Have you checked out the ‘Citrix XenDesktop on Nutanix’ reference architecture solution design document?! No? You should! The Citrix Validated Solution (CVS) provides prescriptive guidance for these components including design, configuration and deployment settings thereby allowing customers to quickly deploy a desktop virtualization solution using Citrix XenDesktop. Validation was performed by extensive testing using Login VSI to simulate real-world workloads and determine optimal configuration for the integration of components that make up the overall solution. Everything in the solution document has been installed, configured, tested and verified by the Citrix Consulting APAC team. Can’t wait? Scroll down!
Introducing Nutanix OS (NOS) 4.0… What’s new?!
Nutanix, founded in 2009, quickly became one of the rising startups to look out for. They were among the first to introduce a simple (converged) compute and storage infrastructure, combining resources, without the need for complex and expensive Storage Area Networks, or Network Attached Storage. They deliver the power of so called Web-Scale technology, which we all know from companies like Google, Amazon and facebook, to name a few, as a turnkey solution directly into your datacenter, basically reinventing the way in which IT services can be delivered. With being awarded the Best of VMworld Gold award and named on Gigaom’s Top 50 Cloud Innovators list, I think it’s safe to say that Nutanix is here to stay!
Book review! Citrix® XenMobile™ Mobile Device Management, published by Packt.
As some of you might have noticed, Packt Publishing was randomly requesting (on Linked-In and facebook) IT professionals to review their, relatively, new book on Citrix XenMobile. Since Citrix study material (I really mean books here) can be hard to come by, I thought I’d give it a go as well. It’s my first book review, but that doesn’t stop me from being honest. I’ll try to judge from a professional, as well as a ‘beginners’, point of view. What kind of information am I presented with and does it really teach me something new?
Last week Nutanix opened their Dutch HQ and I was there, here are my thoughts.
Last week, Wednesday the 19th of February 2014 to be exact, I was invited for the ‘grand’ opening of the new Dutch Nutanix headquarters in Hoofddorp, near Amsterdam. Before the partner reception took off and everybody arrived we had a private get together which lasted around an hour and a half or so. Of course I wasn’t alone, a group of 10 to 12 technicians, bloggers and pre-sales engineers (Nutanix employees excluded) gathered to hear what Dheeraj Pandey (founder and CEO), Howard Ting (Vice President of product and marketing) and Mark Fisher (senior director, demand generation marketing) had to say. It turned out to be a very interesting and informative conversation.
Mobility based on Windows Server 2012 R2
This article was originally written as a guest blogger for intense School IT educational services. Since I already discussed BYOD in general and, more specifically, I talked about Citrix XenMobile (see my previous article “BYOD…Beyond the Hype“ I thought it might be a good idea to have a look at some of the daily challenges we face when it comes to securely accessing our corporate data and applications, especially when mobile devices come into play, and to see what Microsoft has to offer as part of its new Windows Server 2012 R2 release to help us overcome some of these challenges.
A first look at Citrix Byte Squared
This week Citrix announced the acquisition of Byte Squared a.k.a. Byte². Another (big?) step forward in their mobile communication strategy. Citrix and Byte Squared, powering mobile productivity, as they stated on their Blog. I decided to check out their website to see if I could find out some more detailed information, which I did.
FlexCast Management Architecture
Or FMA in short. Did you hear? Citrix officially launched XenDesktop 7 just a few weeks ago. One of the biggest releases in years! Of-course I’m just kidding, who could have missed that?! Citrix also announced XenApp 6.5 FP 2 which will be released in June, once again enhancing and extending XenApp’s life, a good thing if you ask me. Although it seems that the Independent Management Architecture (IMA) will probably be around for many more years to come, it’s all FMA from now on when it comes to future developments. I thought it might be a good idea (and time) to have a closer look at FMA. Is it new technology? No. Is it improved? Definitely! Detailed overview? Scroll down!
Project Curacao complete overview
VDI-in-a-Box, VIAB from now on, has been around for a few years and has not gone unnoticed. It’s still growing in popularity and new fans are added daily. Understandable, it’s easy to install and manage. Although it’s not for everyone, given the proper Business Case (and there are plenty) it just feels right. With this new release, which is still in Beta and not supported in production environments, some exiting new and improved features are introduced, like full Windows 8 / Server 2012 integration and the HDX protocol to name a few, perhaps making it an even more robust and likeable platform than it already was. Let’s first have a look on what it is about and highlight some of the main differences between VIAB and XenDesktop.
VDI-in-a-Box Project Curacao
Updated! Download it now! Go to: http://www.citrix.com/downloads/vdi-in-a-box/betas-and-tech-previews/vdi-in-a-box-tech-preview.html login with your My Citrix account, start your download of choice and have fun!
XenMobile product overview… and It’s nice!
It was only about a month ago when I was writing my Blog about the CloudGateway that I wondered which route Citrix would take now that they acquired Zenprise, well… here it is… XenMobile, another Xen sibling sees the light! Lets jump right in… I had the opportunity to make use of one of Citrix’s demo environments to have a closer look at MDM, which is an awesome way to explore new and existing products by the way, if your company is a Citrix partner and has access I definitely recommend having a look. Besides that I used the Citrix E-Docs website as well as Citrix.com to find as much information as possible.