The title of our slide-deck, which we presented at the 7th Dutch Citrix User Group (DuCUG) over at Cisco Systems in Amsterdam (Friday the 25th of September). ‘We’ in this case are Kees Baggerman, Sr. Solutions Architect over at Nutanix, and myself. We talked about Nutanix in general, why XenApp and/or XenDesktop both perform so well on Nutanix, the Acropolis infrastructure, the Distributed Storage and App Mobility Fabric, and of course, last but not least, the Acropolis Hypervisor, the latest addition to the Citrix Certified portfolio. We also touched on some of the services and features already available today (fully supported of course) and briefly highlighted some features which will be available in one of the upcoming Acropolis releases. I also included our slide-deck.
Archives for 2015
Citrix… What they’re missing or might need to work on. Just thinking out loud here.
During the last year or so I had couple of interesting discussions (trough CUGC, Twitter, real life etc.) on what Citrix might need to do from a business and application development perspective. Perhaps sell some of their products, reinvent, recode or reinvest in existing technology, innovate (which they’re doing) perhaps buy another company and so on and so forth. Of course it’s always easy to judge or come up with comments like these being a so-called sideline critic, but it’s not my intention to be the ‘wise guy’ here, I’m just thinking out loud, that is all.
Liquidwarelabs ProfileUnity & FlexApps overview. Version 6.5 soon to be released!
Last week Jason E Smith, who is the Global Director of User Management and Performance Solutions within Liquidwarelabs, showed and told me a thing or two about ProfileUnity, their User Environment Manager, including their application layering a.k.a. FlexApp solution. They are on the verge of releasing ProfileUnity / FlexApp version 6.5 (as of early October) which currently holds the status of Release Candidate 1, which is the one Jason showed me.
Citrix NetScaler… The basics continued, part three. High Availability!
I think we are all familiar with the term High Availability, or HA in short. It simply means that if a single machine or system fails we will have another equally configured system, or multiple, in standby mode or actively participating a.k.a. active / active, ready to take over when needed. This way we won’t loose any of the functionality that the failing, or failed, machine was providing us with. Which in the case of the NetScaler could be anything from a Gateway to Load Balancing, SSL offloading, Content Switching and more. Needless to say that the Citrix NetScaler has some nifty build-in HA capabilities as well.
My personal Community Edition… The best of August 2015!
The amount of useful, interesting, fun to read, watch or listen to, community content in the form of blog posts, webinars, podcasts, presentations, tools etc. being shared each month can be overwhelming. It’s hard to keep track. Here are some of my personal picks during August. Enjoy!
Citrix FMA Internals… Power Management – Presentation video + slides!
A few moths ago, back in June, Mick Glover and I gave a presentation at the E2EVC in Berlin. Our topic was FMA Power Management. We talked about what it is, how it works, where to configure it, some specifics you need to be aware of before considering or implementing Power Management, what some of the advantages are, some of the things still missing and we gave a few examples on some more advanced Power Management features using PowerShell including a brief look into the future of Power Management.
What you need to know about Windows Server 2016 and containers going forward!
Microsoft has just released Tech Preview 3 (TP3) of their Windows Server 2016 Operating System introducing local container support among some other goodies. In this short post I’d like to share with you some ‘nice to know’ facts with regards to Windows containerisation as it stands today and moving forward.
Citrix NetScaler… The basics continued, part two. Static routes, SNIP and MIP!
Before we jump into what a static route actually is and why we would like, or need, to configure one we must first have a basic understanding of the so-called SNIP, or Subnet IP Address, in full. And while we are at it, we will have a quick look at the MIP, Mapped IP Address, as well. Both er important to understand how traffic flows through a NetScaler device.
Citrix StoreFront… The tale of two Stores. Hiding, authentication and visuals!
There are a couple of reasons why you might want, or need, to use multiple StoreFront stores. One example would be when dealing with a multi tenant environment and you want to be able to apply different configurations per store. You might have an external and an internal store, hiding certain recourses from your users. And what if you want to apply different authentication mechanisms, or you want to give certain stores and individual look and feel? As we can now easily do with StoreFront 3.0, or easier then before anyway.
Citrix NetScaler… The basics continued, part one. VIP’s, Monitors and other objects!
When dealing with the Citrix NetScalers there is a lot to get your head around, especially when you are still relatively new to the product / technology. The different licensing models, all of the ADC (Application Delivery Controller) features (and there are a lot) the secure remote access gateway functionality and a whole bunch of abbreviations like NSIP, SNIP, MIP, VIP and so on and so forth, which will have your head spinning in no time. You have to know about monitors, static routes, load balancing, HA and more. A very interesting, powerful but potentially confusing product when starting out.