Get ready for another European Geek Out event at this year's CUGtech event being hosted by Citrix Users Group Norway on Oct 7 through Oct 9 at the Dr. Holms Hotel in Geilo, Norway

This will be HARDCORE technical stuff with some of the best geeks in the world!
Shawn Bass and Benny Tritsch are coming! So are Alex Yushchenko, the founder and master of PubForum! We also have our danish friend Rene Vester from DKCUG on the speakers list! From Citrix we will have speakers from Citrix Support and Citrix Consulting, and from US our dear friends Rich Crusco and Rick Dehlinger are coming.

If you don't know about Citrix Users Group Norway, climb out from under that rock you have been living under, and come and join us at one of Europe's premier independently run Citrix Users Group events.

Click below to learn more:

CUGtech Autumn 2009: http://cug.no/cugtech-autumn-2009/
Location: http://cug.no/cugtech-autumn-2009/location/
Transport: http://cug.no/cugtech-autumn-2009/transport/
Speakers: http://cug.no/cugtech-autumn-2009/speakers/
Agenda: http://cug.no/cugtech-autumn-2009/agenda/
Master Classes: http://cug.no/cugtech-autumn-2009/master-classes/
Register: http://cug.no/cugtech-autumn-2009/register/

Stay tuned for more announcements about when registration will be made avaialble

Over the past several days I have been assisting one of my colleagues with troubleshooting a Web Interface for SharePoint (WISP) 2007 "Unknown Error" issue.

The problem we initially had was that the error as stated was... Unknown!

Installing, deploying and activating the WISP Solutions and Features was successful. Its when you try to access any of the Citrix Administration links in Central Administration was where we had problems.

So we had to figure out a way to reveal the true error. After trawling through the Citrix Forums for several hours we came across a post which described the steps to turn on error reporting. Once we were able to see the true error, fixing the issue was easy.

Here are the steps we took to turn on error reporting in SharePoint 2007:

Locate the web.config file for the web application associated with your site.

If this is the default web application, this will be at:
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80\web.config

If this is for the Central Administration site then the location will be:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS

Open web.config and make the following changes:

1. Locate the <customErrors> tag and change it to:
<customErrors mode="Off" />

2. Set callstack="true" as shown below:

<configuration>
<SharePoint>
<SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="true" DirectFileDependencies="10" TotalFileDependencies="50" AllowPageLevelTrace="false">
</SafeMode>
</SharePoint>
</configuration>

This will cause the actual error to be displayed, for example:

The expression prefix 'WISP' was not recognized. Please correct the prefix or register the prefix in the <expressionBuilders> section of configuration. at System.Web.Compilation.ExpressionBuilder.GetExpressionBuilder(String expressionPrefix, VirtualPath virtualPath, IDesignerHost host)
at System.Web.UI.ControlBuilder.AddBoundProperty(String filter, String name, String expressionPrefix, String expression, ExpressionBuilder expressionBuilder, Object parsedExpressionData, Boolean generated, String fieldName, String formatString, Boolean twoWayBound) 
at System.Web.UI.ControlBuilder.PreprocessAttribute(String filter, String attribname, String attribvalue, Boolean mainDirectiveMode) 
at System.Web.UI.ControlBuilder.PreprocessAttributes(ParsedAttributeCollection attribs) 
at System.Web.UI.ControlBuilder.Init(TemplateParser parser, ControlBuilder parentBuilder, Type type, String tagName, String id, IDictionary attribs) 
at System.Web.UI.ControlBuilder.CreateChildBuilder(String filter, String tagName, IDictionary attribs, TemplateParser parser, ControlBuilder parentBuilder, String id, Int32 line, VirtualPath virtualPath, Type& childType, Boolean defaultProperty) 
at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ProcessBeginTag(Match match, String inputText) 
at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ParseStringInternal(String text, Encoding fileEncoding)

David
Twitter - http://twitter.com/citrixreadiness
Citrix Support on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/citrixsupport

I just finished reading an internationally acclaimed book about "how to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant".  Wow!  Can I really do that?  Well, maybe not me specifically, but entrepreneurs who have the right stuff can.  At least that's the premise of the book by the title of this blog (minus the "and Citrix).  Why then did I add "and Citrix" to the title?  Because according to the author, "value innovation" is the paradigm required to enter into a new market space, or "Blue Ocean" and Citrix provides the innovation creating value to end customers. From page 12 of the book, "Value innovation is the cornerstone of blue ocean strategy.  We call it value innovation because instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up a new and uncontested market space."

These are the crown jewels of the service provider partner who uses Citrix technology to create an innovative value to end users who are looking to displace their IT services.  Think about it.  Five years ago no self respecting IT manager would be looking outside of his company to get help from someone else.  His job would have been at stake... well here we are in 2009 and guess what?  If IT managers don't look outside for help (or another way to do business more cost effectively) their job is at stake.  What a difference a few years make.

So now we've got a perfect storm where companies are trying to outsource parts (or all) of their IT and we have the emergence of service providers who can meet that demand.  I talked to one of them this morning and they are creating a Blue Ocean of services through innovation created by Citrix XenApp.  The company is ExtrinsicaGlobal and they've got a unique Blue Ocean approach.  Started about four years ago they provided IT services to Agencies of the Government of the UK.  They began to develop a core of personnel who could ostensibly relocate entire IT resources. 

But the founder and Managing Director, Simon Smith didn't stop there.  He realized that if he could provide these types of services to the Government, why not to the SMB market as well.  And so he began to embark on the journey of creating a Blue Ocean Strategy of IT services using Citrix XenApp and subscription licenses to provide any application, to any SMB, anywhere in the world.  To embody that approach, Simon supplies IT services to the Kawasaki World Superbike team that travels on a world-wide circuit.  At every stop, ExtrinsicaGlobal is there to supply IT services on-the-go.  Simon told me "we expect to expand this business to tens of thousands of subscribers.  With Citrix technology, it isn't hard to see that scaling is just a matter of constructing your data center to handle the load." 

Why is this so important to businesses today?  Well for one thing, using the same old methods just won't work in this new world economy and businesses are waking up to that fact every day.  Good thing Citrix is at the forefront yet again of "value innovation" creating an environment for hosting the desktop in a new Blue Ocean.  If you want to find out more about how to get going with subscription services and make your competition irrelevant, just take a look at our web site or you can also visit our CSP Community online.

Tim Greene over at Network World has just posted a great article titled The ABCs of WAN Optimization Savings. The article walks through the various functions of today's WAN optimization devices and how these technologies add up to big savings for IT. Citrix is singled out in the article for our dominance in speeding up virtual desktops and applications, something we have offered since delivering ICA acceleration with Branch Repeater 5 back in February.

As part of the HDX technology framework, Branch Repeater includes a suite of WAN optimization technologies that have been adapted for virtual environments. Since the underlying WAN optimization technologies are discussed in the Network World article, I will explain how Branch Repeater is unique in applying these to accelerate and optimize virtual desktops and applications.

Compression and caching - By default, XenApp compresses all ICA traffic to optimize individual user sessions. Branch Repeater automatically negotiates with XenApp to disable the native ICA compression in order to cache common graphics and data locally in the branch and compress traffic across multiple user sessions. Branch Repeater is the only WAN optimization solution that can inspect the ICA virtual channel to help determine whether to store cached data objects in memory or on disk. This helps to minimize latency for interactive traffic (screen updates, mouse movements) while maximizing compression ratios for bulk transfers within ICA (printing, file transfers).

TCP acceleration - Like any TCP-based traffic, ICA performance can suffer due to high latency and packet loss common on long distance WAN connections. Branch Repeater overcomes these issues with adaptive TCP flow control that senses these conditions and responds by optimizing TCP behavior.

QoS and traffic prioritization - In many networks, ICA shares the wire with other bandwidth hungry applications. Network congestion can 'starve out' ICA traffic causing slow and inconsistent performance. Branch Repeater prioritizes traffic and allocates bandwidth to ensure reliable, high-performance for virtual desktops and applications. However, not all data transmitted within ICA should receive equal priority. For instance, interactive screen data should be prioritized above print jobs. To address such conflicts, Branch Repeater provides the only ICA-aware QoS engine that can granularly allocate bandwidth based on virtual channel priority tags.

Branch Repeater ICA acceleration goes beyond optimizing each of these core technologies for virtual desktop and application delivery. Virtual environments tend to be far more dynamic and flexible than traditional enterprise applications. For this reason, Branch Repeater is fully integrated with XenApp and other HDX technologies to apply the right mix of optimizations for every scenario over any network. And since many of the techniques involve peering inside the ICA session, Branch Repeater works with native ICA encryption (Basic and Advanced RC-5) so there is no compromise to end-to-end security.

The Network World article wraps up by suggesting that businesses consider WAN optimization gear when deploying new applications. Rolling the cost of WAN optimization into a larger IT project - such as desktop virtualization - can be a cost-effective way to pay for the solution. So if you are considering deploying virtual desktops (VDI) in your organization, be sure to include Branch Repeater as part of your plans.

Over the past couple of years I've had a number of customers and prospectives ask me for different ways of evaluating XenApp because they wanted to show someone how it worked really quickly without having to use their production system. Or, they got the Receiver for iPhone but didn't have their system configured to use it. Or, they were meeting with the head of another department at work and wanted to show them the power of application virtualization with Citrix XenApp.

Well, now you can with 3 easy ways to get an evaluation system to meet your specific needs.

• Eval in the Cloud - A pre-configured, rapid evaluation system that anyone can use to see the power of virtualizing applications for themselves. This system is great for anyone from an end-user to a non-technical family member. It requires no investment or hardware and doesn;t need any installation since it's already configured. EVAL LENGTH: 2 hours, 1-User

• Evaluation Virtual Appliance - A completely pre-configured virtual machine system running XenApp, the EVA runs on Xen or Hyper-V and helps your quickly virtualize your own apps and deliver them to anyone. It's got an illustrated quick start guide that leads you through the process of profiling, publishing and accessing applications. You can even add the machine to your domain. It's perfect for the techie that's new to XenApp but who doesn't want to get their hands covered in grease. This system is also perfect as a test bed for applications and application compatibility. It's also useful for testing scripts created with Workflow studio. Some admin's have even found it helpful for stdying up to take Citrix certification exams. EVAL LENGTH: 60-days, 99-User

• Product Media - This is XenApp installation media that is downloadable from Citrix.com. You can also order physical media from customer care. The great thing here is you'll have everything you need to create a completely customized evaluation environment including licenses which we've made available online. EVAL LENGTH: 90-days, 99-User

So the net-net is that there is now an evaluation option for nearly any scenario and you now have more options for getting demo or evaluation XenApp environments up and running with very little effort, if any at all. Check these options out for yourselves at the XenApp evaluation center.

Please let us know what you think.

Sincerely,
Vinny Sosa

Follow XenApp on | | |

Today we announced another key addition to our portfolio of HDX technologies within XenDesktop, enabling high definition virtual desktops - HDX 3D.

Before we get into too much detail, in my experience it's always sensible and logical to consider the broader context to gain perspective and not get lost in the marketing. For me this is about extending our leadership position in delivering user experience that we have built with HDX technologies over the last 20 years.

HDX offers several other capabilities such as multimedia, USB, voice collaboration, etc that users for virtual desktops can use wherever they are. Michael Harris produced a really nice short video that explains the HDX areas of competence. What's key to understand is that to deliver the best experience for many rich content types, on diverse devices that may be accessed from a myriad of locations, one must leverage the existing environment in an optimal manner. HDX with adaptive orchestration leverages the client, network and server to optimize the experience of users based on the content and infrastructure that is available.

This inherent flexibility in the architecture of HDX technology is key to delivering a more efficient and predictable user experience. For example if you send multimedia content directly to the client in it's original format for optimal playback when the bandwidth is good, and render on the server when bandwidth is poor you leverage your bandwidth efficiently allowing other applications to also consume bandwidth. Similarly if your technology can identify repetitive patterns within multiple bitmaps on a screen you can avoid retransmitting bits saving network bandwidth. Additionally if your technology can dynamically adapt to changing network conditions, you remain efficient as parameters that you can't control change. These unpredictable conditions become even more important as you traverse the internet to connect to clouds. So having an arsenal of technologies to handle so many variables that have been matured over the years is critical to delivering a user experience that will allow IT to feel confident in the service levels they are delivering for Desktop Virtualization.

Extending HDX to graphical intensive applications over any kind of network- HDX 3D

HDX 3D is a new technology that addresses the needs of professional graphics users in industries such as Engineering, Manufacturing, Oil & Gas, Aerospace and Automotive. Professional graphics users requiring 3D graphics apps such as AutoCAD or Catia can now use virtual desktops to do all their work.

When we collaborated with our customers on the design of this technology, they reminded us that with the forces of globalization in play, more and more designers and engineers would be working offshore all over the world. This made it abundantly clear to us that in order to meet customer needs WAN performance was going to be a critical component. If WAN optimization was not a top priority from the outset, many of the cost benefits would be negated through poor performance and increased WAN circuit costs. So the mission for our engineers was very clear.

The results

Our test engineers reported back that they could deliver a great user experience on WAN connections with latency of up to 150ms. Even 3D graphics over 1 Mbps became possible! I was pleased, but wanted to understand how this compared to hardware based solutions that have generated a lot of excitement in the industry. Our engineers decided to contrast performance against the PCoIP protocol leveraging the proprietary Teradici hardware solution. Note that VMware has publically stated that they plan to offer a software only version of the PCoIP protocol. Logically speaking, the same technology without the benefit of hardware assist, one would expect this version to be of inferior performance. To be fair, we have not tested the software only version of PCoIP yet.

The methodology on the LAN was to auto-spin in Catia and measure bandwidth usage starting at full image quality for each product and incrementing down to the lowest quality. For the WAN, a WAN emulator was used to introduce latency and repeat the test to auto-spin Catia and observe which appeared to spin more smoothly. Manual rotation was also performed to see what it felt like from a user perspective.

In summary we found that PCoIP with the benefit of proprietary hardware consumed 10X more bandwidth than HDX 3D and HDX 3D produced a smoother user experience.

Based on our tests, PCoIP didn't handle latency and WAN conditions well. So, if you are a designer and need to design a 3D model, from our tests we don't see how you would be able to have a predictable work experience that is efficient and cost effective on a real world network with a distributed workforce. Once again, this was the proprietary Teradici hardware assisted version of PCoIP. This does not bode well for the software version, especially if compromises have been made in quality and predictability to mask bandwidth requirements.

So what should one make of all this?

Firstly, as a technologist, I think it's interesting to see VMware building (or OEM/partnering for) their own protocol; because as a former customer of VMware, I have never understood their position on recommending multiple protocols for different scenarios. They have mentioned extending Microsoft RDP, using Suns ALP for WAN, adopting the Net2Display standard and partnerships with hardware vendors such as Teradici etc. How is all the complexity of so many options and expecting customers to figure out how to integrate them as one predictable experience going to work? Now I wonder if VMware is still going to have multiple technologies to try and build a HDX like portfolio and expect customers to figure out how to interface it all? PCoIP is only a piece of a puzzle - just like a protocol is only a small part of the equation.

However as Citrix has learned over the last 20 years as one of it's core competencies working with 200,000 plus customers, it's so much more than just a protocol. Some of those key lessons are.

• HDX is an integrated set of technologies that are intended to offer the best possible user experience under any network circumstances.
• HDX does not rely on just one approach to graphics and multimedia remoting, because one size does not fit all.
• HDX has unique technologies that can leverage the client resources to offer a local like user experience at a fraction of the bandwidth and server cost.
• When HDX determines that server side rendering is the most appropriate method to deliver the content, it uses a number of technologies to optimize the bandwidth and server CPU usage.
• HDX also includes adaptive orchestration which is a system that makes smart decisions on what techniques to apply under different conditions. Adaptive orchestration sets HDX apart from the competition because it can offer the best possible user experience for the user.

Additionally, I think one of the most important points that is often overlooked is that HDX technologies are Hypervisor and hardware agnostic. Citrix does not lock you into a proprietary hardware solution or Hypervisor. We understand that customers want Hypervisor and hardware choice combined with mature and proven user experience delivery technologies that are being extended to further the reach of Desktop Virtualization. I believe that pragmatic IT decision makers and engineers understand those are critical elements to protect their existing and future investments.

Finally, we would have demonstrated HDX 3D at VMWorld, if we could - if we were allowed the space to do so...... However check out http://hdx.citrix.com

Citrix Tech Support often get asked about how to import/export a site's configuration since the release of Web Interface 5.1. As the SME for Web Interface in my team these questions often come my way, so I've been meaning to write this blog entry for some time

Since the release of Web Interface 5.1 earlier this year it is no longer possible to import/export a site's configuration via the Access Management Console (AMC).

Lets take a step back
In Web Interface 5.0.1, centrally configured sites were deprecated. In later releases (5.1.x), all support for centralized configuration has been removed. As a replacement for centralized configuration, Web
Interface for IIS allows you to specify a "master" site that shares its configuration file over the network. Other sites can then be configured to use the master site's configuration rather than a local file.

So in Web Interface 5.0 the AMC had the following options to import/export a sites configuration:

But in Web Interface 5.1.x those options were removed:

The reason for this is because of the removal of the centralized configuration feature.

In order to make a backup of a site's configuration in 5.1.x you simply grab the Webinterface.conf which is stored in the file system of the Web Interface server located at \inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\<site path>\conf\

HTH

David
Twitter - http://twitter.com/citrixreadiness
Citrix Support on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/citrixsupport

I've been talking to a number of people regarding their ideas with respect to delivering Desktop Virtualization and Application Virtualization from the cloud.

Yesterday Amazon announced Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) with support for Citrix C3. Check out Craig Ellrod's blog post

It's great to see people thinking about ways to extend the reach of the Citrix Delivery Infrastructure. Our very own Scott Swanburg has blogged about this for several months. Scott has some very interesting discussions on how to make money from the cloud and our Service Provider license program. The reality is there is a chasm between existing web apps to deliver SaaS and the tens of thousands of apps that are Windows based. There is a huge opportunity especially in the Small and Medium Business segment for these types of services.

It's also worth noting that some Service Providers are already taking advantage of the opportunity, U.K. based Nasstar, U.S. based nGenX, ClubDrive and Australia based Bluefire. These companies service hundreds of SMBs with thousands of end points.

Last week I spoke to Kenji Obata CEO from Xenocode regarding delivering applications from the cloud. Kenji was kind enough to give me access to a streamed Citrix client what we call our Receiver and we helped Kenji configure it to connect to a desktop in the Amazon cloud. In this case the destkop is delivered via XenApp. If you're not familiar with streaming, think of it as downloading only the bits you need to start an application as opposed to an entire application. A little bit like playing a streaming radio station. In this case 4.2MB is streamed for startup vs. the 23.9MB package size. You'll need to install the Spoon plug-in in the top right of the box the first time for the browser integration to work . After that it should be just a click on the Green button to start your virtual desktop session in the Amazon Cloud. So far i've tested successfully from my XP and Vista machines as a non admin user and plan to try from my Windows 7 machine later today. Note that we only created one account in Amazon for this so you may be stealing sessions..... Anyway it's a fun demo so give it a try. Many of our existing customers do something similar with the XenApp Web Plugin today. Nonetheless it's alway personally interesting for me to see how other people understand the value of connecting to a secure managed hosted application infrastructure.

As these models continue to evolve, leveraging Citrix Dazzle and Merchandsing Server we could enable SAAS in so many new ways. It's fascinating that potentially combined with some of the concepts mentioned in Chris Flecks recent blog how so many possibilities could be opened up.

So I see lot's of creative thinking going on amongst thought leaders and real execution already happening. Certainly an area that I will be watching with keen interest. As always interested to hear from our customers and partners on how they would like to see this evolve.

ICA Proxy for XenApp using NetScaler AGEE.

Citrix NetScaler, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center™, is a purpose-built web application delivery solution that accelerates application performance up to five times while improving security and reducing web infrastructure costs. Access Gateway™, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center, is an only SSL VPN to securely deliver any application with policy-based SmartAccess control. Access Gateway, Enterprise Edition (AGEE) runs on the Citrix NetScaler.

Citrix XenApp™, also a member of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, is the industry's de facto standard for delivering Windows-based applications with the best performance, security and cost savings.

By centralizing applications and data in secure datacenters, IT can reduce the costs of management and support, increase data security and facilitate business continuity.

We at Citrix are often asked how to deploy a NetScaler AGEE in front of a XenApp server farm, to proxy application delivery over the ICA protocol, securely. The NS SGEE secures XenApp delivered applications by serving as a proxy for those applications. NS AGEE proxies the ICA connections delivered from XenApp, and then wraps those applications with HTTPS or SSL to secure the traffic before it leaves your organization.

This is possible by following the steps in the deployment guide. This guide is specific to the NetScaler Access Gateway Enterprise Edition (AGEE), which is different hardware & software from the Citrix Access Gateway Standard Edition (AGSE).

Download the deployment guide.

Its Powerful Citrix Developer Network!

ICA Proxy for XenApp using CAG

Citrix Access Gateway™, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center, is an SSL VPN to securely deliver any application with policy-based SmartAccess control.

Citrix XenApp™, also a member of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, is the industry's de facto standard for delivering Windows-based applications with the best performance, security and cost savings.

By centralizing applications and data in secure datacenters, IT can reduce the costs of management and support, increase data security and facilitate business continuity.

We at Citrix are often asked how to deploy a CAG in front of a XenApp server farm, to proxy application delivery over the ICA protocol, securely. The CAG secures XenApp delivered applications by serving as a proxy for those applications. CAG proxies the ICA connections delivered from XenApp, and then wraps those applications with HTTPS or SSL to secure the traffic before it leaves your organization.

This is possible by following the steps in the deployment guide. This guide is specific to the Citrix Access Gateway Standard Edition (AGSE), which is different hardware & software from the Citrix NetScaler Access Gateway Enterprise Edition (AGEE).

Download the deployment guide.

Its Powerful Citrix Developer Network!

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) announcement of the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) offering has just made Cloud Computing more attractive to the enterprise. Most companies I talk with are interested in the "Cloud", but beyond a few SaaS apps and perhaps some dev/test they are not ready for any big change to their corporate IT infrastructure. On the other hand many of those same companies are currently or projected to be capacity limited in their own data center based on space or power limitations.
Many companies will opt to move or expand into a Co-lo (Co-location) facility which provides dedicated space, power and bandwidth. This solves the space and power problem but most of the same costs of computing are just moved to a remote facility. The expensive data center facility cost is shared among other companies but the Server, Storage and Networking are all dedicated. The promise of the Cloud and particularly IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) like Amazon EC2 is sharing computing and facility costs, having capacity available on demand, and only paying for what is used.

The obstacles to IaaS offerings that I hear most often include security concerns and the desire keep the corporate data and or legacy infrastructure in place. Making a massive move from premise to Cloud is not desired or warranted.  On the other hand enabling a Premise Plus Cloud solution in a secure fashion and using it only for expansion or overflow capacity could be appealing for many companies. Essentially this is what Amazon is offering with VPC, a dedicated secure network extending from a company data center into the Amazon Cloud with isolated VM's available on demand.  
For Citrix Customers this could be particularly attractive for expanding XenApp farms or centralizing new applications on XenApp without the prerequisite facility and capital costs. Customers can bring their own XenApp licensees to VPC or point back to existing license server on premise. We have been collaborating with Amazon AWS to build and test XenApp servers in VPC to validate and number of scenarios and use cases. In addition we have made dedicated Amazon Machine Image ( AMI ) templates available with XenApp 5 preinstalled and ready to launch.  Citrix C3 Blueprints are also now available to assist companies that want to start to evaluate the new offering. ( Note: the service is currently in Beta )

For Citrix this announcement represents another progressive move as a leader and enabler of Cloud Computing. Amazon EC2 based on the Xen Hypervisor has already made EC2 ubiquitous with start-ups and the undisputed leader in Public Clouds, VPC with XenApp now represents a significant opportunity for Enterprise IT. The Citrix Cloud Center ( C3 ) portfolio will continue to enable IT and Cloud providers to exploit the promise of the Cloud, stay tuned..

http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

So my wife drug me to the movies to see "Julie & Julia" this week and for some reason I seem to be thinking about everything in terms of cooking up a master piece.  I'll have to ask you to forgive me if this blog seems a bit "Julia Child-esh" but I can't seem to help myself...

Ingredients: 

(2) NetScalers

(2) Web Interface Farms

(2) XenApp/XenDesktop Farms

(30) XenServer VMs w/Essentials

(1) Provisioning Farm

(10) Storage Arrays

(2) High Speed Access Lines 

First, mix the ingredients in a data center and test to perfection.  

Next pick (3) market verticals for the highest expected IT spend in your area (hint: in 2009 that would be Finance, Gov't, and Services).  Find the local trade associations for each vertical and sign up (hint: In the U.S. Personal Finance Sector, American Association of Debt Management Organizations (AADMO), the nation's largest trade association for the credit counseling and debt management industry).

After hobnobbing with the trade association's board of directors, offer to provide a teaching seminar on "How to save up to 40% on your IT operating costs!" for all of the members of the association.

Create a presentation that the business owners of the association can identify with (hint: specific to the Debt Management business IT - remote access, call centers, etc). After filling an auditorium with Executives show them specifically how they can remove cost by taking them through the Citrix Service Provider TCO Calculator (that you've naturally branded with your company's identity). Make sure that you finish your presentation with the pièce de résistance (Disaster Recovery included in the service).

Offer (2) months of free service (hey, you've got to hook them you know?).

Sign 30 companies with 50 subscribers in each company with a service fee of $70 per subscriber per month.

...And voilà, you have a run rate of $105,000 per month (or $1.3 Million per year).

Best Practices for Deploying and Managing Hyper-V Infrastructure

Date: Thursday, August 27, 2009
Time: 2:00 PM Eastern; 11:00 AM Pacific

Join Microsoft and Citrix as they explore best practices for deploying and managing Hyper-V. Learn how to rapidly provision Hyper-V infrastructure, reduce your Hyper-V storage footprint by over 50%, increase I/O performance by up to 30%, and much more.

Discover how Microsoft System Center together with Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V helps you effectively manage and automate the delivery of virtual and physical infrastructure for your Hyper-V deployments, including how the solutions:

• Rapidly provision virtual and physical infrastructure
• Improve storage utilization with the seamless storage integration
• Conquer VM sprawl and take back control of virtual labs
• Maximize performance and resource utilization

REGISTER NOW.

About the Presenters:

Gordon Mangione; VP, Emerging Virtualization Products; Citrix Systems, Inc.
Gordon Mangione leads the Advanced Products group at Citrix, where he is specifically focused on building products for the Microsoft platform. Previously, Mr. Mangione was responsible for product operations with a focus on engineering, support and services at XenSource before its acquisition by Citrix. Prior to that, Mr. Mangione held several VP roles at Microsoft, where he was responsible for Exchange, SQL Server and incubating the security business.

Dai Vu; Director, Virtualization Solutions Marketing; Microsoft Corporation
Dai Vu leads the team responsible for Hyper-V product marketing and marketing solutions built on Microsoft virtualization products and technologies. His team works closely with solution partners to define, develop, and market joint solutions to drive horizontal and business solution scenarios enabled by virtualization technologies. Previously, Dai was responsible for mid-market/channel strategic initiatives on the Server and Tools Strategy and Planning Team. Prior to Microsoft, Dai was Program Director at IBM and Engagement Manager at McKinsey and Company.

REGISTER NOW

Citrix Support is focused on ensuring Customer and Partner satisfaction with our products. One of our initiatives is to increase the ability of our Partners and Customers to leverage self-service avenues via our Knowledge Center.

I will be writing a series of blog entries detailing recently released Citrix Knowledge Center technotes and hotfixes for Citrix products. The technotes are either newly authored or updated articles.

This blog entry will concentrate on XenApp.

Technotes

Hotfixes

David
Twitter - http://twitter.com/citrixreadiness
Citrix Support on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/citrixsupport

Amazon announces VPC with support for Citrix C3

What is Amazon Web Services?

Since early 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has provided companies of all sizes with an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud. With AWS customers can requisition compute power, storage, and other services-gaining access to a suite of elastic IT infrastructure services as your business demands them. In AWS, customers pay only for what they use with no up-front commitments. The Amazon Web Services cloud is distributed, secure and resilient, providing reliability and massive scale. AWS includes a number of services such as EC2, S3, SimpleDB and others. Today AWS is making available their limited public beta for their Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

What is EC2?

Amazon EC2's simple web service interface allows customers to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides companies with complete control of the computing resources and lets customers run on Amazon's computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing companies to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing payment only for capacity used. EC2 is a key building block for VPC.

What is VPC?

Amazon is announcing a limited public beta of their Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). For the last three years, AWS has provided companies of all sizes with on-demand, highly elastic and highly reliable technology resources in the cloud. As more and more enterprises leverage the cloud, they want a simple, seamless way to migrate their large and complex IT infrastructures to AWS, and to use the security and management controls that their IT teams already know. Amazon VPC aims to address this need —to allow any company to seamlessly connect their existing resources to the AWS cloud as if it were a part of their own datacenter. To read the press release follow this link.

Using Amazon VPC, AWS customers can create an isolated set of AWS resources that they then access via an industry-standard encrypted IPsec Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection. Using API calls, users create their isolated network and then launch customer-addressed Amazon EC2 instances into that network. Users then create a secure VPN to bridge those AWS resources to their existing IT infrastructure. Cloud traffic bound for the Internet routes over the VPN where it is examined by the customer's existing security and networking technologies before heading to the public Internet. With Amazon VPC, customers can access their resources running in the AWS cloud as if these assets were running within their existing IT infrastructure.

What is Citrix's involvement?

Amazon is a top tier strategic partner for Citrix in the Cloud market. Over time, Amazon VPC will enable all our enterprise customers to seamlessly expand their Citrix infrastructures, starting today with XenApp, by adding highly secure and reliable on-demand resources from AWS as a natural extension of their current on-premises Citrix based applications. Citrix will be included in AMZN's VPC press release on August 26 with a quote from Frank Artale. Other companies quotes are Intuit, Computer Associates and Eli Lilly.

What solutions or product scenarios are we launching with VPC today?

At launch we are starting with two simple use case scenarios. Over time these will be expanded upon. Use Case #1: "XA farm expansion - cloud data" includes a blueprint for customers that want to create another XA Farm in the cloud, with the datastore and license server hosted in the cloud also. Use Case #2: "XA farm expansion - premise data" includes blueprint for customers that want to expand the existing XA Farm from premise, into the cloud, using the datastore and license server at premise (Headquarters Datacenter).

Do we have an exclusive cloud relationship with Amazon?

No. While Amazon is the leader in the cloud space and thus provides us with a most important relationship, our partnership with them is not exclusive. Citrix is actively partnering with many other leading cloud vendors, hosting providers and IaaS vendors.

Is Amazon selling Citrix solutions?

No. While Amazon and Citrix endorse and promote each other's offerings, there is not a reselling relationship. Citrix customers need to bring their existing licenses to AWS, leaving our channel empowered to add value as their usually do.

Prior to today's announcement, did we already have a relationship with Amazon?

Yes. EC2 is built on opensource Xen. In addition, Amazon is a large NetScaler customer. Our partnership was officially launched on 5/6/9, when Citrix and Amazon announced the Citrix C3 Lab (press release: http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1690164 ). The Citrix C3 Lab was launched to run in EC2 (vs. VPC) and enables companies of all sizes to get started using Citrix technologies quickly in the Amazon EC2 environment. Since then, Citrix has been one of only nine "Amazon Featured Partners". Here is a link to our partnership: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/featured-partners/citrix/ . Today's announcement expands our alliance from EC2 into VPC.

Where can I learn more about the new Citrix scenarios for VPC?

The Citrix Community Website, has a dedicated section to our solutions in Amazon Web Services: http://community.citrix.com/display/cdn/Citrix+C3+Lab

What does this announcement mean to a Citrix customer?

Customers can more easily expand their Citrix environment into the Amazon cloud. Starting today, a Citrix customer can use the newly launched AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) within VPC (in addition to the already available Citrix C3 Lab AMIs within EC2), in conjunction with the blueprints, which provide technical guidance. Customers will need to bring their own licenses to use these AMIs for production, even though they should realize that VPC is currently in beta form by Amazon. To learn more about Amazon's limited public beta for VPC, customers will need to visit http://aws.amazon.com/vpc/.

Hi Everyone,

We will be soon updating the m.iphone.citrix.com site with the latest documentation, in the meantime I would like to take a moment and introduce you to the Citrix Receiver for iPhone v1.0.3 Admin guide.

This document will come handy when planning for iPhone deployments in your company. Inside you can find:

• Product Requirements

• How to configure iPhone secure access via:
  • Access Gateway Strandard Edition
  • Access Gateway Advanced Edition
  • Access Gateway Enterprise Edtion
  • Citrix Secure Gateway

• How to provide access information to end users

• Basic troubleshooting steps

• Known Issues

Download the Citrix Receiver for iPhone Admin Guide

best,
Gus
twitter.com/guspinto

What's Power IT Down Day

This Thursday, August 27, 2009, is the second annual Power IT Down Day. Please do your part to conserve energy and protect our environment on this day by "powering down" your equipments – computer, monitor, printer and other peripherals – at the end of the day. You don't have to be Al Gore or a celebrity to be helpful!

How much impact your action can have

You will be surprised to know how much can be saved. Here is one estimate
"You can save about 13 kWh powering down all your work devices for fifteen hours, which represents about 6.85 kg less CO2 in the atmosphere and savings of US $1.30 in power."

And savings really add up quickly if many people join the cause.

And you can see an aggregated saving result from the web site.

Even better the sponsors (HP, Citrix, Microsoft etc.) will donate a portion of the cost savings to the Wounded Warrior Project"

How to do it

First show your intent to participate today, by taking the online pledge here. Over 3,000 people have already signed up.

Once you sign up, you will receive an email reminder and you can easily add the reminder to your calendar.

If you just want to add a reminder, click here to add a reminder to your calendar.

Beyond Power IT Down Day

Here are a few things to consider:

• Continue to power down your unused equipments.
• Spread the message.
• If you use XenApp, check out the new power and capacity management feature
• replace PC will thin clients
• Try desktop virtulization
• Try on line meetings/webnars, work from home.

Related articles:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/081809-tgech-green-challenge.html

Ray (Ruiguo) Yang
Check out my other blogs
Subscribe to my blog RSS feed
Follow me (@RayYangCitrix) on Twitter

I recently tried the newly released XenApp Plug-in for Mac, previously known as Mac ICA client.

Overall I had a good experience with it. It's simpler to use and feels more like native applications than earlier version.

Here are a few things I learned that you may find useful:

• This XenApp Plug-in contains a new component called Dazzle. Dazzle is an application that allows you to "install" your favorite published applications so that you can launch them easily later just like native applications.

• Dazzle doesn't however launch published applications.

• Launching from Web Interface from browser is still supported.

• Dazzle relies on XenApp Services (previously known as PNAgent service). Please make sure you provide PNAgent URL not Web Interface URL when asked about server address.

• Once you click the add button next to a published application in Dazzle, an application shortcut is placed in /Application/Dazzle folder. Then you can treat the application just like any other locally installed applications. You can launch it from that folder or drag it to the dock for example. At first I was not sure what happened when I clicked the add button.

My wish:

The published applications, once "installed", behave very much like native applications. One thing that is missing still though is the ability to drag a file from a finder window to a published application. For example, I would love to attach a local file to published Outlook by dragging the file and drop it into the outlook window.

There are certain behaviors of Dazzle that I wish were different. But once I learn how to use it properly, it is not a problem for me since I don't have a need to use Dazzle often. It's more like an installer for me. What's most important to me is the experience of actually using my favorite published applications.

Overall, I am happy with the improvements. Keep up the good work Mac team!

You can find another review by Orestes with pictures here.

Try the new the new Plug-in (client) now.

You can download it from here

I'd love to hear your comments and your experience. I will be happy to relay the feedbacks to the team who developed this release. If you are seeking help with an issue, I'd recommend posting it to this forum and leave a link to it in your comment so that I and others can better help you.

Ray (Ruiguo) Yang
Check out my other blogs
Subscribe to my blog RSS feed
Follow me (@RayYangCitrix) on Twitter

Oracle EBS 12.1 runs on XenApp

Citrix XenApp™, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, is the industry's de facto standard for delivering Windows-based applications with the best performance, security and cost savings. XenApp is the most complete application virtualization system available with the ability to virtualize applications on both the client side and server side, delivering them on demand based on the user, the application or the location (online or offline).

By centralizing applications and data in secure datacenters, IT can reduce the costs of management and support, increase data security and facilitate business continuity. XenApp Platinum Edition adds critical capabilities for application performance monitoring, secure remote access, WAN optimization and single-sign-on application security.

Citrix XenApp is compatible with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. Organizations of any size can deploy XenApp on industry standard servers anywhere in the datacenter, on a single server or across all cloud computing datacenters. This simple integration takes Enterprise applications into the virtual realm, allowing customers to run Oracle on Virtual Machines, within XenServer, delivered to the end user through XenApp.

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