powered on
Restart-XdVirtualDesktop -force -desktop $desktops

Analyzing the PowerShell Scripts
Both scripts above are almost identical so we'll discuss them at the same time. The Get-XdVirtualDesktop cmdlet is used to get a reference to one or more virtual desktops. If you view the help on this cmdlet, you'll find that it provides various switches (-Registered, -Unregistered, -Group) for performing filtering on the virtual desktops that are returned.

In the first script above, I provided two different ways for getting a reference to a single virtual desktop. The first approach looks for the virtual desktop based on the Active Directory machine name. The second approach looks for the virtual desktop based on the Virtual Machine name. You don't need both of those statements in the script - I just provided both as it could help understand the cmdlet statement better. Feel free to experiment with them to find which works best for you.

The Get-XdVirtualDesktop cmdlet returns a XdVirtualDesktop object (or an array of them if there is more than one returned). You pass this object as a parameter to the Restart-XdVirtualDesktop cmdlet and that's it! All the specified virtual desktops will be restarted (if they were already running).

Wrap-up
The blog series is now done! If you found the info within this series valuable or if would like to see some particular things on the XenDesktop PowerShell SDK in the future, feel free leave a comment. Be sure to also sign up for the TechTalk we are delivering on Tuesday, August 24 where you can see several of these PowerShell scripts in action!

Upcoming TechTalk
I will be leading a TechTalk with Mike Bogobowicz on Essentials for using Windows PowerShell with XenApp and XenDesktop on Tuesday, August 24 from 2pm to 3pm EST. If you interesting in learning more about these SDKs first hand and want to see the demos in action, you can sign up here. Feel free to also check out Mike's blog on XenApp 6 PowerShell scripting here. We hope to see you at the TechTalk!

Blogs in this series

• Getting Started
• Retrieving the XenDesktop farm properties
• Creating a new desktop group
• Enabling/disabling a desktop group
• Updating the idle pool settings of a desktop group
• Adding virtual desktops to a desktop group
• Adding AD users and groups to a desktop group
• Disconnecting and stopping virtual desktop sessions
• Restarting virtual desktops and series wrap-up (this one)

Ed York - Senior Architect - Worldwide Technical Readiness
Ask-the-Architect Site: http://community.citrix.com/p/product-automation#home
Follow Me on twitter: http://twitter.com/citrixedy