Brian Madden TV

Forums not fast enough for free desktop virtualization support? Check out CitrixIRC for free, live support.

2011-07-11T04:01:00Z

You know IRC, right? The IRC. The one you used to access via FreeNet in 1990, Prodigy in 1992, and AOL (we all know you had it) in the 1995? As it turns out, people still use it regularly, and for good instead of evil. One such "good" use is CitrixIRC, an IRC server set up by Ryan Gallier to provide realtime, group-driven support for desktop virtualization administrators (not just Citrix, as the name might imply). I had a chance to interview Ryan recently, and here's what he had to say:

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To try out CitrixIRC yourself, you don't need anything more than a browser. Just browse to http://join.citrixirc.com, which gets you into the chat room via an IRC web client. You don't even need to sign up for an account.

Ryan wanted me to point out some of the CitrixIRC All-Stars that help provide great support and around-the-clock coverage:

Blake Burgess (gladier)
Kirill Davydychev (kdavy)
Jarian Gibson (JarianGibson)
Shane Kleinert (makson)
Patrick Reynolds (splatone)

Ryan wasn't joking about around-the-clock, either. As I write this at 10:30 Eastern on Sunday night, there's at least a handful of live people in the channel just waiting to be of assistance! So, thanks to Ryan, and to Blake, Kirill, Jarian, Shane, Patrick, and everyone else that participates on CitrixIRC for a great service!

Brian Madden TV #37 - Citrix Synergy 2011 wrap-up

2011-06-01T09:26:00Z

Brian and Gabe were at Citrix Synergy 2011 in San Francisco last week. While we initially thought it would be a boring show, there were actually several interesting announcements. Here's a rundown from the Expo Hall floor of what Brian and Gabe thought was the most important:

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And in case you missed them, here's a complete list of all the videos, interviews, and demos that we recorded during Synergy last week:

Citrix XenClient 2
Citrix XenClient XT
Citrix NetScaler Cloud Bridge
Citrix HDX 3D Pro
Citrix XenApp future features (XenApp 7?)
Citrix HDX connecting *to* a Mac OS X remote desktops
Kaviza (the company that Citrix bought last week)
Wyse Xenith Pro
Wyse T50 (super cheap ARM-based thin client)
Wyse Z-class thin clients
Datacore SANsymphony-V

And if you missed it, here's our live blog and commentary of the opening keynote. Also, one of my breakout sessions called "The state of the desktop virtualization industry for 2011" was recorded, and that video is now online.

Brian Madden TV #36 - Android thin clients, Xangati, and the "real" reasons people use desktop virtualization

2011-04-01T08:07:00Z

In this episode of Brian Madden TV, Gabe explains why Brian is wrong about Android thin clients, while Brian explains why Gabe is better off in Omaha rather than Las Vegas. Then Brian gets a demo of Xangati's VDI monitoring product from David Messina. Finally, Brian asks attendees of Desktop Virtualization 2011 San Francisco why they're using desktop virtualization.

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Transcript:

BRIAN: Hello and welcome to Brian Madden TV. From San Francisco, this is Brian Madden.

GABE: And back in my stupid boring office in Omaha, I’m Gabe Knuth

BRIAN: Yeah, so is and that *picture* of the Las Vegas strip taped to your back wall?

GABE: Uhh.. can we just move on please?

BRIAN: Alright. So I’s love to talk about Android thin clients. Last week I wrote an article about how I think this concept would rock. You know instead of every vendor having their own thin client OS, they could all use Android. So why doesn’t this exist yet?

GABE: Well I think the commenters made it pretty clear why... Android apps aren’t made for full size, high resolution, mouse-driven screens. Plus if you want a free, local, app-laden platform... we already have that with Linux! And thin clients shouldn’t become personal computing devices.. I mean you’ve said that yourself... “a thin client should be a thin client!”

BRIAN: Hmm.. yeah I guess these are some really great points, but... I still don’t know.. I feel I kinda still feel like want it.

GABE: Dude, listen to the commenters, and then look at the reasons you yourself listed in the article: One OS that would work on any vendor’s thin client. Having the option for stateful or stateless. Nice way to continue the migration from Windows. Tons of native apps that can run locally. The only one that applies only to Android is that “You could run the same OS on your phone/table/thin client” And if you think the whole world is going to Rich Internet Apps and HTML5 anyway, then...isn’t that the Chromium OS?

BRIAN: Hmm.. umm...yeah I mean I guess maybe you’re right.. maybe android thin client isn’t actually as necessary as I thought it was.

GABE: Whoa.…id I just convince you of something? Did I just win an argument? Don’t tell my wife!

BRIAN: I won’t if you don’t tell my girlfriend.

GABE: Deal.

BRIAN: So uh moving on... let’s take a look now Gabe at your favorite topic... which is Monitoring! VM-monitoring vendor Xangati recently launched a VDI-based solution, we actually invited them or our office to get a demo of this new VDI-based product.

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BRIAN: So I'm here with David Messina, so David thank you for making the trip to San Francisco today.

DM: Thanks Brian, I appreciate it.

BRIAN: So, Xangati, you've been around awhile but I've never heard of Xangati.

DM: Well Xangati is actually a performance management company that's very unique in the market. It's focusing now in particular on the virtual desktop infrastructure market, and one of the things that's of real value in what we do is we can see across all the different silos that can affect the virtual desktop user experience. So that's what Xangati does.

BRIAN: So you've brought a demo with us today.

DM: Oh absolutely, the only way to show a product is to show it, not talk about it, so that's what we're gonna do.

BRIAN: Ok, let's take a look.

DM: So what you can see over here is that we have the Xangati VDI dashboard. What's unique about it is that we're taking advantage of looking at all the moving parts the appliance, the desktop, the host of those desktops those are running across, and some other key elements. What you can notice is that there's really to-the-second movement around the solution so we can see this in real-time and the system is continuously looking at the health of all these elements, and as you can see right now that the health of the overall virtual desktop infrastructure is not perfect. And what we can see here is there's specifically an alert here over in the host area showing there's a problem. So I click over here in the host area and what I've got here is a DVR recording of a specific host with a performance issue.

BRIAN: So when you say this recording, you mean this recording happened because there was a problem, you kicked in the recording.

DM: Exactly. So the recording kicks in, as it starts to play back here you can see one of the issues here is that the storage latency is incredibly high for the host that's running these virtual desktops is at 4/10 of a second. So when your users are calling in this is ultimately the issue that's at fault. So the value here for somebody that's running a virtual desktop infrastructure is that they don't own storage but what they can do is actually send a copy of this recording issue to the storage guy and email it through the system.

BRIAN: So when you say this is a recording you don't mean this is a screen recording, you mean this it's a recording of all the data that Xangati is capturing.

DM: Exactly, it's basically capturing all the key metrics around, in this case, the server that's hosting up all the desktops. Could be a desktop issue as well. You know, a desktop is driving too much YouTube traffic and driving too much volume on the network, but each one of these recordings again is reflective of the key metrics that are now reflecting a poor performance health on the infrastructure.

BRIAN: One of the things I'm wondering about this is, are you showing me how to solve my problem, or just that a problem actually exists.

DM: Well, the answers is sort of both, because one of the challenges for somebody running VDI is that he might not actually control the part of the infrastructure where there is a problem, but he's pointing specifically to where that is. So, if the network is an example, across a wide area network has high latency, well then the problem that has to be fixed is with the network guy, and that is one of the big challenges here. Often times the software, VMware's software or Citrix's software is being blamed and what we're doing is actually proving that the software is not the problem, but somewhere else on the infrastructure. So these recordings are gonna tell you where the problem is, another department is prescriptively going to have to change it.

BRIAN: Now, you have a product for the servers, but you're new to VDI. So, what about this product here is actually VDI-specific, and what is just sort of cut and paste from your server product.

DM: So what we've really done over the past six months in particular is we've been focused on VDI administrators and we've worked with them to A) tailor our dashboard, which is the view you see to really reflect how they look at the world, from the clients to the desktops, to the rest of the infrastructure, and the second thing that we're doing is, as per request, is bubble things up into a health index which previously wasn't available in this release, and again the idea is looking at all the moving parts, not just the desktop silo, if you will. So it's very unique in this release.

BRIAN: So is this something that I buy or is it a service from Xangati.

DM: This is a software package that you purchase. e have a starter kit for a hundred desktops, if you will. It's right under $2500 and one of the things that we're doing right now is we have free trials of the software up on the website, so for the next quarter, for everybody who does this free trial download we're gonna have a raffle so one user a month will get a free starter kit for the desktop.

BRIAN: Well David, we appreciate you taking the time to show this and thanks for coming to San Francisco.

DM: Hey Brian, thank you so much. In fact the folks at Xangati got together and we pooled our resources and got you a couple of gifts. A nice little Xangati mug and a hat for future shows.

BRIAN: Thank you so much for coming today.

******

GABE: So this looks alright but I really wanna get my hands on it and see what this VDI Score feature is. I also want to see if this just a new one of visualizing Perf-Mon counters or it's actually doing something unique. I also wonder, in the video he says it helps you find the cause of something, but if you can't see inside the VM what can you really tell from spiking network usage or spiking storage usage?

BRIAN: So last week I mentioned that I would be at the Hyatt in San Francisco for the first of our “desktop virtualization 2011” road shows.

GABE: Yeah, and I asked you to ask attendees why they were using desktop virtualization.

BRIAN: Yep. So during the break I was able to talk to a bunch of people... And so here are the results of those conversations: Why real-world customers in San Francisco are using desktop virtualization:

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Quick Interviews

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GABE: Wow.. That’s kind of surprising actually that there are as many different reasons to use desktop virt as their are customers?

BRIAN: Yeah. No one single answer.

GABE: So next week you’re in Boston, right?

BRIAN: In Boston for another version of this show, so Gabe what questions do you think I should ask the attendees at that show?

GABE: How about which product they’re using and why? View, XenDesktop.. whatever?

BRIAN: Alright.. that actually sounds pretty good to me! And as a matter of fact that’s all we have planned for this week. So from San Francisco, thanks for watching.

GABE: And from Omaha, this is Gabe Knuth wishing everyone a Happy--Muppety--April Fool’s day.

Brian Madden TV #35: MMS 2011 Roundup - SCCM, RES, App-DNA, & Gabe's Bitchin' View

2011-03-25T07:00:00Z

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Gabe was in Las Vegas at the Microsoft Management Summit this week. (If you missed it, check out his keynote live blog and written wrap-up.)

Then recorded a demo of the RES's Max Ranzau about their Reverse Seamless product.

Finnalt, App-DNA's Paul Schnell from showed off what was new from them.

Transcript:

BRIAN: Hello and welcome to Brian Madden TV. From San Francisco, this is Brian Madden.

GABE: And from the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, this is Gabe Knuth.

I’m here this week attending the Microsoft Management Summit. I like it here because it’s not Synergy or VMworld, which are very focused on specific technologies. MMS is a bit more broad of a conference about managing Microsoft products. There’s a lot of focus on System Center, and there’s a bit of desktop virtualization here and there.

BRIAN: All right, so before we get into all the MMS stuff... how’s the wall art in that hotel room?

GABE: I would categorize it as respectful and definitely not worth talking about.

BRIAN: Ok, I’ll leave it at that. So on to MMS. You spent time in the keynotes, you spent time on the expo hall floor...what do you think?

GABE: You know, for me this show was a bit of an eye opener. Not because it was flashy or particularly revealing, but moreso because I realized that we have a pretty strong focus on SBC and VDI, while the world of application and desktop delivery has sort of moved down a level.

What I’m seeing here is a sort of separation of the desktop into two entities...the physical device called “The Desktop” and the concept of “The Desktop”. That’s not a new concept to us in general, but it is in the context of Microsoft and management.

The big takeaways for me amount to big changes in System Center Configuration Manager, which has grown into a product that can manage virtual and physical desktops and applications as well as a large number of endpoints.

BRIAN: Right, I saw you write about that in your live blog today. You can actually use SCCM to control and policy mobile devices running Android, iOS, Symbian, and Windows 7 Mobile.

GABE: Right, and since SCCM is aware of the devices, you can actually deploy applications to each type of device differently. That means a phone might have an app remoted via XenApp and a Windows 7 tablet might have the same app streamed to it or installed locally.

The same is also true for machines that are physical or virtual. SCCM is now aware of this natively, and you can manage devices based on that footprint. The example they gave was with Windows updates, where SCCM is now intelligent enough to be able to deploy updates to physical desktops and skip shared-image VDI desktops.

BRIAN: Wow.. It seems like just yesterday that I took down a whole NT4 domain with SMS 1.2 by accidentally pushing the logon service out to all the BDCs.. and now look how all grown up it is!

GABE: Yeah, and that’s only part of it. Microsoft has built in an element of self-service apps where users can request access to applications. Then, based on the policies configured in CM, the app is provisioned in the best way possible.

Other companies have picked up where Microsoft left off, and they bring to the table their own self-service solutions, along with license tracking & reclamation, reporting, and approval workflows. I talked to SCCM Expert and Matrix 42 about their solutions along those lines, and I hope to actually shoot videos with them at a future date, because I think their solutions are really interesting.

BRIAN: You did shoot some videos on the expo hall floor, right?

GABE: Yeah, and I had about ten conversations that I wish I would’ve recorded, but I guess that’s always the case. The first video I shot was with Max Ranzau of R-E-S Software. He took some time to show us their VDX product that’s been a hot topic on BrianMadden.com recently.

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INTERVIEW WITH MAX RANZAU

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BRIAN: So this is the last time we’re talking about this for a while, right? I mean, I said that last time, but this time I mean it!

GABE: Oh yeah, but they were there showing it off, so I thought we should get a look at it.

I also caught up with AppDNA, who I interviewed last year as well. This year, they’ve added some new remediation and packaging features to their product, so I brought the camera by their booth, too.

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INTERVIEW WITH PAUL SCHNELL

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BRIAN: Ok, good stuff. So, is this what it’s like when I go to a show and you stay home? I’m kind of bored here not talking :)

GABE: Hahah…yeah, something like that. It’s ok, though...you’ve got enough speaking to do this week.

BRIAN: Yeah good point. Tonight I spoke at a dinner here in SF -- I should point out that we’re recording this at about ten at night -- and then tomorrow, or “yesterday” by the time you’re watching this, is our first “Desktop Virtualization 2011” road show. That’s here in San Francisco this week, and then we’re taking it to 18 more cities around the world over the course of the year.

GABE: Yeah, uh... thanks for doing those by the way while I stay at home with my wife and kids!

BRIAN: Nah it’s ok.. You know I like to be on stage and to get out and talk to people. And in fact one of the new things for this year is I got a little video camera that I’ll take with me to all the shows to interview attendees. We’ll pick a topic for each week and then get a sense for what people are doing in the real world.

GABE: Oooh! For next week, can you ask them why they’re doing desktop virtualization in the first place?

BRIAN: Sure. And if you <audience> has any questions you’d like us to ask random IT pros, let us know!

GABE: Speaking of random, how about that view?

BRIAN: Yeah… that’s great Gabe..

GABE: No.. really, top floor!! I can see Russia from here!

BRIAN: Ok, so good bye from Brian Madden in San Francisco

GABE: And from the TOP FLOOR of the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, this is Gabe Knuth. Top floor.

Brian Madden TV #34 - Microsoft RemoteFX super show, plus VMware's View iPad client

2011-03-10T14:00:00Z

In this week's show, Brian and Gabe talk about RemoteFX (now that it's been officially released), as well as the new iPad client from VMware.

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Highlights from this week's show:

Gabe bought a graphics card and setup RemoteFX in his home lab. He'll talk through that process and show how easy it is.
Microsoft's plans for the hardware encoding add-in card for RemoteFX (which will work with both VDI and Session Host use cases)
ThinLinX's status for their own thin clients that will do RemoteFX decoding in hardware
Using RemoteFX on Session Host (and why can't we use it with Windows 7 on bare metal with no GPU?)
How Citrix will enhance RemoteFX (and how they won't rock the boat too much)
Highlights of VMware's View client for iPad (We had a full video about this yesterday)

Transcript:

BRIAN: Hello and welcome to Brian Madden TV. From San Francsico, I’m Brian Madden.

GABE: And from my “under construction set” in Omaha Nebraska, I’m Gabe Knuth. In our previous show we said that this week would be our “RemoteFX” super show, and I think you’ll see that we’re able to deliver.

BRIAN: Yeah, I was in Redmond last week for the MVP Summit, and I was able to get all my technical questions answered.

GABE: Cool. And I was here last week, but I got my RemoteFX-compatible graphics card and started playing with it now that we have the final bits.

BRIAN: Ok, well let’s start with that. Is RemoteFX hard to get up and running?

GABE: The short answer is “no,” but there’s actually two ways you can use RemoteFX. The first is with Windows 7 on Hyper-V, and the other is with RD Session Host. RD Session host requires Windows Server 2008 SP1...the end, but we’ll get into that in a bit.

Windows 7 on Hyper-V requires a little bit more, but it’s not difficult once you assemble the proper hardware. The server you use must have SLAT-enabled processors, which stands for Second-Level Address Translation. It was introduced with the Nehalem architecture, so I had to update my lab with some newer hardware.

BRIAN: Oh, does that mean RemoteFX is Intel only?

GABE: No, both Intel and AMD support SLAT.

Anyway, so then you need to get a supported graphics card. Originally we kept hearing of cards that cost thousands of dollars, so I was happy to find a supported card on Amazon for around $400. It’s an ATI FirePro v5800, and it is huge!

BRIAN: Yeah I saw that that BriForum speaker Claudio Rodrigues posted on his blog that he even tried RemoteFX with a $150 NVIDIA Quadro FX580 with success, so it should be pretty easy for most people to get this up in a lab.

GABE: Oh yeah.

So, after getting all the hardware installed and operating system updated, turning on RemoteFX is pretty easy. The first you do is enable the RemoteFX role service, which is part of the Remote Desktop Services role in 2008 R2 Service Pack 1.

After that, I edited the settings of my Windows 7 VM’s (or templates) in Hyper-V Manager and added the “RemoteFX 3D Video Adapter”, which of course is a virtual graphics card. Doing this lets you to configure how many screens a user can have and what their max resolution can be. It’s worth noting that this option is only in Hyper-V manager and not in SCVMM 2008 R2.

BRIAN: Ok, yeah, that THAT’s the technical reason you need Hyper-V, because that RemoteFX video adapter is looking for the virtual GPU.

GABE: Exactly.

So at that point, you’re able able to connect to a VM via RemoteFX from Remote Desktop Connection 7.1, which is to say, Win 7 SP1.

From there, you can fine-tune RemoteFX via local or group policy, enable USB redirection, enable or disable RemoteFX altogether, and change the compression ratios of the image stream...

BRIAN: Oh yeah.. right.. all the typical CODEC-like settings

GABE: Yeah, because remember RemoteFX is really a new display CODEC for RDP, rather than a full end-to-end display protocol.

BRIAN: You know so actually it’s not that complex to setup?

GABE: Exactly. I mean as long as you have the hardware, it’s pretty simple.

Speaking of hardware, I’m only using this big ATI card today Does Gabe have a video of this? because this style of card is all that’s available. But Microsoft has confirmed that they’re going to release a dedicated RemoteFX encoding card... did you hear anything about that last week?

BRIAN: Unfortunately No. All they’re saying publicly is what they said before, which is that there will be a dedicated hardware add-in card at some point. But they’re not saying when... nor are they saying whether it will be sold by them or by IHV partners like Dell or HP.

GABE: Ok, so other than that, what did you learn? Is the RTM pretty much the same as the release candidate? Still VDI-only, Hyper-V only, Windows clients only?

BRIAN: Yeah. On the client side like found out, the only “real” version of Windows they’re supporting is Windows 7 SP1. But they are also supporting Win7 embedded as well as that thin client locked down version of Windows called WindowsTPC (B roll.. only ref I can find is here: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/business/archive/2011/02/09/windows-7-updates-deliver-more-bang-for-your-buck.aspx Fourth bullet in that bullet list)

GABE: Is that the new name for Windows Fundamentals, or something else?

BRIAN: Yep.. exactly. So they’re supporting that for RemoteFX, and then of course all those super-cheap thin clients with the Hardware Decoder chip built in.

GABE: Oh yeah.. what ever happened to that Australian company making those things?

BRIAN: Oh, Thinlinx! Yeah.. they’re still out there actually. (B roll http://www.thinlinx.com/) They decided to make another revision to their hardware before they release.. Their current beta units have a single RemoteFX decoding core, but they’re having some performance issues above 10x7 resolution, so they’re designing a new chip with 3 decoding cores that will support high-res dual displays and HDMI and stuff. But those devices are still about 3 months away.

GABE: And is the idea still that those things are going to be super cheap? 100 bucks? 150 bucks? Something like that?

BRIAN: Yeah, super cheap, super small. And as far as I know, ThinLinx is the only thin client vendor who’s announced these things.. All the other thin client vendors -- Wyse, HP, Devon IT -- have announced that they’ll support RemoteFX via software decoders, like Windows embedded or their own OSes.

GABE: And the idea is that you can use all of these RemoteFX thin clients -- hardware or software -- with RemoteFX connecting to VDI or to Terminal Server -- or Session Host -- right?

BRIAN: Yeah, exactly. RemoteFX is RemoteFX, regardless of whether it’s running on a Win7 VDI or a Session Host.

GABE: Ok, so tell me this: Last week you wrote about RemoteFX on Session Host, (B roll http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2011/03/03/can-you-connect-to-a-terminal-server-via-remotefx-yes-here-s-what-you-need-to-know.aspx) and in order to use it, you do NOT need a GPU, and you do NOT need to run it on a Hyper-V VM !!

BRIAN: Yeah how crazy is that? No GPU required.. and you can run it on ANY hypervisor or physical. And it’s the same RemoteFX.

GABE: But certainly not the same experience?

BRIAN: True.. I mean using the GPU to encode RemoteFX gives you a lot of free processing capability. And so running RemoteFX on a Session Host with no GPU.. you might get a better

experience than with regular RDP, but it’s not going to be as good as VDI with with GPU.

GABE: Now if you have a GPU in your Session Host, can you use it?

BRIAN: No. Well, not for RemoteFX encoding. Microsoft officially doesn’t even support a GPU in a Session Host, although there have been some anecdotal stories of some apps working properly. But even if you do have one, you’re definitely not using it for RemoteFX because that RemoteFX video adapter you install into the Win7 guest only works with the virtual GPU from Hyper-V on Server 2008 R2 SP1.

GABE: What about that future mystery add-in card for Session Host?

BRIAN: Yeah, that will be supported

GABE: So… did you ask them “why” they’re doing this with Session Host? Like if VDI requires a GPU and Hyper-V only, then Session Host lets you do it all...

BRIAN: Yeah, why not just run everything with Session Host? No ***! That’s what I’ve been saying for a year!

GABE: Ok sure.. but seriously, isn’t that kind of a loophole?

BRIAN: Yeah it sure could be. I mean I understand why they’re tying the GPU requirements to Hyper-V, because for that you need the vGPU and everything. But if they can make a

standalone RemoteFX encoder that’s only CPU-based for Session Host, the REAL question is why aren’t they enabling Windows 7 native or on any hypervisor for RemoteFX with no GPU?

GABE: Maybe they’re leaving that to partners?

BRIAN: Well, still I don’t know what the value is there. Why not just do it themselves? But the partner thing around RemoteFX is interesting too. Quest and Ericom both support RemoteFX connections now since they both use RDP as their base protocol.

GABE: And Citrix has committed to adding RemoteFX support for HDX within 6 months, right?

BRIAN: Yeah. But what’s kind of too bad about that is that Citrix is only supporting the exact same use cases that Microsoft is...

GABE: So VDI-only and only Windows 7 VMs running on Hyper-V

BRIAN: Yep

GABE: Is Citrix going to support XenApp running on Session Host with no GPUs?

BRIAN: Their official PR answer talks about “XenDesktop VDI being their focus” and that they’re “not making any statements about RemoteFX one way or the other at this time”

GABE: And how about using RemoteFX from non-Windows clients?

BRIAN: Again, hazy PR-speak. They’re saying that with their collaboration with Microsoft, they’re “working together towards a long term vision that will extend RemoteFX to a broader range of devices, locations, and use cases.” So initial focus will be Windows 7-based devices, but a broader future goal.

GABE: Wow! Way to add value Citrix.

BRIAN: Yeah ..so in this case Citrix is really not rocking the boat.. Maybe that’s just the RemoteFX licensing deal or something, but it seems like Citrix and Microsoft are one-and-the-same here.

GABE: Well, if you don’t like Citrix and Microsoft, there’s always VMware!

BRIAN: Nice segue Gabe!

GABE: Thanks! So yesterday we saw VMware release their first official iOS app -- a View client for iPad. And I know you got a look at that with VMware’s director of end-user client devices, Pat Lee there in San Francisco.

BRIAN: Yeah, we posted a video of the full conversation yesterday, but let’s take a look at a few highlights

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Pat Lee Interview

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GABE: So iPad only, PC-over-IP only, no multitasking.. I mean is this v1?

BRIAN: Oh definitely. Although Pat kept saying that they wanted to wait before building this iPad client because they wanted to get it right.. you know? Like they only had one chance to get it right.

GABE: And did they?

BRIAN: To be honest it’s hard to tell from the demo. I couldn’t tell if the product was awkward or if the demo was awkward since we were making Pat work in a non-natural way to not block the camera view of the screen.

GABE: But it’s out now, so what do you think?

BRIAN: I haven’t actually set up my View 4.6 environment yet, but I’ll be doing that tomorrow. And I do plan to use View 4.6 full-time for the next month after that, and I’ll certainly be using it via the iPad.

GABE: You know one of our commenters suggested that we do a test between the iPad versions of the Citrix Receiver and the View client... I think we should both buy iPad 2’s and test both devices too.

BRIAN: Nice! Yeah actually I think that makes sense. We should also test Wyse PocketCloud and something like IR-desktop

GABE: And maybe even LogMeIn, which has a great client for iPad

BRIAN: Oh yeah! I think LogMeIn has the best iPad user experience I’ve seen so far. So, the last thing that we need to talk about is that we’re almost ready to announce the sessions for BriForum 2011 London, which is coming up in May.

GABE: That’s right, and this year, we’re doing it a little bit differently. Instead of our typical blog announcing the sessions, we’re going to announce them via video at 10:00AM Eastern Time on Friday morning. That means that you’ll learn who’s presenting which sessions at the same time as the speakers do!

BRIAN: Yep, we’re pretty excited about this, and if things go right, we’ll do the announcement for BriForum 2011 Chicago LIVE!

GABE: So I think that’s it for today. From Omaha Nebraska, I’m Gabe Knuth.

BRIAN: And from San Francisco, this is Brian Madden. Thanks for watching!

Brian Madden TV #33 - Funtroversy, HDX Connect, Xiotech, AppSense, & BriForum London

2011-02-24T06:25:00Z

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Links from today's show:

Brian Madden TV #32 - CES coverage, Motorola Atrix, and a conversation with Jim Moyle

2011-01-13T05:00:00Z

Brian Madden TV kicks off 2011 with a visit to CES where Brian went looking for the newest technology that would be relevant in the enterprise. Then Gabe & Brian talk about the device that Citrix's Chris Fleck is calling the Nirvana Phone: the Motorola Atrix. Finally they discuss a few shake-ups in the desktop virtualization industry, with two BriForum speakers changing companies. Benny Tritsch left Immidio to join AppSense, and VisionApp's Jim Moyle moved over to Atlantis Computing.

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Finally, remember you can follow BrianMadden.com on Facebook. Also we'd love to hear your thoughts about what you'd like to see on Brian Madden TV via our one-minute survey.

Brian Madden TV #31 - PCoIP add-in cards, Virtual Bridges Spice, and the week's news

2010-12-27T05:00:00Z

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After many months of no Brian Madden TV, we're relaunching it for 2011. (This is primarily thanks to our new video producer Justin Meisinger who joined us in August.) The biggest change to Brian Madden TV for 2011 is that we're keeping the show short. This week episode is under 13 minutes and features a news round-up, video of our visit to Teradici to see their upcoming PC-over-IP hardware offload card, and Virtual Bridges' VERDE implementation of the now open source Spice remote display protocol.

Please help us create a better Brian Madden TV by taking this short survey about what you'd like to see.

Brian Madden TV #30 - VMworld 2010 wrap-up show

2010-09-09T14:08:00Z

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Brian & Gabe attended VMworld 2010 last week. In this week's BMTV they discuss the biggest news and buzz of the conference.

Also, in a slight change in format, we've decided to post all of the individual vendor demo videos separately instead of embedding them into the BMTV episode directly. Videos from VMworld 2010 include:

VMworld 2010 Expo Hall: A booth demo from Fusion-io	VMworld 2010 Expo Hall: A quick conversation with Unidesk's Ron Oglesby	VMworld 2010 Video: Interview with VMware's Noah Wasmer about Project Horizon	VMworld 2010 Expo Hall: Video of Aqua Connect's new ACAM feature
VMworld 2010 Expo Hall: a video of Wanova's booth demo	VMworld 2010 Expo Hall: video of Wyse R-class thin client running RemoteFX	VMworld 2010 Expo Hall: a video of Wyse PocketCloud 2.0 for iPad, iPhone, and Android	VMworld 2010 Expo Hall: MokaFive demos their bare metal hypervisor
VMworld 2010 Expo Hall Tour: a video of Teradici's booth demos	VMworld 2010 Expo Hall Tour: Virtual Computer

Brian Madden TV #29 - A rundown of the Citrix and Microsoft desktop virtualization announcements

2010-03-22T04:00:00Z

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Microsoft and Citrix made several announcements around desktop virtualization last week. In this Brian Madden TV episode, Brian & Gabe discuss:

New features in Citrix XenApp 6
New features in Citrix XenDesktop 4 Feature Pack 1
Microsoft and Citrix's "VDI Rescue" program
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V's dynamic memory feature
Microsoft Calista / RemoteFX

In the course of the show, Brian & Gabe wondered whether the joint Citrix/Microsoft "View Rescue" program (where they offer up to 500 licenses of XenDesktop and the Microsoft VDI Suite for free for VMware View customers) required customers to choose Hyper-V as their platform, or whether they could stay on ESX. We've read the details of the program, and we can't find anything that says you have to actually use all the elements of the Microsoft VDI bundle. (It only mentions that you get it.) So based on our understanding, it appears that an existing VMware View customer could get XenDesktop and the VDI bundle for free yet still choose to deploy their virtual desktops on ESX.

[TECH NOTE: This show is delivered via the streaming option, so you can now jump back-and-forth without waiting for the entire show to download. Also, if you're using Flash Player 10, it will dynamically adjust the bitrate and quality depending on your connection speed and whether you've chosen to view the show in the window for in full screen mode.

Brian Madden TV #28 - Interview with Benny Tritsch, "fifth vendor" voting results, and news round-up

2010-02-04T16:28:00Z

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In this week's Brian Madden TV, Gabe and Brian discuss Array Network's forthcoming iPhone remote desktop client, Citrix's Nirvana phone hardware spec, and the situation with RTO, Symantec, and VMware.

Then Brian interviews Benny Tritsch about the products he's building at Immidio. (Note, the full interview was about 30min, although we had to cut it down to 12min for the show. We'll post the full interview tomorrow.)

Finally, Brian and Gabe discuss the results of the "fifth vendor" voting for next month's "VDI Week."

Brian Madden TV #27 - 2010 trends and predictions

2010-01-22T05:00:00Z

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For our first episode of 2010, Brian & Gabe sat down in the same room as their very first episode from a year ago. Today's episode is about about the desktop virtualization trends that will be important in 2010. Specifically, they discuss:

Client hypervisors will drive Type 2 client-based VMs too
Tradition desktop management will drive desktop virtualization
People will start to think about the managed versus unmanaged desktop
Some kind of "smart replication" technology will emerge that combines block-level and file-level replication
(From Martin Ingram) BYOPC evolves to the HAPC (Home Access PC)
(Also from Martin) First commercially viable user-installed app solution
Cloud will continue to be irrelevant for the desktop space
SSD everywhere and continued innovation in alternative storage technologies
2010 will NOT be the year of major VDI adoptions. (Yes, the technology will be ready, but it's not taking off in a big way until 2011 or 2012.)

We also mentioned in the show that we'd link to Martin's full 2010 predictions blog.

Brian Madden TV #26 - 2009 year in review

2009-12-23T06:34:00Z

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In our 2009 year-end wrap-up show, Gabe and Brian look back at the ten biggest stories of 2009.

Calista, where are you?
The capital costs of VDI get more in-line with traditional desktops
Citrix combines XenApp and XenDesktop licensing
No more excuses for x64
Microsoft makes a VDI product and admits that VDI is real
Thin client renaissance
Protocol is "solved"
iPhone gets more love
Where are those client hypervisors?
Cloud is approaching Y2K in buzzwordiness

We also looked back at some of the predictions we made way back in Brian Madden TV #2, and tried to take credit for successfully guessing how the year would shake out.

Brian Madden TV #25 - 10in10ish (10 stories in 18 minutes)

2009-12-03T05:00:00Z

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Did we say 10 stories in 10 minutes? We meant 10 "ish" minutes. (Like, say, 18!)

Today's stories: (each is linked to the original article/conversation on the web)

Brian Madden TV #24 - MultiPoint, Quest, and Aqua Connect's Terminal Server for Mac OS X

2009-11-19T05:07:00Z

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In this week's episode of Brian Madden TV, Brian & Gabe discuss:

Microsoft MultiPoint Server and how NComputing and Microsoft are working together
How Quest Software has done with their acquisition of Provision Networks and the near release of vWorkspace 7
An interview and demo of Aqua Connect Terminal Server, a product that adds TS capabilities to Mac OS X!