StorageLink is one of the components of the new Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V product that was just released last week.

I recently recorded a technical deep dive presentation and demo with Pete Benoit, the Senior Director of Engineering for StorageLink. You can watch the hour long presentation and demo below -

You can download the StorageLink Install Guide here. The StorageLink User guide is here and you can download the Powershell guide here.

UPDATE: I added the Deep Dive webinar video to my SkyDrive on Windows Live. You can download it here

Follow me on Twitter.

VDI Expert Series: Microsoft and Citrix - Exploring VDI's Myths, Limitations and Benefits

If you're considering Desktop Virtualization or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), join Microsoft and Citrix to discover how to minimize the cost of a VDI implementation with the most comprehensive solution.

Hear about:
•Top 5 VDI Myths
•XenDesktop Technical Differentiators & Testing Metrics
•Minimizing the cost associated with a VDI implementation
•Enhanced security
•Increased business agility

Register for the Exploring VDI's Myths, Limitations and Benefits Webinar 

Webinar Speakers

Scott Woodgate
Director of Windows Business Group
Microsoft Corporation

Scott Woodgate is the Director at Microsoft® in the Windows® Business group. He owns the enterprise version of Windows Vista® and Windows 7, Software Assurance Business, and Windows virtualization strategy including new ways to deploy windows on a variety of form factors such as laptops, desktops, and thin clients. Scott created the Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) license for the virtual desktop infrastructure space. He was involved in the creation of the desktop optimization product and in particular the acquisition of Kidaro (MED-V) and SoftGrid (App-V).

Scott has eight years of experience at Microsoft across both enterprise servers and clients. Before joining Microsoft, Scott was project manager in New Zealand building projects for enterprise customers. Scott holds 5 degrees including a PHD in chemistry.

Sumit Dhawan
Vice President, Product Marketing
Citrix Systems, Inc.

Sumit Dhawan is responsible for leading the go-to-market strategy for the Citrix desktop virtualization product line including evangelizing and developing the rapidly emerging application and desktop virtualization markets.

Prior to his current role, Dhawan was director of product management for the company's flagship product, Citrix XenApp™ (the new name for Citrix Presentation Server®), and led the growth of this product line to generate $1 billion in revenue in 2007. Since joining Citrix in 1998, he has held product management, product development and product marketing leadership positions for a variety of product lines and markets.

Dhawan holds degrees in both business and science, with a master's degree in business administration from the University of Florida and a master's degree in computer science from the University of Minnesota. Dhawan graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology.

Exploring VDI's Myths, Limitations and Benefits Webinar 

Learn more about Microsoft VDI

Learn More about Citrix XenDesktop

In my post last post before VMWorld Europe, I embedded a new demo video on the StorageLink functionality with the recently announced Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V. Another component of Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V is Lab Management. In the next video, Peter Blum takes about five minutes to review the capabilities of this new feature inside Essentials.

Here are the requirements for Lab Manager -

Lab Manager host (Platinum Edition only):

• CPU: Intel or AMD x86 or x64 compatible; 1 GHz minimum; 2 GHz preferred
• RAM: (will vary by number of managed physical hosts, number of users and number of deployed VMs)
• Disk space: 10 GB minimum for small labs and 30 GB for large labs (disk usage will vary by number of templates, ISOs, scripts and software packages)
• OS: Windows Server 2003
• Database: PostgresSQL 8.3 for data store installed locally on LabManager host
  
  Lab Manager agent for Hyper-V (Platinum Edition only):

• One agent required per Hyper-V Host
• Installed on the Hyper-V host
• RAM: 512 MB minimum
• Disk space: 1 GB minimum
• OS: Windows Server 2003

Learn more here.

Yesterday Citrix announced the newest Citrix product that builds on top of the Microsoft Windows Server platform - Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V. Essentials for Hyper-V has four primary components -

1. Automated lab management enables Hyper-V customers to develop, test and deliver applications faster by automating and simplifying the entire virtual machine lifecycle, including movement across virtualization platforms.
   
   
2. Advanced storage integration using Citrix StorageLink™ technology makes it easy for Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center customers to fully leverage all the native power of their existing array-based storage systems.
   
   
3. Dynamic provisioning services lets customers centrally manage a common set of master images which can be streamed on-demand into Hyper-V virtual machines or physical servers.
   
   
4. Hypervisor interoperability makes it easy for customers to manage virtual machines across heterogeneous Hyper-V and XenServer environments.
   
   

This short video below by Peter Blum reviews the Advanced StorageLink capability built into Essentials with Hyper-V.

I will post more videos and info on Essentials from Hyper-V from VMWorld Europe.

Andrew Renne, a Solution Architect with Microsoft Services UK, recently blogged about Microsoft VDI and Citrix XenDesktop at the Deployment Guys blog on TechNet. Andrew writes "In this second blog entry on VDI I will explain the benefits that using Citrix Xendesktop as the connection broker can bring."

Bob Muglia and Edwin Yuen of Microsoft demoed Citrix XenDesktop as part of the Microsoft VDI solution with Hyper V and SCVMM at Citrix Synergy. You can watch he video here (scroll down to the bottom). Brian Ehlert made his own video of the XenDestop/Hyper V/SCVMM integration for his entry into the XenDesktop Beta Video Tips.

Citrix and Microsoft announced our first joint appliance this year at Citrix Synergy. The new Citrix Branch Repeater combines the powerful WAN optimization of WANScaler with several key native infrastructure services from Windows Server. The embedded presentation below provides a technical overview of Citrix Branch Repeater.

(click here to see the presentation in full screen)

You can watch a brief demo of Branch Repeater (from the Synergy keynote) below -

The Branch Repeater Admin Guide is available here. Download the Installation Guide here. You can read a Tech Note on how to discover Citrix Branch Repeater with Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager here.

Robin Brandl (Microsoft Technology Evangelist for Citrix) was interviewed by Joey Snow of Technet Edge during the Microsoft getVirtualnow event in Bellevue, WA.

(click to play)

Citrix is all about virtualization. They have a suite of tools that enable IT departments to virtualize almost everything. Citrix is a Microsoft Certified Partner and, to some extent, a competitor. How does this Partner Competitor relationship work? Microsoft is very interested in virtualization technologies and with the advent of our hypervisor technology, HyperV, and application virtualization software, SoftGrid, you can bet that we'll compete hard with other virtualization vendors.

Here, we meet Simon Crosby, formerly of XenSource now working for Citrix (Citrix purchased XenSource). We discuss the relationship between Microsoft and Citrix, the complexities of building scalable, sercure, reliable and performant virtualization technologies and the future of virtualization. It's a very interesting conversation and Simon is quite the conversationalist. Enjoy.

Monitoring the Wanscaler This is the fouth video in the four part series of configuring a Wanscaler environment for FTP demonstrations. The first in this series is Configuring the W2K3 machine. The second is configuring the XPclient, third is configuring the Linktropy Wan simulator, and fourth is monitoring the Wanscaler

Configuring the Linktrophy. This is the third video in the four part series of configuring a Wanscaler environment for FTP demonstrations. The first in this series is Configuring the W2K3 machine. The second is configuring the XPclient, third is configuring the Linktropy Wan simulator, and fourth is monitoring the Wanscaler

Configuring the XPclient. This is the second video in the four part series of configuring a Wanscaler environment for FTP demonstrations. The first in this series is Configuring the W2K3 machine. The second is configuring the XPclient, third is configuring the Linktropy Wan simulator, and fourth is monitoring the Wanscaler

Configuring the W2K3 server for FTP transfer. This is the first video in the four part series of configuring a WanScaler environment for FTP demonstrations. The first in this series is Configuring the W2K3 machine. The second is configuring the XPclient, third is configuring the Linktropy Wan simulator, and fourth is monitoring the Wanscaler.

This is the second video in a two part series showing CIFS acceleration over a WAN link using Wanscaler. This video will demonstrate the amount of CIFS optimization that occurs in a Wanscaler environment. 

 Here is a video demonstration of Microsoft CIFS acceleration over WanScaler. Equipment used for this demo were Microsoft W2K3 server, an XP client, and a Linktrophy Apposite WAN simulator.

Although, the demonstration seems very simplistic CIFS acceleration represents a milestone in WAN acceleration and data networking, in general. CIFS is the protocol that is used by Microsoft Servers and clients to exchange information. The protocol was originally designed to function over a LAN environment with a minimum of 10 Mbps throughput, half-duplex. As enterprises began expanding their data services to remote offices CIFS, designed for a LAN was being used over low bandwidth, high latency WAN's. Performance and end-user experience vary greatly in this enviornment, and the protocol provides a very high, inefficient overhead. With an accelerator between the remote and central office, TCP transmissions are optimized and thus the protocol is streamlined. Users can now experience LAN like performance while being thousand's of miles away from HQ.

h.1 Watch this videotip

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.-- Today, Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, announced it has won the 2008 Microsoft Partner of the Year Global ISV - Infrastructure Special Recognition award. This award recognizes the global independent software vendor (ISV) for superior technology, delivering innovative infrastructure solutions based on Microsoft platforms.

Microsoft also honored Citrix with its Partner of the Year award for Citizenship for the company's collaborative work on behalf of the Traditional Area of Ashanti-Agogo, Ghana, Africa to provide an infrastructure and training, allowing local residents access to applications and the Internet for the first time.

Building on an almost 20-year relationship, the 2008 Microsoft Partner of the Year Global ISV - Infrastructure award is a testament to the strength and commitment the two companies have in bringing solutions to market that benefit their mutual and respective customers. Over the past year, Citrix and Microsoft have reinvented their already broad relationship in application virtualization to include server and desktop virtualization, creating a complete end-to-end virtualization solution from the datacenter to the desktop that leverages technology from both companies.

"It is a privilege to be honored by Microsoft with these prestigious awards. It is clear evidence that the strength of our relationship and joint go-to-market strategies are benefiting our mutual customers across an increasingly broad set of product lines," said Mark Templeton, president and chief executive officer of Citrix Systems. "After almost 20 years of building and nurturing our relationship with Microsoft, we remain more committed than ever to creating IT infrastructure solutions that leverage Microsoft technologies as platforms for innovation."

Continue at Source: Citrix.com

In the Application Expert series part 2, Caching, I released a Deployment Guide discussing Static and Dynamic Caching.  As we are partners with Microsoft, we recently did some work here internally setting up some Dynamic Caching for an ASP.NET application and thought we would share the knowledge. This Caching Deployment Guide for ASP.NET Web Applications discusses the way an Application Expert would find out the potential caching scenarios that a web application can benefit from, and shows how to create and test the NetScaler caching policies and settings to put these scenarios into effect.

Tap into the power of AppExpert!

A couple months back I posted a blog on running OCS 2007 on XenApp. In it I highlighted a couple of known issues (doesn't support voice or video at this time), but I also posted a feedback received from customers that the user status changes intermittently. E.g., Communicator will change your status to "Away" even if you are online and available. If you have experienced this annoyance, it appears this issue (sporadic presence change) has been addressed in Microsoft's April 30^th update for OCS 2007. You can find more information about this update here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951662/

I'm truly impressed with Microsoft Live Mesh services, it's an awesome approach to cloud computing, however, the service relies on RDP and we all know RDP is not fine tuned for HPRD (high-performance remote desktop).

I'm showing on this screencast a comparison of GoToMyPC and Live Mesh Remote Desktop side by side, and I add my thoughts on how Microsoft can partner with Citrix to deliver superior quality for this unique platform.

cheers,

Gus Pinto
Microsoft MVP - Virtualization
Twitter.com/GusPinto

Policies are used to configure various Citrix NetScaler Application Switch features. For example, the parameters for compressing content are defined in a compression policy.

The features that use policies are:

• Load Balancing
• Content Switching
• Content Filtering
• AppCompress
• Cache Redirection
• SSL VPN
• Priority Queuing
• DoS Protection
• Sure Connect

Policy expressions are applied to content that enters the switch. Expressions are shared among features, but actions are feature-specific. For example, you can create an expression to identify .pdf files being sent through the system. You can then create a compression policy that uses this expression to compress those files. The Policy Engine (PE) refers to the architecture in the Citrix NetScaler Application Switch for versions up to 8.x. The architecture for Policy Engine and the manner in which it operates is presented in this Deployment Guide.  Did you know that each feature in the Citrix NetScaler Application Switch is processed in a certain order, and the Policy Engine (PE) applies policy according to that order.  That order is represented in this diagram and discussed in the Deployment Guide for Policy Engine (PE).

Watch this Policy Engine Tip:

Tap into the power of AppExpert!

As web applications grow in complexity, the art of accelerating them seems to remain the same. This art is performed by applying some basic concepts to the application; that is, Caching, Compression, Load Balancing, Global Server Load Balancing, SSL Offload & Acceleration, Content Switching, TCP Multiplexing and SSL Session Reuse.

Citrix® is a leader in Gartners magic quadrant for Application Delivery with their flagship appliance NetScaler®. NetScaler accelerates web application performance by leveraging multiple acceleration technologies and innovative TCP optimizations.

Whether you are building out a new datacenter and architecting it the right way, or retrofitting an existing datacenter, Citrix NetScaler will perform and keep costs down. Whether you are looking to accelerate legacy enterprise applications such as Oracle or SAP, or building a new web 2.0 social community, Citrix NetScaler contains all of the tools to get you there.

Citrix NetScaler web application delivery solutions are purpose built appliances that accelerate application performance, while simultaneously reducing datacenter costs and improving web application security. Platforms range from the entry level 7000 to the latest MPX-series appliances that provide an industry-leading 15 Gbs of throughput at Layers 4 through 7.

There's more here: Case Studies, White Papers, Analysts , Datasheets

Check out the new MPX!

Buy it here!

Tap into the power of AppExpert!