Citrix Summit 2014 in Orlando Florida is approaching fast. Just a few more weeks before the Welcome Reception, including the Solutions Expo, at the Hyatt Regency (Regency Ballroom) officially kicks off next years Summit event. Since I don’t like last minute arrangements I took some time to figure out what I need to take with me, MacBook, paper notebook, clothing (I’m counting on 80F, around 26 celsius, average :-) hotel voucher, tickets, passport etc… stuff like that. About a month ago I also figured out my conference schedule, the opening key-note, multiple break-out sessions, the Expo, perhaps a walk-in hands-on session and I also scheduled the 1Y0-400 exam to, hopefully, earn my CCE-AD certification. See my full schedule further on, I fine tuned it last week.
Archives for 2013
XenDesktop SQL High Availability… What to use?!
The XenDesktop Site Configuration Database is an important part of your infrastructure, when it’s is down, users won’t be able to connect and IT won’t be able to make any configuration changes. Because of this you’ll probably want to implement some kind of high availability mechanism keeping your database up and running at all times, or at least to try and keep downtime at a minimum. During one of my recent presentations in which I talked about XD7 including it’s database dependency, a discussion around which type of (SQL) HA mechanism we should implement quickly formed… What options do we have?
Desktop as a Service a.k.a. DaaS
This article was originally written as a guest blogger for Intense School IT educational services. During the past few weeks I repeatedly talk about virtual desktop infrastructures (XenDesktop, VDI-in-a-Box), some of the technology involved, features and probably the most important one, use cases. Especially with Windows XP coming to an end, see my previous article on this, this might be a good time to rethink your alternatives when it comes to replacing your (fat) client infrastructure and the accompanying back-end systems that come with it. That being said, there’s another concept I’d like to discuss since it’s closely related to VDI and could prove to be a valid solution for a great deal of use cases out there, especially when it comes to small(er) and mid sized companies. I’m referring to DaaS, or, Desktop as a Service in full.
Configure StoreFront Multi-Site configurations
StoreFront Multi-Site configurations are still fairly unknown. I guess this has something to do with XenDesktop 7 still being relatively new (I know, it’s actually a StoreFront 2.0 feature) and with this I mean, the addition of the XenApp functionality. Since zones are no longer part of XenDesktop 7, or the Flex Management Architecture (they’ve disappeared together with the Local Host cache) you’ll have to, in most cases, create separate Sites to achieve similar results. Especially if Sites are geographically separated. When using StoreFront Multi-Site configurations we can still add in load balance and failover capabilities, even when using geographically ‘Dispersed’ Sites, just like we are (or were) used to with zones. No NetScaler required, although it’s probably a good idea to implement one anyway.
Microsoft’s Windows XP is hot! Read why.
This article was originally written as a guest blogger for intense School IT educational services. This may sound a bit weird to some, but Microsoft’s Windows XP is hot! Perhaps not as hot as it was when it was first released, but it’s not far of. Unfortunately not in a good way. Next year, in April 2014 to be exact, Microsoft Windows XP will no longer be officially supported. During this article I’d like to explore the end of life concept, what we can do to prevent potential issues and have a look at some of the possible migration and or upgrade scenarios we have at our disposal. Is it time to dump those fat clients? Adopt VDI? DaaS or Hosted Shared Desktops perhaps? Let’s see what’s out there.
VIAB and Windows Server 2012 R2’s Data Deduplication
This article was originally written as a guest blogger for intense School IT educational services. Now I wouldn’t directly call this part three of my VDI series, although it’s probably not that far off. Rather think of it as the ‘hidden bonus track’ an extra addition if you will. During some of my previous articles I already talked about VDI, storage, IOPS and more. I also highlighted some of the newly introduced Windows Server 2012 R2 features offering us divers methods in building and managing our public and private cloud infrastructures including technologies like Domain join, Work Folders and a few more. For this article I’d like to combine two worlds and technologies; Citrix’s VDI-in-a-Box, yes, another way to do VDI, this might just be what you’ve been looking for all those years, and Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 R2, focussing on (VDI) data deduplication in particular.
How to… Install and configure your Host Infrastructure
Just a quick note I’d like to share with you all. During the setup of my XenDesktop 7 lab environment not to long ago I ran into an error (because I wasn’t paying attention) when configuring my Host Infrastructure, which, in my case is Microsoft’s Hyper-V. While were on the subject I’ll fisrt start by explaining and showing you the concept behind the Host Infrastructure which is often used in combination with either Machine Creation Services and or Citrix Provisioning Services. Of course, ‘normal’ provisioned virtual machines can be hosted on there as well.
DaaS has grown up… Has it?
Amazon WorkSpaces. Fully managed desktop computing service in the cloud. Amazon WorkSpaces allows customers to easily provision cloud-based desktops that allow end-users to access the documents, applications and resources they need with the device of their choice, including laptops, iPad, Kindle Fire, or Android tablets. As stated by Amazon. However, when we look under the hood, it’s still good old Windows Server 2008 R2 (with a Windows 7 user experience) serving us our desktops. Old news, is it?
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.
Citrix XenMobile (8.6) revisited
Just four months after Citrix released XenMobile 8.5 they’re now on the verge of launching version 8.6, I know, it’s hard to keep up. During this Blog I’d like to point out some of the new features and possibilities that version 8.6 will bring to the table, as announced by Citrix. At the same time I’d like to spend a minute discussing the device enrolment process when using MDM and have a closer look at the Worx enabled apps concept as well, including the MDX technology involved, since this tends to confuse people from time to time.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next Page »