What is the Advanced Concepts Guide (ACG)?  This is a document created by Citrix development/test teams that contains advanced technical information as well as last minute information found during the product closedown.  In the past, this document was delivered a few months past the product release date in the form of a pdf and posted on the Citrix Knowledge Center on Citrix.com.  Then, a few months after the document was completed a comprehensive book would be published by McGraw-Hill and made available for purchase at any major retail store.  

With the Presentation Server 4.5 release, we have changed the delivery method for this information.  Instead of creating a large pdf and posting it to the Knowledge Center, we have created a landing page that serves as a table of contents with links to all of the articles with new information.  These articles are intended to be used in addition to any previously posted ACGs.   (Remember to reference other separate product ACGs that are now Platinum features.)  Why did we make this change?

• The Knowledge Center did not support "search" functionality within a pdf document.  Therefore, it was difficult to search for a specific topic.
• This new way will reduce the "time to market".  (Although, this time we didn't see this benefit as we were enhancing our processes.)  Previously, the entire document had to be completed before any information was posted.
• Now we can constantly add information instead of waiting until the next rev of the document.
• You can set a "watch" in the Knowledge Center to receive alerts when there are modifications or new entries added. 

A couple of things to note:  With the next product release we will carry forward previously published information so that everything will be found in one place.  Also, the book will still be published.  The 4.5 Platinum version is expected in Q2. 

Let us know what you think of this new delivery method?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is a fully integrated customer relationship management (CRM) system. Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives you the capability to easily create and maintain a clear view of customers from first contact through purchase and post-sales. With tools to enhance your company's sales, marketing, and customer service processes, along with native Microsoft Office Outlook integration, Microsoft Dynamics CRM delivers a fast, flexible, and affordable solution.

Now that we're done with the shameless marketing description of the Microsoft product, here's the news.

It's very common for Microsoft CRM to be deployed via Citrix infrastructure, so as part of finalizing the product for release, Microsoft and Citrix jointly tested CRM with CPS to ensure absolute compatibility and to publish guidance on optimal configuration. We've tested this application on Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems and declare that Microsoft CRM 4.0 is now officially "Citrix Ready", and as information becomes available it can be found in the online solutions catalog at www.citrix.com/cr_microsoft_dynamicsCRM.

~snip

WOW....it's almost been a year since we launched the Platinum Edition of Presentation Server!  What has made this new top-level edition of Presentation Server so popular?  Well, several reasons I think:

1.  Complete end-to-end application delivery solution all-in-one offering.  No need to buy each of the piece parts separately and hope that you can get them to work together.  Now it's all from one vendor, Citrix, and they WILL work together else "one throat to choke".

2.  All of the cool new features!  Application Performance Monitoring, SmartAuditor, SmartAccess, Single Sign-On, Application Streaming, and EasyCall.

3.  The price it right!  It only takes interest in one or two of the new features to justify the ROI.  Most of the new features are available to expand your existing Enterprise or Advanced environment, but for the cost, you are better off upgrading to Platinum.  Take a look at the math.

4.  Existing customers are using Subscription Advantage renewal budget for upgrades.  See blog on "Presentation Server Upgrade Calculator" by Sridhar Mullapudi.  By adding a few additional dollars to the already planned Subscription Advantage renewal budget, customers are upgrading to Platinum and getting all of the additional value.

5.  The anticipation of what the future might bring.  Besides all of the value that Platinum currently has, what other cool technologies might Citrix add to the Platinum edition in the future - the possiblities are endless!  Remember, it only takes an active subscription advantage to be eligilbe for anything that gets added - so stay tuned!

As the Product Manager for Presentation Server Platinum, let me know what you think.   Have you moved to Platinum?  If so, what drove you there?  If not, are you planning to?  Why or why not?  Also let me know what technologies you'd like to see in this edition in the future. 

The Nirvana Smartphone as a PC , Thin Client , Desktop Appliance ... 

 
As Smartphones become more capable, and fast networks pervasive, plus now with Virtual Desktops going mainstream ( like Citrix XenDesktop ) , the practicality of using a Smartphone as a laptop/desktop alternative is closer than ever. The use case's for this model are many fold. It's is not intended to replace a PC or laptop ( at least initially ), rather the early adopters of this "Nirvana" Smartphone would likely already have a laptop for work and a PC at home. The general use case's revolve around enhanced mobility with broader access to applications and desktops. So even though most users already have access to apps and desktops from PC's and laptops, most of us would prefer to travel locally ( including the inside the office ) or on selective trips without a laptop if it was practical.

So what is missing from today's Smartphone's in a single device ?
Video-out -  A few Smartphones have video-out like the Nokia N95 but the resolution is limited and it has no pointing device support. Some PDA's ( HP and Dell Axim ) have better screens and resolution with Video-out but they are not phones and are still too big. The upcoming i-Mates promise this functionality... we'll see. The iPhone also has some video out capability but it's still too limited. The resolution needs to be capable of 1024 x 768 to satisfy most users.
Keyboard & Mouse -  The Smartphone user input options continue to improve, however to do "real" work a full keyboard and mouse will continue to the requirement when stationary. Many Smartphone's today do have bluetooth which can work fine for this scenario. Some new portable keyboards are making this more realistic as well.
Docking Station - This scenario works best if there is also a Nirvana docking station that recharges the phone at the same time as providing the VGA video interface and USB hub. The " Nirvana " Smartphone ideally would provide USB host functionally  vs. USB slave that many have today. Additional / alternative functionality for the docking station include VGA/USB passthrough - so the docking station can plug into a home PC and use the same monitor and peripherals, as well as audio in/out for headsets. This docking station would also need to come in a portable dongle version as well as stationary.

Industry trends that are also working in favor of this scenario

Free seating / Office hoteling is a growing trend for mobile workers that occasionally work in the office. Today many cubicles already have a monitor for a laptop hook up, they would just need the docking station and keyboard to provide a full desktop experience. Similarly "real" hotels have office facilities with printers and monitors, they just need a "Nirvana" docking station to complete the solution.
LCD TV's are now pervasive and many have VGA and multiple Video inputs. This opens up hotel rooms, kitchens, family rooms, etc.

LCD's in general are getting cheaper and pervasive. They are showing up everywhere; cars, picture frames, book readers.

Digital Projectors - most conference rooms are already equipped and portable projectors are getting smaller and cheaper.

Virtual Desktops - Like XenDesktop ... hosted centrally but available everywhere.

Remote Desktops - Like GoToMyPC ... remote desktop connections to home or office PC's.

Application Virtualization - like Presentation Server .. apps hosted centrally available from any device.

Web based; apps / storage / photos / social networks - more and more of digital life ( work and play )  is available from any device on the web.

Consumer driven use cases

Most device companies we speak to about this concept are interested in the idea, however many are clearly driven by the consumer use cases vs business ones due to the huge volume that the cell phone market drives today. The assumption is that Smartphone's will continue to improve and excel in handling voice, video, music and cameras, but here are some additional consumer use cases that could exploit the unique features of the Nirvana Smartphone;

Web enable all the TV's in your house - most new LCD TV's are VGA capable but normally are only connected to a cable box and DVD player. Simply adding the Nirvana docking station would provide web connectivity without all the other complexity required in today's configurations.

Video conference from your TV -  add a camera to the front of the Smartphone and use the TV to view and communicate with others doing the same.

Photo / Video Playback - many cameras already offer viewing from a TV, the Nirvana Smartphone will carry your photos and videos that could be viewed full size from the Smartphone Video-out to any LCD monitor or TV through the Nirvana docking station.

So how long is this going to take ? Why has this failed so far.

It's easy to project everything is going to be possible in the far future; wireless video, virtual keyboards, rollup video screens, etc. However, I am more interested in the next 12-18 months, the technologies to build this Nirvana Smartphone and use it as a Desktop Appliance are all available now, it just needs a leading device vendor to put together all the parts ( and embed some Citrix SW.. ).

So far there have been a few attempts to build full PC functionality into a Smartphone/PDA however they all come up short ( too big, too slow, too expensive ) because they try to replicate a full PC in a small device. Instead, if device makers can assume that a remote virtual desktop is accessible with all the apps you need and full size keyboard+mouse+monitors are readily available and connectible, then the Nirvana device could be built at a reasonable price, fit in your pocket, and provide the freedom to leave your PC or laptop at home.

Who will build the Nirvana Smartphone ?	Choose
Apple
HP
Motorola
Nokia
I-Mate
BlackBerry
HTC

Would you buy the Nirvana Smartphone ?	Choose
Yes, even if it's $400-$800
Yes, only if its less than $400
Not interested

Related links

Update : What is a Nirvana Phone video post

Adam Marano's search for the Nirvana Device posts from CTIA 2008

The Viewsonic ViewDock with an iPod looks like a perfect combination, unfortunately it still needs a PC to run and view.

John Dvorak's PC week article from 2003..

Nokia N95 TV-out feature review.

i-Mate 8150 with VGA out on youtube. 

The RedFly Mobile companion announced at CES.

Follow me at http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

There's recently been a fair amount of discussion on security and Presentation Server installation, with some insightful responses (see Brian Madden's blog entry). One point about the original posting: it was concerned with attacks from authenticated users only. An Internet attacker has to jump the authentication hurdle first. That's why strong authentication is so important for Internet-facing deployments.

The book Citrix Access Security for IT Administrators (ISBN-13: 978-0-07-148543-2) is a great resource for planning and securing your setup. Several Internet-facing configurations are described. It doesn't cover everything: we had to leave out Access Gateway because it didn't fit the editorial timetable; and those with specific regulatory requirements will also want to refer to the Common Criteria documentation, and the Security Standards and Deployment Scenarios documents, at https://www.citrix.com/security.

And yes, this edition of the book covers Presentation Server 4.0. We'd love to do a second edition for Presentation Server 4.5 and later. Getting into print is a lot of work, so we'd like to know first whether you like this kind of security material in book form, or delivered some other way. The Common Criteria documentation and the Security Standards and Deployment Scenarios document are already posted for Presentation Server 4.5. Let us know your thoughts.

Also, since this book was written, we launched the Citrix Ready program. Take a look at the Citrix Ready Products Guide for third-party information - there's a section for security products.

Finally, consider whether SmartAuditor is a good fit to your organization. It's a powerful tool for addressing the risks from authenticated users. At this time, it is a feature of the Platinum Edition of Presentation Server - see Citrix Presentation Server Editions.

One of the most viewed Citrix blog posts of all time is Orestes Melgarejo's post, "To VoIP or not to VoIP". A lot of customers have expressed interest in delivering telephony functions to their users via Presentation Server. The purpose of this blog post is to highlight that there are at least three ways you can already deliver telephony functions with Presentation Server 4.5 today. I'll get into more detail on each of these currently available solutions in subsequent posts, but let's start with a brief summary:

1. Published softphone in "control mode".

There are softphones available today from vendors such as Avaya and Cisco that are Microsoft Terminal Services compatible and can be published on Presentation Server to control a physical telephone set. Likewise, Microsoft's Office Communicator client, a Unified Communications tool, can be used in this way. In control mode, you use the softphone application to make calls, redirect calls to any telephone, establish audio conferences, control telephony features, and so on.

2. Softphone application streamed to the user's Windows PC.

The application streaming feature of Presentation Server 4.5 Enterprise Edition and Platinum Edition can be used to stream compatible softphone applications to client devices. The softphone application then runs within a protected isolation environment. The softphone is never actually installed on the user's PC. This approach to softphone delivery centralizes management and reduces the risk of operating system instability from application conflicts.

At iForum in Las Vegas last year, Citrix, HP and Cisco jointly demonstrated softphone streaming to a Windows XPe thin client. Enabling telephony is one of the common functions of an embedded operating system. We're still accepting requests from customers who would like to field test this solution. Amazingly, it was all done with generally available product releases.

3. EasyCall.

EasyCall, powered by the Citrix Communications Gateway, is a feature of Presentation Server Platinum Edition. EasyCall provides a remote telecommunications capability without the need to purchase and support softphones. With its click-to-call function, users can click on any telephone number that appears on their screen, whether in a directory or any other application, and EasyCall will initiate a call to that number. EasyCall does this by calling the user first and then completing the call to the number on the user's screen. The user can specify whether they are using their office phone, home phone, mobile phone, softphone or whatever. Since all calls placed through EasyCall actually originate from the company's telephone system, long distance charges are reduced.

In addition to the three solutions summarized above, the Citrix Access Gateway deserves a mention in this context. The Access Gateway is capable of tunneling VoIP traffic (which is typically UDP) over SSL. There's a white paper in the Citrix Knowledge Center that explains how to enable the Cisco IP Communicator softphone through Access Gateway.

So, stay tuned for future blog posts where I will elaborate on each of these currently available methods for delivering telephony functions to your users via Presentation Server. And then I'll update you on where all of this might go in the future. Meanwhile, I'd be very interested in your comments on any of these solutions, the 'use cases' you believe are most important to address, and your own strategic thinking around delivering telephony functions to the enterprise.

Derek Thorslund
Product Strategist, Multimedia Virtualization

Whereas Citrix NetScaler is all about delivering web applications with outstanding performance, availability and security, the SpeedScreen Browser Acceleration feature of Citrix Presentation Server is focused on optimizing the performance of the web browser used to access those applications. Many Citrix customers deliver Internet Explorer and/or Mozilla Firefox to their users through Presentation Server for reasons well articulated by Brian Mirrotto and Rob Patterson in their iForum 2005 presentation Take Control of Your Users' Web Browser; in particular, easier management, better performance and improved security (see also Resolve Web browser security and compatibility issues). SpeedScreen Browser Acceleration ("SpeedBrowse" for short) improves the usability of Internet Explorer when accessing web pages that contain JPEG and non-transparent GIF images, two very common digital image file formats. (SpeedScreen Image Acceleration takes over for photographs and other high detail images.) It also optimizes the performance of Outlook and Outlook Express when viewing HTML-based email.

SpeedBrowse actually consists of several sub-features that work in tandem to improve browser responsiveness and reduce bandwidth consumption. Here's a high-level summary of the most important pieces that make up the SpeedBrowse feature:

• Optional automatic disabling of GIF animations. By default, SpeedBrowse disables Internet Explorer's "Play animations in web pages" option. This setting reduces bandwidth consumption and enables the resulting static GIF images to be delivered over the SpeedBrowse virtual channel.
• High-level browser hooking. SpeedBrowse uses high level hooks into Internet Explorer to intercept JPEG and GIF images before they are decompressed. Images can be sent to the client in their native compressed form, minimizing bandwidth consumption.
• Dynamic JPEG image recompression. JPEG offers multiple levels of compression. By recompressing a JPEG image at a higher, more "lossy" level of compression, bandwidth consumption can be further reduced, at the expense of image quality. Presentation Server Enterprise Edition and Platinum Edition offer a "Determine when to compress" option that dynamically evaluates image size and available network bandwidth to automatically decide how much compression to apply.
• Background image delivery. SpeedBrowse sends compressed images in chunks over a separate SpeedBrowse virtual channel so as not to block the Thinwire command protocol. The user can scroll and use the Back and Stop buttons of the browser with excellent responsiveness as images are downloaded at lower priority in the background.
• Client-side image caching. SpeedBrowse caches compressed image chunks on the client. If the server detects that a chunk is already in the client's image store, it will not resend that chunk. It only needs to send an identifier. By caching image chunks on the client, web pages that are revisited display much faster and bandwidth consumption is reduced because the server does not need to retransmit previously sent images. Furthermore, decompressed images are added to the client's cache as bitmaps so that these images don't need to be decompressed each time they are drawn. This provides a significant performance boost when a web page is scrolled because scrolling generates multiple drawing operations for each image on the page.

Of course, there are some limitations, too. SpeedBrowse is not compatible with web pages that include Adobe Flash content. And it would be nice to see an enhancement to handle PNG images, which offer more vibrant color than GIFs.

When you look at the multiple facets of SpeedScreen Browser Acceleration, you can see why it adds up to a tremendous feature for accelerating web browser performance. A study by Doculabs (click for summary press release or full report) published shortly after SpeedBrowse was introduced concluded that Presentation Server provides "200% to 250% more efficient network bandwidth utilization than locally installed browsers (depending on the configuration and tuning options selected)" and "may provide users with a two-fold or greater increase in page loading performance" on low bandwidth connections. This testing was done against a set of 99 web pages including commercial sites such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.com. 50% of the pages were graphically intense (over 95% of the total page download coming from image loading). Using a browser delivered via Citrix Presentation Server resulted in a transfer of 55% less data than when browsing with a locally installed browser, resulting in noticeably faster response times. The SpeedBrowse feature is a big contributor to this outstanding performance.

In the time since the Doculabs report was written, we've witnessed the emergence of numerous Javascript-enabled web sites (Gmail, for example). These days, there's a lot more data getting sent down to the browser, which now is becoming a pseudo operating system executing all these applications. It's often a lot less network intensive to send the image representation of the web page through ICA rather than downloading the entire page to the client. This is especially important if the client is at the end of a limited bandwidth pipe.

Derek Thorslund
Product Strategist, Multimedia Virtualization

Are you planning to renew your Subscription Advantage for Presentation Server licenses in the near future? Check out this calculator that tells you the dollars saved to upgrade to a higher Presentation Server edition using your Subscription Advantage budget. Remember that all upgraded editions of Presentation Server include the first year of Subscription Advantage.

You just need to give 3 pieces of information to get the savings - the number of licenses you plan to renew, your current edition and your desired edition.

Shawn Bass wrote a good blog about the new PowerSmart Utility

In his blog, he explained his take on our choice of of using WinRm and server vendors's out of band management products. It's a good read.

One thing I need to clarify is that it is fairly simple to configure this version of PowerSmart to power on HP servers if you follow the user guide. We'd like to hear your experience and improve the tool and its documentation.

Shawn was right that if you just want to give the tool a quick try without reading much, the out of the box default configuration will allow you to try it without much restriction. It will even work in a virtualized environment.  Please see the minimum requirement section of the download page. The trade-off however is that this default configuration won't power on servers. A good default power on mechanism is hard to find because user environments are likely to be very different.  The included HP script won't work with IBM servers for example. We thought this default is a safer option and it can lead the users to think about the best way to power on servers. Plus this default makes it easier for users to have an alternative mechanism to power on servers. For example, users can use windows scheduler to schedule a script to power on servers. Yes, the HP scripts we provided can be easily modified to do so.

We thought about using Wake On LAN as default. But we soon realized that it has many limitations too. Please see the FAQ page for more details. However If you know WOL well or you can get some experts such as Shawn to help, it may very well work for you.  I heard a large company had successfully used WOL to save millions of dollars by powering off idle desktops. In the data center, I expect administrators may have more control over the servers and thus WOL may have a higher chance to be useful.

Please share your experience with others so that we can benefit from each other.

The wait is over. I am happy to announce that Citrix PowerSmart Utility is available for download now at this newly designed Developer Network site. Please visit this page for more information and to download the utility. Be sure to check out the related page section for the FAQ page page and new idea page page.

The new site makes it so much easier to post new projects. I love it. Please try it out. I hope you like it too. I've even left the FAQ page open so that you can edit directly yourself.

A great platform is of no use if no one is using it. We'd love to hear from you and we hope the new platform makes it easier.

I've also posted the same information at my blog post at official citrix blog site. Going forward, I guess I will post more CDN specific information here and general information at Citrix blog site and cross reference. It's the power of the web...

Many thanks to everyone who have contributed to this project!

Merry Christmas and  Happy New Year!

Ray Yang

I am happy to announce that Citrix PowerSmart Utility is available for download at the new Citrix Developer Network web site now. Please visit this page for more information and to download the utility. Be sure to check out the related page section for the FAQ page and new idea page.

Many thanks to everyone who have contributed to this project!

We'd love to hear from you. The new Wiki based Citrix Developer Network is cool. Please check it out.  I've even left the FAQ page open so that you can edit directly yourself. 

Merry Christmas and  Happy New Year!

Ray Yang 

The views expressed here are mine alone and have not been authorized by, and do not necessarily reflect the views of, Citrix.

When implementing a "VDI" solution, most admins focus on the "Desktop".  What should the desktop look like, how many will be the same, who can access them, where do I run the desktop from and store my images.  Moving forward, the admins think about items like how they need to update the desktops with OS updates and or security patches.

I find that many times, applications are not thought about in the whole solutions from the admin point of view.  How are the applications going to be delivered to the end-user, how are the applications going to be managed.  Typically when this question arises, the answer is to install the applications on the desktop images just as they would be at the user's desk.  So let's look at the benefits of this so far........   Centralizing the desktop in the data center give you full control and security over of the desktops.  By installing the applications on the desktop images, you are also centralizing the application installs to the data center.  The downside to both of these would be when it comes to managing and maintaining the implementation(updating the desktop and the applications).

XenDesktop gives the admin a great way to reduce the headache and time associated with updating both the desktop and the applications.  XenDesktop can be fully integrated with Presentation Server.  This means that you can deliver a desktop from the data center to an end user, wherever they may be, and then deliver their applications to that desktop from Presentation Server in that same data center.  For companies currently running Presentation Server most application may already be setup and ready to be accessed from that centrally deliver desktop.   So now the applications are dynamically delivered to the desktop that is presented to the end user.  This allows the desktops images to be more flexible since the applications are not installed locally and no matter which desktop from a pool is presented to the user, the user can get the applications they have access to via Presentation Server and the ICA client residing on the delivered desktop.  These applications can be updated in the datacenter via a package that is being streamed to the Presentation Server or installed on the Presentation server.  Either way, the updates are done only on the package or the installed application on the Presentation Server.......not on every desktop image.

In addition to the applications, the desktop can be created as a single image or a few images based on your needs.  This image or images can then be streamed to the hypervisor on-demand when needed for a requesting user, via the Provisioning Server.  This way, you would only need to make updates to the "gold" image and then have it stream the updated desktop image to the user.  This method allows the admin to save space, time and pain of maintaining a desktop image for each user.

I hope that after reading this, you will have a good understanding of how much XenDesktop and Presentation Server can work together to provide an entire Desktop and Application Delivery system.  To allow users access to this system via a Secure Remote connection........ Implement Citrix Access Gateway Enterprise Edition.

The views expressed here are mine alone and have not been authorized by, and do not necessarily reflect the views of, Citrix.

Typically, an admin that implements the Access Gateway Enterprise Edition(AGEE), find themselves deciding how to lock down the environment that the users will connect to.  I have been asked many times what the "Best Practice" would be to restrict or allow access to their users.  What I like to explain is that the normal security guidelines come into play first, however each environment can differ based on company security policies and application delivery goals. 

What I like most about the AGEE, aside from multiple vServers, automated failover, enterprise scalability, policy control, etc.. is the flexibility to provide secure remote access to Presentation Server applications without using a "VPN" client. The AGEE's is called the Secure Access Client(SAC).  The SAC is there if needed, and all of the granular access policies can be applied to the full "VPN" tunnel.  The flexibility to give users access to just Presentation Server application and/or a full desktop experience is only outdone by the ease and flexibility of the policies that can determine the users logon session environment.......  This is called SmartAccess and it gets performed via the AGEE appliance itself.

Bottom line with using policies is to make sure you start with a solid design.  Included in that design should be what kind of users will be connecting and what resources they will need access to.  From there, you will need to decide on if you need to run Pre-Authentication Policies to grant/deny access to the logon page as well as determining other features that the users will have during their session.  In addition, you will need to determine if you need to setup any policies to run End-Point Analysis after their credentials are entered to filter Presentation Server applications and/or grant/deny access to other resources, including the entire session.

This is just the beginning, there are many other features provided by the AGEE as well as many different combinations of how to apply policy and dynamically create the users logon environment when connecting via the AGEE.  I hope after reading this, you too will be excited about the power and flexibility of the AGEE and remember to keep in mind how important an initial design is to maximize the AGEEs full potential. 

Update: 

The utility has been released to CDN. Here is the link

----

Hi my name is Ray Yang. I am a senior technical business development manager at Citrix. The new official Citrix blog site displays my name as Ruiguo Yang. But most people at Citrix refer me simply as Ray Yang. That was the name I used for the old community blog.

I haven't posted anything new recently because I've been busy working on an exciting new project called "Citrix Power Smart".

So what's "Citrix Power Smart"?

Nowadays, server power consumption and associated cooling cost have been a hot issue. Many people in Citrix and Citrix customers are asking what Citrix can do to help addressing this issue.

During a discussion with some members of the CTO Office team, a small group of us conceived the idea of powering off idle presentation server during off peak hours.  Here is our thought process.

Just imagine you have 10 presentation servers.  During the business hours they are fully utilized. However at nights or on weekends hardly anyone connects to them. These servers however still consume power needlessly during such "off business hours".  Simply powering off such servers during "off business hours" can save you up to 30-50% of your presentation server farm power consumption based on our rough estimate.  It sounds easy. But why haven't we found many people doing so? Many of them do want to save money and are environmentally conscious. We think one of the reasons is that it has to be made easy and reliably before such practice is widely adopted. Can you imagine the following scene?

A presentation server administrator stays late every night.

Wait for the last person to log off.

Shut down each idle server.

Get up early to power on all servers before everyone else comes to work.

It's a bit tough to do, isn't it?

Well, such repetitive work is best left for computers. And they can be programmed to do it reliably!

In fact, we realized that the existing presentation server and the underling server platforms have the necessary ingredients already. The existing Presentation Server SDK provides the ability to see what user sessions are running on a given presentation server. There are existing standards such as IPMI and infrastructure such as Windows Remote Management available to power on/off servers reliably. What's missing is a small piece of software to tie them together.

But wait a minute. What if some poor fellow do have to check emails or get some work done during the "off business hours"? You can leave some Presentation Servers running to serve them. However without additional work, the default Presentation Server load balancer will typically distribute the load evenly across all the servers preventing many servers to be shut down. To give you an example, say you have 10 servers in your farm. Each server is capable of supporting 50 concurrent user sessions.  Based on historical data, you expect at most 30 concurrent user sessions will be needed during "off business hours". So I only need to keep one server running after business hour then. But wait. You have set up your presentation servers to balance user load evenly across your servers. These 30 user sessions will be spread across all 10 servers during "off business hours" preventing you from shutting them down. After all you don't want to lose your job because you disconnect your CEO's session when he is checking an important email at home.

So how can we improve our simple algorithm? Well, it turns out that Presentation Server has a "scheduling rule" for all the currently supported versions. You can define the time periods when certain servers are available. Perfect, we thought. If we add a simple scheduling rule, to make sure the servers we want to shut down aren't going to accept new connections in "off business hours", chances are much greater that these servers will have zero active sessions as people log off.

"Sounds great and simple. We have App Delivery Expo coming up next month. It's going to be a great talking point. Can you have it done, like tomorrow?" Marketing guys asked.

"Well, we like it but it is likely going to take XXX man weeks to go through the release cycle. And we are fully booked" answered development team.

Finally, the technical folks in the business development group volunteered to deliver the first version via Citrix Developer Network with forum support. Because of my developer background, I volunteered to lead the project. We volunteered because we love doing something good for the environment, sooner than later. And we believe once we showed the leadership and initiative, the community (users and partners) will help us get there even if the initial functionality is limited. And it is easier to convince the product team to include such features in the future releases once we have positive feedbacks from users. Personally it is gratifying to be able to contribute to something I believe in while getting paid 

Thus "Citrix Power Smart for Presentation Server" project is born.

At this year's "App Delivery Expo" (AKA IForum), we announced "Power Smart" initiative. Here is the link to the press release. If this project is successful, we may bring more exciting projects under this model. For example, a Power Smart Utility for Xen. Since then we've got many interests from partners and customers. I may be able to share some more information on that subject later.

We know Presentation Server very well. But we are not the experts in controlling the physical servers such as powering on/off servers. Luckily we found some like-minded folks at one of our great partners HP to help us. HP's development team is busy too. But they gratefully provided advices and test equipments to allow us deliver a solution that will work with HP servers. And they happily agreed to do joint marketing with us. It's been a pleasure working with the HP team involved with this project so far.

I've been itching to share more information with Citrix community about this project. But I felt I had to get the utility working and release it on schedule first.  I am still running some last minutes testing and getting feedbacks from selected beta users.  It now looks promising that we will have the utility delivered to the community as a New Year gift from Citrix.

I will share more details with you as we make progress.

In the mean time, I'd love to hear from you, good or bad. If you prefer, you can also send an email to me at Ray.Yang@citrix.com. I can't promise to respond to every email. But I will try. For this reason, I would encourage you to comment on my blog or soon to be setup user forum to exchange your ideas with the broader community. Let's do something good, together!

I hope you find this blog interesting. And if you do, please help us spread the message.

Thanks!

I'm back from my 7-day Eastern Caribbean cruise and of course the first thing on my mind is my Multimedia Virtualization blog! We've just migrated the Citrix blog site to an updated system so I had a few transitional issues to work through, but now I'm ready to share with you Part 2 of my series on optimizing Adobe Flash performance on Citrix Presentation Server. (Click here to read Part 1.)

There's definitely more to optimizing Adobe Flash than configuring SpeedScreen Flash Acceleration ("SpeedFlash") and making sure you have any required hotfixes to handle newer versions of Flash. One of the features of Presentation Server that can have a very substantial positive impact on Flash performance (animations and video) is Queuing & Tossing. This feature shows up in the management console as "Discard queued images which are replaced by other images" or "Discard redundant graphics operations", depending on which version of Presentation Server you're running.

The Queuing & Tossing feature of Thinwire briefly queues GDI draw commands and, before sending them over ICA, inspects the stack in reverse order (LIFO) to allow tossing of obsolete commands (those which have been overwritten by subsequent commands). The queuing period is short enough (30ms) that it doesn't degrade the responsiveness of the application; in fact, performance is significantly improved because draw commands that are logically redundant are discarded.

The tossing algorithm was enhanced in Presentation Server 4.5 (Ohio) to look for more graphics constructs. The tossing algorithm now uses a 1-bit-per-pixel map of the session screen. And it can detect complete self-contained 'frames'. As a result, Thinwire will either send the entire frame to the client as a self-contained entity or toss it completely. These improvements to the tossing algorithm further reduce the amount of data that needs to be sent over the wire. Along with reduced network bandwidth consumption, network efficiency (data bytes per frame) is increased. And the user experience is better because the entire frame gets updated at once rather than in pieces.

So, just how big a difference does all of this make? I recently spoke with one of our engineers who has been taking performance measurements with Flash videos. In his testing, he found that enabling Queuing & Tossing reduced bandwidth consumption by more than 3 times!

In addition to the new framing behavior of Queuing & Tossing in PS 4.5, just-in-time output behavior has further improved Flash performance. Flash video playback with PS 4.5 is noticeably smoother. And CPU consumption is lower, which increases server scalability (number of simultaneous Flash users per server).

There's still quite a bit more to tell you about Adobe Flash performance optimization, so stay tuned for my next installment on this topic.

Derek Thorslund
Product Strategist, Multimedia Virtualization

Hello everybody,

My name is Frederic Serriere, i have been working in the EMEA Technical Support for almost 7 years.  I wanted to answer some common queries about Citrix Presentation Server hotfixes.

As per Citrix policy (refer to http://www.citrix.com/English/SS/supportSecond.asp?slID=5107), maintenance will only occur on the most recent version. So, you may need to update to the latest available Citrix hotfix when engaging Citrix Technical Support

What does PSE450R01W2K3X64001 or PSE400R04W2K3011 mean ?

PS => Presentation Server
E/F/S/J/G => English, French, Spanish, Japanese, German
45/40 => 4.5 or 4.0
0 => service pack level (remember XP days...)
R01/02/03/04/05/06... => requires that Rollup Pack 01/02/03 is installed
W2K/W2K3/W2K3X64 => Win2000, Win2003, Win2003 64 bits,
followed by the hotfix number

How can you quickly check if a fix is available for other languages?
Once you have found the fix in a hotfix' readme but you need a different language (or Operating System) version, get the number at the end of the paragraph (ie #159404) and run a search against this number. Why? because the hotfix versioning may not be consistent accross plateforms, languages and versions.

and a quite note to end this first post :
CTX106248 : Hotfix Inventory Management tool
CTX106237 : List Hotfixes For All Servers In A Citrix Farm

Regards,

Frederic

In my conversations with customers at our iForum App Delivery Expo in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, the topic of Adobe Flash came up several times. It became apparent to me that many Citrix system administrators are looking for guidance on how best to configure Presentation Server to support access to web sites with Flash content, and they're wondering what future enhancements Citrix has on our technology roadmap. So here is the first in a series of blog posts about optimizing Flash performance.

Flash is indeed a key focus area for the Citrix Multimedia Virtualization Initiative. Over the past few years we introduced various enhancements and tweaks to Presentation Server to help customers optimize the user experience when viewing Flash animations and videos. We also offer NetScaler to dramatically accelerate the delivery of web applications, including apps with Flash content. And there's more to come...

The reason for this continued attention to Flash is the growing prevalence of Flash-based content. Based on input I received from two leading Content Delivery Network vendors, it looks like Adobe Flash has now captured at least 10% of the enterprise market and is enjoying rapid growth. And a Forrester survey ("Enterprise Browser and Desktop Trends") of over 2,000 large enterprises found the Adobe Flash player installed on 98% of desktops.

The obvious starting point in our discussion of Flash performance is the SpeedScreen Flash Acceleration feature ("SpeedFlash" for short) introduced in Presentation Server 3.0. You can enable SpeedFlash to be on at all times or just over low bandwidth connections (less than 150Kbps). SpeedFlash automatically adjusts the Flash player to use simpler graphics (for example, no smoothing or anti-aliasing). These simpler graphics can be more effectively compressed, thereby reducing bandwidth consumption. CPU usage is reduced, too, which translates into higher scalability (more concurrent users per server).

SpeedFlash looks for specific binary file names. Here's where things can go wrong. The SpeedFlash code in Presentation Server 4.0 looks for flash.ocx and won't do its trick unless it finds that file. You may be running a version of the Flash player with a different binary file name. Presentation Server 4.5 was updated to also accept flash8.ocx, flash8b.ocx or flash9.ocx. But what do you do if you're still running Presentation Server 4.0?

There's a hotfix for PS 4.0 [NOTE: this hotfix is for Windows Server 2003] that adds support for Adobe Flash versions 7a, 8, 8b, 9, 9c, and 9d. You'll find the details at http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX115426 (login required). [NOTE: If you have trouble with this link even after logging in, just do a search for CTX115426. I've noticed that the link can take a long time to resolve. An approved support contract is required to access limited release hotfixes and hotfix articles.] The hotfix number is PSE400R03W2K3091. And I expect there will be future hotfixes as new versions of Flash are introduced that have a different binary file name or require new SpeedFlash code to achieve the task of adjusting the Flash player to use simpler graphics.

[UPDATE: A hotfix for PS 4.0 with HRP04 on Windows Server 2000 was made available on March 10th. Customers with an approved support contract can find the article describing this hotfix at CTX115555. The hotfix number is PSE400R04W2K012. This hotfix adds support for Adobe Flash versions 7a, 8, 8b, 9, 9c, and 9d.]

So, does it work? Obviously the current SpeedScreen Flash Acceleration technology is not as advanced as SpeedScreen Multimedia Acceleration, which leverages client-side resources to greatly improve server scalability and provide a just-like-local user experience for a long list of media types that can be decoded with a DirectShow codec. Yet the measurements I've seen for SpeedFlash show an impressive 22% average reduction in bandwidth consumption (the actual figure will vary according to the content).

If your users will be accessing Flash videos, I recommend setting SpeedFlash to be always on, rather than limiting it to just low bandwidth (dial-up) connections.

Audio settings are also important to consider since if you're watching a Flash video it more than likely has an audio track, too. I recommend Presentation Server's Medium Quality setting as the best compromise between sound quality and bandwidth consumption. The Low Quality setting does not make for a very good user experience, and the High Quality setting uses up a lot of bandwidth (roughly 1 Mbps). Improvements to audio support are another part of the Citrix Multimedia Virtualization Initiative (see "Now playing - The Ulysses Audio Codec").

I'll have some more "secrets" for optimizing Flash performance in a subsequent blog post.

Derek Thorslund
Product Strategist, Multimedia Virtualization

The Mac OS X 10.0 Beta was posted today.

In general, I have noticed a resurgence of Mac support across the Citrix product line. I glad, because I began using a MacBook Pro as my work machine about 3 months ago.

It good to see that our developers are minding the shop while 4,000 customers and Citrites attend the Citrix App Delivery Expo.

In his 2 hour keynote speech before 4,000 attendees, Mark Templeton celebrated the 10th anniversary of our annual Citrix customer event: from Thinergy (1998) to iForum (1999-2006) to the newly named App Delivery Expo (2007+). This new name marks an important change in how Citrix views its market and the growing importance of application delivery. Will Citrix App Delivery Expo grow into an event the size of the RSA Security Conference, or even bigger? Only time will tell, but today, the market conversation was broadened.

3 Quests
Citrix is on 3 quests to build out its application delivery infrastructure, which is clearly a multi-year initiative that will provide greater IT flexibility and reduce complexity.

1. Datacenters are dynamic - use a virtual infrastructure to separate apps from app workloads. The 3 components of an app workload are the datacenter of work stateless re-useable components, and a loose, run-time coupling of those components.
2. Apps are a delivered service - apps are no longer and instead are Even for users who use applications offline, these applications can be centrally managed with client-side application virtualization. The idea of a new app receiver will enable apps delivered as a service.
3. Desktops are a service - physical and virtual desktops are delivered as a service. App workloads will be stored in a catalog and then delivered.

9 Partners on Stage
I have never seen such strong partner participation at our annual customer event. Participating either on-stage or via video, VPs/Directors from Microsoft, IBM, HP, BEA, Oracle, Dell, Intel, AMD, and Business Objects provided their support for building out application delivery infrastructure. Typically, it has been Citrix executives delivering the keynotes with possibly 1-2 partners.

New Types of Virtualization
In addition to server virtualization, Mark offered these new types of virtualization:

• Client-side Application Virtualization - In Presentation Server 4.5, application streaming and isolation was introduced. This functionality is now re-positioned as client-side application virtualization.
• Server-side Application Virtualization - Applications are virtualized on Presentation Server and then delivered to other Presentation Servers or desktop devices. I expect to see more on this during tomorrow keynote sessions.

New Concepts

• App Workload - The app workload consists of the app + engine + OS. The goal is to make every workload a single server, whether those servers are virtual or physical.
• App Receiver - The app receiver runs on any device and has plug-in functionality for acceleration, virtualization, monitoring, collaboration, communication, user support and will be open for 3rd party plug-ins.

Other News
Citrix announced, via the conference bag insert, the Presentation Server Delaware Beta. Through Monday, Oct. 22, Citrix has issued 11 announcements.

Also see Brian Madden coverage on iForum App Delivery Expo 2007.

Some people have been quite excited about the Citrix Presentation Server Solaris x86 8.50 Client release. ThinGuy statement on Sun Think Thin blog says it all: Freaking On So I decided to catch up with Chris Wright, the development team lead for this release. spelling remains for authenticity .

Question: Tell me about yourself and your experience at Citrix.
Answer: I am a Software Development manager at Citrix, based in our development center just outside London, UK. I have been working for Citrix for two and a half years, initially managing products in the Management Services Group, which produces components like Resource Manager, Network Manager, End-User Experience Monitoring, the Access Management Console framework etc. For the past six months, I have worked in the non Win32-clients group, managing the development side of the UNIX and Mac clients.

Question: Why is this release important to customers? What are the biggest benefits to customers?
Answer: This release brings the feature set for this client up to the same as that for Solaris SPARC, so we have a greatly enlarged feature set over the previous release. The main features in demand have been increased colour depth and resolution, encryption, and smart card support. This version also supports Solaris Trusted Extensions for the first time.

Question: In what industries do you expect to see the most use of this new client?
Answer: The main demand for this release was for government contracts, which is where the need for Solaris Trusted Extensions and smart card support arose. We have also seen demand from car manufacturers and telcos among others.

Question: What tips or tricks do you have for using this new client beyond what is in the Admin Guide?
Answer: None. (The Citrix Publications team must be doing a great job!)

Question: What are Citrix and Sun doing to further develop their relationship?
Answer: We are grateful for Sun engineers technical support while closing down this release. We have also released an updated Solaris x86 version of our Presentation Server product this year, so we are fully committed to the Solaris operating system.

would you like to see in the next Solaris x86 ICA client release?