The Citrix XenDesktop Beta gave us a sneak peek at its highly anticipated Citrix XenDesktop product. Citrix will officially begin shipping to customers worldwide at the upcoming Citrix Synergy 2008 event on May 20.

XenDesktop, which will be co-marketed with Microsoft ( Microsoft and Citrix Expand Alliance to Deliver Virtualization Solutions from Desktops to Datacenters ), is a groundbreaking new desktop delivery solution that allows companies to virtualize Windows desktops in the datacenter and deliver them on-demand to office workers in any location. Unlike first-generation virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) technologies, XenDesktop is a comprehensive end-to-end desktop delivery system that offers an unparalleled end-user experience, dramatically simplifies desktop management and reduces the cost of traditional desktop computing

Continue at Source: Citrix Systems to Unveil XenDesktop at Citrix Synergy 2008

GUS PINTO: It's noticeable the steady growth of conversations around virtualization within organizations and in the Internet today, more specifically around server and desktop virtualization.

Microsoft is readying up Hyper-V, and a lot of technologies to allow these technologies to actually happen for the large enterprise. It's going into market in partnership with Citrix and its Xen Hypervisor.

I guess the question is, what is your true feeling about virtualization in the enterprise on the server and desktop base? Is this just really hype or is this something you guys truly believe is going to happen?

RAY OZZIE: No, it's absolutely fundamental. It is absolutely going to happen.

I would say you have to take desktops separately. The logic behind virtualization on the desktop is completely separate from what it would be on the server, and in some ways it's different within the on-premises world versus the cloud. So, I'll just touch upon those independently.

Before I do that, though, let me just say that from a TS perspective, Terminal Server based deployment will always be more efficient than virtualization. It was a designed-in, multi-tenant model within the OS. So, if there are applications and solutions that fit the TS model, that's just a terrific model to use, and I would encourage organizations to use that model.

Within the enterprise, virtualization, the simplest and most straightforward way is to just make the best use of the datacenter resources that you can from a consolidation perspective. This is we are absolutely taking it seriously.

There are two phases of that consolidation. Phase one is bringing things together, meaning if you have a scale-up cluster or a scale-up, some expensive configuration of hardware, how can you package much usage on that piece of hardware as you can? The other one is then movement of images amongst the different machines within the back-end. You'll see investments progressively from us in both of those realms.

Taken to the extreme within the cloud, virtualization is absolutely critical. Virtualization is key to making the best use and securely isolating properties from multiple customers that might not use even a full inexpensive CPU, and moving them geographically or whatever to provide resilience and robustness. So, it is something that's extremely important.

On the client I'll only say that the uses of it, the way that the Mac uses it to run Windows and stuff, it's clever. Parallels, they're very clever technologies.

The way that you'll see us take advantage of it over time more and more on the client is our mechanisms around ensuring compatibility. App compat is a very, very challenging thing, and you want to continue to make progress with the operating system. We look to it as another tool in the toolbox to try to help in the compat world without -- enabling innovation while still enabling assurance of compatibility.

~snip~

I will be posting the Video with Q&A shortly.

Gus Pinto - Technology Evangelist
Microsoft MVP | gus.pinto@citrix.com

Want to Hear directly from top virtualization executives about how the value of Citrix and Microsoft solutions can benefit you today and into the future?

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Virtualization of applications, desktops and servers represents an exciting new frontier for IT. Join Citrix® and Microsoft® to learn how their combined forces offer the leading virtualization solution that is highly interoperable, transforms your data center into a delivery center, and lowers costs. Citrix's new server virtualization technology and next-gen Windows® and desktop virtualization offerings and the new Microsoft Windows Server® 2008 and Hyper-V hypervisor make an unbeatable combination that many customers are choosing as their virtualization solution today.

Hear directly from top virtualization executives from both companies about how the value of Citrix and Microsoft solutions can benefit you today and into the future.

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Event Date	City	State	Registration
04/16/2008 (Wednesday) 8:30 AM - 2:45 PM CST	Irving	TX
04/17/2008 (Thursday) 8:30 AM - 2:45 PM CST	Houston	TX
04/21/2008 (Monday) 8:30 AM - 12:45 PM PST	San Francisco	CA
04/22/2008 (Tuesday) 8:30 AM - 12:45 PM PDT	Irvine	CA

* Every attendee receives a Microsoft Virtualization book signed onsite by author Robert Larson!

* Win an 80GB Zune! [1 winner per city; must complete evaluation form to enter drawing]

Use of the Citrix ICA client on mobile devices that have VGA resolution  or larger, or companion devices such as the Celio Redfly changes the game a bit when using the Citrix ICA client to connect to full Win32 applications delivered by Citrix Xenapp.  The increased resolution can leverage some configuration changes on the ICA client to get more optimal usage.  Below are some tweaks that you can do to get a more "Nirvana" like experience with such devices.  This setting was used in the demo blog entries previously posted. 
Most Win32 applications are usable at a VGA 640x480 resolution, so I recommend running ICA in full screen mode on mobile devices that support VGA resolution.  This allows the user to get rid of the program bar at the top of the screen and the navigation tool bar at the bottom of the ICA client.  Comparison pictures below (Note: screen clarity is degraded in the below screen shots, native screen is clear).  Caution, when you run in full screen mode, you will not have access to the local keyboard button, thus if you device does not have a QWERTY keyboard, you should have a Bluetooth keyboard connected.  

 HP iPaq 210 running ICA connection to SAP Enterprise Portal without the Full Screen option set.  Notice the screen space that is lost at the top and bottom of the screen. 

HP iPaq 210 running ICA connection to SAP Enterprise Portal with the Full Screen option set.  This allows you to leverage the full resolution of the device. 

To set the Full Screen option, simply follow the steps below.  Note that this is a global option and all of the apps you launch will come up in Full Screen mode.  

In the Programs area, start "ICA Client":
  

This should launch the ICA Client UI into your browser.

Select "Edit Global Settings" from this screen:  

Select "Edit Preferences" on the next page:

Scroll down to the "Enable Full Screen" check box and select it:

Scroll down to the bottom and select the "Save" button:

So if you have a mobile device that supports VGA 640x480 resolution or higher, you might try the above settings to get a better user experience.  Also, if you need to access another application on the mobile device while running a XenApp or XenDesktop session in Full Screen mode, you can always hit the Windows button on your device to pull up the devices start menu as shown below.

Intel's "Cliffside" technology enables a single physical Wi-Fi adapter to function like two independent Wi-Fi adapters.

I don't know of any software out there, it may exist though, that allows a single Wi-Fi adapter to be able to connect to multiple wireless networks. The only exception to that would be is if the adapter had multiple radios in either the same or different bands.

The other really exciting thing I can see from "Cliffside" is what it can do for us with virtual machines.

Here is a real scenario that "Cliffside" could have helped solve:

A good friend of mine over at Siemens, Scott Hembroff, ran into a bit of a problem that involved the local host needing to be able to connect to the Siemens Wireless network, but yet also be able to connect a running virtual machine on to another Wireless network. This problem could have been solved with some really crafty voodoo magic, but the big hurdle had to do with the security of the other wireless network and how they locked down MAC addresses and Machine ID's. Basically to solve the problem we ended up using a USB Wireless adapter that we did not let the local host install, we only installed it on the guest. This allowed for the security measures in place on the other Wireless network to not be comprised, but yet allow us to have the physical host exist on two different Wireless networks.

If "Cliffside" had been around when we were tackling this problem, who knows, we might not have even thought twice about what to do. With that being said, it doesn't look like "Cliffside" in its current advertised feature set from Intel, could have solved the problem, as they are intending the second partition to only be used as a PAN. I get it, but why wouldn't you go all the way with the ability of true duality?

This is a good starting point, but if our computers are to be fully virtualized or are running more than one virtual machine, we are going to need to be able to connect to more than one wireless network, and the virtual machines are going to have to have be able to do that from one physical/virtual wireless adapter.

So our search for the Nirvana Smartphone, or companion device at CTIA 2008 comes to an end with this post.  Our friends at i-mate have gotten us another device to put through the Hotel Acid Test.  In this case an i-mate Ultimate 9502.  I'll let you check out the full specs on their website, but this device packs VGA 640x480 resolution onto a 2.8" screen.  The clarity of the screen is very good, allowing you to clearly read the text, but again, some may need to pull out the reading glasses when not connected to an external monitor.  Stand-alone pics below: 

Pic 1: 9502's browser connected to Web Interface.

Pic 2: 9502 connected to a published desktop.

So how did it do in our Hotel Acid Test, not bad.  While the VGA resolution is a little tight on the native screen, it works well when output to a larger monitor.  As with the 6150, there is no noticeable latency when outputting the video to the TV.  The 9502 uses a RCA audo video cable to output to the external monitor, and it's not quite as clear as the 6150 which uses a VGA cable, but still very usable.  The icons are a little fuzzy, but I'm having not problem using this setup.  You also get a fade-in effect of the letters when typing, but again, not a big deal IMO.  Again, the network connection is 3G WWAN on ATT, and latency while using Word is not an issue at all, very responsive. 

Pic 3: 9502 connected to hotel TV using RCA audo/video cable. 

You are currently limited to the 640x480 resolution even when attached to an external monitor, which is fine for most Win32 apps, or desktops.  But it sure would be nice to have 1024x768 or larger functionality down the road.  The VGA 640x480 resolution could also be less than optimal if connecting to an overhead projector while giving a presentation. 

But in general, I'm liking this device as well.  Seems to have a good mix features that's making using it with XenApp for this post rather comfortable.  Very quick and responsive as I'm typing this post.  Maybe not the ultimate Nirvana Smartphone, but definitely a potential contender in today's market.  I can definitely see certain road warriors leaving their laptop at home if they have this in their pocket. 

Being this is my last post, I had to try my favorite test on a mobile device, viewing a 3D AutoDesk design from XenApp on a mobile device over ICA, you gotta love SpeedScreen!  We gotta get another video of this demo out, but this time running to an external monitor!  A still shot shown below. 

Pic 4: AutoDesk Design Review delivered by XenApp to the 9502 output to the hotel TV.  I cut the flash on this pic so the screen didn't wash out as much. 

Unfortunatley, you get not sense of the performance with a still pic.
Got some comments on this use case, give us your feedback. 

As I stated in my previous post, there is no one Nirvana devicethat will fit everyone's tastes, so here's another twist on the topic. 

Impatica Showmate  is a device, call it a "puck", that you make a Bluetooth connection to from your smartphone using its Screen Projector software that you install on your smartphone.  A VGA cable is connected between the Showmate and the monitor you want to use.  You must register your mobile device with the Showmate.  Simply start the installed client on mobile device, enter in a few numbers from the bottom of the Showmate to register.  Then you just choose what registered Showmate device you want to connect to and hit select.  Your screen then pops up on the monitor the Showmate is connected to. 

 
Pic 1: Picture of the Showmate "puck", and VGA and USB power ports. 

Impatica was in the BlackBerry booth at CTIA showing their Showmate working with BlackBerry phones.  As part of the demo environment, they had the Rove Mobile Citrix Client on demo BB, and showed how they can remote the ICA presentation to an external monitor.  As you can see from the show pics below, they have some novel ideas about using this type of setup on portable LCD screens and such that you would find in police squad cars or utility trucks.  Great idea, especially when matched with the Rove Mobile Citrix Client to get access to all kinds of data from the secured data center. 

Pic 3: Michael Doyle, Impatica Director, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer showing the Impatica Showmate at CTIA 2008.

Pic 4: Showmate displaying a BlackBerry screen onto a portable LCD monitor inside a customer UI, mock of a law enforcement unit.  You can see the ICA session imbedded in the customer UI.

To stay consistent, I put the Impatica Showmate through the same hotel acid test I did with the other vendors.  I must note that the Windows Mobile Impatica ScreenProjector client that I'm using as I type this is still in Beta.  I used the Showmate with 2 devices, a Dell Axim X51v and an ATT 8525.  Latency on the X51v was very noticeable at times on the X51v, but response was good when using the 8525.  Note sure if this is related to old .vs. newer hardware/Bluetooth stacks, or the fact that the X51v has a larger resolution.  In general basic text entry like I'm doing now is pretty good.  Again, thanks to the Impatica team for getting us this beta to try.  I'm sure they still have some tuning tweaks up their sleeves before GA. 

The script is the same, in this case I'm using the Dell Axim X51v connected to the Showmate via Bluetooth to VGA out to the hotel's flat screen TV.  This picture below is an actual picture of the creation of the text for this blog using a XenApp connection to a published desktop, and running MS Word on that desktop over ICA.  This is where I stop and take the picture

Pic 5: Show mate connecting the Axim X51v running the ICA cleint to the hotel TV, and bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

The Showmate form factor is interesting in that you can see the device, or derivative of this device being imbedded in other devices to meet different goals, as shown in there show demo pciture above with a custom UI on the mountable LCD screen.  Imagine the use case of a utility working or law enforcement office having a mobile device that when in there car or truck is having applications and data delivered to them via XenApp or XenDesktop.  But once they exit their vehicle, they take the  mobile device with them and continue to have the same apps and data delivered to them, just on the native screen of the mobile device.  Whether it be a policeman on foot, or a utility working working on a transformer in the bucket of his boom truck.  A very interesting modular device approach IMO.  But at the same time, I can see road warriors carrying the Showmate with them to do presentations from their mobile phone, or use in the hotel as I am.  You can read more on their website, but they already have a lot of road warriors using their Showmate today.  They also have a product that compresses PowerPoint presentations, and then an optimized viewer to run the presentation from the mobile device.  You can get more details on this from their website.   

So does the Showmate pass the Hotel acid test?  Yes, I've been able to create this post using the Showmate, and my mobile device, and it does provide benefits described around a Nirvana Deviceuse case.  So it's definitely another option, with it's own twist on the Nirvana Device seach. 

Like this twist, tell us why or why not.  As always, we are looking for your input on defining the Nirvana Devicefor use with XenApp and XenDesktop.  

The next find on our quest for the Nirvana Smartphoneis the i-mate Ultimate 6150 (i-mate 6150 web site) shown below.   The 6150's native screen resolution is VGA 640x480, making it natively more suitable for displaying Win32 apps via XenApp than most QVGA screens. 

Pic 1: 6150's browser connected to Web Interface ready to authenticate.  

Pic 2: 6150 running a full published desktop at 640x480.  I probably should have cleaned the screen before taking the picture

So what makes the 6150 a Nirvana Devicecandidate (Original Nirvana Device Post), it's got video output natively built into the device.  The 6150 comes with a VGA adapter cable that connects into the side of the device, so you can then connect it to a monitor that accepts VGA input.  The 6150 comes with software that when activated changes the device resolution to 1024x768, turns the 6150's screen into a touchpad mouse and displays the 1024x768 output to the connected monitor.  Unfortunately, the cable that I have with my demo device is only about 4ft long and did not reach to the table that was working from, so I'm using my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard instead.  Might be something for the i-mate team to look at. 

Pic 3: 6150 External output software.

Pic 4: 6150 connected to the hotel's flatscreen TV, running a published desktop from XenApp.  MS Word is open and I'm working on this text using this setup.  The 6150 is the at the base of the TV in this pic.

All of the work to create this post will be using the 6150 connected to a published desktop in my hotel room using the flat screen TV as an external monitor (except for photo resizing which I will do with my OQO, being I don't have photo shop installed on our XenApp demo server).   Seems like a real world use case to me.

In general, I like the 6150, and it is the closest device I've gotten my hands on to date to hit Chris Fleck's Nirvana deviceconcept.  Personally, I like devices to have a QWERTY keyboard on the native device as well, and I hope to get a chance to try the i-mate 8150 down the road, which does have a QWERTY and VGA out capability.  I also like the fact that the VGA feature is native to the device, so I don't need to carry anything extra but the VGA cable.  Flip side is that unlike the Redfly (Celio Redfly post), if I don't have a monitor handy, let's say in the airport, I'm restricted to the native screen of the 6150.  Hey, if i-mate gives me a really long cable, maybe I can plug into one the TVs in the airport that always running CNN

So how do I rate the 6150 as a Nirvana device candidate, again I give it an "I like it".  I think I'd like the 8150 even better with the QWERTY keyboard, but in terms of it being a smartphone that I can run XenApp applications natively and then attach it an external monitor to extend the usability, it passes my initial hotel acid test.  At the end of the day, a Nirvana SmartPhoneis a personal choice.  So if you're interested in the concept, I'd say that the i-mate 6105 is one to have a look at. 

As always, give us your feed back on this topic.  I've got a few more entries on more devices from the show to come.  Hopefully one will be the Nirvana Smartphone you're looking for to use with XenApp or soon XenDesktop, and you can leave the laptop at home on that next business trip.  As with all of the devices being tried, we will get some more hands on time with them when I get back to FTL.  We'll try and update if we find anything new.   

Day 2 of my search for the Nirvana Deviceat CTIA 2008 ended a few hours ago, and we have some cool products to talk about.  Let's see how they do when we replace my OQO Model 2 with Nirvana Device candidates from the show. 

This entry focuses on one of our newest Citrix Alliance partners, Celio Corp and their recent product launch of the Redfly Mobile Companion (http://celiocorp.com).

 
Pic 1: Celio Corp booth at CTIA, including Citrix collateral at the booth. 
 

Pic 2: Redfly demo at the booth connecting to XenApp 4.5. 

The Redfly is a definitely a device cut from the cloth of Chris Fleck's original Nirvana Devicepost.  The Redfly is a portable docking station for Windows Mobile devices, thus a Mobile Companion, and has a built in mouse, keyboard and monitor.  So you wanna run those BIG win32 apps from you WinMo device, but want a bigger screen, checkout the Redfly.  It doesn't have a CPU, memory or an OS.   You connect your WinMo device to the Redfly by either USB or Bluetooth.  If connected via USB, the battery in the Redfly will also charge your WinMo Device (8 hours of battery life), if it allow USB charging.  Once the Redfly software is installed on your WinMo device, it will detect when it is attached to the Redfly, change the effective screen resolution to 800x480 and enable the Redfly's mouse and keyboard transforming the user experience similar to that of a lot of UMPCs.

Pic 3: Redfly attached to an ATT Tilt in my hotel room at the Today screen. 

In this scenario, the ICA client is installed on the ATT Tilt, and all processing involved and required storage is provided by the Tilt.  Again, think of the Redfly as a docking station with a built in mouse, keyboard and monitor that you carry on trips as a companion. 

The 800x480 resolution of the Redfly easily enables me to connect to a virtualized Citrix desktop or published application, in this case a published Microsoft Server 2003 desktop with the Luna interface enabled.  As you can see from the picture below, this device has very good potential for use with  both published applications as well as XenDesktop connections when using a WinMo device.

Pic 4: Picture taken as I was working on the text for this entry.   

The Redfly has a number of other very useful features that really enhance its usability in my opinion.   
First off, there is a VGA out port on the back of the Redfly that enables you to output the screen to a larger monitor, overhead projector or hotel TV as shown in the picture below.  

Pic 5: Redfly using its VGA output to the hotel's flat screen TV. 

You'll notice that the entire screen of the TV is not used and that the 800x480 resolution is maintained even when output to a larger monitor.  Basically, you can use the Redfly as a VGA output device for you WinMo device if you like, very cool.  But I would like to see the Celio guys enable you to change the resolution being displayed when VGAing out to a larger monitor.  Well see what happens in subsequent releases. 

So you can use the Redfly's native screen or output to a larger screen, what about upping to a bigger keyboard and external mouse?  Well, they've thought of this as well.  There are also 2 USB ports on the back of the Redfly that you can plug in USB mice and keyboard.  Even cooler IMO is that I can plug a USB stick into this slot and the device will associate this new storage as "remote storage" on the WinMo device.  And you may have guessed it, ICA will now have access to this USB drive as part of its client drive mapping.  For those concerned about security of such a use case, you can always disable this virtual drive mapping from the XenApp admin console.

Pic 6: Shot of the USB Flash card reader files maped into the XenApp desktop session via virtual client drive mapping.  This is the actual flash card that contains the pics in this post plugged into the back of the Redfly with a USB flash card reader. 

There are a number of other cool features on the Redfly, such as special function keys that are mapped to normal phone functions like Send and End calls, but I'll
let you check out their site for these.  As I stated in my initial post on my blog, when I look at devices in this space, my first thoughts are how Citrix customers can leverage such technology to enhance their use of Citrix products.  So how to I rate this one, I like it.  I see it as a true enabling technology when used with mobile devices to access XenApp or XenDesktop.  IMO, the Redfly Mobile Companion enables a lot of the concepts that we discuss in the Nirvana Device concept.  While it's not a Nirvana smartphone, IMO it takes a lot of today's WinMo devices and gets them a lot closer to the Nirvana use paradigm.   Having the option to use the Redfly as a companion to provide a bigger screen with its mouse and keyboard, or use it as a VGA output device with an even larger external mouse and keyboard is an interesting advantage if this is what you are looking for. 

Reality check: note that this entire post was produced using the ATT Tilt phone, 3G WWAN network, from the Redfly's mouse, keyboard and native monitor connected to a XenApp published desktop.  And it worked really well!  Albiet, I'm used to using UMPC devices with smaller screens and keyboards, it will take some getting used to for some.  So if you looking to lighten your load when traveling, and would like an ICA companion to go with you mobile phone so you can leave your laptop behind, you might want to check out the Redfly from Celio Corp. 

We'd appreciate your thoughts on the use of these types of devices with XenApp and soon XenDesktop.  I'm sure the Celio guys will also be interested in your input, pro or con.  At the end of the day, there is no one Nirvana solution for everyone, but is the Redfly going down the right path for Citrix users looking to further leverage ICA on mobile devices?    

Yesterday Citrix announced a new XenServer pricing modelthat is already creating headlines across the industry. XenServer is the first server virtualization product to do away with the complex and outdated per CPU socket pricing, moving to a per server model.  Administrators no longer need to worry about counting the numbers of sockets, cores, CPUs etc - servers is what matters.

Part of the Citrix DNA is to simplify and streamline the whole customer experience - in addition to building intuitive and easy to use products, we extend the ease of use concept to how the product is evaluated, purchased and supported.  Citrix XenServer doesn't have a plethora of confusing options and add-on packs - everything is bundled into one or more editions within the product line, dramatically reducing the size and complexity of our price lists and the purchasing & ownership experience.

We noticed that selling based on per 2 CPU sockets was causing confusion in the marketplace, especially between sockets, CPUs, and CPU cores.  In the days of multiple core CPUs does pricing per physical CPU make sense?  How many administrators know exactly how many sockets are in their organization - (everyone knows the number of servers) - Per server just makes sense.

So for XenServer 4.1 each license is an entitlement to support a unique physical server within the organization. In addition we support both annual (12 months  usage) and perpetual licenses.  We're defining per server as industry standard 2 and 4 socket servers, as these represent apprximately 99% of all servers - 8 CPU (and above) servers are specialized systems and we continue to offer unique pricing.

Moving forward you're going to see a continued focus on ease of use, making Citrix XenServer the best server virtualization choice!

Our search for the Nirvana Device has led me to Las Vegas and CTIA 2008.  Citrix has been working with a number of partners around the concept of the Nirvana Device, and a lot of them are here this week.  The plan is to try and get as many demo devices that I can and report my findings in my blog as related to their use from my hotel room at the show.  So let's start off with my current baseline config of my remote office in my hotel room in Vegas. 

Device: OQO, maker of the Model 2 UMPC (www.oqo.com), and a Citrix Alliance partner.  You may have seen them at iForum or Citrix Summit over the last year.

I've actually been using OQO Model 2 as my primary device over a year now, and UMPCs such as the Model 2 used with Citrix App Delivery work great.  In the FTL office, I dock the Model 2 and the doc has 2 VGA outputs, so I run a dual monitor setup and drive a 21" and 19" monitor from my desk.  I also have a doc at home connected to my home office monitor via a KVM switch.  So when working from home, I simply KVM from my home PC and use the same device that I use from work.   At the CTIA show, I'm docked and connected to the Philips flatscreen TV in my hotel room.  Of course, the form factor of the Model 2 is also great when attending meetings at the office, or working from home on the couch (note: I'm over 40 and have no problem seeing text on the OQO's native screen, but some will have issues clearly seeing text on a device this small, reading glasses may be required by some J).  The Model 2 I have has built in EVDO Rev A from Verizon, which works great when on the road or at home (using it from my hotel room as I type this entry).  I can see this type of devices being used by others like myself that just prefer a small form factor UMPC, as well as some good tactical usages with Citrix customers, where a standard sized laptop is just to big.  Some pics of the baseline remote office setup below:

 
 
As you can see, several of the Nirvana Device concepts that Chris Fleck mentioned in his original post (Original Nirvana Device Post) are already in play.  Being the Model 2 is a UMPC and not a smart phone, I'm cheating a little, but:
-          I am docked and using the hotel's flat screen TV as a larger monitor

-          I am using an external Bluetooth mouse and keyboard

-          I am using a WWAN connection for my network

-          I am using Citrix App Delivery to do my work

While I don't plan on giving up my OQO any time soon, I am going to see what I can find at the show that I could use in the same basic configuration that I'm using the OQO in.

Off to my 2^nd meeting of the day, and hopefully will return tonight with some more Nirvana Device candidates to try out. 

Most of us know or have heard about Virtual Appliances.  Mostly single purpose virtual machines usually running on some variant of Linux today.  So why is this beneficial?

-          Ease of installation - import the VM and start it up

-          Preconfigured - maybe not fully preconfigured, but much more than having a stack of OS and product CDs and bare metal to start with

-          Reduced maintenance costs - starting with a preinstalled and mostly configured solution tends to reduce the number of errors associated with the install and configuration when done from scratch

So why not a Virtual Application Delivery Appliance (VADA)?  A preinstalled and mostly configured XenApp or CAE server that already has a targeted application published in the virtual machine.  A virtual machine that I get from my ISV that I start on my XenServer server.  Web Interface and PNAgent are already setup with defaults.  I add my users to the published application and start delivering the app.  Kind of a normal virtual appliance, but on digital steroids to enhance performance.

This is already starting to happen!  Our Platform Development Group at Citrix has been increasingly having discussions with ISV alliance partners to do just what is explained above.  Some are doing it; others are looking at the feasibility of doing it with their solution.  They have an application, or multi-component software solution that they want to, or are required to deliver via Citrix Application Delivery, and they want to simplify the process for both the customer and themselves as much as possible.  Maybe the deployment of the solution is a standalone environment and not to be part of a bigger farm.  Maybe there are reasons that their solution should run on dedicated server(s) and they simply join an existing farm.  In either case, by deploying their solution as a VADA (I'll let marketing guys change this acronym later), they can greatly reduce their installation/deployment cycle, and spend more time on training the customer on use of the solution, thus increasing customer satisfaction (VADA Bing VADA Boom!).  Post-installation maintenance should also be lower, being a large percentage of the OS and application installation has been automated by creation of the tested baseline virtual machine image which already contains the OS, XenApp and the published application, all following best practices established in the ISVs controlled lab environment.

So why not just jump on this band wagon today?  As always there's a few "gotchas". 

-          Licensing - while a bit easier on the Linux side, what we are discussing here is Microsoft Servers and Citrix Application Delivery products.  Usually ISVs do not have access to distribute licenses for either of these.

-          Server Virtualization Platform - So which platform does the ISV support (XenServer, VMWare, HyperV).  I think you can see some of the benefits of having a standard virtual machine image format, and why it's good that 2 of the 3 vendors listed are working towards such a standard. 

-          Please add your "gotchas" below.

 Intent of this thread is not to indicate the right or wrong way to approach the above scenario, but to get your feedback and ideas on the concept.  I find this concept very intriguing.  So give us and the other readers of this blog your input below.  Respond with your "gotchas" or respond to others "gotchas" on how they should be resolved.  I'll be sure to send a link to this post to our interested ISV partners, so they get the input.

I kicked it off, help me finish it! 

References:

Satori Group VADA blog post

Citrix has partnered with Nokia on ICA clients for their Symbian devices for years.  I recently did an interview with the Nokia team on use of the Citrix ICA client for Series 60 3rd Edition devices such as E61, E70 and E90 devices for their Nokia Forum Pro.  These ICA clients can be downloaded from http://www.citrix.com/English/SS/downloads/details.asp?dID=2755&downloadID=165587&pID=186.

Snippet from the interview below: 

Helping enterprise IT departments

 The Citrix XenApp Client for S60 3rd Edition devices offers some very clear benefits to IT departments as well, Marano adds. "From an IT perspective, the flexibility of mobile devices can be scary," he says. "How do you encourage people to use them, but also make sure that they are used properly and securely? With this solution, the same infrastructure being used today for external laptops and desktops can be used to deliver applications to the Series 60 3rd Edition devices. Minimizing the number of technologies used to deliver business-critical data to end users regardless of device type, by standardizing on a single platform, is a key factor to consider."

The interview gives a good overview of use Nokia S60 devices, but also provides a pretty good overview on the use of mobile devices as a whole with XenApp.

The full PDF interview can be found at: http://www.nokia.com/NOKIA_COM_1/Developers/Success_Stories/Enterprise_&_productivity/Dev_succ_Citrix_SC_v1.0.pdf

My first blog on Mobile Devices and The App Delivery Center seemed to get enough hits that I thought I would follow up with a video demo to give a better view of XenApp applications actually being delivered to a mobile device.  Also felt that it would be good to describe the setup used to create the video, so details follow below.  The demo was intended to show a "real world" use case that a lot of us have been through.  The script for the video is that your boss sends you an email asking you to perform a number of tasks in preparation for an upcoming meeting:

-       update a Word document

-       update an Excel spreadsheet

-       verify a CAD document is up to date

-       join a GoToMeeting

All of these tasks are performed in the below video.  Details on the setup:

-       A real ATT 8525 device with the 10.0 WinMo ICA client was used to connect to  a XenApp 4.5 server

-       The server is hosted on the internet, outside of the Citrix network.

-       The Web Interface changes referred to in my Mobile Devices and The App Delivery Center blog post are in use on this demo server, thus you get the better app sizing described in the aforementioned post (http://support.citrix.com/forums/thread.jspa?forumID=136&threadID=91629&tstart=0).

-       Soti Pocket Controller was used to display the screen of the 8525 on my laptop

-       When connected to Soti, an active sync connection is used, which actually provides the network connection for the 8525.  So the native 3G data connection of the 8525 was not used, BUT.

-       I used the EVDO Rev A connection on my laptop to connect to the internet, so even though the device has ATT 3G connection, a Verizon EVDO Rev A connection was actually used in this case, thus a WWAN connection is being used.

-       Camtasia was used to capture the Soti output on my laptop

So now that you know the gory setup to get this capture, the video is below.  Hope this give a better picture of use of the Citrix Mobile ICA clients.

Obviously some clarity of the video was lost during conversion and upload to YouTube.  But I thing you'll get the idea!

The wall street journal has an interesting article describing how Microsoft is late getting into the virtualization game and details plans to catch up to VMWare.  The relevant portion of the article talks about Microsoft's plans include partnering up with Citrix for the hyper-visor piece of the puzzle.

"Microsoft is also announcing cooperative moves with a bigger company that offers similar technology, Citrix Systems Inc. Citrix, which recently bought the virtualization software maker XenSource, is developing technology to help customers transfer virtual machines between Citrix's XenServer product and Windows Server 2008 with the Hyper-V technology, Microsoft said."

There is also a similar article on wired news.

"Microsoft also said it will expand an alliance with another virtual desktop computing company, Citrix Systems Inc., that will help their respective products work well together."

For those of you working with Xen 3.1, be aware that Xen 3.2 is now launched and available at xen.org.

===============================================================

CALL FOR PAPERS

3rd Workshop on Virtualization in High-Performance Cluster and Grid Computing (VHPC'08) 

as part of Euro-Par 2008, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Island, Spain

===============================================================

Date: August 26-29, 2008

Euro-Par 2008: http://europar2008.caos.uab.es/ Workshop URL: http://xhpc.wu-wien.ac.at

SUBMISSION DEADLINE:

Abstracts: February 4, 2008

Full Paper: April 14, 2008 

Scope:

Virtual machine monitors (VMMs) are becoming tightly integrated with standard OS distributions, leading to increased adoption in many application areas including scientific educational and high-performance computing (HPC). VMMs allow for the concurrent execution of potentially large numbers of virtual machines, providing encapsulation, isolation, and the possibility for migrating VMs between physical hosts. These features enable physical clusters to be treated as "computation pools", where a variety of execution environments can be dynamically instantiated on the underlying hardware. VM technology is therefore opening up new architectures and services for HPC in cluster and grid environments, but consensus has not yet emerged on the best models and tools. This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners working on virtualization in HPC environments, with the goal of sharing experience and promoting the development of a research community in this emerging area.

The workshop will be one day in length, composed of 20 min paper presentations, each followed by 10 min discussion sections.

Presentations may be accompanied by interactive demonstrations.

The workshop will also include a 30 min panel discussion by presenters.

TOPICS 

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following subject matters:

- Virtualization in cluster and grid environments

- Workload characterizations for VM-based clusters

- VM cluster and grid architectures

- Cluster reliability, fault-tolerance, and security

- Compute job entry and scheduling

- Compute workload load leveling

- Cluster and grid filesystems for VMs

- VMMs, VMs and QoS guarantees

- Research and education use cases

- VM cluster distribution algorithms

- MPI, PVM on virtual machines

- System sizing

- Hardware support for virtualization

- High-speed interconnects in hypervisors

- Hypervisor extensions and utilities for cluster and grid computing

- Network architectures for VM-based clusters

- VMMs/Hypervisors on large SMP machines

- Performance models

- Performance management and tuning hosts and guest VMs

- Power considerations

- VMM performance tuning on various load types

- Xen/other VMM cluster/grid tools

- High-speed Device access from VMs

- Management, deployment of clusters and grid environments with VMs

- Information systems for virtualized clusters

- Management of system images for virtual machines

- Integration with relevant standards e.g. CIM, GLUE, OGF, etc.

PAPER SUBMISSION

Papers submitted to each workshop will be reviewed by at least two members of the program committee and external reviewers. Submissions should include abstract, key words, the e-mail address of the corresponding author, and must not exceed 10 pages, including tables and figures at a main font size no smaller than 11 point. Submission of a paper should be regarded as a commitment that, should the paper be accepted, at least one of the authors will register and attend the conference to present the work. 

Accepted papers will be published in the Springer LNCS series - the format must be according to the Springer LNCS Style. Initial submissions are in PDF, accepted papers will be requested to provided source files. 

http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html

Submission Link:

http://www.edas.info/newPaper.php?c=6123&

IMPORTANT DATES

February 4, 2008 - Abstract submissions due Full paper submission due: April 14, 2008 Acceptance notification: May 3, 2008 Camera-ready due: May 26, 2008

Conference: August 26-29, 2008

CHAIR

Michael Alexander (chair), WU Vienna, Austria Stephen Childs (co-chair), Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Jussara Almeida, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brasil Padmashree Apparao, Intel Corp., US Hassan Barada, Etisalat University College, UAE Volker Buege, University of Karlsruhe, Germany, Simon Crosby, Xensource, UK Marcus Hardt, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany Sverre Jarp, CERN, Switzerland Krishna Kant, Intel Corporation, US Yves Kemp, University of Karlsruhe, Germany Naoya Maruyama, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Jean-Marc Menaud, Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France José E. Moreira, IBM Watson Research Center, US Yoshio Turner, HP Labs Andreas Unterkircher, CERN, Switzerland Dongyan Xu, Purdue University, US

GENERAL INFORMATION

The workshop will be held as part of Euro-Par 2008, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Island, Spain.

Euro-Par 2008: http://europar2008.caos.uab.es/

For those of you interested in the Brussels event I blogged about yesteday; here is a 30% discount code for the event: XENORG

Post:http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/stephens/2008/01/09/European+Virtualization+Event+in+January

If you are in Europe near Brussels and want to learn more about the open source solutions of virtualization, I recommend looking into a conference for January 22 - 23, 2008 at http://www.profoss.eu

Speakers currently scheduled for the event are from Sun, AMD, Novell, The 451 Group, Citrix, and many other leaders from open source projects. The event is sponsored by companies such as HP, Oracle, Unisys, and others.

Text from the Event Home Page:
Welcome to the Profoss website. If you're a professional user of Information and Communication Technologies, you'll be happy to know that Profoss brings you quality events where you will actually learn things, without commercial talks.

Profoss' objective is to spread objective information about the possibility to use professional solutions based on alternatives to proprietary and closed products. We focus on organising informative events, each dedicated to one subject, where professional IT people can get the information they need to make informed decisions. We also want to put you in contact with local professionals able to support you in your projects.

As you are smart enough to draw conclusions, we'll provide objective information so you can take the best decision based on your work environment, your experience, your knowledge, etc... We're not trying to sell you anything. We're only trying to bring you the most interesting information.

We don't think that to make an event interesting, it has to be expensive. This makes Profoss events accessible to employees of bigger companies as well as SMEs, where open solutions can have a significant added value. 

Just before Christmas I made a post on CIO Magazine's "10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch" list.

Cirba was first on the list. Next is Vizioncore -

VizionCore offers several very popular management tools for virtualization. VRanger Pro offers a comprehensive backup and restore solution for virtual machines. You can find demos and screenshots here. VReplicator provides host level replication of entire virtual machines. VConverter is a P2V solution, and VOptimizer is a product for optimizing virtual hard disks sizes.

George Pradel of VizionCore recently did a podcast on their solutions with Virtual Strategy Magazine. Here is a list of topics covered -

George was a SE Manager at Citrix when I was just starting out. He is a great resource to have and a very engaging person.

According to their website, Vizioncore started out a a consulting and software development company focused on Citrix products. Vizioncore has found a great deal of success as they have moved into the virtualization management space. Now that Citrix has become a major player in the virtualization space, I am looking forward to seeing Vizioncore come full circle and work closely with Citrix in this growing market.