In the first Deep Dive into XenDesktop post, the embedded presentation covered the architecture of XenDesktop. This next presentation reviews the install of the the Desktop Delivery Controller and the Virtual Desktop Agent, then reviews the Management Console, Desktop Groups, and the Citrix Desktop Toolbar.

Click here to view the presentation in full screen at Slide Share.

This presentation does have several slide notes that provide additional detail. You can view the slide notes here.

Frank Anderson on the XenDesktop team has created a few screencasts covering the features of XenDesktop. You can watch his short screencast covering the provisioning and lifecycle management features of XenDesktop here. Frank's screencast on user experience is available here

Download the free XenDesktop Express Edition here

Thanks to Richard Nash on the SE team for providing much of the source material for this slide presentation.

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.

Provisioning Server 5.0 was recently released. Provisioning Server 5 is included in the Platinum versions of XenServer 5 and XenDesktop.

See earlier posts (here here and here) for other deep dive presentations.

UPDATE: You can see the second post (and presentation) in this series at this link.

The XenServer posts with technical presentations embedded (here and here) have been very popular. This next presentation dives down into the architecture and functioning of XenDesktop.

This presentation does have several slide notes that provide additional detail. You can view the slide notes here

Frank Anderson on the XenDesktop team has created a few screencasts covering the features of XenDesktop. You can watch his short screencast covering the provisioning and lifecycle management features of XenDesktop here. Frank's screencast on user experience is available here

Download the free XenDesktop Express Edition here

Paul Venezia, senior contributing editor of the InfoWorld Test Center, recently posted a review of Citrix XenDesktop. Paul writes "The future is bright for VDI and, thus, for XenDesktop". He goes on to say "Citrix has married VDI to its existing stable of application and desktop delivery mechanisms, and it continues to leverage the stellar ICA protocol to assist in speed, user experience, and manageability" (emphasis mine).

The review evaluates Citrix XenDesktop on five categories - Management, Performance, Scalability, Setup and Value. Overall, Paul rates XenDesktop solution as "Very Good".

Read Paul's full review here.

Frank Anderson on the XenDesktop team has created a few screencasts covering the features of XenDesktop. You can watch his short screencast covering the provisioning and lifecycle management features of XenDesktop here. Frank's screencast on user experience is available here

Download the free XenDesktop Express Edition 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)

Provisioning Server offers you the ability maintain Active Directory machine account password synchronization for target devices. This ability is enabled on the Provisioning Server and is configured on a per virtual disk basis.
Private virtual disks do not need to maintain Active Directory machine account password synchronization, as they are a read write virtual disk, and have the ability to retain changes and store them to the virtual disk.
Standard virtual disks do need to maintain Active Directory machine account password synchronization, as they are read only, and do not have the ability to retain changes on the virtual disk.
There are some things to take into consideration when dealing with Provisioning Server and Active Directory Machine Account Password Synchronization for a successful implementation of this feature. The following are some guidelines and best practices to follow:


If the virtual disk image that is going to created is to be used by multiple target devices, in Standard Image mode, it is best practice, that before creating a virtual disk image, to run the Device Optimizer utility on the target device and apply the "Disable Machine Account Password Changes" setting If the virtual disk image that is going to created is to be only be used in Private Image mode and never Standard Image mode, the "Disable Machine Account Password Changes" setting does not need to be applied



When creating virtual disks that will ever be used as Standard virtual disks, it is best practice, to never create a target device that will have a device name of an existing machine account in Active Directory that is, has, or will ever be running off of local disks, and is ever going to be provisioned as a Standard Virtual Disk

When creating virtual disks, it is best practice, to ensure that the Active Directory setting for "Enable automatic password support" is configured on the Provisioning Servers

When creating virtual disks, it is best practice, to ensure that the "Enable Active Directory Machine Account Password Management" setting is configured on Standard Virtual Disks

Also, it is best practice to use an Active Directory Organizational Unit to manage machine accounts for target devices that will be provisioned, and that the Group Policy Object or Security Policy setting for the Organizational Unit is set to enable the "Disable Machine Account Password Changes" setting to disable Windows Active Directory automatic password re-negotiation.

And lastly, it is best practice to ensure that the Group Policy Object or Security policy setting for that Organizational Units "Maximum machine account password age" setting is compared to the Provisioning Server Active Directory setting for "Enable automatic password support" setting. The Provisioning Server Active Directory setting for "Enable automatic password support" number of days must be less than the Group Policy Object or Security policy setting for that Organizational Units "Maximum machine account password age" setting or you could end up in a scenario where the machine accounts would not able to log on to the domain due to this restriction being in place.

If you should ever encounter a situation where the active directoy machine passwords are out of sync, in provisioning server 4.x and below there is a command line utility for reseting machine accounts. In provisioning server 5.x this has been incorporated into the management console.

Following these best practices will help you keep synchronization between Active Directory Machine Accoutns and Provisioned Target Devices that are using a Standard Virtual Disk. With the use of Provisioning Server with XenServer and XenDesktop, these best practices are also applicable, as those technologies are also used to delivery devices that may need Active Directory Machine Account Password Synchronication.

Hello Mac Users

First I would like to thank all of you for downloading version 1.0 of our blogs widget. We currently have 1400+ downloads, and this goes to show that the Citrix community has indeed a large number of Mac users.

I also would like to thank those users who sent us their feedback, this version of the widget is here because of you, so keep sending your feedback and comments.

 Meet the Citrix Blogs Widget

 Version 1.0:

• The latest 30 Citrix Blog posts
• Adjust view from Full to Summary
• Collaborate with your comments
• Open posts on Safari or Firefox
• Spotlight Search (Instant search)
• Push updates (no refresh required)
• Watch blogged videos
• Check for updates
• Send feedback

 Version 1.2:

• Widget Resizing
• Bug Fixes

Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4 or greater

Download:

Citrix Blogs Widget

I an earlier post, I asked "How do you make Technology decisions?". According to a recent survey, Google is by far the most used tool by technology buyers (83% ALWAYS use Google). The poll on my post found similar results.

Again Google is the clear leader, but not nearly by the same margin as in the external survey. I am curious if the is partly because the question in the poll was phrased a bit differently.

Instead of guessing why, I decided to ask you. Please vote below on whether you always, sometimes, or never use these different resources when researching a new technology before making a decision on a solution to implement.

Do you always, sometime or never use Google when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

Do you always, sometimes or never use another search engine (Yahoo, MSN Live, Ask, etc..) when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

Do you always, sometimes or never use a vendor blog when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

Do you always, sometimes or never use an independent blog when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

Do you always, sometimes or never use a vendor product site when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

Do you always, sometimes or never use a vendor support site when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

Do you always, sometimes or never use a third party analyst site when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

Do you always, sometimes or never use a user group when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

Do you always, sometimes or never use Wikipedia when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

This is the first episode of the Citrix Delivery Center podcast. Vishal Ganeriwala and I interviewed Daniel Feller of Worldwide Consulting Solutions on the topic of deploying XenApp on XenServer. In part 1 of this topic, Dan talks about where, why and how XenServer and XenApp integration makes sense to deploy in your environment. Scalability will be covered in part 2.

Thanks to Jim West in Citrix Technical Support for voicing the Citrix Countdown and Steve Greenberg of Thinclient.net for the CTP Minute. A special thanks also goes out to Doug Brown for his podcasting advice and help.

MP3 File Download

Subscribe to the Citrix Delivery Center Podcast Feed

UPDATE: Click here to vote on topics for future podcasts.

Here are the documents Dan created regarding XenApp on XenServer -

Reference Architecture: Explains why a 100% physical architecture was reconfigured to include both physical and virtual systems and deciding factors of why XenServer is the best server virtualization solution for XenApp servers.

Implementation Guide: A step-by-step guide showing how to incorporate a XenApp Farm into a XenServer Platinum environment. Demonstrates how to create a golden XenApp image to be provisioned to any number of virtual machines.

Design Considerations: To meet the needs of the business, a solution like XenServer for XenApp must allow for design decisions. This article focuses on a few of the major considerations when integrating these solutions together.

I recently came across this chart of the results of a survey of IT decision makers and influencers about where they look for information when evaluating technology solutions.

UPDATE:Thanks for voting in this poll. appreciate so many of our readers taking a moment to share your thoughts with us.

Where do you look first for information on technology solutions?	Choose
Google
Yahoo
MSN Live
Independent Blogs
Vendor Blogs
IT Vendor Product web site
IT Vendor Support web site
Online IT publication
Directory
Analyst site
User Group
Wikipedia

Many you have seen the Synergy Underground site by now. As I wrote in the post announcing Synergy Underground prior to the conference, the goal for Synergy Underground was to give those of you unable to attend an inside view into the event. I have received many questions about how the concept came into being, how we did the live video, and how many video views the site has had since the site launch last week. I put together a presentation that answers these questions.

Several of my friends have given me a lot of well deserved grief over the live interviews I shot where you can hear me do a count down at the beginning. Yes, you can hear me say "two, one" in several of the videos. I did a countdown to help the interview subject prepare for the beginning of the live video. Some people were more than a little nervous about being broadcast live on Citrix.com (very understandably) so I thought a countdown was a good idea at the time. In my defense, most of the time when I hit the stream button on the N95 there was a couple seconds delay before the connection was established and the video began to stream. Obviously, that delay was inconsistent, so on some videos you do hear me count down. I have also heard about how many times I opened a video with "Okay". The interview subjects were not the only ones being broadcast live for the first time on the internet, the guy behind the camera was new at this as well. C'est la vie. I could have spent a lot of time editing that part out of all the videos I did and reposted them, but I decided to leave them as is, warts and all.

Despite the audible count downs, the intermittent data signals and the eternity it takes to upload videos to BrightCove, this project was a lot of fun and a big success in my opinion. I hope we get the opportunity to do this again.

There are many changes at the Citrix user conference this year. The new name, Citrix Synergy, is only the most obvious difference.

iForum is now a breakout session track, and the IT 2.0 Business Symposium track, the Application Delivery track and the Geek Speak track (including Geek Speak Live! and Geek Speak BarCamp) are all new. There are more technical sessions than ever (over 90 total). There are more industry heavyweight keynote speakers than ever before, and a keynote by a Senior Vice President from the largest software company on the planet (and our most important partner).

For the first time ever, we have an opening keynote from a best selling (and controversial) author on technology and business, and a closing keynote by a very accomplished comedian and actor. Citrix Synergy is shaping up to be the most engaging, interactive, technical and relevant Citrix user conference in our history.

I recognize that many of you across the world will not be able to attend Citrix Synergy for a number of reasons (such as the rapidly increasing costs of energy and fuel). Due to constraints such as distance, time or an overwhelming work load, several of you may have not been able to come to a Citrix conference in sometime (or ever).

The members of the Community and Solutions team at Citrix would like to bring a taste of this conference directly to you. We have put together a plan to show you the face behind the name Citrix Synergy - the faces of the attendees, partners and Citrix employees who all come together to make this event happen. We want to bring you an inside (and unofficial) look at the people and events at our user conference.

Citrix Synergy Underground will bring you inside the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston during the conference. Our team (including Rich Crusco, Vishal Ganeriwala, Gus Pinto and me) will bring you instant text updates from the keynotes via Twitter. You will see numerous live video (via Qik and Mogulus TV) and recorded video interviews (via BrightCove TV). These video will be taken inside the Convention Center common areas and halls, the Exhibit floor, Tech Lab, and Geek Speak Live and Geek Speak BarCamp (no keynote or breakout videos). We plan to speak to as many customers, partners, resellers, and Citrix employees as we can at the event, and show you many of the great demos and new technology that will be unveiled. We hope to give you an inside look at the event that you have never seen before at any user conference.

Our team put together a short video to introduce themselves and the Citrix Synergy Underground site.

(Thanks to Bryon Thomas for pointing me to Qik. Thanks to Gus Pinto for putting together the web page with Microsoft Expression Engine, and Saul Gurdus and his Web Services team for hosting the site for us and providing tech support)

Our underground coverage will begin formally on Tuesday, May 20th. Tune in to http://community.citrix.com/underground to watch.

Voting is now closed on the XenDesktop Video Tips Contest. Here are the final vote talliesfor the best desktop virtualization video tip -

The Winner of the 16 GB Apple iPod Touch is "20 Desktops Delivered in 20 Minutes" -

The winner of the 8 GB Apple iPod Touch is "VDI Made as Easy as Pie" -

The winner of the Apple iPod Nano is "XenDesktop User Experience" -

Congratulations to the winners. All of the other finalists will receive an Apple iPod Shuffle 2 GB. If you are a winner and are attending Citrix Synergy, please let me know. I would like to recognize any winners at the Geek Speak BarCamp event on Wednesday evening.

I ask each of the winners to send me your address and contact info to citrixblogger
@citrix.com.

Thanks again for participating and voting in the XenDesktop Video Tips contest.

All twenty speaking slots for the first ever Geek Speak BarCamp are filled and the scheduled is locked in tight. (Read background on Geek Speak BarCamp here, here and here). This event happens on the evening of May 21st at Synergy in Houston (in room 360 right after Geek Speak Live).

I have communicated to all the speakers the schedule, and this is now the final one I will post before Citrix Synergy. We have had a few changes (including one speaker dropping due to another commitment) but we have twenty full sessions.

The line up now includes FOUR Citrix Technology Specialists, four consultants, two Escalation Tech Support Engineers, four Product Managers, a HP Print Driver Developer and a Senior Architect from a large healthcare company.

If you have not yet registered for Citrix Synergy, you can click here to to complete your registration. I look forward to seeing you at Synergy and the Geek Speak BarCamp.

The voting is now open for this years Citrix Innovation Award -

The Citrix Innovation Award is for Citrix customers who innovate in utilizing technology to make a significant impact on their business. Ultimately, information technology is about delivering applications to end users so they can perform business transactions. These three nominees have innovated in their use of Citrix technology to cut costs, reduce time to revenue for projects, and to mitigate risk.

Here is the video from Betchel Corporation -

Next up is Cocamar Cooperativa Agroindustrial-

And finally the video for Mutual of Omaha (yes, the Wild Kingdom guys for those who remember that show) -

The judges for this years Citrix Innovation Award are listed below -

How to Vote
You can vote now for the Citrix Innovation award online at http://www.citrix.com/innovationaward. The winner will be named during the keynote session at Citrix Synergy 2008 on Wednesday, May 21st. Citrix Synergy will be held on May 20th to May 23rd at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.

If you have not yet registered for Citrix Synergy, you can click here to to complete your registration. I look forward to seeing you at Synergy..

You still have time to get your vote in for the XenDesktop Video Tips Contest here. As of this posting, there have been almost 200 votes. Currently "VDI Made as EASY as Pie" by Gareth James maintains a slight lead.

The creators of the top three video tips as voted by you will receive prizes including an Apple iPod Touch 16 G, an Apple iPod Touch 8 GB, and a Apple iPod Nano.

Gareth James a blogger at DABCC.com did an amazing job of walking us through how to install and configure Citrix Provisioning Server.


                         Watch Video

To see more articles from Gareth please visit his blog here: Gareth's Blog



Cheers,

Gus Pinto
Microsoft MVP - Virtualization
Twitter/GusPinto

In my previous post on Geek Speak Bar Camp (May 21st at Citrix Synergy), we had fourteen of the twenty speaking slots filled. As of now, all twenty speaking slots for the first ever Geek Speak BarCamp are filled. (Read background on Geek Speak BarCamp here, here and here).

 
The line up now includes three Citrix Technology Specialists, four consultants, two Escalation Tech Support Engineers, a VDI Specialist from VMWare, four Product Managers, an HP Print Driver Developer and a Senior Architect from a large healthcare company.

I am looking forward to flying to Houston and getting this event started. I think that after seeing this line up and the list of technical sessions in the other tracks, I think you will agree with Shawn Bass when he wrote -

I am still working on juggling the time schedule to meet everyones equipment requirements and time constraints. I expect to finalize by Monday or Tuesday.

If you have not yet registered for Citrix Synergy, you can click here to to complete your registration. I look forward to seeing you at Synergy and the Geek Speak BarCamp.