Citrix is sponsoring Oracle OpenWorld! Starting on October 11th at San Francisco's Moscone Center, Citrix will showcase our desktop virtualization solutions and promote recent Oracle application validations with Citrix NetScaler and Citrix XenApp. At the event we'll also feature Citrix Receiver for the iPhone running Oracle applications.
Don't miss your chance to learn about our desktop virtualization vision and how our solutions work alongside Oracle solutions.

The following are the Citrix speaking sessions at Oracle OpenWorld:

Delivering Oracle Applications with Citrix Desktop Virtualization Solutions
Different users have different computing needs. Learn how desktop delivery solutions from Citrix can provide cost-effective application and desktop management solutions for all users.
@ October 12th - 11:30am (Booth #2137)

Desktop Virtualization - Five Years Forward
Desktop virtualization will have a pivotal impact over the next five years. Learn how your organization can use these solutions today and to plan for the future.
@ October 13th - 3:30pm (Booth #2137)

If you're planning to be at Oracle OpenWorld, attend our speaking sessions or stop by the Citrix booth (#229) to meet with the team and learn how we're working with Oracle to improve application delivery and user experience. Learn more about Oracle OpenWorld or register to attend here.

And...drum roll please...here's your chance to attend the event at no cost! If you're a Citrix customer and are interested in attending Oracle OpenWorld, we are offering 50 "Discover" passes to the event. These are available on a first come, first served basis. Contact the Oracle Alliance Team today to secure your pass and take advantage of this offer!
 

In the previous Provisioning Services High Availability Considerations blog, I briefly spoke about using Provisioning Services 5.1 with read-only shared access to a SAN LUN(s). Now I will provide a step-by-step overview of how to implement this feature.

Let's start with pre-requisites that I mentioned in my last blog:

• You need to install Microsoft iSCSI initiator on all Provisioning Services servers that access the SAN.
• Private Image mode is not supported.
• If cache is located on server disk, a separate shared storage location that has read-write access is needed for write cache files.

Steps on the SAN:

You will need to create a volume on the SAN interface front end and then set access type for the volume to read/write, later you will make the volume read-only through NTFS attributes. In my example, I will use NetApp, your case might be different. The storage devices are called iSCSI targets and the clients are called iSCSI initiators.
 
Make sure it is online:

Now we move to the Provisioning Services server:

Initially, you will need to use iSCSI Initiator to login to the SAN volume on only one of the Provisioning Services server while in read/write mode. If you are using Windows Server 2008 the iSCSI software Initiator and components are built into the OS, if using Windows Server 2003 iSCSI software Initiator is available as a download package from the Microsoft website. In my example I am using Windows Server 2008, so I just enabled the service from the Admin tools.

 
Depending on your settings you may get a UAC warning, go ahead and approve. The iSCSI Initiator is our Provisioning Services server; under the general tab you will see the Initiator Name that you will need to provide as "Initiator" to your SAN. 

Go back to your SAN and add the "Initiator Name" to Initiator group:

Back to your Provisioning Services server, from the iSCSI Initiator Properties you need to go to the Discovery tab and add the portal by specifying the IP address to the iSCSI target:
When the LUN first appears on Windows you will have an uninitialized volume, therefore you have to switch it Online and let it get initialized. Next step you need to do is format the volume:Once you formatted the volume and assigned a drive letter/mount point, next step you will copy all the vDisk image files (.vhd) and associated properties files (.pvp) to the volume, no need to copy the Lock files. Before you copy the files, make sure all properties for the vDisks that will reside on the volume are set correctly (including High Availability).
Next step is to make the volume read-only. You can use diskpart.exe, verify the volume number, select it and then set the attribute to read-only. In case you want to verify if it was set correctly you can type "detail volume" and verify that "Read-only" is set to "Yes".

Now you will log off from the volume on that one Provisioning Services server, from the iSCSI Initiator click on "Details" and then" Log off..."

In case you get an error message about the volume being in use, go to Disk Manager and switch that disk Offline.You will log on to the target again and make the volume a persistent target.  You must log off and then re-login to the volume to get NTFS on the server to re-read the volume attributes, so that it will recognize the volume as read-only. Making the volume a persistent target will ensure the volume is accessible when the server reboots: 

Just mount the iSCSI volume on all the other Provisioning Services servers; it is now safe since the volume is set to read-only. Also, in order to facilitate your job, have all servers to mount the volume using the same drive letter or mount point; if not you will need to adjust that from the Provisioning Services Console. You should be all set after creating a store and pointing the Path to the SAN volume and adding the vDisk to the pool. Don't forget if you are using Difference disk mode you must enter a default write cache path for the store that does not point to the read-only SAN volume, this also applies if you are going to use write cache on the PVS server (cache on server disk).

You might be thinking, what if I am using a NetApp array as the back-end storage attached via Fibre Channel? There is no reason why this should not work since the LUN appears as a drive to Windows, so Provisioning Services should have no problem using it. When using Fibre Channel the iSCSI initiator is not required, so vendor specific software for the FC device should be used.

If you want more details about this subject, I encourage you to watch this TechTalk session called:  "Simplifying Implementation of Provisioning Services"

"Elisabeth Teixeira - Principal Engineer - Worldwide Technical Readiness

Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/lizteixeira

Follow me in the Blogs: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/elisabetht

I'm pleased to announce that Workflow Studio 2.0 is now available:

Download Workflow Studio 2.0 (MyCitrix login required)

This release has a number of great new features and is a seamless upgrade from version 1.x. Here are some of the key new features:

• Native XenApp activity libraries (and many other additional activities)
• Remote runtimes
• Simplified management interface
• Enhanced security features
• Simplified installation and configuration
• Improved SDK
• Simplified workflow Designer
• Globalization support

I will post some more blogs over the next few days with more details on the above features and will also be updating the CDN site with many new articles, so subscribe to the Workflow Studio blog and head over to the Workflow Studio CDN site and subscribe for updates on CDN as well.

Feel free to leave feedback in comments or email me directly.

Workflow Studio will be included with XenApp Feature Pack 2

Learn more about Citrix XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2

• Official Press Release - http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1857726
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 release Web Site - http://citrix.com/xenapp/featurepack2
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Executive Video - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/video
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Release Webinar - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/techtalk
• XenApp Expert Series videos for this release - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/expertseries
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Blogs- http://community.citrix.com/blogs/tag/xa5fp2
• Download XenApp technology previews - http://citrix.com/xenapp/techpreviews
• XenApp Product Page - http://citrix.com/xenapp/

Follow XenApp on | | |

Since announcing Project Independence with Intel at the start of the year and announcing our XenClient local virtual desktop solution at our Synergy show in May, we have been absolutely bombarded with questions and interest in plans for this amazing new bare metal Local Virtual Desktop platform. So we built XenClient Central, a Citrix Community site dedicated to keeping you informed on the latest news, happenings, and developments around Citrix XenClient, our Local Virtual Desktop platform.  Come check it out!

XenClient Central

•             Subscribe to the XenClient Interest list

•             View the latest XenClient demos

•             Register for beta programs

•             Subscribe to feeds for news articles, blogs, and more

•             Join the XenClient Army twitter feed

Right now we're sharing code with a very limited set of close development partners and customers. But not to worry, later this year we plan to open up our beta program to a much broader audience so you can see firsthand the benefits of XenClient and how it connects into Citrix XenDesktop our virtual desktop delivery solution.  Be sure to visit XenClient Central and register with our XenClient Interest list and we'll make sure you're always in the know with the latest news and happenings.

Are you planning to attend Intel Developer Forum 2009 next week? If so, you will see Citrix in every corner of the event!

Stop by the Citrix booth (#501) next week at San Francisco's Moscone Center to see demos of our Citrix Delivery Center solutions. We will also showcase demos of Citrix XenClient, our joint collaboration with Intel to develop a local desktop virtualization platform.

In addition, Citrix will be featured in the Intel Virtualization Pavilion and Intel vPro Zone Communities. Within the Communities we'll showcase XenClient and also how Citrix XenServer leverages the benefits of Intel Xeon processors for Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenDesktop workloads. And as if that weren't enough, we will also have a demo of SR-IOV with Citrix XenServer at Intel's booth.

Citrix will also be featured within several breakout sessions at the event. Stop by the session "Hosted, Streamed, and Local Bare Metal Desktop Virtualization with Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenClient" on September 22^nd from 3-3:50pm to hear Peter Blum introduce our desktop virtualization vision and discuss Citrix XenClient.

Also, Simon Crosby is participating in a cloud virtualization panel discussion alongside other industry-leading companies. This session is scheduled for September 22^nd from 5-5:50pm.

In short...or maybe not that short...if you plan on attending the event, you'll have a lot of opportunities to meet with Citrix and learn how Citrix is working with Intel.

We look forward to seeing you there and we guarantee you won't be able to miss us! Learn more about Intel Developer Forum or register to attend here.

Some of the questions I've received lately is how to design a large-scale, enterprise XenDesktop architecture.  We all can attest that most systems put into place become much more difficult to architect as the number of users increases.  I'm not talking about Citrix products, I'm talking about any product.  Which one do you think would be more difficult to design:

• A 100 user (insert your own product here) environment
• A 10,000 user (insert your own product here) environment
• A 50,000 user (insert your own product here) environment
  

Most of you will probably agree that it gets quite a bit more difficult as the number of users increases.  And if we do a typical type of design, I would tend to agree, but I'm thinking we can simplify this so even the 10,000 and 50,000 user XenDesktop environment can be as easy as a 100 user deployment. 

Many of you are probably thinking, this guy is full of it, he is too pie-in-the-sky for me.  And when I first started thinking about this simplified architecture, I tended to agree. But as I've continued looking into this and discussing with other architects, I've come to the realization that I might be on to something here.  See for yourself in the following video.  I plan on posting additional videos around this concept in the future to show/demonstrate how it would work.  But for now, I bring to you the Pod concept (and don't forget to leave your comments) 

Daniel - Lead Architect

Follow my Blogs: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/danielf

Follow me on Twitter: @djfeller

Send Desktop Virtualization questions to: AskTheArchitect@Citrix.com

Watch previous Ask The Architect Videos at: http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/1063 

Citrix User Group Denmark session on Whats new in Provisioning Server. The Session was delivered by Henrik Poulsen from Citrix Consulting, and Henrik covered whats new and how does Provisioning Server fit into the scheme of a dynamic delivery center.

Dansk Citrix User Group Session om Whats new in Provisioning Server. Sessionen blev leveret af Henrik Poulsen fra Citrix Consulting, og Henrik afdækkede hvad der er nyt samt hvor Provisioning Server passer ind i det store dynamiske delivery center.

Click below to continue to Dansk Citrix User Group:
http://www.dkcug.dk

I received an interesting inquiry recently.  Given my post on Never Deploy to XenApp Servers, how do you stop deploy from happening for hosted desktop?   Excellent question!

Here's the situation.  Happy XenApp Customer (they are all happy) who uses Application Streaming to deliver applications to their XenApp servers as well as stream to client, primarily for offline access.  The applications are published to the user as offline enabled and this works swell to trigger the deploy operation that is required to execute the application when disconnected from the corporate network and also works swell to not trigger Deploy in the XenApp hosted case.

Quick refresher on Deploy

The Deploy space is a COPY of all the needed stuff from the Application Hub, but it is local to the execution machine.  The Deploy space makes it possible for the streaming client to support application usage even when disconnected from the network.  The Deploy space is generally in \Program files\Citrix\Deploy and the execution cache space is generally in \Program files\Citrix\RadeCache. 

At runtime, the streaming client runtime fills the execution space as needed by copying content from the Application Hub - or if Deployed, from the Deploy space.  Other than one being remote and the other being local, the activity of the client is the same whether "offline" or "online".  Technically, "Deploy" enables streaming from one side of the hard disk to the other and this keeps life pretty simple from a programming standpoint.   I thought it up back in the Tarpon development and I'm still pretty happy with myself.

Deploy is automatically not done on XenApp Servers

It may seem like a good idea to Deploy to the XenApp Servers, but I have already squashed that myth and apparently did a good job there because the corollary, "Never Deploy to XenDesktop" has also been heard.

Back to the customer.  They have XenApp running good and are engaging XenDesktop.  Application Streaming is delivering the applications to the XenApp servers as well as to the end user machines (notebooks). 

Here's the thing that's not always obvious.  The streaming client KNOWS that Deploying to XenApp Servers is a bad idea.  If you publish an application to a bunch of users and offline enable the applications AND if you publish the applications to hosted execution, a single user can use both without triggering a Deploy on the XenApp server.  

If the user is running the application server side, the streaming client is still involved but it knows that it is running ON a XenApp Server, so it SKIPS the Deploy.  This is the right thing to do.  If the admin doesn't like that, they can still command a Deploy to occur on the server by directly calling the deploy utility, RadeDeploy.exe, but again, you shouldn't do that.

The problem

The customer is now engaging XenDesktop and have connected the hosted desktops to the App Streaming infrastructure from the existing XenApp configuration.  Here, the streaming client is running on the hosted desktop and ... when performing its app launch concludes that this is a client side execution and background copies down all the bits for offline execution. This is bad.

Here's a good write up on the percentage of space that is used for online vs. offline execution.

The point: Lots of disk writes start happening to copy the Deploy content down from the Application Hub to place them in the Deploy space where they will exist and get copied again into the RadeCache.  All of this is bad to the layers of cake.  We want to minimize disk WRITES.  Disk writes are backed up either by Xen/Other Virtual Machine manager or by Provisioning Services.  Either way, large writes by large numbers or users are bad.  Beyond being slow, these writes will occupy space in the per-user write back cache; which is discarded on logoff, so this whole thing will repeat on the next logon.  

The solution

The Deploy should not occur!  But it does.  In a "correct" world, the streaming client would be XenDestop aware as it is XenApp aware.  If running "hosted", don't Deploy!  We do not live in a correct world.  My initial guidance to the folks that asked me about this was "erase \program files\citrix\streaming client\radedeploy.exe".  All happy with myself because I KNOW that the streaming client shells to the utility to perform the deploy.

With the utility "missing", the streaming client will have no choice but to push on without the deploy.
Survey says.... didn't work. 

Instead of "pushing on", the streaming client declared failure and aborted the app launch.  Aargh.

Beautiful part of this is that I didn't have to actually try it.  Smart folks on the other side, all I had to do was keep coming up with ideas.  

Second round: Replace RadeDeploy.exe with a program that does nothing, but returns "success" return code.

Survey says.... Success!

The only utility I had handy to do this is one I wrote a very long time ago to use for remarking out RUN= statements from the Windows registry.  Source is included - please compile it yourself before putting in production.  For the programmers in the room, said program is "Hello world" minus the printf.  In the common image where the streaming client is installed, copy nop.exe to RadeDeploy.exe. 

Back to the Deploy activity

The streaming client "shells" to RadeDeploy.exe which is really "nop.exe", which returns 0 as RC.  With the Deploy "successful", the launch proceeds with no error, AND the Deploy never happens.  Perfect!

I see a future where the streaming client will be XenDesktop aware and skip the Deploy.  Until then, this technique may prove useful.  If you have other creative solutions to this problem, please share them here.

Next step is getting the RadeCache space available to everyone from a single source, read-only and fully populated at the get-go.

Joe Nord
Product Architect Application Streaming

Citrix Systems

Registration is now open for this years Autumn 2009 CUGtech event in Geilo, Norway on Oct 7th through Oct 9th. It looks like there might also be a discount for the event by registering as a member.

Register here to participate at CUGtech Autumn 2009

• You will have to pay directly to the hotel when checking out Friday, using creditcard or cash.
• Register as a member now and get 50% discount for the membership valid thru 31/12-09.
• Only members can attend Master Classes, and get the special member price for the conference.

Click below to continue to registration:
http://cug.no/cugtech-autumn-2009/register/

Here is a nice view of the Geek Wonderland where the event will be hosted.

Geilo, Norway

Click below to learn more about the event:

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

Thomas James (Intel) and I did a great podcast with Douglas Brown discussing how Citrix and Intel are working closely together to deliver Citrix XenClient the innovative Bare Metal Local Virtual Desktop platform. During this podcast we shared lots of great detail on the software and hardware technology behind XenClient and why people are so excited about this new Virtual Desktop technology. You can hear all about the collaboration with Intel and the Intel vPro technologies we are leveraging in the forthcoming product.

You can access the podcast on the DABCC site here.

Also you can always get the latest news on XenClient on our XenClient Central Community site.

Over the holiday weekend I had one of those "come to X" moments, where for X you may insert your deity of choice. Under my customary backlog of tasks to complete, and wanting to also spend time with my family, I was happily at work on Friday night fine tuning powerpoint for a presentation to the industry, when....

(You've all experienced this before) One profile change too many, one cookie too many, one slide too many, one keystroke too many.. or something, and my XP VM decided to toss its legs, feet & boots in the air. With daylight fading fast, spousal impatience on the rise and with a rapidly (Decibels are measured on a log scale) increasing din on the part of my children, I did something that no self respecting hypervisor zealot would do, namely take a leap of faith in another layer of virtualization - App Virtualization.

And the result is that it saved my weekend with my family, and the current state of my work, and enabled me to meet some tough deadlines this week. Here's what I did: First, the diagnosis was that my Windows XP client OS VM (on my Mac) was done for. I could still boot it. Not much else, and not for long. My key concern was how to rescue all of my files and other state in the VM.

This exercise allowed me to validate a theory that I have had in the area of virtualization, which I can now summarize: Lesson 1: Make your VMs stateless. Move all of your documents (more generally, any app specific storage/state) out of the virtual hard disk of the VM and into an appropriate storage layer external to the virtual hard drive of the VM. In my case, all state (every document I work on) is stored in the local file system of my Mac and is continually backed up to the cloud. So my XP VM was simply an operating context for some apps, divorced from the storage for the docs etc that I work on. The fact that my XP VM had become unstable was therefore not a threat to any of my documents/presentations - only to the execution of the apps. Nothing I value was stored in the virtual hard disk of the VM itself.

Now, fancying a challenge, I also chose to upgrade to Win7 in the process of fixing this problem. After all, why not test Win7 in the process? So I created a new Win7 VM (using the MSDN media). That took the expected amount of time, and I easily got to the point where I had a new Win7 OS booted, with access to all my storage, including all my documents. What next? Well, I needed my Apps. Not only the basics, but also Citrix specific apps - for example expense reporting...

I was tempted to send an email to my local Citrix colleagues requesting install media for all my apps. Then I realized that that would not be easy - since I had no email client! : All I needed to do (and did, after a glass of wine) was download Citrix Receiver, turn on "auto update", and enable the appropriate folder sharing to get my content back into the OS. Then I enjoyed the remainder of the weekend with my family.

When I started work this morning, XenApp App Streaming had delivered to me all the apps that I needed, ready to run at full performance, and appropriately configured for the enterprise network and other infrastructure. I had a brand new Win7 desktop, the latest apps, and everything I had ever created, all beautifully merged into a single runtime system.

As we now have the desktp virtualization design discussion going, I want to look at the next big question... Should I do XenApp or XenDesktop? Can I get by with Terminal Services or do I need VDI? Spend just a little time going through tweets, blogs and articles related to desktop virtualization and you will be left in the same place you started, asking the simple question "Should I do this or am I crazy?"  When I think about the desktop (I really need to have a better imagination) it isn't focused on what solution to pick, or which vendor to pick... It is focused on one simple concept:

Delivering the Correct Application to the Correct User in the Best Manner Possible

• What is the correct application? The one the user wants
• Who is the correct user? The one making the request
• How should it be delivered?  That is the tricky question isn't it.  This is where we all struggle to make headway, we keep stalling because we just aren't sure.  Why is the decision so difficult? Because users are very demanding. User keep the organization functioning.  If you hurt the user, you hurt the organization, which means you will hurt yourself (bye bye promotion, raise, or job).  
  

So how do you make the right decision? By realizing three simple truths:

1. One size does NOT fit all
2. Applications are unique
3. User's requirements change
   

Trying to align the users, applications and devices into a single, coherent desktop virtualization solution seems like a daunting task, but if you follow a few guidelines the process is doable.  For example, if a user comes to work with their own personal laptop, can I simply deliver them a hosted virtual desktop or will they need a local virtual desktop? What about users with a 3-4 year old PC?  What can I do with that setup? 

This is why I suggest you take a look at the following, recently published, white paper focusing on the deciding factors between VDI and Terminal Services-based solution. If you want a highlight of the article, it is that the whole debate is not even a debate at all. 

What do you think? 

Daniel - Lead Architect - Worldwide Consulting Solutions

Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/djfeller

Follow me in the Blogs: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/danielf
  

The recent announcement of the Terremark Cloud offering has raised significant attention especially because of the competitive pricing and EC2 like features of elastic capacity and hourly charges with no commitment. On the surface the Terremark entry price of $0.036 per hour seems very low compared to Amazon EC2 at $0.10 but it's worth picking a few examples to provide a more apples to apples comparison.

..
Not included in the comparison is the difference in storage costs which can be small or very significant depending on the circumstance. Amazon provides up to 160 GB of instance storage for a small image or 850 GB for a large included in the hourly cost. If you have only a small instance say 10GB that adds $ 2.50 to the monthly price at Terremark ( @ .25/GB ) however of you needed the 850 GB included in the Amazon Large image that would add $ 212 to the monthly Terremark costs. Also not included is bandwidth costs, however both charge the same $0.17 GB for data transfer out . ( Although Amazon charges $ 0.10/GB for data in vs Terremark $ 0.17 data in ).

Some the bigger differences will more likely depend on how the VMs are utilized. The numbers stated above assume a full month of 24x31 operation. With Amazon EC2 it's possible to save in S3 ( bundle in Amazon terms ) an instance and then shut down ( terminate ) the VM and the billing stops. With Terremark however although you can shut down the VM, the hourly charges do not stop. Only deleting the VM ends the billing, there does not appear to be an option of saving with the hourly charges turned off and allowing a new instance from the saved image to be started at a later time. This appears to be a big advantage for Amazon although I need to learn more about the Terremark offering to fully appreciate the capabilities.

Certainly economics is not the only factor in selecting a Cloud infrastructure provider. Vendor Lock-in and VM portablity often come up as concerns. Security is also a factor in regard to Cloud computing and this was a motivator for Amazons recent Virtual Private Cloud offering which provides a dedicated VPN connection from a customer premise to an isolated Cloud inside the Amazon infrastructure. I also have to admit I was impressed with a recent tour of the Terremark data center in Miami , this place was like a high tech Fort Knox when it came to security. The entire topic of Cloud security is worthy of specialized consideration not covered in this simple comparison.

Ease of use is another consideration that is worth evaluating. The Amazon Web Console is limited in function but easy to use plus includes access to many partner and community provided ( including Citrix C3 Lab ) templates that are prebuilt and ready to launch. In Amazon EC2 for example its now possible signup and launch your own XenApp server in as little a 15 minutes.

Terremark also provides a web base console that looks straight forward however I have not used it myself yet. Terramark does not provide the same portfolio of 3rd party templates however they do provide more granularity in the size of VMs and RAM plus they offer multiple versions of Windows Server.

As the options for Cloud Computing continue to expand the economic analysis of Cloud vs Premise will extend to Cloud vs Cloud, as Service Providers continue to provide dynamic cloud type offerings.

Cloud Economics 101 Part 1 - Premise vs Cloud vs Colo
Cloud Economics 101 Part 2 - Premise Plus Cloud
Cloud Economics 101 Part 3 - Amazon Reserved Pricing

http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

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

After my first blog, I received a few comments focused about user-installed applications and how there isn't much talk about them.  Faisal posted a comment that stated he was doing a pilot with XenDesktop.  Right now the biggest complaint is that users can't install their own "personal" applications  and this is one of the big questions regarding virtual desktops.  We had a few comments from others wanting to know the same thing (some really good posts). Well, here are my thoughts

With a physical desktop model, users could essentially do just about anything to their workstation.  How much of a good thing was this?  It makes the user happy, but what are the associated risks? 

1. Managing the endpoint became a nightmare. Hard to know what application conflicts will ensue with these unknown applications.
2. Introduction of viruses, malware, spyware, etc.  Many of the applications users install are freeware/shareware from untrustworthy sites.  If it is on the desktop, does it now have the freedom to inflict damage to the rest of the network?
3. Workstations became bloated and eventually slowed to a crawl resulting in IT having to completely rebuild the workstation.
   

Let's now move to the desktop virtualization model.  If we are using hosted virtual desktops, that typically means the desktop is now operating within the confines of the data center.  If you allow users to install applications onto their hosted virtual desktop, in my opinion, you might as well just open the doors to your data center and let anyone in because that is what you are doing if you let users install anything.  Doesn't that concern you?  If not, try telling this to a security person within the organization. After they recover from their stroke, they will tell you why this is not a good idea.

Now I'm not saying that we can't and shouldn't allow user-installed applications, I just want to make sure everyone understands the risks with doing such a thing.  With the 3rd party solutions that are out there (AppSense and Atlantis Computing were mentioned in the comments from a previous blog post), my question would be

1. How do we protect the data center from unknown apps.
2. How do we keep the virtual desktop optimized and supportable. I don't want manage more bloated desktops By the way, this makes a great case for a Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC or BYOPC) model.
   

I do just want to add one more point.  I've been using a hosted virtual desktop for about 2 months now with a shared disk, so any changes I make (application installs) go away after reboot.  Truthfully, I haven't had much of a problem.  I did need to download and install a few freeware tools to help me finish a project, but I only used those items for about 2 hrs.  The nice thing, in this instance, was after I rebooted, they were gone.  I don't plan on using them again. And if I do, I'll just re-install. Of course this isn't an application I need. 

So the final question is should we really allow user-installed applications to persist or should we have a process in place where IT can quickly virtualize and deliver these applications to the respective users through a standardized application delivery approach?   

Daniel - Lead Architect - Worldwide Consulting Solutions
Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/djfeller
Follow me in the Blogs: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/danielf
  

I don't care what anyone says, it's really not that hard to virtualize a desktop.  The hard part is delivering virtual apps and desktops to users in a way that's so fast... so smooth... so seamless, they don't even realize it's not running locally. Believe me, THAT is no easy task. Introduce a slight mouse delay or drop a few frames, and users go nuts.

Citrix has spent more than 20 years refining and improving user experience for virtual desktops and apps. During that time, we've faced every imaginable combination of users, devices, networks, drivers, peripherals and applications. And for each new challenge, we've gone back to the drawing board to develop, optimize and refine technology from the datacenter to the device to ensure a "high-definition experience," using the least bandwidth possible. When you do something for more than 20 years, you tend to become fanatically focused on the details. You also tend to get really good at it. That's exactly what the HDX Technology in our Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp product lines is all about.

But while I'll stand our HDX Technology up against anything in the industry, there is one class of applications that have admittedly been almost impossible to do well in a virtual desktop environment in the past. Apps with high-end 3D professional graphics such as Dassault Catia, Autodesk Inventor, ESRI ArcGIS or Siemens NX are so demanding, they have simply been impractical to do in most cases without running the app and all its data on a local PC or workstation. 

This is unfortunate since the manufacturing companies who are the heaviest users of these apps are often those who have the most to gain from the flexibility, security and cost saving benefits of virtualizing these apps and running them centrally.  Because many of their users are in offshore locations, intellectual property concerns are high.  And since offshoring partners tend to be a long distance away and can only work with data that stays securely in the customer datacenter, WAN performance is absolutely critical. When it comes to engineers and designers working with complex 3D models, you simply can't afford to settle for anything less than a true high-definition experience.

Earlier this week, we officially unveiled our new HDX 3D technology, breaking through this barrier for the first time ever. Many of those familiar with Citrix, however, know that we've been working on the technology needed to deliver these high-end graphical apps (and the enormous data models they use) for a few years now.  During that time, we've had several high profile projects underway to address various aspects of this problem, including Projects Pictor, Apollo and Prism... all of which you've probably heard about in blogs, events and user conferences.  So which of these efforts lead to the final breakthrough that is now HDX 3D? Here's the inside scoop on how it played out.

From early on, there were a number of technologies on the market designed to "remote" 3D graphical apps. At the same time, it was pretty clear from the beginning that none of them worked in a true WAN environment.  While this was obvious from our own testing, it was even more apparent by the number of customers who asked us for a solution even after purchasing other 3D graphical application remoting solutions (some quite expensive, I might add).  Issues like lag, overshoot and mouse delay were driving users crazy as they constantly chased their models around the screen and waited for skittish refreshes.  As I mentioned above, it's not hard to virtualize a desktop or an application - it's just hard to make it feel like it's local. 
While figuring out how to perform seamlessly over a WAN was obviously critical, we also found out that unlimited bandwidth LAN environments could be just as much of a challenge as tightly constrained WAN scenarios.  While virtualized 3D apps tend to perform better on the LAN, customers quickly discovered that they could easily consume up to 30 to 40 Mbps of bandwidth on average. 

Clearly this too was a non-starter. In many ways it reminded me of when I bought my last car. After all the papers were signed, the salesperson walked me through all the buttons and dials, and casually slid into the conversation the fact that the car took only the most expensive grade of fuel. Not the kind of surprise you want to find out about after-the-fact.

Probably the best news of all from a customer perspective is that HDX 3D is a built-in feature of Citrix XenDesktop Advanced, Enterprise and Platinum editions at no additional charge.  It runs on a dedicated blade or server with a dedicated GPU, but is managed alongside regular XenDesktop users - providing a single infrastructure that serves everyone.  

It's pretty easy to sum it all up:  HDX 3D for does the same thing for 3D graphical applications as the rest of our HDX technologies do for regular applications.  At the end of the day, it all boils down to user experience and cost.  You can talk all day about the flexibility and security benefits of centrally managed desktops, but if users have a bad experience... or if you blow out your network costs in the process, you haven't solved the problem. Luckily with HDX you have both.  And with our new HDX 3D technology, we've finally broken this barrier for the most demanding professional graphics apps in the industry.

But now for the REAL question on the mind of all you Citrix fans who have been following us on this journey... "Which of those graphics acceleration projects we heard so much about became HDX 3D?" Was it Project Pictor? Or Project Apollo? Or maybe the more recent Project Prism?" Or were these all really just the same thing under different names to keep people guessing?

The answer is actually pretty simple. Project Pictor, our first major investment in this area, was based entirely on a XenApp architecture.  Project Apollo, a parallel effort that started a bit later, set out to accomplish the same goals on a XenDesktop based architecture.  As we worked through these two projects, it became clear that both had strengths and weaknesses.  At the end of the day, we decided to combine the strengths of both projects under a new initiative dubbed Project Prism. It is this final combined effort that will debut later this month as the new HDX 3D feature of XenDesktop. 

I have personally tested all of the other solutions in the market today and can assure you that XenDesktop with HDX 3D provides the best user experience over the WAN hands down... AND uses dramatically less bandwidth over the LAN. Getting there was no easy task, but I can promise you that taking the time to get it right was well worth the journey.

What's new in desktop virtualization?  Well, lots of announcements from different vendors trying to peddle their wares, but I haven't seen or read anything very thought provoking. 
<rant> (Man, I'm totally geeking out here)

I'm trying to keep abreast of the latest happenings in the desktop virtualization space from a design and architecture perpsective, but honestly, there isn't much.  There are tons of solutions out there, some better than others. There are many point solutions out there that solve 1 issue for desktop virtualization.  Heck, even Brian Madden commented about the one-hit wonders in a recent blog. 

I'm also on twitter (@djfeller) and I try to follow VDI/Desktop Virtualization, I have Google Reader alerts setup (You can follow my shared items but there isn't much I've found useful). What do I typically see? One post about a new feature, then I see it retweeted a zillion times (Ok, I'm exaggerating a little, but still).  I see articles about why companies aren't doing the VDI/Desktop Virtualization thing yet.  Why? It's not because there aren't solutions. There are. They might not solve every use case, but they can solve some for some users. So what's the holdup?   No one is showing them how to get it done. 

It's time for a REAL discussion. Let's start focusing on designing a desktop virtualization solution.

</rant>

I'm not going to lie to you and tell you desktop virtualization is easy. It won't be a walk in the park unless your park is full of mountains, rivers, mosquitoes, coyotes, wolfs and bears.  So, why would we attempt to do something like this? Because the alternative is even worse. With so many different user requirements you can quickly see how the current distributed desktop environment is a disaster waiting to happen (or already happened over and over again).

But let's not dwell on the ugliness of the current model. Let's instead focus on designing a better solution.  Let's start talking about design, and my oh my there is a lot to talk about, which is why I'm about to start a blog series on designing a desktop virtualization solution with XenDesktop.  I plan to focus on the main design decision areas and giving you my thoughts and recommendations based on what I've seen so far. I'm positive many of you have seen different things, which I encourage you to comment so we all can learn. 

This should be a great series and I can't wait to hear some of your comments.  (BTW, I got a lot of great comments for all of you during our Provisioning Services for XenApp blog series and hope to get the same level of feedback.)

Daniel - Lead Architect - Worldwide Consulting Solutions
Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/djfeller
Follow me in the Blogs: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/danielf
  

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.

We are pleased to announce that Citrix XenDesktop and HDX technology is powering the new Smart Business Desktop on the IBM cloud, a public cloud service that delivers desktops for office based workers. This new service enables small to medium businesses to be able to virtualize desktop computing resources, and provide a logical, rather than a physical method of access to the entire Windows desktop experience, including OS, apps, and data - with all the storage and computing services hosted in the public cloud. The service requires no up-front capital making it easier for small to mid-size businesses to adopt virtual desktops.
 
One of the keys to successfully deliver virtual desktops from a public cloud is to ensure that the experience for end users remains unchanged or is better than their physical PCs. Remember, all users in this environment will be accessing their desktop over WAN. This is where Citrix's HDX technologies come into play for IBM Cloud. HDX includes a set of technologies designed to enable a high definition user experience for virtual desktops, and is a key component for IBM public cloud services for virtual desktops. Virtual desktop users from IBM cloud services will now be able to access their desktop from any device in any location and still get uncompromised experience with any kind of content, including rich media. Learn more about Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix HDX.
 
Citrix and IBM Global Technology Services have worked closely together for many years. IBM has been successfully managing XenApp implementation for delivering apps to hundreds of thousands of users for customers worldwide. Centralization and optimization have been the joint focus for Citrix and IBM and we have hundreds of successful customer implementations (see a great example on ATU in Germany through the video at  www.citrix.com/ibm). Citrix XenDesktop and HDX technology will continue to be key parts of IBM Global Technology Services offerings for private clouds within larger enterprise customers. The private cloud offerings now include the entire Citrix desktop virtualization product portfolio - i.e. XenDesktop, XenApp, Netscaler, Branch Repeater and the Citrix Access Gateway.
 
IBM has developed hundreds of consultants with skills that span the entire Citrix desktop virtualization portfolio, making it easier for both large and small businesses to adopt Citrix XenDesktop and HDX technology for delivering virtual desktops to their users anywhere.
For more information about IBM Smart Business Desktop on the IBM Cloud, visit http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offering/bcrs/a1026737.

Raj Dhingra

General Manager, XenDesktop Product Group