The Citrix XenClient Central looks great already, interesting videos, integrated scans of current twitter-topics on the subject and all sorts of videos. The site works great and i already signed up for the upcoming beta-test, you should do the same: http://deliver.citrix.com/go/citrix/xenclientsignup

The address to the site is here: http://community.citrix.com/citrixready/xenclient

If you want to follow Citrix on the topic of XenClient this is who to follow: http://www.twitter.com/XenClientArmy

And ofcourse Peter Blum’s blog is worth a visit: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/peterbl

Rene Vester

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

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

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

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

I have been spending quite a lot of time this week presenting news from the Synergy to customers around Denmark. And when it came to talks about the virtualization of XenApp and terminal services workloads i think we could all agree that there is a great need for objective performance tests to help guide us to choose the solutions best suited for the environment we are working with at the moment.

At Citrix Synergy in a Virtualization Congress session i had the pleasure of watching a presentation by Jerome and Ruben, two dutch CTP’s they presented the joint-venture between their two companies PQR and Login Consultants a project named Virtual Reality Check. The Project is awesome in two ways i think, first it provides a great view into their results from the tests they have done so far. Secondly the tool they have used to automate the workloads for the tests have been made available to the community.

The tool they are using to perform their tests is called VSI, Virtual Session Indexer.
The VSI tool is basically an automation of workloads and collection of the results to give a view into differences. The platform can both be used for performance tests, scalability test, but also as they clearly showed in their session, it can be used to spot challenges with new applications, updates or other changes to the platform. And by preparing it can be possible to avoid deploying a new update which will decrease performance of the infrastructure without having to effect the ‘physical’ users.

You can read more about VSI here: http://www.loginconsultants.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=210&Itemid=128

The tool can be downloaded from the Login Consultants download section.

Check out www.virtualrealitycheck.net to see the results of their tests so far.

/Rene Vester

Today Citrix made the beta for XenServer 5.5 available through www.mycitrix.com. The Beta involves several new features and taken from the release notes i will try to share a few of my experiences with the beta.

I had a chance to look at the previous Beta and thats where i have my personal experiences from. I will of course update with more recent information if I find things have changed dramatically.

The main improvements from a headline perspective is:

• Improved Backup and Snapshot support 
  This allows you to take snapshot of virtual machines both through CLI as before but also through XenCenter which is the management GUI
  • I Personally like the fact that Snapshots were taken to the XenCenter, but i must admit i was hoping to have a take snapshot/revert to snapshot sort of thing like we have seen in VMware. The way snapshots are integrated in the GUI now are more of a take snapshot/create new machine from snapshot.
• Active directory integration for the management of your XenServers.
  • Great integration, just what we needed to use the same sort of management structure as we have today in many organization, Support, Admins, devs etc.
• Workload Balancing
  • Workload balancing helps to optimize the placement of VM’s and assist with balancing of workloads within a pool. This feature is based on the Workload Balancing Server which is a component you can download alongside the beta. The way i see this it is a step in the right direction for a DRS solution like the one VMware offers.
• Integration with StorageLink services
  • This is done using the “xe” CLI and gives access to advanced storage management capabilities via the Citrix StorageLink service. Another component to download and configure with the XenServer beta. I have not had a chance to play with this personally as the storage in my Home Lab is not supported.
• Improved OS Support
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3
  • Novell SLES 11
  • Debian Lenny

My experiences from a Performance and stability point of view in my Home Lab has been that XenServer runs excellent and the updates which have been made from an administrator point of view are spot on, i still have requests but i will keep an eye on the XenServer and let you all know as the features arise.

I find XenServer a strong candidate for Server Virtualization projects in cases where there is no specific need for the features added by VMware, like

• DRS, Workload Balancing will provide some of this
• Fault Tolerance, which is available in vSphere 4, and as Addon for XenServer through Marathon,
• Integrated features for Deployment of Servers, Citrix focuses on Provisioning Server which is in almost all their product lines.
• Cisco Nexus 1000v, the virtual switch Cisco and VMware now provides.. we could hope to see the support extended to XenServer.

When it comes to Server or Desktop virtualization i find that both Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX has something to offer, each in there own price-range to match the needs of the customer.

Rene Vester

Citrix Essentials which is the name for the “XenApp of the Server Virtualization world” has been announced and the major news for me is the strong integration with Microsoft Hyper-V. To me Microsoft Hyper-V has always been a player in the market which i had high expectations of, i think Microsoft has succeeded well in building a very customer base often with a dedicated “microsoft strategy”.. Loving Microsoft or not, i think that is an impressive achievement.

Citrix Essentials include a lot of cool features which will be the same value-add for both Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V, i will try to show explanations, demos and reviews of the components as i think it is way more important than the cool names someone in Marketing came up with

For this post i came across this video-demo of the Advanced StorageLink technology and i would like to share it with you guys. The demo is shown on a Hyper-V environment.

I think the fact of having a product like this, which can easily be updated with new features, greater support in storage vendors and whatever comes next puts Citrix in a unique position to offer value-add like they have done for so many years with Metaframe, Presentation Server, XenApp(wonder whats next). Who knows.. maybe Citrix Essentials will be available in a VMware edition at some point?

As i was looking around for more references and buzz on the Citrix Essentials stuff i came across Alexander Ervik Johnsen homepage. He also mentions the Citrix Essentials features and i added his site to my list of blogs i read. Good to find another scandinavian on the big bad internet. Ervik is also recognized as a CTP by Citrix for his contributions.

Rene Vester

Citrix Hosted an unfiltered discussion with two renowned CTPs, Jeroen van de Kamp and Ruben Spruijt. They are the two people behind the Virtual Reality Check where they have had support from both their organisations Log-in Consultants and PQR in this joint venture.

The Virtual Reality Check material has been made public at: www.virtualrealitycheck.net

The recorded webcast can be seen at: https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=136904&sessionid=1&key=3CD0F47C5FAAC232A296EA11E6B953C1&sourcepage=register

Happy viewing, and for those coming to Citrix Summit/Synergy/VC there will be an opportunity as well to listen to and talk to Ruben and Jerome on the matter of Virtual reality check

Rene Vester

So where is the Provisioning Services being included in existing products(as far as i have heard for now):

XenApp Platinum Customers will receive Provisioning Service for Physical XenApp Servers
Update: i was corrected that this also goes for virtual servers, but only XenApp, no WI,SQL, exchange etc.(thanks to Chrisitan Fenneberg for actually reading what i write not what i think i wrote)

Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise will receive Provisioning Service for the Virtual Machines running on the Host

Citrix Essentials for XenServer Platinum will receive Provisioning Service for Virtual and Physical machines

Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V Enterprise and Platinum will receive Provisioning Service for Virtual Machines on the Hyper-V host

I do think this will make a difference as i definitely think Provisioning Services(server) will be able to save money on the management of XenApp Server.

Thanx Joe for the heads-up and thanx to Nicolai Jensen and Christian Luckow for the help in clearing up the details

Rene Vester