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.
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.
Being a Nutanix (NTC) Technology Champion… What is it all about?
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.
Containers? Docker? Docker on VMware. Docker on Windows. Docker on Citrix?
With all the excitement going on around Docker, and containerisation in general, including the latest rumours around Microsoft’s Nano Server, I thought it might be useful to have a closer look at this technology to see what it can and cannot do and when it might be a good time to actually start using it in a real world scenario.
Sh*t just got real… The Nutanix Platform Expert Program!
Last week Nutanix launched their flagship certification program, the Nutanix Platform Expert. Let me start by pointing out that the NPX program is not ‘just’ another IT certification and that it’s not to be taken lightly by any means. It is set out to become, and I quote, the most rigorous technical qualification in enterprise computing. NPX candidates are expected to have a considerable amount of IT industry (hands-on) experience and to be expert technologists, consultants, and solution architects with portfolios of work reflecting this expertise, with a strong focus on hyper-converged architectures. And no, I’m not trying to scare you. Curious? Learn more about the Nutanix Platform Expert (NPX) program they’ll gladly provide you with everything you want or need to know.
The (final) results are in! Project Virtual Reality Check 2015.
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…
Time to participate in the Project VRC “State of the VDI and SBC union 2015” survey
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.
Powered by Nutanix! Check out the new Dell hyper-converged XC series!
Back in June, the 24th to be exact, Nutanix announced their global (OEM) agreement with Dell. Here’s what Nutanix had to say about it back then “This strategic Relationship Significantly Expands Access and Distribution of Nutanix Solutions with Dell’s World-Class Hardware, Services and Marketing” Today at Dell World they revealed the new Dell XC Series, Web-scale Converged Appliances equipped with Nutanix Software. The general availability date is set for next week at November the 11th.
Who needs Citrix Synergy Europe when we have events like E2EVC?!
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.
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!