Brian Madden makes some really strong points about the state of VDI today. To be honest (in my humble opinion) he is spot on when he says that VDI is a "use case" solution. He's correct that even those customers that are 100% VDI today are companies where all their users meet the right "use case".

He may even be right that come June 2010 perhaps VDI technology will advance so much that it can expand its "use cases" circle to include just about all desktops at all companies. But what if VDI doesn't do that by June 2010? In fact what if VDI doesn't do that ever? What would that mean for Citrix XenDesktop? And what would that mean for the competition's VDI solutions?

To answer that, it needs to be pointed out that Brian frequently misses the boat when he talks about XenDesktop. In fact he recently assessed that XenDesktop is just an "old school server-based computing remote desktop delivery product". To even suggest that, one has to seriously sell the XenDesktop product short of what it really is. And I find that surprising coming from Brian, as he has been one of the biggest fans of the Ardence technology, which is a significant component of XenDesktop.

I can only assume that Brian's assessment of XenDesktop is based upon the use of XenDesktop as nothing more than a VDI solution. The problem with that basis is that XenDesktop is not just a VDI solution. It does far more than just VDI.

And this is perhaps the biggest problem that XenDesktop faces today. It is just so frequently compared to other VDI solutions, so much so that it's now perceived to be "just a VDI solution". It has pretty much become a pre-conceived notion, even within the ranks of the highly respected industry bloggers such as Brian Madden.

The problem with comparing XenDesktop to other VDI solutions is that it's like comparing Guitar Hero to a Playstation 3. That's comparing apples to oranges. In fact, that's more like comparing apples to apple trees. Guitar Hero is a game. Playstation 3 is a gaming system, of which Guitar Hero is one of the games it can play. Likewise VDI is a tool, whereas XenDesktop is a Desktop Delivery system, of which VDI is one of the tools it can do.

So back to the questions in the second paragraph, what would it mean for Citrix XenDesktop if VDI use cases never expanded to include just about all desktops at all companies? And what would that mean for the competition's VDI solutions?

If VDI use cases never expanded, then the competition's VDI solutions would always remain "niche" solutions. However, because XenDesktop is far more than just a VDI tool, its technology is not contained within the VDI "niche". To use the Guitar Hero/Playstation 3 analogy, if after this Christmas people stop buying Guitar Hero, that doesn't mean people would stop buying Playstation 3. The gaming system isn't contained within the "niche" of one of the games it can play.

The problem with XenDesktop today is that even though the technology isn't contained within the VDI niche, its market perception is pigeon holed as being just another VDI product within the VDI niche. However, perception will eventually catch up with reality. Eventually the market will begin to understand everything XenDesktop can do. And if we are predicting what things will be like come June 2010, we can safely assume that the preconceived notion that XenDesktop is just another VDI solution will certainly be gone by then. If use cases of VDI haven't expanded by then, then the market is still huge for XenDesktop, a product that does far more than just VDI. If VDI use cases do expand, then XenDesktop will still be right in the mix of that niche, as it does VDI as well.

OK, so what are these "other things" that XenDesktop can do, such that it's a "Desktop Delivery" system as opposed to just another "VDI" product? Well, honestly I could refer to the many blogs Brian Madden has posted singing the praises of the Ardence technology, of which Citrix bought and renamed Provisioning Server.

In order to explain Provisioning Server technology, let me say that personally I'm not a fan of the product name "Provisioning Server". Far too many times I have heard people say they don't need it because they rarely provision operating systems. Such a task is something they do once to a new piece of hardware, and hopefully they never have to "provision" an operating system to that piece of hardware again. Well,  "one and done" is not how Provisioning Server functions, but given the name of the product I can see why people assume it does function like that.

I much prefer to call the technology "Disk Image Virtualization". Essentially what I can do with the technology is take a traditional desktop computer (or server) and virtualize the entire disk I/O that occurs on the machine. While the operating system is running, it's using all the machine's RAM, the machine's CPU(s), the machine's video card, the machine's sound card, etc, etc... The only thing the machine isn't using is the machine's local hard disk. In fact, you could remove the disk if you want to, because the entire local disk I/O is being redirected to Provisioning Server.

So why not call it "Disk I/O Redirection"? Well, that would be a good name if that's was all that it does. But Provisioning Server does one more important thing. It shares one disk image amongst many of machines. I could boot thousands of machines from one shared disk image. Calling it "Disk I/O Redirection" doesn't address that it can share one disk image to many machines. So when I'm explaining what Provisioning Server does, calling it "Disk Image Virtualization" ends up making a lot more sense to the customer than the name "Provisioning Server" does.

Now again, Brian Madden loves this technology, despite what it's called at any given time. The benefits of using it are huge. Instead of managing thousands of instances of Windows, I manage just one instance. Brian loved it when it was called Ardence. He loved it when it was renamed Provisioning Server. And I'm sure he'll still love it even if he hates the name I call it, "Disk Image Virtualization". 

So I have to assume that if Brian assesses XenDesktop to be just an "old school server-based computing remote desktop delivery product", he must not be aware that when a customer buys a XenDesktop license they are allowed to boot their local desktops directly from a shared disk image and avoid a remote connection to a VDI hosted desktop all together.

This flexibility of the XenDesktop license provides the XenDesktop customer tools for additional use cases, and more importantly, additional money saving implementations, which a customer of the competition's VDI solution just flat out cannot do. Essentially, buying the competitions VDI solution for nearly the same price provides the customer with far, FAR less capabilities, and could end up costing the customer far, FAR more overall to implement.

Let's take for example the case of the customer who decided to buy 150 band new laptops with OEM versions of Windows. I'm choosing the laptop scenario because I am frequently finding that due to the low cost of laptops today with OEM Windows installed, many companies are buying these laptops even for use cases where a desktop has been traditionally used. Their justification is that when they price out a desktop, or a thin client, or a laptop, the laptop is only costing a few dollars more than even some thin clients, so the cost to standardize everyone in the company on a laptop is pretty small.

If you're pushing a VDI solution on the customer, the customer's decision to buy laptops hurts your chances of selling VDI, because much of the savings in implementing a "cost saving" VDI deployment is accomplished by keeping the customer's old desktop hardware on the user desks (i.e. save money by extending the life of existing hardware).

If the customer is committed to replacing the old hardware with something new, then the person pushing a "cost saving" VDI deployment would have hoped that the customer had opted for thin clients instead of laptops, so that the power savings of the thin clients could be included as part of the ROI on the VDI proposal.

Despite the customer's excitement over deciding to buy 150 laptops, if you're pushing a "cost saving" VDI deployment, then the customer's decision is disappointing news to you. The new user hardware costs and power consumption of laptops will make your VDI proposal a tough sell (especially when the Windows license costs get added in... more on this later). You'd almost be inclined to convince the customer that buying 150 laptops wasn't a good idea. Good luck with that.

But if you're selling a Desktop Delivery system like Citrix XenDesktop, the customer's decision to buy laptops doesn't hurt your chances of selling XenDesktop at all, because XenDesktop has the tools to work with whatever the customer has on their user's desks. Old, new, and/or power hungry, it doesn't matter.

Keeping with the point of what "doesn't matter", if you're pushing VDI on this customer, it doesn't really matter to you at all how the customer intends to use those laptops, because no matter how they use them the customer is still going to need 150 virtual machines in the datacenter, and users are always going to connect via a remote protocol. But if you're selling a Desktop Delivery system to the customer, how the customer intends to use the laptops actually matters (GASP!!! Imaging that... Use case matters!).

For this scenario let's assume the customer says approximately 100 of the laptops will never leave the user's desk, but 50 of the laptops could be taken on the road or home for the employees to remotely connect in. You also find out that they expect that the maximum number of remotely connected users at any given time would be 20.

If you're pushing VDI as the solution, you would require a virtual infrastructure in the data center to host 150 virtual machines. But the person selling Desktop Delivery sees that the customer only needs the virtual infrastructure to host 20 virtual machines. This is a huge infrastructure savings, and given the customer just spent a lot of money on 150 laptops you're going to need this savings in your proposal if you want the customer to buy a new way of managing their desktops.

Windows licensing can also be a huge factor. If you're pushing VDI, the customer is going to have to take all 150 of those OEM Windows licenses and upgrade them to Vista Enterprise, add an annual SA fee, and then buy an annual VECD license. But the person selling Desktop Delivery sees that the customer only needs 50 of those OEM licenses upgraded to Vista Enterprise with SA and VECD. That's one third of the additional Microsoft costs as VDI is only used when the user meets the VDI use case. See, use case matters!!!

Managing the operating systems is also significantly different. If you're pushing VDI, you're not giving the customer any tool to manage the 150 operating system instances that are on the laptops' hard drives. All the tools of VDI only manage the operating systems on the virtual machines. Even if VDI finally develops an offline mode, the VDI tools still will only manage a virtual machine on the client, and not the operating system installed on the client's hard drive. By pushing VDI, you've essentially just doubled the number of operating systems instances that this customer now needs to manage and you've only given them tools to manage half of them. Gee, thanks!

But the person selling Desktop Delivery tells the customer to have the 100 remaining OEM licenses migrated to the customer's Microsoft Volume Agreement (which is much cheaper than upgrading to Vista Enterprise with SA and VECD), so that all 150 of the laptops meet the Microsoft licensing requirements to be booted from one shared Provisioning Server image (Vista Enterprise, SA and VECD are NOT necessary to use Provisioning Server... the operating system license just needs to be a Volume Agreement to use a shared image). Instead of having twice as many instances of operating systems to manage, the customer now has just one instance. The 150 laptops and the 20 Virtual Machines all boot from one shared disk.

And really the most significant benefit here is the user experience. When booting from Provisioning Server the user's desktop experience isn't occurring over a remote protocol. As much as I could sing the praises of ICA over RDP in a VDI solution, why even use a remote protocol when one isn't necessary at all? When you push VDI, even when the user is in the office they're using a remote protocol. Not necessary!

With Provisioning Server you've virtualized the entire disk I/O to occur in the data center where it's secure, but do you really need all the CPU processing, graphics rendering, and multimedia processing occurring in the datacenter too? Those laptops have good ram, good processors, good video cards, good sound cards, etc... The user will be happier with all that processing occurring locally on their laptop. And IT will be happy that all of the user's disk I/O is occurring in the datacenter on the Provisioning Server. Use a remote protocol when the user meets the use case. Don't force it on them all the time.

So what about the 50 users who will take the laptop out of the office with them? What will they boot to? Well, first let me point out that they won't be booting to the corporate image outside of the office. This is a good thing. In fact, that's a great thing! It's much more secure. In order to boot to the corporate image, a laptop needs to boot from the corporate network. If you're pushing VDI those laptops need to have a corporate managed image on their hard drives because they connect to the corporate network every day. So when they leave the office with the employee, or they are stolen, they will boot with the corporate image anywhere that they are booted. Not good from a security standpoint.

Those 50 laptops in Desktop Delivery when not connected to the corporate network will boot with the image of Windows that the laptop shipped with. With the Citrix Access Gateway, and the XenDesktop Web Interface, the SSL encryption client and the Desktop Receiver client get installed automatically when the user remotely connects for the first time to the office. The employee can then securely use one of the 20 VDI instances within XenDesktop, which by the way boot from the exact same shared disk that their laptop boots from when they are on the corporate network. That means they get the exact same desktop outside the office that they have inside the office, but again the corporate image never physically leaves the datacenter.

In fact, if the user wants some offline applications, Citrix XenApp 5.0 is a great way to stream those offline applications over an http connection to them, and isolate those applications on an unmanaged operating system. And that's essentially what that operating system on the laptop's hard drive is. It's unmanaged. You don't need to manage it. It will never have a full connection to the corporate network. The only connection it will ever have is an encrypted ICA traffic connection.

If the user corrupts that local operating system on the laptop, just have them use the manufacturer's restore CD and then point back to the Access Gateway and Web Interface to get the clients reinstalled. And if a restore CD is too hard for them, you've got 100 spare hard drives with the laptop's original OEM Windows image on it that you pulled out of the other laptops that will never leave the user's desks (assuming you don't opt to sell them on eBay). You could have your remote users carry around a spare hard drive with them if you wanted to. In fact, you've got enough hard drives to have each remote user carry around two spare hard drives.

And ultimately, even if your company policy says you do need to manage the operating systems on those 50 laptops, that's only 50 instances, plus 1 shared image that you need to manage, as opposed to 150 instances on the laptops and another 150 in the VDI infrastructure that the person pushing VDI creates.

Now, given the scenario of the 150 laptops, does XenDesktop sound like an "old school server-based computing remote desktop delivery product"? Sorry Brian, but you've missed the boat in your assessment of XenDesktop. I expect things will be drastically different come June 2010, but not for the same reasons as Brian. I believe by then the preconceived notions that XenDesktop is just another VDI solution will finally be gone.

I have to admit that this in response to a blog posted by Brian Madden couple of days ago. In his blog Brian did three things:

1. Create some news and controversy - as always he seem to have done well
2. Compare Citrix's shipping product with VMware's 'experimental' technologies
3. State that do not invest in VDI because of the competitive alternatives that are available in the market through 2010 and we don't know the who the leader will be then.
   

I usually enjoy reading Brian's blogs because he always looks at the best interest of the customer and doesn't get influenced by announcements and technologies that are not real. However, in this case - I have to say that he missed the mark on few things. Brian is the last person I had expected to get caught up in the land of vaporware and public announcements; so I thought I'd get the record straight.

1. Citrix shipping product vs. experimental technologies - There is a lot of confusion in the desktop virtualization market already. And broad announcements regarding 'experimental' technologies has created some of the confusion. Citrix, on the other hand, has been focused in getting success with XenDesktop product in the market and we are seeing some great results; thanks to all of our loyal customers who are putting their trust in a solid product and moving forward with hundreds or thousands of hosted virtual desktops. At Citrix, we have taken a more conservative view point in going public with our 'experimental' technologies in this market. However, that doesn't mean that we are not working on the future technologies; in fact, we have a robust roadmap that we continually discuss with our customers around different use cases. Our vision is to deliver a desktop to all enterprise users including mobile and offline use case. We are working with customers to align our vision and strategy with customer requirements. As appropriate, we will make short-term and long-term announcement of our vision and product releases.
2. VDI or Desktop virtualization - be all end all - We all love technology and want to talk about how technology will get better overtime. However, when it comes to client computing, I urge each one of you (including Brian) to think about the use cases. Is XenDesktop not a good fit for anyone today? False. Like I said, we have customers who are implementing the technology for hundreds or thousands of users. It is designed and built for delivering a desktop to an office worker (corporate office, branch office or home office) who does all his/her work when connected to the network. That is about 50% of total workers worldwide. Is offline or check-in/check-out a requirement for that user? - NO. Example - I deal with two financial advisors (an inside sales person and a field sales person). The inside sales person is always working when connected and can be using XenDesktop and the field sales person needs offline access and cannot. Those of us who can figure this out will have no problem in cutting the cost of desktop computing for your office workers TODAY!
3. Offline worker - Is Citrix doing anything about offline workers? First of all, we ship the best technology for the offline workers today - XenApp. XenApp enables you to have offline virtual applications, simplifying application management (addressing the biggest offender of cost and complexity). Again, we have customers using the technology TODAY for their mission critical mobile worker use cases - packaging their applications once and then flexibly delivering them to users using any device anywhere. In addition, we are investing heavily on local desktop virtualization technologies where two desktop OS can co-exist on the same device in order to increase the overall security of the mobile workers with laptops and further improve manageability of the desktop OS. Again - we are taking the use case based approach here. We are looking at the needs of a mobile worker who has either a corporate owned laptop or a personal owned laptop (BYOC) and delivering a solution that provides three benefits:
   • Enhance data security by protecting the data with a layer of virtualization
   • Further simplify desktop lifecycle management - by having a single image across multiple types of devices and centralized image management technologies
   • End user flexibility - by enabling them to pick any end point device while delivering the desktop anywhere

Let's look at the mobile user use case - these users will be using their laptop device and the latest version of OS, apps and user settings must be available to them anytime anywhere, including when they are offline. The only time they will be accessing a desktop in the data center is when they don't have access to their laptop device (traveling, emergencies, etc.). So, the whole concept of check-in and check-out is an incorrect model. In fact, I'd argue that the check-in/check-out model is antiquated. We are no longer used to going to libraries and checking-in and checking-out books. Instead, we use iTunes to automatically synchronize what we need on our iPods for offline use and most of us use automatic synchronization. That's what the right solution will need to be - dynamic synchronization, rather than static check-in and check-out, and that's what Citrix is designing and building. 

In summary, I urge each of you (including Brian) to start thinking about the use cases rather than technologies. There are some great technologies out in the market that help you address your challenges for your use cases TODAY - leverage them. Don't wait until 2010 - there will be some other vaporware then!  Consider three different use cases (task workers, office workers, mobile workers) and map out your technology requirements based on the following high level goals that you should accomplish: 

• Lowest cost of ownership
• Maximum flexibility and agility
• Data security 
  
  

There are a couple of myths that have propogated in the industry - VDI - one size fits all (NOT TRUE) and desktop is just another workload on the hypervisor (again NOT TRUE - think users and use cases instead).  

Of course, I am going to close by saying Citrix can help!

I often talk with Citrix customers who are interested in virtualizing XenApp ( Presentation Server  ) based on the potential to consolidate servers, increase flexibility or enable new HA/DR capabilities. However, a frequent comment I hear is that we tried this before with ESX but the overhead penatly was to high so we are still running XenApp fully installed. This may have been the case before but things have changed, now it is possble to get the benefits of Virtualization by runing XenApp on XenServer 5 without the downside you may be concerned about.

If you would like learn more and engage with the experts without traveling to an event, make sure you register for the Citrix Delivery Center Live event on Devember 4th. You can register here and check out the other topics that may be of interest as well.

Part I of the Deep Dive into XenDesktop series reviewed the architecture. Part II covered the install and management tools. Part III reviewed an example XenDesktop Pilot Architecture. Part IV reviewed the Virtual Desktop Delivery of Dan Feller's "XenDesktop Pilot Implementation Guide". Part V reviewed the integration with XenApp for application delivery to the virtual desktops. Part VI covers User Personalization with Citrix User Profile Manager. This is the third section from Dan's Pilot Implementation Guide.

This embedded presentation covers the "Personalization" section of the Pilot Implementation Guide.

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

Part I of the Deep Dive into XenDesktop series reviewed the architecture. Part II covered the install and management tools. Part III reviewed an example XenDesktop Pilot Architecture. Part IV reviewed the Virtual Desktop Delivery of Dan Feller's "XenDesktop Pilot Implementation Guide". Now in Part V we review the integration with XenApp for application delivery to the virtual desktops. This is the second section from Dan's Pilot Implementation Guide.

This embedded presentation covers the "Application Delivery" section of the Pilot Implementation Guide.

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

Part I of the Deep Dive into XenDesktop series reviewed the architecture. Part II covered the install and management tools. Part III reviewed an example XenDesktop Pilot Architecture. Part IV reviews the first section of Dan Feller's "XenDesktop Pilot Implementation Guide". Dan goes through each step of configuring a pilot from start to finish.

This first embedded presentation covers the "Virtual Desktop Delivery" section of the Pilot Implementation Guide.

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

Part I of the Deep Dive into XenDesktop series reviewed the architecture. Part II covered the install and management tools. Part III reviews an example XenDesktop Pilot Architecture. This presentation is based on the "XenDesktop Pilot Reference Architecture" document by Dan Feller. Here is the the introduction to Dan's white paper -

Dan put together a list of requirements for this Pilot Reference Architecture -

I have broken the great content of the pdf into smaller, bite size chunks to make it more digestible within a slide format (especially the step by step tables). Before each step in the tables, I added in the reference diagram with a big arrow that points to the step within the diagram. There are a lot of slides, but the amount of content on each slide is much easier to swallow in this format IMO.

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 Dan Feller for putting together an excellent whitepaper and allowing me to convert that content into this format. I hope you find this useful.

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.

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

The Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller PowerShell SDK provides a snap-in, XDCommands, for the Microsoft PowerShell v1.0 framework. The SDK consists of a number of "cmdlets" that allow you to script many of the administrative tasks you may need to perform on a regular basis.

Step by Step setting up your PowerShell / XenDesktop environment

• Install PowerShell 1.0 on the DDC (Desktop Delivery Controller)
• Download and Install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
• The PowerShell SDK is located on the XenDesktop 2.1 CD in the ...\Support\DdcSdk folder. Run the installer XenDesktop_2_0_DDC_Powershell_SDK.msi

Installing the SDK registers the XdCommands snap-in assembly with the Microsoft PowerShell framework. The snap-in makes a number of new classes and "cmdlets" available to PowerShell scripts or interactive shell sessions.

To run scripts you may need to use the built-in "Set-ExecutionPolicy" cmdlet to adjust the PowerShell execution policy to a value such as "RemoteSigned"

• Start Powershell and set the Excecution Policy. Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
• Change to the folder where the SDK is installed cd \Program Files\Citrix\Desktop Delivery Controller\Powershell
• Load the snap-in into the PowerShell  Add-PSSnapin XdCommands
  

Alternatively, use the installed PowerShell console file, XdCommands.psc1, to start an interactive PowerShell shell session with the XdCommands snap-in pre-loaded. Citrix provides a shortcut on the Start menu to start such a session. This shortcut also runs the "XdAliases.ps1" PowerShell script that sets up aliases for most of the SDK cmdlets. This shortcut will not function properly until the PowerShell execution policy, as described above, is set appropriately.

Help

Online help is available for all Desktop Delivery Controller SDK cmdlets. To obtain a list of cmdlets offered by the snap-in, run the built-in "Get-Command" cmdlet, as follows: Get-Command -psSnapin XdCommands
Online help for individual cmdlets is available using the built-in "Get-Help" cmdlet. For example, to view the online help for the "Get-XdDesktopGroup" cmdlet, run the following command: Get-Help Get-XdDesktopGroup
For an overview of all cmdlets provided by the SDK, view the "about_XdCommands" help topic. To view this information, run the following command: Get-Help about_XdCommands

Samples

Creating a new VM-based desktop group

This command creates a new VM-based desktop group, "testgrp", containing three machines, and published to all domain users.
$usr = New-XdUser 'domain users' -group
$cred = Get-Credential 'root'
$hs = New-XdHostingServer 'XDS01' $cred
$machineName= 'machine1','machine2','machine3'
#find all the VM machines in the pool
$allvms = Get-XdHostedMachine $hs
#Find the workers and set the AD identity to the correct machine
$dsk = $machineName | foreach { $vm=$_; $allvms | where {$_.HostingName -match $vm } | foreach { $_.Name = $vm; $_ }}
$hgs = New-XdGroupHostingSettings $hs
$ng = New-XdDesktopGroup -pub 'testgrp' -desk $dsk -user $usr -hosting $hgs

Adding a virtual desktop to an existing VM-based desktop group

This command adds a new virtual desktop, hosted by a VM, to an existing VM-based desktop group. Before adding a VM to the group, you must create a mapping between the VMs host ID and Active Directory ID. To do this, run the Get-XdHostedMachine cmdlet to obtain a list of host IDs for VMs and assign Active Directory IDs to those VMs.

# get all the groups whose name starts with 'test' (should be just one)
$grp = Get-XdDesktopGroup test*
# get all the workers whose friendly names have 'machine3' in them (should be just one)
$dsk= Get-XdHostedMachine $grp.HostingSettings.HostingServer -name *machine3*
# Set up the mapping to the AD name for the new Virtual Desktop machine
$dsk.Name = 'machine3'
$grp.Desktops.Add($dsk)
Set-XdDesktopGroup $grp

If host ID to Active Directory ID mappings have been created previously, run the following command:

Get-XdDesktopGroup test* | *%* { \[void\]$\_.Desktops.Add($(Get-XdHostedMachine $\_.HostingSettings.HostingServer \-name \*machine3\*)); $\_ }| Set-XdDesktopGroup

Logging off a user from all current sessions, after sending a warning message

This command displays a warning message to all users whose names start with "christian" before logging them off. Note that in this example there is specified time period (10 seconds) before logoff occurs.

# get sessions for all users whose names start with 'christian'
$sess = Get-XdSession -user christian*
# warn the user
Send-XdSessionMessage $sess 'Forced log off in 10 seconds'
Start-Sleep 10
#Then go ahead with the logoff
Stop-XdSession $sess

Adding a user to an existing desktop group

This command adds users in all groups whose names match "GroupName" to an existing desktop group.
# get all the groups whose name matches 'GroupName' (should be just one)
# Note could also be written as:

#  $grp = Get-XdDesktopGroup GroupName
$grp = Get-XdDesktopGroup | ? {$_.Name -match "GroupName" }
$Usr = New-XdUser "UserName"
$grp.Users.Add($Usr)
Set-XdDesktopGroup $grp

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)

I've had a great opportunity to travel the world this year and meet with a wide range of our customers and partners. I've been struck with the number of CIO's, IT Managers and Admin's who are consistent in their frustrations and questions around finding a better way to manage desktops. In one meeting with the IT team of a Japanese company with more than 100,000 employees, the CIO summarized this well with his comment, "We can't go on with the current desktop model as we need to reduce the overall cost of IT while continuing to deliver innovation to our businesses". I hear something similar to this in customers large and small across geographies and industries. This is a classic headache looking for aspirin IT challenge. The next part of the conversation generally turns into something like: "We know we have a problem, but how do we work our way out of this mess?".

VDI, What is all the fuss?

The cost and complexity of the current default model of: purchase personal computer's/laptop's, install standard operating environment, deploy with user, then patch/fix/secure & repeat is hitting the breaking point. Maybe this is just the edge of the pendulum swing between mainframe/dumb terminal to networked PC, but it's clear that there is a big "headache" today. Desktop Virtualization represents a new way forward that can be radically simpler than the current managed desktop model. The benefits of desktop virtualization are now within the reach of every organization. Customers deploying XenDesktop are seeing total cost of ownership per desktop reducing 10%-40% annually, time to value is pretty much instantaneous and information security is significantly increased.

After a recent customer event I had one IT manager ask me, "so for my 5,000 desktops I can use just one image of XP and manage 1 copy rather than 5,000? Wow, my management challenge just disappeared". With ah-ha moments like this, you can see why more and more organizations are making the move to centralized delivered desktops. The current economic headwind that businesses are facing is creating an opportunity for every company to take a look at current models and make large scale changes to emerge from this downturn in a stronger position. With this in mind here are a few principles and key points when considering Desktop Virtualization.

1) One size DOESN'T fit all

As we worked with customers to define and develop XenDesktop, we attacked the biggest pain point first -> the cost of delivering and managing desktops inside the company on the local area network. We partnered with a number of our hardware partners to build a new class of end user device called a Desktop Appliance - meeting a base level of capabilities to ensure a great user experience and options to increase capabilities over time. The Desktop Appliance combined with XenDesktop becomes the primary device for Office Workers and delivers a user experience better than a desktop PC.

Desktop virtualization can provide a user customized desktop for Office Workers; however it is an over-kill for task workers and does not address the needs of mobile workers. Task Workers include call center agents, retail clerks and shop floor workers, generally accessing a set of specific applications. A shared server based desktops (delivered by XenApp) combined with a traditional Thin Client device is the most secure and cost effective way to deliver applications to this group of users - 20 million task workers operate in this model every day. When you consider that a shared server can accommodate the needs to 300-400 users vs 30-50 virtual desktop users per server for VDI, the cost comparison is fairly straightforward. Mobile workers include sales execs, service personnel and executives who carry a laptop and need their applications with them on the road, both on and off the network. Application virtualization is the best solution for cutting down the cost of managing applications for mobile worker laptops. Citrix has a long history supporting mobile workers and now we have the only product, XenApp, that acts as a single application hub that can deliver line of business applications hosted from the data center and productivity applications like Microsoft Office streamed to run locally on the users laptop for offline use in locations like airplanes and at customer offices.

2) IAATHUX - It's All About the User Experience

I'm a virtual desktop (XenDesktop) user and it really is a fresh, personal & fast experience every time I log-in. My XenDesktop starts up faster than I can get a cup of coffee and absolutely screams when I launch and use applications throughout the day -> apps and data live close together on servers in the data center. Knowing there is no spinning hard drive or humming fans makes me feel good about reducing power and air conditioning in our offices. With anytime, secure remote access, I can work from home with my customized desktop when needed and not make unnecessary off-hours trips to the office. I have accessed my virtual desktop from all locations, broadband, our small regional sales offices, offshore during my international trips. With the EasyCall feature of XenDesktop set to make calls from the office, or the users cellphone or home telephone, I can be productive with voice and data access from anywhere - and see significant savings in my cellphone & telephone bills.

3) The Desktop: Just Another Datacenter Workload?

Server virtualization is primarily focused on the wringing efficiency from under-utilized servers. Virtualizing desktops, on the other hand, is more an end-to-end solution including servers, networks and client devices. Defining the desktop as Operating System + Applications + User Profiles is useful to highlight the key components. The dynamic assembly of these components and delivery as a service are critical to realize the cost advantages of desktop virtualization and improved user experience.

4) App Virtualization: Key to Succesful VDI

In much the same way that having a single copy of the operating system to be delivered to all users, application virtualization can deliver a single image of each application across a broad range of users. XenApp delivers applications on a hosted or streamed basis to virtual desktops (in addition to physical desktops). Keeping individual copies of applications for each user and maintaining these across users just doesn't make sense and destroys the cost benefits of desktop virtualization. Managing each application separately from the desktop image is the only way to make the virtual desktop projects cost effective.

5) Storage, storage and more storage - Why Storage is a Critical Factor

The first versions of early virtual desktop infrastructure seemed designed to increase IT's spend on back end storage. Virtualizing applications and managing them separately, as explained above, not only helps in cutting down the cost of desktop and application management but also becomes one of the key factors in reducing the storage requirements of the desktop images. In addition, this virtual desktop image along with applications should be dynamically assembled and provisioned into a virtual desktop on-demand at the time when a user logs on. XenDesktop has been architected to optimize storage requirements by dynamically assembling users' desktop at the time when they logon. The only unique storage required for each user is their profile and application data. This approach has unlocked the business case for Desktop Virtualization using any hypervisor - XenServer, Hyper-V or ESX.

6) Real distance, real networks

With the move to centralized data centers and more virtual workforces, the distance between users and their desktops and applications is increasing. Hence, the delivery of the virtual desktop is equally important regardless of where the end user is. Citrix has a long history with delivery applications over networks ranging from current high speed 1Gb networks with lots of bandwidth and low latency to the skinniest of networks with high latency and failure rates. Our larger customers operate with 10's of thousands of users operating across public and private networks built with wired and wireless network infrastructure from different network infrastructure vendors including Cisco, Juniper, Nortel and others. Since application and networking professionals have lots of hands on experience with Citrix traffic on their networks, we decided to have the same proven virtual delivery protocol, Citrix ICA, in both XenApp and XenDesktop.

7) Client Hypervisor - Fact vs. Fiction

Based on the strategy above, all task workers and office workers should have their desktops centrally hosted in the datacenter, enabling them to securely access their desktop from anywhere. For mobile workers, who need to work offline, I expect more innovation to come where IT can virtualize and stream full desktop images to laptops. Citrix is helping to make this a reality by working closely with the Xen.org, Xen Client Initiative (XCI) to create a fast and free embedded hypervisor for laptops, PC's and PDAs. XCI is an exciting and fast-moving initiative driven by all the biggest names in microprocessors, BIOS, PCs and laptop hardware. Because when it comes to client hypervisors, trying to build something proprietary and closed simply won't cut it. Anything that doesn't have broad, open and compatible implementation across the industry is likely to fail. An embedded client hypervisor will, of course, provide a foundation to deliver local virtual desktops. However, a client side hypervisor alone is not enough for IT to have a complete solution. At Citrix, we're working on a complete solution that integrates a client side hypervisor, application and desktop streaming, application and desktop hosting, and end user profile and context management - this complete solution will ensure that the mobile users can quickly get their personalized desktop and their applications available to them offline and IT can centrally manage the lifecycle of the desktop at lowest possible cost.

In our experience to date with XenDesktop in the market, I've been pleasantly surprised at both the level of interest and speed at which our customers are deploying virtual desktops. It seems that the headache with current desktop management crosses industries, geographies and customer size and that many of these organizations are reaching for the aspirin or already starting to breath a sigh of relief with their virtual desktops.

If you are interested in a third party evaluation of XenDesktop, check out this InfoWorld test by Paul Venezia:  http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/16/38TC-citrix-xendesktop_2.html

Gordon Payne,
Senior Vice President
Delivery Systems Division

 A few of us were having a brainstorm session recently regarding the ICA client, mobility and device support, inevitably the discussion led to the topic of competing priorities, limited resources, and business cases. Al Granville ( sometimes affectionately referred to as the " suit " in the blogosphere ) is the Product Manager for the ICA client and has the enviable position of driving what features and functions get included ( and which ones don't ). Nowadays you can't talk about mobility without the topic of support for the iPhone and where that fits versus all the other priorities. If you also want Citrix iPhone support please place your vote and tell us your use case here. Typically this analysis means doing a market analysis, talking to customers and developing a business case comparing all the alternatives and determining the ROI. During this discussion however, Al made the profound statement that maybe in this situation the business case simply needs to say  ...   it's the iPhone.. Stupid !  

This brings up a really interesting point that IT also seems to be dealing with lately, that is what is the value of new and "cool " and do you spend resources to enable these technologies. It could be the iPhone or it could be Web 2.0 collaboration tools or desktop video conferencing, whatever. Sometimes it's straight forward to put an ROI and business case together, however quantifying the value of "cool" is subjective at best. Apple as the best example has done a superb job proving that elegant design, user experience, and "cool " is a profitable business model. This certainly has proven to be the case in the consumer world, but it's also evident that this is impacting the business IT world as well, at least from the perspective of user expectations. I am interested to know if this phenomena is also impacting IT's decision process for implementing new projects.  

What criteria does your IT organization use for evaluating new projects ?	Choose
Business requirements, ROI, and compliance only
The above plus,  Executive mandates
The above plus,  User productivity and desires ( like iPhone support )
The above plus,  Does the new IT technology provide a competitive advantage

The XenDesktop Setup Wizard allows an administrator to quickly create a pooled desktop group with virtual desktop VMs for their XenDesktop environment.  I wanted to share more information on what the XD Setup Wizard does along with promoting it as we have had several customers unaware of the benefits of this wizard.  If you are going to create a desktop group of pooled desktops then you should seriously consider using the XD Setup Wizard as it will save you a tremendous amount of time.  Trust me on this as I needed to create 300 virtual desktops on VMware ESX two years ago which led to me creating this wizard.  But I will save that talk for another time.

First let's cover the prerequisites and initial configuration...

Before the XenDesktop Setup Wizard is run you need to have a virtual desktop VM template and a base OS image (aka Provisioning Server vDisk).  For detailed setup information on how to accomplish this please refer to the XenDesktop Getting Started Guide.  This guide describes the configuration for the XD Setup Wizard as well as the other components of XenDesktop.  

When you create your virtual desktop VM template you specify the VM hardware parameters for your base virtual desktop VM.   When the XD Setup Wizard is run it reads this VM configuration information and then creates X number of VMs using the same virtual hardware configuration.  For example if you created a VM on XenServer that has 512MB of RAM, 1 virtual CPU, 1 virtual NIC and no virtual hard drive all your new virtual desktop VMs would have that same configuration.  Keep in mind that you do not need to have a nice round number in terms of RAM.  You could try using something like 460MB of RAM per desktop to try and squeeze one or two extra desktop VMs per server.  Of course that would only help if RAM was your bottleneck.  No virtual hard drive for the VM is possible because Provisioning Server (PVS) dynamically streams the base OS image to the VM which does not require a hard drive in the VM.

However, in advanced cases you may want add a virtual hard drive to the VM that will cache information from the streamed base OS image.  This virtual hard drive will be used as the write back cache for the Provisioning Server (PVS) base OS image and will typically be 1 to 2 GB.  Whether or not you want a virtual hard drive depends on your network configuration and storage.  By moving the write back cache off the network storage that also has the PVS base OS image you reduce the load on your network storage and you balance your network load.  However having your PVS base OS image and the write back cache for each desktop on the same storage device makes the configuration easier and can result in better storage utilization.  These are some of the trade offs to consider when you want to have virtual desktops deployments for thousands of users.  If you need to scale your virtual desktop environment to over a thousand users email me at sunil.kumar@citrix.com.

When you create your virtual desktops you will be asked for the base VM template, the base OS image (Provisioning Server virtual disk),  the base host name along with the number of virtual desktops to create, and the name of the desktop group.  In our case let's use

• "CXD_VM_TEMPLATE" as the base VM template
• "CXD_IMAGE" as the base OS image
• "CXD1, CXD2, ... CXD100" as the name of the virtual desktops.
• "CXD_GROUP" as the desktop group name.

You will be asked for all this information when you run the wizard to create a desktop group.  The attached video walks you through this configuration. 

Now let's look at what happens when the wizard starts creating virtual desktops ...

Step 1: Connect to the hosting infrastructure and create new virtual desktops 

The XD Setup Wizard connects to the XenServer resource pool via the master XenServer.  It instructs XenServer to create X number of VMs.  In our case we created 100 VMs.  A new MAC address is created for each VM that corresponds to the virtual NIC for the VM.  The XD Setup Wizard stores this newly created MAC address for each VM along with the host name specified (CXD1, CXD2, ... CXD100).  The XD Setup Wizard uses the first MAC address for the VM if multiple NICs are used.  However I would avoid this configuration because bad things could happen if you try it.  Well actually the worst that could happen is that your virtual desktop would not boot, but because of the complexities of having multiple NICs I would avoid this configuration unless you could not live without having multiple NICs.  We now have 100 VMs created with the XD Setup Wizard storing the host name for each VM along with the MAC address.

Step 2: Configure virtual desktops in Provisioning Server

The XD Setup Wizard adds a target device in Provisioning Server for each of the virtual desktops.  The client name for each of the target devices is the host name.  When the VM boots it replaces the host name of the base OS image with this client name.  Each target device is uniquely identified by the MAC address which is why we stored the MAC address for each VM in the previous step.  Each target device is then set to boot from the specified base OS image (CXD_IMAGE).  In addition Provisioning Server adds each target device to active directory.  You can either let the XD Setup Wizard add computers to the default location or you can specify a custom OU.  We now have 100 provisioning server target (client) devices that correspond to each of the VMs created in the previous step.

Step 3: Add virtual desktops to a new Desktop Group in a Desktop Farm

The wizard now creates the new desktop group we called "CXD_GROUP".  The 100 virtual desktop VMs created above are now added to this desktop group on the Desktop Delivery Controller (aka the Connection Broker or DDC).  The DDC identifies each of the VMs by their AD host name, but when the VMs are added the DDC can only see the VM name and UUID (Universal Identifier).  The wizard knows the host name for each VM so it informs the DDC of this automatically.  Otherwise the administrator would need to manually associate each VM name / UUID with its corresponding AD host name.  We now have a newly created desktop group with 100 virtual desktops.

Readying the desktop group for use

Once the desktop group is created, the Desktop Delivery Controller takes over and starts the initial setup for the desktop group.  This includes starting the idle virtual desktops.  These idle desktops are used to quickly connect a user to a virtual desktop because the virtual desktop is already running and only the profile needs to be applied when the user logs in.  The DDC informs the XenServer resource pool to start a virtual desktop VM.  When this virtual desktop is started it streams down the base OS image using the Provisioning Server component.  The virtual desktop loads the Virtual Desktop Agent as part of the OS boot process which then registers with the DDCs in the XenDesktop farm.  The desktop group is now ready!

In addition to the XenDesktop Setup Wizard automating all of this for you it only takes seconds per desktop.  Are you now convinced to use the XenDesktop Setup Wizard as opposed to doing everything manually?  You can now run the XD Setup Wizard again to either create a new desktop group or add new VMs to an existing desktop group.  To modify advanced options of the desktop group such as idle pool settings you can run the Access Management Console on the DDC.

As part of their coverage of Citrix Synergy,Virtual Strategy Magazinerecorded a video interview with Simon Crosby, the CTO of our VMD division, at Citrix Synergy. In this interview Simon talks about our virtualization products Citrix XenDesktop, XenServer and about great partners like Marathon Technologies.

Thanks to VSM for the link back to the Synergy Underground site as well.

       Update **

Running Windows applications on the iPhone may not be a high priority for Steve Jobs, but for many IT users and providers the desire seems to be increasing. The recent SDK and upcoming release of the Apple 3G iPhone has increased the interest in Citrix enabling iPhone access to XenApp hosted Windows applications. We are always encouraging expanded access to XenApp from any suitable device and the iPhone appears to be a very good candidate. The great screen and touch features would provide usable viewing of apps even though they were designed for bigger screens. Plus the improved email and networking capability of the device can now make it a real contender for business use. The iPhone could be even be the " Nirvana Phone " if a new docking station was offered to provide video access to a full sized monitor plus a standard keyboard.

So the question is one of priority and market demand, where does this fit on the list of nice to have vs. must have now, and does the solution need to come from Citrix or could it be partner provided such as the Rove Mobile client for BlackBerry. We encourage your opinions and feedback.

Do you need a Citrix client for the iPhone ?	Choose
I want it for myself
I need it for my company users ( and myself )
Cool, but my company is not likely to enable it

What is the primary iPhone use case at your company ?	Choose
EMR - Patient records, view and update.
CRM - Customer records, view and update.
ERP - Process workflows, approvals, etc.
Documents - Find, view, edit, forward.
Specific line of business app

** Update 11/1/08

Yes, we are listening, and yes we are going to ship a Citrix Receiver for the iPhone ! Mark Templeton demonstrated our latest internal build at our Summit event last week and our partners gave us the same enthusiastic response as we are seeing here on the Blogs. Right now the ship schedule is first half of '09 , but keep those votes and use cases coming and help us increase the priority further ! 

*** Update 3/30/09

Check the App Store !

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

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.

There is one day left to get your vote in for the XenDesktop Video Tips Contest here. As of this posting, there have been almost 300 votes. The video tip "VDI Made as EASY as Pie" by Gareth Jameshas expanded its lead a bit over the "XenDesktop User Experience" video.

VDI Made as Easy as Pie

XenDesktop User Experience Comparison

The "XenDesktop with SC VMM and Hyper V" video is in third place.

XenDesktop with SC VMM and Hyper V

Check out these great desktop virtualization videos and cast your vote now.

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.

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.