Citrix and Microsoft has kicked of a virtual lab which enables it-professionals to try out the process of building a Virtual Desktop environment based on Citrix XenDesktop 4 and Microsoft Hyper-V.

This is GREAT news, i think it is just what we need.. a hands-on lab with guided exercises to give everyone a better understanding of VDI and especially XenDesktop and the Hyper-V platform integration.

Personally i spend a lot of time working with companies on Proof of Concepts to decide whether or not Virtual Desktops deliver the value-add their company needs. I think this is virtual lab is a great innovation in the quest to spread understanding of both the several hyper-visors available and the concepts needed to build a viable Virtual Desktop proof of Concept.

Deciding whether or not Hypervisors A or B is the best platform for your organization may not be easily decided over this virtual lab, but i think it clearly shows what Hyper-V can offer in the aspect of a virtual desktop host. And let there be no doubt, when you are talking about virtual desktops, the cost of the hypervisor is a parameter.

Citrix XenDesktop to me is the best positioned Virtual Desktop broker in the market. This is from my point of view because of the close integration with the older brother Citrix XenApp, this integration makes it possible to spread your virtual desktops over a dynamic virtual desktop platform, and the much cheaper “shared virtual desktop” platform which Citrix XenApp delivers.

What i do not understand is why VMware has not tried to incorporate terminal services(now RDS) support in a much better way to help accommodate the users which does not need to have their own OS, and by that lowering the total cost of the deployment… but that’s just me.. i do not buy the hype, i did the math.. And if you do VDI without doing the math.. “Oh boy..”

To get more information on this new lab cooperation between Citrix and Microsoft have a look here: http://community.citrix.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=116033898

Click here to try out the lab: https://cmg.vlabcenter.com/default.aspx?moduleid=281742e3-2613-42da-bd58-2c3578f039b4

or watch the video here:

I guess i could put in a guide to solve the challenges here but i chose not to. Citrix and MS did a good job on guiding through the challenges and delivering a good lab to work in.. good job!

I Really wish we could see this from more virtualization vendors! this is the way to show off your product!

As i wrote a while a go, Shawn bass is coming to Scandinavia for a couple of masterclasses as i wrote here.

The class in Norway has already been filled however there are still a few available seats in Malmö Sweden.

Malmo, Sweden
Organiser: Viridisit
Date: 19.-23. of April, 2010
Location: Cornerstone, Malmö
Speakers: Shawn Bass
Register here: http://www.viridisit.se/index.php?page=77

I am super excited that there has been such a great support for the initiatives made to get a different form of workshop to scandinavia, and hope the workshop in Malmö will be filled as well having workshops and content differing from the official training courses allow unfiltered debate and knowledge sharing in my opinion.. and does it get better than this? hope i get a chance to visit the class in Malmö.

René Vester

Rene Vester

Citrix has released a description of their 5000 concurrent VDI session scalability test, and for their testing platform they chose the Login VSI from Login Consultants, which is the same methodology used in the Project Virtual Reality check, great move from my perspective.

You can download the entire document here: http://support.citrix.com/article/ctx123684

Some of my thoughts after reading:

• Great to see the XenDesktop solution based on ESX!
• Great and honest in-depth description of problems encountered
• Why say scaling to 5000 when you only launch 3268 sessions? i get that 5000 sounds better but 3268 is cool enough
• Very impressive PVS scaling i will be looking into the mentioned changes.

What do you guys think? is this possible?

What interest me most.. whats the price pr. Concurrent Device?

But worth a read for sure for everyone considering VDI.

/René Vester

Hey folks,

For a while i have been keeping up to date on the progress in the case of getting the famous Citrix Advanced Training Masterclass to Scandinavia, and i must say it has happend in a very cool way, not only will the Masterclass be held in scandinavia for the first time in quite a few years to my knowledge, but it will be held in both Oslo in Norway and Malmo in Sweden.

The really cool thing about this is that Malmo is very close to Denmark so hopefully this will be the opportunity for both Danish and Swedish enthusiast to get a very different form of Citrix and Terminal Services Training.

The two venues are as follows:

Olso, Norway
Organiser: Citrix User Group Norway
Date: 22.-26. of March, 2010
Location: Commaxx, Grenseveien 92, Oslo, Norway
Speakers: Shawn Bass, Dr. Benny Tritsch
Register here: http://cug.no/cugforum-2010/

Malmo, Sweden
Organiser: Viridisit
Date: 19.-23. of April, 2010
Location: Cornerstone, Malmö
Speakers: Shawn Bass
Register here: http://www.viridisit.se/index.php?page=77 

To learn more about the content of the Masterclass you can also visit Shawn’s website to learn more about whats what. http://www.shawnbass.com/Training.aspx

Rene Vester

This is a joyous time.. Citrix sent us one of the fun-filled Christmas gifts.. the new version of the Citrix Receiver for iPhone.

I have had the pleasure of testing this new version and i must say that it is an incredible client. This Receiver really brings some much needed functionality to the mobile device platform. And though i am a big fan of the iPhone i really hope Citrix will manage to bring this level of functionality and features to the other emerging mobile device platforms like Android. Citrix has a tech preview out of their Android receiver it can be found here: http://community.citrix.com/display/xa/Citrix+Receiver+for+Android

Bringing it back on topic, the Receiver for iPhone has been out for quite some time now and have been downloaded more than 300.000 times. The receiver was a 1.0 up until now! With the release of version 2.0 i actually see a lot of cool features which will help make it a more usable platform for companies and organizations.

I have chosen to highlight a few of the new features:

Support for Multiple Accounts

This is a great feature and embraces the opportunity to also allow users access from more than organization or allow applications to be delivered from the Cloud.. or SaaS providers or what you will call it To support this there has also been implemented a search function to allow users to find the apps they need.

New interface

The new client has a completely different interface for applications, favorites, online help and much more. These are really great changes with an even more iPhonish look and feel, and more useful to users and better administrated by administrators.

Better Support for Citrix complementing technologies

With the new release and some from 1.0.3 there is now an integrated support for Access Gateway Standard, Advanced and Enterprise and of course Support for XenDesktop 4.

Usability improvements

There is a lot of improvements on the usability side of things, just to mention a few it is great to work with the options to Change the initial zoom value, hide status bar, change session resolution and one of the really cool features when working on the iPhone.. a “Caffeine option” a built in feature to help keep the screen active.

Another cool thing which i am a big fan as most who have read this blog will know.. SMS stuff.

2-factor support has been improved and revolutionized

Of course Citrix quickly added support for traditional tokens primarily the RSA tokens. But one of the cool new features, is support for SMS Based 2-factor solutions like SMS PASSCODE. I have written about SMS PASSCODE several times here, here, here and here. The integration allows for the users to log in securely into the company applications using 2-factors on their mobile devices without having to memorize the SMS based 2-factor code from an SMS and then type it into an application. It is based on a technology in which the SMS recieved on the mobile device contains a link which is allows sending the code into the Citrix Reciever application. I do not have a demo-site for this feature ready at the moment but i hope i will have one soon. Until then you can test the SMS PASSCODE solution here on their demo site.

More than i love the technology i love the convenient way in which users can access their applications.. POWER TO THE USERS! Power to convenience!

If you want more information have a look here at Chris Flecks blog post: http://community.citrix.com/display/ocb/2009/12/21/Feature+Rich+Citrix+Receiver+2.0+for+iPhone+is+in+the+App+Store

and on the matter of mobility Vinny Sosa did a blog post here: http://community.citrix.com/display/ocb/2009/12/11/Mobilizing+your+apps+-+Part+I+-+Session+Resolution

And of course keep up to date on the iphone receiver site here: http://community.citrix.com/display/xa/Citrix+Receiver+for+iPhone

Rene Vester

I am getting a lot of questions about whether or not RDS(Remote Desktop Services in 2008 R2, previously known as Terminal Services) is ready to kill the need for XenApp in our modern server based, centralized computing environments.

The truth is i get this question every time there is a new release of Windows Server with improvements to Terminal Services/RDS or whatever it will be called next time

The truth is.. and be ready for a shock, as this is even new to me ….. Windows Server 2008 R2 RDS is truly a great product, and i do believe that many customers could benefit from taking the features and functionality of the new release into consideration.. That said i still think Microsoft has a lot of potential in the area of improving the management capabilities and tools for RDS to compete with the level of management we receive with the Citrix offerings..

To me, small installations, one, two or three servers might be able to live with the management features that are available today in RDS to deliver basic applications like ERP, CRM or similar to the company users. However it has to be kept in mind that the Citrix fundamentals offering is quite cheap and fills most of the gaps we see in the management infrastructure in Terminal Services/RDS.

But again it all depends, and deciding between one or the other based only on the comparison matrix available online is not the right way to go about it.. That said, doing a fair comparison is also a bit of a challenge.. so we need to evaluate our use cases, needs and then choose the product that covers our needs at the best possible price.

To get more information i have gathered a few links here to blogs about the features and technologies:

Jason Conger has done a great post here: http://blog.xcentric.com/2009/08/04/is-windows-server-2008-r2-terminal-services-a-citrix-killer/

Michel Roth explained the new features here: http://www.thincomputing.net/articles/specifics-of-what-is-new-in-windows-server-2008-r2-rds.html

And hopefully we will have a XenApp version available for 2008 R2 soon, so we can do a fair comparison of the products available The signup for the techpreview is available here: http://deliver.citrix.com/go/citrix/xar2techpreview

Rene Vester

Hey folks, as many bloggers, twitters already post all around the inter-web, Citrix has released a Tech-preview of their Android Reciever.

You can read Tedd Fox’s Legen … wait for it… DARY..  page here on the community site for more information: http://community.citrix.com/display/xa/Citrix+Receiver+for+Android This site seems to be updated with all things related to the Android reciever.

You can watch the sneak peak demonstration from back in July  here:

And hopefully really soon we will have some available demo videos with the flashy new tech preview..

I have to say that i really do love my Reciever for iPhone and i hope the Android reciever will be just as usable which again has always been the problem with the clients for mobile devices.

Cant wait for feedback on the Android client..

If you want to keep up to date and use Twitter Tedd Fox is a dedicated Android fan: www.twitter.com/teddfox

Rene Vester

A while back a document was created and maintained by our all time favorite Rick.. the man Dehlinger! The idea was to share experiences and knowledge on how to update and tune Terminal Services and XenApp workloads. The document has been used by a lot of people and sadly, like with many things the rate of maintenance updates fell over time.. all good things must come to an end… HOWEVER… the project has been reopened and now updated on a voluntary basis through the Danish Citrix User Group.

The newly available document has undergone heavy revisioning and Christian Fenneberg from ArrowECS has been a driving force behind the revision and the document has returned to the field of battle ready to help us to better tune the platforms we work with.

I am looking forward to participate in this project for years to come and would like to extend a thank you to especially Christian Fenneberg and Rick Dehlinger but also all other past, present and future contributors.

To find the new updated document you can use this link: http://www.dkcug.dk/?page_id=14/sponsor-indlg/citrix-tuning-doc

The document is still in a beta, lacking key sections, but there is already a lot of good stuff in there(document will be updated just like the picture in this post:)).

Rene Vester

So finally the first information and dates have been released for the Pubforum in May 2010. The event will be held in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, at the InterContinental Hotel

General information:
Starts: Friday May 28, 2010
End: Sunday May 30, 2010
Location: InterContinental Frankfurt
Frankfurt Am Main, HESSEN 60549 DE

The price of this event will range from 125 – 199 EUR depending on Early bird registration etc.

You can read more and register your participation here at the Linkedin Event: http://events.linkedin.com/Grand-PubForum-2010-Frankfurt/pub/173529

And you can keep up to date, following the development at the Pubforum website here: http://www.pubforum.info/welcome/PubForumEvents/PubForum2010FrankfurtMain/tabid/83/Default.aspx

Stay tuned for more information and the big surprise, Pubforum Boston 2010!

/René Vester

Once in a while, the little innovative, creative and fun companies actually takes off! i am thrilled that the SMS based 2-factor authentication solution from SMS PASSCODE is one of the technologies which has taken off like this. I have written about this product quite a few times and not because i am paid to do so, but because convenience to me is a very important factor in the search to deliver the ultimate infrastructure to our users. SMS PASSCODE delivers convenience in the authentication area, by taking advantage of something we all BRING with us, rather than something we have to TAKE with us like our physical tokens..

I was super happy to hear that SMS PASSCODE was nominated by the SC Magazine as a Security Innovator finalist and even more happy when i heard they had taken a fourth place in the Security Innovators Throwdown! Congratulations to SMSPASSCODE, it has been an incredible journey from when i first saw the product and to the mature state it has reached now. I still need to finish a review of their latest version 3.0, it will be here soon.

Some of the key features i want to point out to everyone even if you do not read the entire articles, why i like the SMS PASSCODE:

• Typically offers a higher level of security than traditional tokens
• A lot more convenient for the end-users
• Easier to administrate than the physical tokens
• No logistics, tokens back and forth
• Very low Total Cost of Ownership

Until i finish my review of version 3.0, if you guys want to learn more about SMS PASSCODE:

Website: www.smspasscode.com
Earlier review by me: Permanent Link to 2-factor authentication for Citrix, VPN and remote access in general using any 

And even better, if you want to try it out, have a look at this post: SMS PASSCODE launched a demo site

Or click here to go directly to their Demo-site: Demo site

Congratulations again to SMS PASSCODE for moving up in a really tough world

Rene Vester