So one of the really cool guys on the inter-web Nick Holmquist did a blogpost yesterday… a month ago(thank you Shawn).. on the perfomance of XenApp cmdlets vs. MFCOM.

Nick tested with 3 difference scripts

• MFCOM with VbScript
• MFCOM within Powershell
• XenApp cmdlets within Powershell

Nick has a very nice overview of the results and you should go have a look at his blog post here: http://nickholmquist.com/archives/75

but i will say this… long live MFCOM

Rene Vester

Jeremy Tirrel posted a script to do a zero downtime snapshot based XenServer 5.5 backup. It is a cool script, however looking at his blog post alone it does not all make sense, so make sure you download the zip-file and take a look at the cool scripts in there.

Jeremy’s blogpost can be found here: http://community.citrix.com/display/xs/0+downtime+snapshot+based+XENServer+5.5+backup+script.

If you just want to get the scripts you can find them here: Download Link

Rene Vester

So Citrix launched a free online 6 hours Citrix Essentials for XenServer 5.5 course. The course is available for free for a limited time only, or so they say

I would recommend this course to people who needs to work with Citrix Essentials but i also think it will be a great way for people considering Citrix Essentials to supplement or replace existing virtualization infrastructure.

From the description of the course:

This course introduces learners to Citrix XenServer 5.5 and Citrix Essentials for XenServer 5.5 and provides the knowledge needed to perform basic configuration and management tasks. Through online simulations, learners will view, install and configure key product features, as well as explore capabilities such as StorageLink, Workload Balancing and Lab Manager.

On a side note, if you are looking to try out or buy Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V this seminar might also provide a better understanding of the components of Citrix Essentials which are available for both the Hyper-V and XenServer editions.

You can sign up here: http://www.citrixtraining.com/courses/course_view.cfm/course_id:274/cgroup_id:30

Rene Vester

For a loooong time i have been looking for a way to run Access Gateway on my XenServer for test purposes. And i never found a good description on how to get it running but it seems the nut have been cracked. Citrix CTP Alexander Ervik published a guide on his site: www.ervik.as His site is definitely worth a look and i keep up to date on his site.

Thanx for the guide Alexander..

You can read the entire article here: http://www.ervik.as/index.php/citrix/xenserver/1885-how-to-run-citrix-access-gateway-cag-on-citrix-xenserver

Rene Vester

Hey folks,

Rich Crusco has been updating his blog at Citrix with information and videos from the community events this spring. There are a lot of cool stuff and Rich keeps updating with more as we go. Definitely worth a look.

http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/richcr

As always Citrix is trying to focus on the community and their community pages give a wider approach to the citrix employees blogging. You can check out their community section here: http://community.citrix.com/

Rene Vester

Hey folks, just a quick post to let you know that an AppSense User Group is online.

AppSense offers a suite of products which helps with a lot of the challenges often faced in SBC and VDI environments.

The User group is here: http://apug.info/index.php

And if you want more information on what AppSense is, check out their site here: http://www.appsense.com/

Perhaps i should do a few posts about AppSense, the products are really strong and perhaps some of you out there would like to know more about their practical application?

Rene Vester

So.. for a while i have been thinking about the new breed of essential products from Citrix and VMware.. I cannot help but wonder exactly what we need, and what is exactly essential to virtualization.

For a while i have been looking into the offerings of the three major vendors Microsoft, VMware and Citrix and i have been trying to decide for myself what would i want and need for my own business.. if i had one.. And the debates on the subject with colleagues and friends have been quite interesting. To me it is a matter of delivering what a business needs to leverage virtualization thereby gaining the lower cost of operations, higher flexibility and of course  an easier infrastructure to manage.

I would like to start this series of posts with a run through of the vendors i am most focused on.

VMware ESX

VMware to me is an awesome innovator in the virtualization space. They have done extraordinary things in the field pushing the adoption of virtualization to a degree where it is not a question of if we should virtualize but more a question of how much we can virtualize, of course keeping in mind how much we can afford to virtualize. One of the things i fear in the aspect of VMware is the fact that they might not be able to keep up as the new platforms catch up on features while keeping the cost of the product down. VMware is by far the most extensive virtualization platform available today. The most proven and the most feature-rich platform if you need to drive a large and complex it infrastructure. The question in regards to VMware is really whether the large part of the customers out there actually need all the features they are getting or have to pay for.

Microsoft Hyper-V

Microsoft has done great things with their own hypervisor the Hyper-V platform, and my most recent experiences tell me that the product is definitely ready to be implemented in production environments. The product is not as enterprise-aware.. or should we say “cloud-aware”.. as VMware but for smaller, simpler installations Hyper-V could be an option for many too look at. Hyper-V is very limited in the variety of platforms supported, but for many of the customers i have spoken to, they agree that it is well worth it to have confidence that if you platform performs poorly you contact one vendor. With the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 R2 Microsoft Hyper-V also have the long awaited live migration feature and from my tests on the Betas the feature works quite well.

Citrix XenServer

Citrix with their acquisition of XenSource put themselves on the Virtualization world map. Citrix XenServer as the product is called now is a strong Linux/Xen based hypervisor platform with a low performance overhead between hypervisor and virtual guests. The architecture of XenServer and VMware ESX are very similar in the way that they both run on a well-trimmed linux kernel, however they differ a lot in the way they connect virtual machines to the physical hardware(i will elaborate on that in a later part of this series.). Citrix XenServer put themselves on the map even more clearly with their announcement of a free hypervisor with central management, live migration and other features. VMware also has a free edition of their product but Citrix sent a strong message as they delivered close to all the features a mid-complexity customer needs to run an efficient virtual infrastructure especially central management and live migration. Citrix also delivers additional administrative features through their Essentials for Virtualization product and through this bind all their products even more strongly together.

The next post in this series will focus on the differences in architecture of the platforms and the benefits/challenges with these differences.

Rene Vester

Oh by has it been a hectic couple of months. As those of you who have been following this blog for a while might have noticed i am busy starting up a Danish Citrix User Group, and though we have not yet had the first meeting in the group a lot of people have signed up on website www.dkcug.dk. As a special bonus to all this i have been in dialogue with the Norwegian user group who seem more than interested in working together. I see this as a strong thing, as we can hopefully tie the Scandinavian region even tighter together in the Citrix communities. We do have the advantage that though we do speak the same language, we can quite easily understand each other, and the challenges for our countries are often very similar. I would like to thank the Norwegian User Group very much for their support, i hope we get to do a lot of great things together!

After having visited the Norwegian User group on their spring event from Oslo to Kiel, then visiting Las Vegas for the Citrix Partner Summit and the Citrix Synergy event which i have blogged about earlier i we held the 2009 Pubforum Dublin just earlier this month. It was a great event, sadly my duties during the event kept me from blogging as much from the event has i have done earlier. But i can tell you that the event was great, awesome presenters and as it is with Pubforum wonderful attendees. At Pubforum everyone is a family.. presenter and attendee alike, it is one of the great things and i am happy to be a part of the event. Next Pubforum will be in Frankfurt Germany the home city of Pubforum Founder Alex Y..Dr.Conti, so i bet he will do what he can to make us all feel like we were at home

Now i am back to attending my day-job, and at last i have worked my way through the work which had piled up on my desk. And with the summer coming i hope i will have time to write articles and blog posts about all the many impressions i have gotten over the last couple of months. I will be kicking of today or tomorrow with the first part of a serie i have chosen to call The Essentials of Virtualization.

Back on the Blog.. back on twitter.. its good to be home ……… maybe i should get out more

Rene Vester

Twitter.. good or bad? i find it really hard to figure out which one it is. I mean i get a lot out of twitter, but a lot of the people i talk to complain about the information on twitter being too facebook-like. And i have to admit i enjoy chit-chatting on twitter, but for me the main purpose is to share my opinions, and hear other peoples opinions. And to do that and get what i want from twitter it requires navigation and selection. There is a lot of information on twitter and in my opinion it is a matter of filtering the information to make the time you spend on twitter worthwhile.

Barry Flanagan from Citrix did a blog-post listing the official Citrix twitter channels. You can read his blog here: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/barryf/2009/05/28/Citrix+on+Twitter

In addition to the Citrites Barry mentioned i also follow these Citrites.

Juliano Maldaner user: jmaldaner

Louise Matthews user: LouiseMatthews 

Vishal Ganeriwala user: vishalg

John Fanelli user: johnfanelli

Gus Pinto user: guspinto

Another group which might be relevant are the CTP’s this is a group which to me has been great to follow to hear their oppinions on news, products etc.

Brian Madden user: brianmadden

Charles Aunger user: charlesaunger

Jim Kenzig user: kenzig

Joe Shonk user: joeshonk

Alexander Ervik user: ervik

Rick Dehlinger user: rickd4real

Douglas Brown user: douglasbrown

Ruben Spruijt user: rspruijt

Michael Keen user: michael_keen

Shawn Bass user: shawnbass

Jason Conger user: JasonConger

And a lot of others ..

Hope it helps you guys to get more useful information and inspiration from twitter

/Rene Vester

PubForum 2009 Dublin
June 5 – 7, 2009
Dublin, Republic of Ireland

So the time is drawing closer and the European expert-to-expert event of the year is almost here. I am super exited and looking forward to Dublin and catching up with regulars and new attendees at this years Pubforum.

There are still a few seats available for the event and if you are interested in a few days of strong technical content i really suggest you check out the Pubforum Dublin 2009 Site. also throw a glance at the action-packed agenda which is pretty much finalized. This time around we will have a lot of cool speakers at the event including Shawn Bass, Benny Tritsch, Alex Danilichev and many others including internal Citrix SEs and experienced consultants and architects.

Pubforum is always a great event, open people great atmosphere, with a lot of pictures and friendships to prove it.

I will be there and of course blog during the event as time allow it

The Agenda is available here: http://www.pubforum.info/welcome/PubForumEvents/PubForum2008Nice/AgendaPubForum2009Dublin/tabid/87/Default.aspx

Rene Vester