In this post, I’d like to highlight a couple of eye-catching announcements (12 to be a bit more precise) made throughout re:Invent 2018, AWS’s annual main event, which took place in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have never been to one of their conferences personally, but man, would I like to go someday. AWS has always been and still is the Nr 1 in Cloud services and solutions worldwide. Of course, Microsoft is catching up quickly. Let’s dig in and see what they’ve been up to.
The ultimate cheat sheet page
Throughout the last couple of years, I have published multiple, so-called ultimate cheat sheets around the FMA, Citrix printing, and application layering. But also around IoT networking and IOPS in general, for example. Looking through my website statistics I can see that these articles or small e-books are by far the most popular, even the older ones. Because of this, and because I like to have them a bit more organized myself – they really come in handy from time to time – I decided to bundle them all into one page, for your convenience. The ultimate cheat sheet page, if you will. Next to this blogpost, you’ll also find it here (the page itself).
Citrix Machine Creation Services… What to consider!
Since this will officially be my first blog post as a Citrix CTP, I would like to start by thanking everybody for your support during the last couple of years and of course for all the congratulations and well wishes I have received since the official announcement last week. It has been a truly wonderful experience! Having said that, let’s get back on topic. This is not going to be a MCS vs. PVS kind of blog post; there are plenty of good ones out there already, instead I will assume that you already choose MCS over PVS. However, while the choice has been made you still have some doubts as to weather MCS is up to the task at hand. Throughout this post I will summarize some things to think about and questions to ask when and before implementing Citrix MCS.
Block vs file level storage, VMware VMFS, NTFS and some of the protocols involved.
During the past few months I have spend a considerable amount of time looking at various storage related topics. Among others I discussed Web Scale technology as part of converged and software defined architectures, with Nutanix being one of the main vendors, next I also took a, somewhat, deeper dive into the wondrous world of IOPS where I talked about some of their characteristics and ways to potentially enhance performance and the end user experience, which are still two of the main concerns when dealing with these bad boys. Throughout this article I want to take a closer look at some of the differences between block vs file level storage, the accompanying file systems, the different protocols used, potential block sizes and some of the characteristics of VMware VMFS in particular.
LoginVSI advanced performance & scalability testing. What’s new with version 4.1?!
If you recall, and I think you do, last week I published an article / guide, named: The ultimate IOPS cheat sheet, which, I’m glad to report, was an instant success! For those of you who might have missed it you’ll find it here. Throughout the article / guide I talk about what IOPS are, how and why they impact overall performance, how they can be measured and (a lot) more. However, as you’re probable well aware, there is more to it then ‘just’ IOPS and the underlying disk subsystem when it comes to measuring or validating (benchmarking) overall performance with regards to our VDI and or HSD orientated architectures. Although they (IOPS) do make up a large piece of the puzzle, we also have to deal with CPU, memory, networking and more.
The ultimate IOPS cheat sheet!
Lately I’ve seen a lot of talk about IOPS, we need as many as possible and as such we are constantly on the look out for new ways to boost performance. No matter what kind of infrastructure we build, virtual or physical, or what ever products we use, in the end it all comes down to the end user experience. Topics often relate to flash like storage solutions, converged infrastructures, Citrix provisioning services, Machine Creation Services, or a combination of the above.
Planning your next XenDesktop deployment? Have a look at Citrix Project Accelerator
Have you ever used the Citrix project Accelerator? No? You should! At least have a look and see what you make of it, so did I. Currently there are over 12.500 projects (active and closed) known by Project Accelerator, I’ll get to the how and why in a minute. According to the release notes it has been online and available in beta since December 2012, but I assume they’re only referring to the (upgraded) XenDesktop 7.1 version, right?! For those of you unknown with the concept, I’ll try and explain what it’s about and how it’s done.
VDI, storage and the IOPS that come with it. Part 1 & 2.
This article was originally written as a guest blogger for intense School IT educational services. One of the topics I’d like to discuss throughout this article is VDI and some of the common issues we (might) run into when it comes to storage, IOPS and image management. At the same time I’d also like to point out some possibilities, or better said, technologies, we have at our disposal in addressing these issues and talk a bit more on IOPS, block vs file level storage and image management. During part one I’ll primarily focus on VDI in general, describing its use and some of the common pitfalls we might encounter with part two primarily focusing on some real world solutions.