Microsoft – Page 4 – basvankaam.com

Being a Nutanix (NTC) Technology Champion… What is it all about?

Average time to read: 5 minutes

Being a Nutanix Technology Champion, NTC in short, is something special. Let me, throughout this post, try and provide you with some insights on what to expect once you’re ‘in’, so to speak. Although I can’t compare it to any of the other ‘programs’ out there, since this is the first time my efforts got recognized in such a way, I’m confident that they’re doing a more than decent job in keeping their community members up to speed with all that is going on within the company and everything that surrounds it.

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Desired State Configuration & the Citrix XenDesktop DSC Tech Preview

Average time to read: 4 minutes

Desired State Configuration (DSC)… Ring any bells? No? It should by now. Although it isn’t a technology or concept thought up by Citrix, it is still very much applicable to Citrix components and infrastructures. DCS is a (still relatively) new management platform for Windows PowerShell allowing you to configure, apply and maintain a certain desired state (duh) on a single or multiple machine(s). A desired state can be anything related to software installation and configuration, the management of files and folders, registry entries, local group and account management, adding and removing server roles and the list goes on. Best thing is, as soon as something changes DSC will step in and correct it for you, preserving the desired state. DSC is a PowerShell extension and ships with Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1. Let’s have a closer look at what is needed.

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The (final) results are in! Project Virtual Reality Check 2015.

Average time to read: 4 minutes

If, by skimming the title, you’re not sure what I am talking about here, which I doubt to be honest, than you need to check out this website first before continuing. Just a few hours ago I received the final results of this years Project VRC and I can tell that there are some interesting and useful facts in there. The beauty of it though, at least that’s how feel, is that it’s all a 100% authentic. With that I mean that all information recorded in the survey is provided by you, the all-round, real deal, no nonsense, hard core, customer focused, he (or she) who only sees solutions and eats problems for breakfast – IT professional! Does it get any better then this? No Really? But wait, let’s stay focussed here, I am allowed to publish two results, so without further ado…

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Time to participate in the Project VRC “State of the VDI and SBC union 2015” survey

Average time to read: 2 minutes

The independent R&D project ‘Virtual Reality Check’ (VRC) (www.projectvrc.com) was started in early 2009 by Ruben Spruijt (@rspruijt) and Jeroen van de Kamp (@thejeroen) and focuses on research in the desktop and application virtualization market. Several white papers with Login VSI (www.loginvsi.com) test results were published about the performance and best practices of different hypervisors, Microsoft Office versions, application virtualization solutions, Windows Operating Systems in server hosted desktop solutions and the impact of antivirus.

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Who needs Citrix Synergy Europe when we have events like E2EVC?!

Average time to read: 10 minutes

Don’t get me wrong, I like Citrix, but every now and again companies, since their run by people, make mistakes, it happens. Normally you’d learn from them, but I guess there will always be exceptions. Dear Citrix, please listen to us, the community, and bring back Synergy to where it belongs (as well), Europe! Luckily we have E2EVC, which, even if Synergy would return, is ranked Nr. 1 by many, and since a couple of months I know why. Of course it’s hard to compare these types of events and maybe we shouldn’t, but let’s just say that Citrix leaves us no other choice. Read on please, it’s not all bad.

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Citrix Synergy 2014 Keynote wrap-up, here’s what’s new!

Average time to read: 9 minutes

Finally, Synergy Keynote time! All eyes were on Mark Templeton as he took the Synergy stage for, what is supposed to be, the last time, since he’s resigning as Citrix CEO later this year. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to experience the buzz myself, but SynergyTV turned out to be a good alternative. At least it was warm where I was sitting :-) With around 5000 people, spread over 66 countries and over 2000 companies, attending Synergy in person and another 5000 following the Keynote live stream you good say that the event was a success before it even started, but to be honest, I didn’t expect anything less, especially with Mark resigning.

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Introducing Nutanix OS (NOS) 4.0… What’s new?!

Average time to read: 8 minutes

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!

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It’s been a while!

Average time to read: < 1 minute

Hi everybody, it’s been a while, I know. I posted my last article on March the 16^th, and believe me, for someone who is sued to posting once a week and sometimes even more, it feels like an eternity! But it won’t be long now, there is some good stuff coming, I promise :-) I’ve been invited to some sneak preview sessions, been busy with organizing some stuff at work, talked to a few guys and gals at Citrix and I’ve been really busy working on my own (first) book, which is a lot of work! But also very rewarding and fun to do! The book will take me another few months but I’m sure I can find some time in between to share some of my thoughts with you guys. See you all soon!

Regards, Bas.

End of Life… to Migrate or not to Migrate?

Average time to read: 16 minutes

What if you want to merge four separate XenApp 6.0 Farms into one and upgrade to 6.5 along the way? Just one of many challenges at work :-) This made me think about some of the possible migration and upgrade scenario’s out there. With Excalibur on the horizon and multiple ‘End of Life’ dates passed (can be found on the Citrix Product Matrix, give it a Google) I guess there won’t be many admins migrating their 4.5 / 5.0 Farms to 6.0. I mean, why would they? 6.0 isn’t that different from 6.5 and we all know an even newer version will be released shortly. I know… there are some distinct differences between the two and I can also think of several reasons on why not to migrate, but you get my point right?!

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