Aaron Silber came across an interesting KB article that had some very impressive stats hidden in it!  This particular KB article reinforces a pretty standard Microsoft Windows  practice of removing unnecessary items from the session startup process.  Removing items such as the Java Runtime Update Engine, ICABar and Citrix Online plug-in from users’ startup can yield gains of 10 to 15 percent more users on your XenApp Servers! These tests and benchmarks were done by Citrix Labs and affirm the fact that some extra housekeeping and attention to detail during your server builds can really add up.

The KB Article mentions using msconfig to track down these unnecessary processes.  I’d recommend taking a look at Windows Sysinternal’s AutoRuns for a more complete picture of the processes running on your servers.

For the complete details, check out the rest of the article, it can be found here:  http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124800

As published on VMwareInfo.com

As Published on VMwareInfo.com:

Last month, Citrix released a new version of their Provisioning Services product.  You can download the latest version here.  Lots of new and updated wizards in this version (Imaging Wizard, Enhanced Config Wizard, AutoAdd Wizard), Support for SQL server database Mirroring, optimized load balancing algorithm, Jumbo Packet support and other fixes and tweaks. 

The prior versions already had offline database support for local network fault tolerance and now with support for the SQL server database mirroring, DR solutions will be easier to architect.

Aaron Silber did notice an interesting blurb in the release notes concerning ARP Cache timeouts for Vista/W2K8 servers that you may want to take note of :

TR-8435: Occasionally server stops responding to booting target device requests for 2-3 minutes.

The default lifespan of ARP cache entries was lowered from 10min in Windows Server 2003 to a random value between 15 and 45sec in Vista/W2K8. As a result, the PVS bootstraps are twenty times more likely to experience a timeout during a Vista/W2K8 boot. The workaround is to increase the ARP cache entry lifespan for PVS-bound NICs:

1 Open a command shell window. At the command prompt, enter the following command:
netsh interface ipv4 show interfaces

2. To set the ARP cache entry lifespan to 600 seconds, enter the following command:
netsh interface ipv4 set interface <PVS interface number> basereachable=600000

3. To verify the new setting, enter the following command:
netsh interface ipv4 show interface <PVS interface number>

The “Base Reachable Time” should be set to 600,000 ms, and the “Reachable Time” – to a value between 300,000 and 900,000 ms.
Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949589

About the Author:
Carlo Costanzo is a very active member in the Virtualization Community. In addition to being a full time consultant at IPM, Carlo also publishes tips, tweaks and article posts on his blog at VMwareInfo.com.

So apparently this actually *IS* the year of the desktop!   Forget about when you heard it last year or the year before.  This is REALLY it.. Or maybe next  year.    In any event, Citrix and VMware have both had plans for a bare metal Client Hypervisor for a while now and with Citrix’s Synergy announcement, they are now the first to actually release it.  XenClient was announced and a public release candidate of it is available for download on Citrix.com.  VMware had also announced plans a while back for its own CVP (Client Virtualization Platform) but has not released anything to the public yet.  VMware has had offline experimental support for VDI though leveraging it’s VMware Workstation application for a while now.

The basic idea behind these client hypervisors are to give users the option of running a secure corporate image alongside a not so secure personal image. This choice of personal and work images is suppose to allow companies to blindly encourage employees to purchase whatever hardware they like so long as they can run the client hypervisor.  From there, the corporate image will get pushed down and the user can do whatever they like on the personal image without putting corporate assets at risk.  Sounds good I guess but I am not sure I am sold on the hypervisor aspect of it.  My work and personal life are so blended at times (from an application and daily workflow standpoint) that booting to and from different images would be an incredible loss of productivity. Inevitably, I would begin to break the basic rules of having the two distinct images by merging applications and functions to whichever one would gravitate to become the dominant image in my life.  This of course would put support and security back to the same state as when I had just one image on my laptop.  So I’m just not sure it would work for me personally. 

Offline desktop access might just be a red herring anyway since almost everything is becoming blanketed in WiFi.  Planes, Trains and Automobiles are just becoming moving hotspots.  These spots were the traditional barriers for mobile professionals to relinquish their data.  ‘How do I access my Hosted Desktop/App/Doc while on a plane?’  That question is quickly becoming irreverent.  Assuming latency and performance will be overcome, why not just access it all remotely from whatever device you happen to have in your hands at the moment.  iPad, NetBook, Laptop, Kiosk, Phone, whatever.  Although Citrix was first to release the XenClient, I think they had the right message all along.

For me, Access Anytime, Anywhere, Any device was on the money.

As Published on VMwareInfo.com

As published on VMwareInfo.com:

Tuesday, I had a private mode provisioned vDisk fill up completely and needed to resize it quickly.  A little googling around and not quite finding the right answer (I guess I couldn’t get the right search terms down), I headed off to Twitter.   A couple of tweets later and Jarian Gibson came through with an answer! [BTW: If you are at all interested in Citrix, be sure to follow him on twitter (@jariangibson)]

Jarian pointed me to a Citrix KB article : How to Resize a Provisioning Server 5 Virtual Disks.

The KB article details the steps needed to resize the VHD but I thought I’d post this to help highlight the legitimate cases for using Twitter at work.

Thanks Jarian!

As Published on VMwareInfo

If you haven’t had the opportunity to check out the Citrix Netscalers, do it.  They are some pretty neat devices.  The Tech Dev team at IPM has really, in my opinion, shown how cool and flexible these appliances can be with some of the customizations that they are baking into the Netscalers.  Check out the screenshot below.

The IPMer Chatter Scrollbar scrolls Twitter and Facebook status updates from all of the IPMers. 

The Scrollbar is an excellent example of pulling external information into the portal page.  Although our scrollbar flashes through Twitter and Facebook data, any standard or aggregated RSS feed could be fed into this widget.

There is the Support Information tab which allows a user to give all the important Support information to a help desk support person over the phone if they experience any issues connecting to published applications or network resources.

  and of course the  Weather hover!

Not to mention the Single Sign on pass-through for our INTERNAL Timesheet application, our VoIP Portal and Exchange OWA.

I hope this doesn’t come across sounding all marketing and SALESy but did want to post something that highlights some of the enhancements that can be put right into the Netscaler boxes themselves.  I think they are pretty cool and I wanted to see if anyone else was doing anything outside the box on their own Netscalers.

Don’t forget that you can try out a Virtual Edition of the Netscaler @ https://www.citrix.com/English/ss/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=1857216
Both ESX and Xenserver/Hyper-V editions are available for free download.

-Carlo

Virtual Disks.  They are single file containers that hold entire file systems within them (think of the Galaxy Marbles in Men in Black!)  Operating systems blissfully run within them without any knowledge of the outside hypervisors. Very nice from a management perspective.  Need a quick backup, just copy the file and you are good to go.  Need an exact byte by byte copy of that server’s C drive, just copy the file and you are good to go.  Very useful and tidy in their current form.

One of the more annoying things for me that has come out of the Hypervisor Wars between Microsoft, VMware and Citrix is the 2 different standards of Virtual Disk file formats.  Microsoft and Citrix have standardized on Virtual Hard Disks(VHDs) while VMware was first to release their Virtual Machine Disks (VMDKs).  In my opinion, there is no real difference between the two formats.  Operationally though, they are incompatible.  I think in most other scenarios, this might be acceptable since most users would choose a hypervisor and run with it.  Even changing between the hypervisors isn’t too difficult with the availability of various conversion tools and methods.  I take issue with the whole situation when I am using solutions that run various products concurrently which are now leveraging the different (and incompatible) formats. 

Take for example a common VDI solution leveraging Citrix Provisioning Services with Citrix XenDesktop running on top of VMware’s vSphere platform.  Citrix Provisioning leverages vDisks (VHDs) to stream an Operating System to a XenDesktop target running as a vSphere Virtual Machine (VMDK).  Everything is fine until you realize how GREAT it would be to mount that VHD directly in ESX to make some modifications to it (Update VM Tools or a NIC driver).  Can’t do it unless you go through a kludge process of converting the VHD to VMDK and then back again.  Under Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V, mounting that VHD is a simple supported process.  Even Windows 7 can now directly boot VHDs!

As I create a mental tally in my head, I am currently counting more products out there that are leveraging the VHD format than the VMDK format.  VHDs are and will continue to be an excellent way to evaluate the newest Microsoft Back Office software.

I’m definitely not advocating that VMware change it’s file format from VMDK to VHD but would love to see them begin to support VHDs natively.  It’s not enough to convert them on the fly to VMDKs since sometimes I need to bring them back to their original programs (i.e. Citrix Provisioning Services).

Come on VMware!

As published on VMwareInfo.com:

In case you missed them this month, Citrix published 2 KB articles detailing the End Of Life support plans for their current XenDesktop products. 

XenDesktop 3 is end of life at the end of this year, and there won’t be patches after 10/28/10.  XenDesktop 4 however, will be supported through 5/2014.

XenDesktop 3 – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124351 
XenDesktop 4 – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124352

It’s interesting to me that XD3 which was released in February 2009 will have it’s support pulled so soon while XD4 is slated to have support until 2014.  From my perspective, it seems that most of the XD3 implementations where still in Test/Dev while XD4 has made inroads into production environments making support of the product more critical and requiring the customers to upgrade more of an issue.  I would imagine that from now to 2014, at least 2 more major revisions will be released to the public. XenDesktop 6 anyone?

As published on VMwareInfo.com:

Even though the iPad will not hit the streets until Saturday, iTunes is starting to show iPad applications.  One of interest is the GotoMeeting application.  Jump on that webinar from wherever!

Although released on April Fools, Chris Hahn has verified that the download and application are in fact real.
Check it out for yourself @ http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gotomeeting/id363452804?mt=8

As published on VMwareInfo.com:

In environments where you might be so inclined to run XenApp Published applications over your XenDesktop sessions, the default behavior for the ICA protocol is to map a client’s local drives all the way through the sessions. (Pass-through ICA)  See image below :

This may not be the desired user experience if the XenDesktop session is the user’s Main desktop.  Users might need to access files saved to the local XenDesktop drives from within their published XenApp applications.

Changing a quick registry value on the XenDesktop machine will correct this issue.  From the Support article : http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX238200

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\ICA Client\Engine\Configuration\Advanced\Modules\ClientDrive
Create the Reg Value: NativeDriveMapping
Reg Type: REG_SZ
Add the Value: True

This value will yield the desired results illustrated below :

Most companies now have plans to investigate and use the latest form of virtual desktop in the very near future.  There are many POC’s (proof of concepts) going on as we speak and many more are planned. Citrix, Microsoft, VMware and others are all vying for a piece of this large market potential.

Let’s consider the following situation for a company: 8,000 users, 1,200 servers. Virtualizing the 1,2000 servers in the datacenter  saves money, power, is easier to manage etc. So with a consolidation ratio of 20:1 (to make the math simple) we would then have to manage only 60 servers as opposed to 1,200.

On the other hand, if the plan were to take ALL 8,000 users and virtualize their desktops into the datacenter, even with double the consolidation ratio of 40:1, this would mean managing another 200 servers. Add to this the additional expensive datacenter storage, power, electricity, real estate, etc. “plus” still having to work with end user devices. While the hosted vdi solution does work in many cases, a complimentary solution is on the horizon.

So what’s a company to do? Stay Physical with Virtual.

We would suggest that companies begin to deploy the virtual desktop on a server hypervisor to gain experience, conduct their POC and understand the end user experience first hand. However, once the desktop hypervisor is available and tested for scalability and reliability, and with the use of provisioning technology,  a company can begin to deploy their provisioned and secure virtual desktops  throughout the organization by using existing PC’s or instituting BYOP (bring your own PC) with the proper PC configuration.

The BYOP model, with a client hypervisor (e.g. XenClient from Citrix – available Q1 2010) allows IT to provision a secure corporate desktop to an end user’s device, while at the same let the end user have complete control and freedom to conduct his personal business on the same desktop.

It‘s a great time to be in the thick of things and as always “If It’s Virtually Possible, We Do it!!

by Myron Bari – November30, 2009 (mbari@ipm.com)