BrianMadden.com

A Quick Glance to Server App-V and Sequencing Server Applications

Thincomputing.net — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:28:00 GMT

Server App-V is one of those things that you know is coming but you might not be sure exactly what to think of it. This article helps! Taking a quick approach, Server App-V is a technology that enables the virtualization of server applications, removing Read More......(read more)

What should companies do before they buy an Ad to run during a Super Bowl game?

Citrix Blogs — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:18:24 GMT

There were lots of fun and cute commercials during the super bowl game last weekend. With my friends from all kinds of IT companies all gather it is about watching the commercials for the funniest, dorkiest, etc. Some Ads were more memorable than others Read More......(read more)

Introduction to Storage and How it is Applied in the Virtual World, a video from BriForum 2011

BriForum Video — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT

(this was originally posted in August, 2011)

Presented by: Joe Shonk

(Please visit the site to view this media)

In Joe Shonk’s many virtual desktop and application journeys over the last few years, a reoccurring theme has continued to persist: storage. Specifically, the lack of understanding of how storage works and what kind of impact it has in a virtual environment. In this session, attendees will learn: storage terminology and basics; the difference between block-level storage and file-level storage; the ways hypervisors attach to and utilize storage; how virtual desktops and application servers utilize storage; real-world examples on how to size and choose what kind of storage you need and how to best configure it; and storage best practices and why they matter.

Click to browse all of the BriForum 2011 videos.

Ready, Steady, Transform!

Citrix Blogs — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:59:15 GMT

If you're just getting into or struggling with completing a desktop transformation, or feel exposed with too much “shelfware” around, Lakeside Software's Virtual Desktop Assessment tool for Citrix may be just what the doctor ordered. Oh, and it's Read More......(read more)

Antivirus Recommendations for VMware View Virtual Desktop Environments

VMware End-User Computing Blog — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:08:02 GMT

By Tina de Benedictis, Technical Marketing Manager, End User Computing Are you wondering how to best protect against viruses and other malware in a VMware View virtual desktop environment? We have recently updated the white paper on this topic: Antivirus Read More......(read more)

How to Google and to Google for Citrix stuff

Thomas Koetzing - SBC specialist — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:13:05 GMT

How do you Google? Really?? I read quite often that I searched for hours, even days, and couldn't find anything when it took me only seconds or minutes; of course not always. The Google Basics Check out the picture about some options you have to use Read More......(read more)

Citrix Consulting Best Practice: Phase 2 Analysis -understanding your existing IT infrastructure

Citrix Blogs — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:41:59 GMT

The next Citrix Consulting Best Practice webinar is on Thursday 9th February at 3pm GTM. Here’s the registration link. The focus is on the analysis phase of a desktop virtualisation project. So, this webinar looks at the tools and techniques we Read More......(read more)

A Complete Guide to SQL 2008 App-V Database Migration

The Microsoft Application Virtualization Blog — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:59:24 GMT

Hi everyone, John Behneman here. The purpose of this article is to outline the steps necessary to migrate or move a Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) Database from one SQL server 200X to SQL server 2008 R2. This article assumes that the Read More......(read more)

News of 8 February 2012

VanBragt.Net SBC Centre & Virtualization Centre — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:10:28 GMT

XenClient Disable Local VM creation, VDI Smackdown 1.3, ActiveSetup Stub path. Read More......(read more)

XenDesktop oder VDI-in-a-Box? Welche Lösung ist die Richtige?

Citrix Blogs — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:17:26 GMT

Wenn Sie anfangen über die Einführung von Desktop-Virtualisierung nachzudenken, dann haben Sie mit Citrix XenDesktop und Citrix VDI-in-a-Box mittlerweile zwei ausgezeichnete Optionen. Aber welche Lösung ist die Richtige für Sie? Ist es eine Frage der Read More......(read more)

vWorkspace 7.5 Feature Spotlight: vWorkspace Desktop Clouds

Quest Communities : Blog List - vWorkspace — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:27:58 GMT

In the previous feature spotlights we talked about the new vWorkspace 7.5 Hyper-V Catalyst Components and its key technologies such as HyperCache and HyperDeploy . We also talked about our direct Hyper-V integration . The feature we are going to be discussing Read More......(read more)

Free tool: Launch Time Analyze

Thincomputing.net — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:25:00 GMT

LaunchTimeAnalyzeis a tool to measure Perceived Performance, a measurement of the performance of systems as perceived by the end-user by the industry veteran, Tim Mangan. The purpose of this tool is to act as an automated command launcher, which will Read More......(read more)

Citrix Knowledge Center Top 10 – January 2012

Citrix Blogs — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:55:17 GMT

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. Find below the Citrix Read More......(read more)

Devon IT introduces DeTOS 7.1

Thincomputing.net — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:33:00 GMT

Devon IT recently released DeTOS 7.1., the latest version of its Devon Terminal Operating System (DeTOS). DeTOS 7.1 features include: Devon Zero Client Feature – Enables thin clients to operate in a zero configuration mode through DNS environments Read More......(read more)

vWorkspace 7.5 Feature Spotlight: Hyper-V Catalyst Components – HyperCache

Thincomputing.net — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:23:00 GMT

This article digs a little bit deeper into the vWorkspace Hyper-V Catalyst Components (HCC), specifically HyperCache. The Hyper-V Catalyst Components are a collection of technologies that add value to the Hyper-V platform to make it the best platform Read More......(read more)

Seavus Project Viewer™ certified as Citrix Ready

Citrix Blogs — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:03:49 GMT

The latest version of Seavus Project Viewer v6.6 is fully tested and approved as Citrix Ready on XenApp 6.0 and 6.5. With a XenApp deployment, it becomes easy to have Seavus Project Viewer™ and the state of the application follow the user, rather than Read More......(read more)

Control Mobile Features

Citrix Blogs — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:11:19 GMT

Installing the Mobility Pack for XenApp adds new Citrix User Configuration Policy settings to control the Mobility Pack features. Under ICA > Mobile Experience: Automatic keyboard display Launch touch-optimized desktop Remote the combo box Under ICA Read More......(read more)

Oracle VDI gets the Geek Week treatment...finally!

Gabe Knuth — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:12:00 GMT

It's been a while since we had a "Sun Ray = the Best Way" war on BrianMadden.com, but our most tenured readers will remember the small but vocal group of supporters that Sun Ray terminals and Sun/Oracle VDI have. The truth is, when it was a Sun solution, it only rarely made it to the top of our minds. There was little exposure on our part, and little marketing on Sun's part. Now that Oracle is running the show, we've seen changes on both fronts, and we finally reached out to Oracle to get a demonstration (and explanation), Geek Week style.

If you don't remember Geek Week, it's a time in March/April of 2010 when we profiled a single VDI solution each day, going from bare metal at 8:00 AM all the way to provisioning desktops and user experience testing, sometimes well into the night. We had a lot of fun, but we didn't get to Oracle VDI because we let the community decide which solutions we should test. For the original Geek Week, we had VMware, Citrix, Quest, Microsoft, and Virtual Bridges.

We tried to keep the Geek Week spirit alive during our day with Oracle, and we were able to preserve some of the aspects of it. We fell a bit short on the user experience testing because our Apposite WAN emulator didn't appear to get along with the ALP protocol that Sun Ray clients use, so we just did LAN testing. The rest of the day, though, went according to plan, and really helped us to understand the Oracle platform (I think. If I get it wrong, I'm sure the fanatics will let me know in the comments, which I encourage :). We had John Renko at our offices in San Francisco driving the demo for us, answering all of our crazy questions.

With regards to the videos, we tried to be brief with them this time around, and not show the configuration screens and all. We've limited it to two videos, with the whiteboard video coming in under twenty minutes, and the user experience video coming in under ten minutes.

To the whiteboard!

Before we started, we had John explain to us exactly what we would be setting up, along with a quick walkthrough of our demo environment. The best way to get this information is to watch the video. The first part is a walkthrough, and the whiteboard explanation starts 3:40.

Basically, the Oracle VDI solution entails these components:

Solaris - The OS on which the rest of this stuff runs. Installation was easy, and while it may not be Windows, it shouldn't be a showstopper. Installing software is installing software.
VDI Core - Handles administration, pool configuration, cloning, provisioning, Sun Ray Server, brokering, and so on. It runs as a service on the Solaris box, and there would typically be many of these for redundancy/scalability. Typical environments have one VDI Core per 500 sessions. In the video, John talks a bit about density, but keep in mind those numbers are in a vacuum.
MySQL database - used as the data store
Hypervisor - They use VirtualBox, of course. They also support Hyper-V and ESX, but you lose some of the Oracle-only features like vRDP, which we'll get into later.
Storage - In our case this was on the lab box as a volume formatted with the ZFS filesystem. Typically this would be running on an Oracle Unified Storage Appliance. ZFS is required, so you're locked to Oracle for the time being.
Sun Ray thin clients - Pretty much the same zero client we've been hearing about for years. They have new form factors, all in ones, and so on, but by and large it's the same old thing.
Oracle Virtual Desktop Client - OVDC is the software client for use on PCs, Macs, iPads, and so on.
ALP Protocol - This is the remote protocol that the Oracle system uses to communicate between the VDI Core (specifically the Sun Ray Server).

The connection workflow as described in the video, works like this:

The client (Sun Ray or OVDC) makes a connection to the VDI Core via the ALP protocol.
The VDI Core, which is aware of all the sessions and hosts, communicates with the hypervisor.
The VDI Core then communicates with via the vRDP protocol to the hypervisor in the case of VirtualBox, or waits for the machine to boot and uses MS RDP to communicate with the VMs in the case of Hyper-V or ESX.
The VDI Core translates that vRDP or MS RDP data into ALP and passes it down to the client.

vRDP runs out of band, similar to SPICE, which enables you to watch machines boot. While it's based on RDP, it's not 100% RDP compliant. Still, there are things like the out-of-band hypervisor tie in, some graphics enhancements, and some multimedia redirection that they can do with vRDP and not RDP. Of course, you can also use MS RDP to connect to VMs running on VirtualBox, but that's a more traditional solution that relies on the Remote Desktop service in the VM. Oracle recently released a XenDesktop connector, as well, which uses MS RDP between the VDI core and the XenDesktop host, but not HDX.

Preparing and provisioning desktops

We're skipping some of the more mundane sections from Geek Week, and part of that is the installation of all the components. The fact of the matter is that it's not that big of a deal, and you don't need any special knowledge to pull it off, regardless of the fact that it all runs on Solaris. The process, roughly, goes:

Install Solaris
Configure ZFS volume (if not already done)
Install VDI Core
Create/import desktops
Prep desktops
Provision desktops

The interesting bits there are the preparation of the desktops and the provisioning, but even those are straightforward. For our test, we had base Windows 7 VM's already created in VirtualBox, and importing them into the VDI core was no big deal. Preparing them amounts to making the normal tweaks, and running their FastPrep, which is like all the other <adjective>Prep tools out there. It prepares the machine for cloning much faster than SysPrep because it leaves out the SID replacement. It also installs the tools package, joins it to the domain, and makes it available to the VDI core for pool configurations when it's done.

Oracle VDI supports three types of pools:

Dynamic Pools (non-persistent, everything is wiped at logoff)
Growing Pool (non-persistent OS, but with linked clones so user state persists)
Manual Pool (persistent, personal VMs)

In terms of guest OS support, Oracle VDI supports Windows from Windows 7 back to 2000, although you can install pretty much anything in VirtualBox and have it work. I've seen demos with Windows 3.1 and DOS. Linux, Solaris, Android...you name it, it all works. It can also broker connections to Terminal Servers (RDSH). The reason for this is the integration between the ALP, the VDI Core, vRDP, and VirtualBox. There's essentially an extra layer in between, and that layer gives much more flexibility than what we're used to seeing with the more typical desktop virtualization solutions.

This is the same diagram as above, just here so you don't have to scroll.

There are some limitations that this brings in, of course. Translating from native protocols to something else negates any enhancements built into the native protocol. In a way, this is sort of like how HTML5 clients use a gateway service to interact with the host via RDP (or whatever protocol the host uses), then re-encodes that into a text stream for the browser to decode and render. In this case we're not changing the data to text, but we are re-encoding it.

The reason for this architecture has nothing to do with VDI, though. ALP, or Appliance Link Protocol, has been around since the late 1990's as the protocol used by Sun Ray terminals. In fact, when you boot up a Sun Ray, the logon screen that you eventually see is actually being sent via ALP from the Sun Ray Server. In our case, the VDI Core was fulfilling the role of the Sun Ray Server, but Sun Rays are a thin client solution unto themselves. In fact, the Sun Ray Server has a built in RDP client so that it can connect terminals (via ALP) to RDP sessions running on Windows boxes...all without Oracle VDI or VirtualBox.

It seems to me that the VDI portion is more or less done because they can do it, and is more or less an amalgam of all the different things that Sun/Oracle could already do. They had the thin clients, they had the hypervisor, the hardware, the storage, and the base OS. The real power, apparently, is in the Sun Rays.

The devices themselves are fairly unremarkable (it's the management that really shines). They're a zero client, and I'll acknowledge that they are the first of the breed. Oddly enough, though, they still run a firmware. We know this because it was one of the first things we saw on the day Oracle came to visit. So, just because something is zero doesn't mean it doesn't have firmware, it just doesn't have any intelligence besides, "seek server...find server...do what server says."

What warrants a deeper look someday, though, is the Sun Ray Server component, and about how to use these devices. We saw a few gee whiz features that, unfortunately, didn't make for very good video (although we tried). Being able to group terminals and provision single or multiple desktops to them as if they were one box, for instance, is pretty neat, although probably not used en masse (this is called a Multi-Headed Group, which you can read more about in the Sun Ray Server Admin Guide). I really want to like Sun Rays, and the nerd in me is behind them, although I'm not sure, based on the user experience testing, that I can completely get behind the whole ALP + translated-other-protocol thing yet.

The User Experience

Admittedly, this test is incomplete. We were only able to test the LAN scenario because we didn't trust the way our Apposite box was performing. We believe it has something to do with the way ALP and the Apposite handle Path MTU Discovery, but were unable to come up with a solution that would allow us to reliably test the WAN scenarios. This is another thing that we'll revisit when the next version of Oracle VDI comes out, perhaps on site at Oracle using their Shunra.

We did, however, get a good LAN test, and the best way to get a feel for ALP aside from using it is to watch the video.

I will say that experience looks fine most of the time, but it doesn't "feel" as nice as some of the other protocols out there. I think this is because the system handles acceleration is pretty complex with two protocols in the mix. Any acceleration native to the connection between the Sun Ray Server (or VDI Core) and the virtual desktop has to be translated or passed through to the client. This results in a lot of behind the scenes work going on, and culminates in that not-quite-normal feel on the user side.

To look at how Oracle handles acceleration, there's a few terms to know ahead of time:

RCA - Rapidly Changing Area - The system detects RCAs at the hypervisor with vRDP, where it can automatically transcode those areas of the screen to MJPEG.
Sun Ray Windows Connector - This is basically the built-in RDP Client that the Sun Ray Server uses to talk in MS RDP to Windows. The Windows Connector can identify RDP 6 bitmap acceleration and convert that to MJPEG, which is then sent to the client as an RCA.
MS RDP - Microsoft RDP, which we talked about earlier
vRDP- Oracle's RDP implementation at the hypervisor level. As discussed before, this is based on MS RDP, but is something like RDP 6.1 compliant, not RDP 7. I could be off a version there.

This is complex stuff, so I hope I get it right. You should check the comments and look for Craig Bender's notes to make sure I didn't completely screw this up :)

Multimedia and Flash Acceleration

In general, if you choose to use vRDP as your protocol for any virtual desktop (this is between the virtual desktop and the Sun Ray Server, because the client > Sun Ray Server is always ALP) and an RCA is detected by the hypervisor, this motion is converted to a Motion JPEG and is sent directly to the client (not translated by the Sun Ray Server or VDI Core). The Sun Ray client has a MJPEG decoder built into it, which makes this more efficient than trying to remote the moving areas. On the user side, it's noticeable, but not awful.

If you choose to use MS RDP on Windows XP/2003 (so, RDP v5.2), Flash is handled by a feature called SunFlash when the Flash element is accessed in IE. If it's accessed through anything else, it will simply be remoted like anything else. For VC-1 (Windows Media's codec), H.264, and MPEG2 videos played in Windows Media Player, the video data is redirected to the client where it is decoded locally. The client can be a Sun Ray or the OVDC software client.

If you choose to use MS RDP on Windows 7/2008 R2 (so, RDP 7), it leverages Microsoft's RCA-like solution (which they call "enhanced bitmap acceleration." You can read more here) to know what to accelerate. Essentially, if the Sun Ray Server sees RDP accelerating video, it grabs it, converts it to MJPEG, and sends it to the client.

I asked why the fancy codec detection didn't exist in Windows 7/2008 R2, and the answer was "When's the last time you used WMP?" Touché. They said this acceleration was written before Flash was the dominant video delivery method. Oracle is also aware that this means that the experience isn't optimal, which you can see in the video, and that while they can't say what's coming, it's safe to assume something is coming :)

Wrap-up

The protocol transcoding, while complex and a bit awkward feeling right now, is still adequate for business use today. I'm hopeful that there will be some marked improvements in the future when it comes to acceleration because the competition is getting incredibly stiff. RemoteFX, HDX, PCoIP, EOP, etc... feel a bit further ahead of the pack when you're actually using them. As this technology segment grows, we have a lower threshold of pain when it comes to the user experience. Based on the many conversations I've had with Oracle in the past few weeks, I think they get that, so I'm optimistic about future changes and simplifications.

Admittedly, I didn't get to see it in a WAN scenario, but Oracle seems to be pretty proud of the way it performs. When we get a chance to do it, we'll be sure to add to the user experience video shot here. I really want to get a look the Sun Ray Server next time we connect, even more than the Oracle VDI pieces, I think.

It would be interesting to see a comparison of the backend technology that makes up Oracle VDI, so if anyone reading this feels like doing that, let me know what you come up with (or have come up with, if you've done it already). I'd be curious to compare storage performance and hypervisor performance with others. Of course, I'd also love to see Benny Tritsch and Shawn Bass add this to their already amazing session called "VDI Remoting Protocols Turned Inside Out," which, if you haven't seen it, is awesome (and you can watch it right now!)

Oracle wanted to show pre-release code, which we wouldn't have been able to talk about, so we decided to show what is available today. We'll be catching up with Oracle again when they release the next version, so if you have any questions or things you'd like to see, let us know in the comments. We'll also plan on doing a more hands-on review to go into some more options.

If you want to take a look yourself, you can probably stand up a test environment in a day or so with no Solaris knowledge whatsoever. If you happen to have Windows 7 VMs in VirtualBox already, you can get it set up even faster. If you're already an Oracle customer, you can download version 3.3.2 today by visiting http://support.oracle.com and downloading the appropriate patch. If you're not a customer, you can download version 3.3.0 by visiting http://edelivery.oracle.com.

For more information and to follow Oracle VDI and Sun Ray solutions, follow @ORCL_Virtualize on twitter and check out their Virtualization and ThinkThin blogs.

Oracle VDI Testing: The user experience

Gabe Knuth — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:01:00 GMT

Oracle came to our offices in mid-January for a day-long demo of Oracle VDI and Sun Ray terminals. This video is of the user experience on the LAN. We tried to emulate the WAN similar to how we did it in Geek Week in 2010, but the Apposite Linktropy 4500 didn't agree with our setup. Perhaps it was overkill, or perhaps there's an issue with the way the WAN emulation (and pass through when not emulating) works with the ALP protocol, but we didn't trust what we were seeing, so we stuck with the LAN testing only.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Oracle VDI Testing: Lab tour and whiteboard explanation

Gabe Knuth — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:01:00 GMT

Oracle came to our offices in mid-January for a day-long demo of Oracle VDI and Sun Ray terminals. This video is the whiteboard explanation of the components and technology involved in our lab and in a typical Oracle VDI solution.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

VDI Smackdown; Head-to-head analysis of Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix VDI in a Box (Kaviza), Microsoft RemoteFX, Quest vWorkspace and VMware View - UPDATE February 2012

Ruben Spruijt — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Are you looking for an independent overview of the Server Hosted Desktop Virtualization (VDI) solutions and curious about the different features- and functions each Desktop Virtualization vendor is offering!? Then this is the whitepaper you must definitely read. In the current market there is an increasing demand for unbiased information about Desktop Virtualization solutions.

This white paper is focused on solutions that are anticipated to have an important role in Application and Desktop Virtualization. An overview of available features of each solution has been created to better understand each solutions capability. The solutions included in the feature matrix are: Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, Citrix VDI in a Box 5.0 (Kaviza), Microsoft VDI with RemoteFX, Quest vWorkspace 7.5 and VMware View 5.0; Compared to the previous VDI Smackdown, more than 1010 new and updated features are included in this whitepaper.

The overall goal of the white paper is share information about:

Application and Desktop Delivery Solutions
Explain the different Desktop Virtualization concepts
Explain the pros and cons of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
Describe the different Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) vendors and solutions
Compare the features of the various VDI solutions

Making applications available to the end-user, regardless of the technology being used, is the ultimate strategic objective of an Advanced IT infrastructure. The Virtual Desktop (vDesktop) is an essential component in the range of application and desktop delivery solutions and in essence, provides the following functions:

Flexibility: Detach the vDesktop from the endpoint; Several vDesktops next to one another
Access: vDesktop works independently of location, endpoint and network; Uniform workstation
Security: Server Hosted – VDI; data in the computing center
Freedom: Every user has their own desktop with administrator access when needed;
Management: Hardware-independent ‘image’
Legacy: It is simple to offer legacy applications on a state-of-the-art platform
Sustainability: Power Management, handling the necessary resources in an efficient manner

The growing reality of the transition to a dynamic datacenter is causing many IT organizations to re-evaluate traditional IT operations, support, and management methods. Virtualizing the Desktop is a reasonable piece to support growing numbers of unmanaged desktops, external users, and other use-case scenarios. Managing the (virtualized) Desktop is an essential component in the complete stack. It’s important to have a Vision and Strategy around Application and Desktop Delivery. Designing, building, managing and maintaining the vDesktop infrastructure using the right Technologies, corresponding vendors and products is an important last step. We see many organizations primarily focusing on features, products and vendors and lacking a clear and profound overall vision and strategy.

This approach isn’t good or bad, it just depends on what the goal of the organization is. When the organization needs a point solution, the various vendors and corresponding products can help to solve this issue and fillin the demands. When the organization is investigating possibilities, advantages, use cases and functionality of the vNext “Optimized desktop”, a profound vision and strategy should be in place. The following discussions and corresponding topics should be part of the vDesktop strategy.

The following themes should be part of the vDesktop strategy:

What are the use-cases? And does the usecase require Desktop Virtualization?
VD-why, what do I want to achieve?, lowering TCO?, business enabler, overall cost of ownership and cost reducer?
What is the Business-case? What do you expect as a ROI?
Are you investigating a tactical (point)-or strategic solution? What do you want to solve?
Is work shifting a key driver for the Optimized Desktop? How are the roaming/flexible and mobile users within the organization facilitated? How do you take care of Application and Desktop Delivery when the user has different Access scenarios?
How do you deliver applications to users in a Bring Your Own (BYO) or Choose Your Own (CYO) scenario?
What’s your desktop delivery and migration strategy for Windows 7 and later Windows8?
What’s the user experience using Multimedia, NextGen, Video/Voice, 2D/3D applications? What do users expect from the vDesktop?
Is Unified Communications and VoIP integration with VDI needed? Is it supported by the VDI and UC-vendor? Are you able to design and implement this scenario?!
What endpoints do we support and facilitate and what is the role of these devices in the end-user experience?
Secure Access and Secure networking ; SASN how do users, with a variety of endpoints (rich, thin or zero clients and mobile devices) connect to the vDesktop?!
What is the impact of Secure Access and Secure Networking solutions on mobile devices while connecting to the vDesktop? What is the user experience with these solutions?
Do we need to manage the endpoints?
Does the VDI solution needs a client/agent component on the endpoint? Is there a supported agent for the OS/endpoint? What is the User Experience with this agent? What is the feature and future roadmap of these agents? Is agentless via HTML(5) included and important?
Is image deployment and management part of the (virtual) Desktop Strategy? What is the role of User Environment Management in this strategy ?
How do we design, build and maintain the user’s profile and his ‘workspace’?
Do we need a vMachine based image management solution?
How do we design, build and maintain the (golden) Image(s)?
Do you need context awareness? Based on user/role, device, location and various settings is access to application resources controlled and enforced when needed?
How are Windows applications delivered within the vDesktop? Unattended or manual Installation, Application Virtualization or the applications are part of the (golden) image? What is the strategy?
Do you want to integrate and run local applications in the centralized desktop environment and present centralized and local applications in one single interface to the end-users?
Does the end-user needs the ability to install and update applications? Is User Installed Applications functionality needed? Does the user have the correct privileges to install or update software?
What is the performance and storage impact of Application Virtualization in combination with VDI? Is this important from a business-case or technology perspective?
Do you need local or centralized storage?
What is the impact on storage and how does it affect the business case?
Do we focus on stateless (non-persistent) and/or stateful (persistent) images? What is, for example, the impact on storage, manageability, security, legal and business-case?
What is the impact of client management solutions in a stateless VDI scenario? Is it supported?
Windows 7 or Windows XP as core vDesktop OS platform? x64 or x86?
How does the solution scale? What do we need from a scalability point of view?
How do we size the vDesktop and corresponding infrastructure and what are the best-practices for optimizing the vDesktop? http://www.virtualrealitycheck.net/
What is the performance and bandwidth impact on the network infrastructure; LAN, WAN, WLAN
Licensing; Operating System, Client Access Licenses and (Business) Applications
Do we need to backup (and restore) the vDesktops?
Is Antivirus needed? Inside the VM or as service module on the Hypervisor? What is the performance impact of Antivirus?
What is your site topology? Multi-site, multiple datacenters?
Is the VDI solution as a whole highly available? Is that built-in or are additional planning and solutions needed to get high availability? Is a highly available vDesktop needed?
Is the IT organization mature enough to support and maintain the new solution? What is the knowledge and skill-set of the IT-department? What subject matter experts are needed to get and keep the VDI solution up and running in production environment? Is this expertise available? Who has overview of the complete VDI solution stack?
Is the VDI deployment targeted for Small, Medium or Enterprise environment? Is the solution easy to deploy in SMB scenarios?
Is the VDI vendor a financially healthy organization? Is this important in evaluation of the vendor?
Is there a huge ecosystem with partners, consultancy, training and education around the VDI solution? Is this important for you?
Is separation of Operating System - Application - and User Preferences inside and outside the vDesktop part of the overall strategy?

Bottom Line: What’s your current Desktop strategy?!

Get a head start! Download our complete, in-depth, and independent whitepaper "Head-to-head analysis of Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, Citrix VDI in a Box (Kaviza) 5.0, Microsoft VDI with RemoteFX, Quest vWorkspace 7.5 and VMware View 5.0". We did our best to be truthful and accurate in investigating and writing down the different features. When you see the need for improvements or fixes, please let us know rsp@pqr.nl or www.twitter.com/rspruijt

EdgeSight Under The Hood, a video from BriForum 2011

BriForum Video — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT

(this was originally posted in August, 2011)

Presented by: John Smith

(Please visit the site to view this media)

There’s a ton of data in EdgeSight—so much so that in the absence of a crystal ball, Citrix will never be able to write a canned report for every possible metric someone may need. This session will show you how to leverage the EdgeSight data model from beneath the GUI, including how to open up SQL Query analyzer and write the query yourself. John will also show you how to convert the queries from ad hoc results as well as discuss additional queries for both XenApp and VDI. You’ll also walk away knowing how to actually put the data into an RDL report and present it as a dashboard.

Click to browse all of the BriForum 2011 videos.

Mobile apps that work for the enterprise – CoreMobile

Citrix Blogs — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:03:30 GMT

Last night’s IIT Alumni event at Google was a coming-out party for the Core Mobile technology – one-touch instant access to the most relevant information. In large part, the company is the culmination of two previous IIT events exploring how the Read More......(read more)

Last Chance To Register!

Citrix Blogs — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:33:47 GMT

Don’t miss this Technical Live Webinar tomorrow at 10 AM PT/ 1 PM ET! Register today and attend this 45-minute webinar featuring guest speaker Morgan Gerhart, Sr. Director of Product at Citrix Systems Networking & Cloud. He will be presenting Read More......(read more)

XenClient Best Practices Series – Disable Local VM Creation

Citrix Blogs — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:56:16 GMT

With a click of the mouse, XenClient administrators can set policies in the Synchronizer to control what users are allowed to do. There are also commands that can be run on the client to control users in other ways. Admins may want to stop users from Read More......(read more)