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.
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 Summit… Just the tip of the iceberg
Last week I got some great news, next year I will attend Citrix Summit in Orlando Florida! I just found out a few days ago but I already made all arrangements, I bought my plane tickets, booked my hotel en registered for the event itself, in short, I’m ready to go… Just another 109 days to go from here. I will be there the whole week, 8 days in total to be exact, so I can also do some, not much though, sight seeing. I’ve never been to the ‘Sates’ before so I’m really looking forward to the experience. A special thank you to Qwise.nl for making this possible.
BYOD… Beyond the hype
This article was originally written as a guest blogger for Intense School IT educational services. When I started out in the IT business just short of 15 years ago, mobile phones were a big deal, a privilege to have and use, and if you were allowed to use it privately, that basically meant you were the man! Nowadays it’s all about mobility, smart phones, tablets, net and notebooks, and the list goes on. Internet is cheap, wireless, and it’s everywhere, for most people today, it’s hard to imagine going even one day without their mobile device, whether it’s an iPhone, an Android phone, or some sort of tablet device. In this post, I’d like to focus on some of the challenges we as IT admins face when it comes to managing and securing, not only these (mobile) devices, but the accompanying corporate applications and data as well.
Get Citrix certified!
Shortly after Citrix released XenDesktop 7 they also announced their new Citrix Certification Program. Although still in beta back then, they were quite clear on what to expect in the months to come. Their new solutions-focused certification program, introduced a few months ago, has just gone live and offers us three brand new certification and upgrade paths which we will have a closer look at during this Blog. The accompanying exams, three in total, are now officially open for registration at Pearson VUE. Registration for the beta exams has been closed for a while. Individuals who registered before registration closed were eligible to take the beta exams through August 6th 2013. It’s the real deal from now on.
Excalibur Courses Roadmap
With all the Summit & Synergy madness going on you might have overlooked or missed the latest education / training news from Citrix (www.citrix.com/tv). Yesterday Citrix revealed their new Excalibur training roadmap or the ‘Excalibur Learning Journey’ as they like to call it, see below. It includes two introduction level courses (among others) of two hours each. The first one explains what Excalibur is all about and walks you through some of its new and improved features, the other one points out some useful tips and tricks to work with right from the get go. Both are here to help you decide to go with Excalibur right away or to wait another month or two :-) There might be a small fee to pay, not a 100% sure yet.