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Is Microsoft Changing VDI Licensing?

March 11th, 2010 | Posted by Sid Herron in Licensing | Microsoft | VDI | Virtualization | XenDesktop - (0 Comments)

You may want to mark your calendar – one week from today, Microsoft is holding a “Desktop Virtualization Hour” Webcast, beginning at 9:00 am Pacific time.

Why should you care about this? Well, techtarget.com and others are reporting that there are some licensing changes coming that will make it easier – and hopefully less expensive – to license desktop virtualization technologies.

I really hope they’re right, because the current license model is complex, expensive, and, in my experience, not very well understood by the user community. The vendors of VDI technologies are often not very helpful in this regard, because their focus is to sell you on why their VDI approach is the best, not to needlessly (in their view) complicate the sale by saying, “By the way, here are all the hoops you have to jump through to legally license this deployment from the Microsoft perspective.” Not to mention the fact that their salespeople may not understand the Microsoft licensing side very well anyway.

Today, there is one and only one way to legally license access to virtual Microsoft desktop operating systems, and that’s with the VECD license. (When it was first introduced, VECD stood for “Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop” – today it stands for “Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop.”) The VECD license is only available as an annual subscription license…and the annual cost varies, depending on what the client device is that’s being used to access the virtual desktop OS. If the client device is a Windows Desktop that’s covered by Software Assurance, then adding a VECD license for that client is only $23/year. If it’s anything else – a Windows desktop that’s not covered by Software Assurance, a thin-client terminal, a Linux desktop, a Mac, etc. – the cost jumps to around $120/year. That adds up pretty quickly, and it goes on forever. That’s a tough license model to adjust to if you’re a Small- or Medium-sized business that’s used to just buying new PCs that come with OEM copies of Windows.

These days, you can buy a pretty darned good desktop PC with a professional version of the Windows OS, and probably an OEM copy of the Office Suite, for $700 – $900. If you amortize that over three years, well, you can do the math. Throwing another $120/year on top of that for the VECD license is not insignificant…and we haven’t started talking about the cost of the rest of the VDI infrastructure.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a fan of VDI in general, and Citrix XenDesktop in particular, which you already know if you’ve followed this blog for any length of time. I truly believe that there are overall cost savings to be had. But most of the savings are in soft costs: reduced effort to manage the desktop image; easier to upgrade and patch; harder for users to break things; easier to insure that critical data is being stored in the data center and backed up; flexible application deployment options; consistent access to the same desktop from just about anywhere; extended life for the client device; faster rollout of Windows 7; etc. Those cost savings are real. Unfortunately, they are also, by definition, hard to quantify, despite the best efforts of the Gartners of the world. And a lot of businesses are still in an operating mode where reducing hard costs today is more important than reducing soft costs in the future.

Reportedly, one of the changes Microsoft is announcing will be a move from per-device licensing to per-user licensing. Depending on what the numbers look like, that could be a step in the right direction.

The other change I’d like to see – and this applied to Windows Server licenses as well as to desktop OS licenses – is to have the OS license associated with a workload, not with a physical device. If a Windows Server license was associated with a workload, e.g., my Exchange Server, instead of me having to “assign” it to a piece of hardware, then I could use live motion to move it from one virtual host to another, or use HA functionality to restart it on another virtual host in the event of a host failure, without having to worrying about whether I’m violating my Microsoft license agreement.

On the desktop OS side, I tend to agree with Tony Wilburn of Betis Group, Inc., who is quoted in the techtarget.com article as saying, “If I buy a Windows 7 license…let me use that instance of Windows 7 whether I have it installed locally, attach to it remotely with a PC or thin client running Windows or Linux, [or] have it running on vSphere, XenServer, or Hyper-V.”

Microsoft’s answer to the Server OS issue is: buy Windows Datacenter Edition licenses for your virtual hosts. And that does indeed solve the license compliance issue. It can also nearly double the cost of licensing for a smaller business that is looking at server virtualization for the first time.

So far, Microsoft’s answer to the desktop OS issue is: buy the VECD license.

But Microsoft is not totally insensitive to customer pushback. Some of us remember when NT 4 Terminal Server Edition was first introduced. Microsoft’s initial licensing stance was to say, in effect, “Terminal Services provides another way of accessing an NT 4 desktop. Therefore, if the client device you’re using is not an NT 4 Workstation, you must buy an NT 4 Workstation license for it, no matter what it is.” Customers who were running Windows 9x, or thin-client devices, or Macs, were not happy about being told that they had to buy a bunch of NT 4 Workstation licenses that would simply sit on a shelf or in a file cabinet and never be installed. The customer outcry was so loud that, less than a year later, Microsoft converted to the Terminal Services CAL license model – which at least had the virtue of being consistent with the way they licensed other server products.

Windows 7 adoption is important to Microsoft. And Windows 7 adoption is driving a lot of the current interest in VDI. Therefore, it is in Microsoft’s best interests to make it as easy as possible for customers to deploy VDI as a means of enabling and accelerating Windows 7 adoption. The signs are hopeful, we’ll just have to wait and see what comes out of next week’s Webcast.

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It’s Official – XenApp 6 Is On the Way

March 10th, 2010 | Posted by Sid Herron in Application streaming | Application Virtualization | Citrix | XenApp - (1 Comments)

As most of you know, XenApp 5 is not compatible with Windows Server 2008 R2. Citrix has been working diligently on an R2-compatible version. The “technology preview” has been out for several weeks now. Apparently the new product is sufficiently different that Citrix decided it warranted a major release number – so a few days ago, Citrix announced the release of XenApp v6. Here are some of the high points of the new release:

  • The biggie, of course, is compatibility with Windows Server 2008 R2. This means, among other things, that it will be a 64-bit-only release (since R2 is strictly 64-bit). And that has obvious implications for things like print driver and application compatibility.
  • New setup wizards reportedly cut installation time in half.
  • New “AppCenter” application management console. Includes the ability to manage and deliver streamed apps using both Microsoft App-V and Citrix application streaming from a single point.
  • Better integration with Microsoft management tools, including PowerShell.
  • “HDX” (High Definition User Experience) support for:
    • Real-time audio and video collaboration using Microsoft Office Communicator and VoIP soft phones
    • CD-quality audio with 90% less bandwidth
    • Plug-n-play support for USB devices like Point-of-Sale interfaces, webcams, microphones, scanners, digital cameras, etc.
  • Support for the new “Dazzle” self-service application storefront
  • New Citrix Receiver for Android mobile devices (and a promise that BlackBerry support is coming soon)

Along with the release of XenApp 6, Citrix is also releasing XenApp 5 Feature Pack 3, which will port as many of these features as possible back to Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 (non-R2) users.

Customers with current Subscription Advantage as of March 17 will be able to download XenApp 6 starting March 24. And, since XenDesktop 4 Enterprise and Platinum editions include full access to XenApp functionality, this applies to XenDesktop 4 customers as well as XenApp customers.

For more on the announcement, check out the following video from Citrix TV:


And for even more product information, see the XenApp 6 product page on the Citrix Web site.

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Why You Should Still Go To Trade Shows

March 10th, 2010 | Posted by Shane Kalles in Education | General | Trade Shows - (0 Comments)

Over the last few years we have seen a decline in trade show attendance. There are several reasons for this:  For one thing, trade shows always seem to suffer in economic downturns, because most organizations are trying to do more with fewer people, which just makes it more difficult to get away from the office to attend.  Plus, much of the product information that we used to go to trade shows to get is now available at your finger tips on the internet anytime you want or need it.  So it makes sense that the trade show world is a bit slower these days. However, there are still many reasons to attend trade shows and ways to make it worth your time to be there.

Education
Many shows have breakout sessions and tech features these days. Even though many breakout sessions focus on products that a particular vendor is pushing, you will often get some good insight and ideas for how their product might be utilized that can be useful to you in ways the speaker never intended. Also, trade show promoters often hire experts in a particular field to speak on a topic rather than a product.  Look online (all trade shows have Web sites these days, right?) and see if there is a list of the sessions before you go, so you can choose the ones you think would be most beneficial.

Networking
You will never meet more people interested in your company and what it does than you will at a trade show.  Use that to your advantage. You might not need a particular product or service now (or ever), but people change job titles, change companies, or just change how they do business. It’s always good to have resources for whatever might happen.

Who knows?  Maybe the person working the vendor’s booth might need your services – don’t be afraid to ask. They might need a personal loan for their kids’ education, and if you’re in banking they could be a potential customer. I’m not suggesting that you try to hard-sell the representatives who are working their booths (although there might be some satisfaction in turning the tables on some of the more annoying sales representatives that you occasionally run into), but you’d be surprised at the opportunities that get uncovered simply by having a business conversation about what you do and what they do.

Yet a third networking opportunity presents itself:  other attendees.  Other people are probably looking for the same things you are, and have many of the same issues that brought you to the trade show. Meet and talk with other attendees  –  they many know of a solution or have recommendations that could help you greatly. Make it a point to talk to as many people as possible while you’re there.

Serendipity
Even if you can read about and learn about anything and everything on the mighty interwebs, you still have to have some idea what you’re looking for in order to find it. Sure, there are trade magazines and blogs (including this one) and any number of places that write about the latest and greatest stuff, but they still have limited reach, and most of them write for the masses.  A trade show is your chance to find that “shiny new thing” you didn’t even know you should be looking for:  a new technology, design, option, or whatever that could potentially help you and your business in a way you hadn’t even thought about.  Making a buying decision is a whole lot easier when you know all of your possible options.

Trade Show Stuff
Not really that important, but hey,  you’ve got to love that trade show swag.  Note pads, pens, and highlighters for a year. T-shirts for your weekend yard work or for drying your car off when you’re done washing it.  Stocking stuffers for the holidays.   Flying toys for your kids.  Quick birthday presents for co-workers.  And nothing says “Happy Anniversary” like a logo-branded, 128 Mb, USB thumb drive.  So stock up.  And follow your nose to the booth that’s giving away the fresh-popped popcorn (there’s always at least one)…early in the day while it’s still fresh!

Citrix Continues to Virtualize Appliances

March 2nd, 2010 | Posted by Sid Herron in Citrix | Remote Access | Security | Virtualization | XenServer - (0 Comments)

Five or six years ago, when Citrix first announced the Citrix Access Gateway appliance, I remember scratching my head and thinking, “Wait a minute, Citrix is in the software business. Why in the world do they want to start selling hardware, with all of the warranty, repair, and support issues that come along with being a hardware manufacturer?” The answer, of course, was that in order to build out the complete Application Delivery solution they envisioned, they needed components that, at the time, couldn’t be delivered using software alone.

But the world turns, and time moves on, and today Citrix has a world-class virtualization platform that runs on off-the-shelf server hardware that is itself mind-bogglingly powerful compared to what was available five or six years ago. So it makes all the sense in the world for Citrix to turn all of those hardware devices into virtual appliances as quickly as they can.

Yesterday, they formally announced virtualized versions of both the Access Gateway and the Branch Repeater. We’ll get to the virtual Branch Repeater in another post, because we’ll have our hands full in this one just covering the things you need to know about the Access Gateway VPX.

First, you need to know that the Access Gateway VPX is fundamentally a virtualized version of the 2010 CAG Appliance – with some exceptions that we’ll get into in a moment. You can download it and use XenCenter to import it directly into your XenServer environment. The cost is only $995 (compared to $3,500 for the 2010 hardware appliance), with an ongoing Subscription Advantage cost of $129/year. Here’s where it gets cool:

  • It was difficult to come up with a good solution for redundancy and automatic failover with the 2010 appliance. Unless you wanted to put a load-balancer in front of it (and if you’re going to do that, you may as well just buy a NetScaler in the first place), redundancy depended on putting primary and secondary appliance URLs or IP addresses into the CAG client. And that did you no good at all if you were trying to run it in “CSG-replacement mode” just to provide secure Web access to a XenApp farm. But the VPX virtual appliance fully supports Live Motion, XenServer HA, and NIC bonding. So the VPX doesn’t have to be redundant, because the underlying XenServer infrastructure can provide the resilience you need.
  • If you were using a 2010 appliance, and wanted to use “SmartAccess,” you had to stand up a separate “Advanced Access Control” Web server in your protected network. Obviously, that added to the cost and complexity of the solution. The VPX appliance, on the other hand, supports SmartAccess policies directly.

    Edit July 27, 2010: Not sure now where I originally picked up this information, but it is incorrect. An Advanced Access Control Web server is still required to enable SmartAccess policies with the Access Gateway VPX.

NOTE: SmartAccess, in case you’re not familiar with the term, allows you to control, at a very granular level, what applications and information a user can access, and what they can do with that information, based on the access scenario. The same user, presenting the same authentication credentials, might get a totally different level of access depending on whether s/he is connecting from inside the corporate network, from outside the network using a company-owned laptop, from home using a personal PC, or from a hotel business center using a totally untrusted device. For more information on how SmartAccess works and why it’s cool, check out this video from Citrix TV:


  • The VPX appliance fully supports the latest generation of the Citrix Receiver, and works with Dazzle and the Merchandising Server.
  • You no longer need to buy VPN client licenses to run it in “CSG replacement” mode. This is a biggie. Citrix made it clear some time ago that they would not be putting any more development time and effort into enhancing the software “Citrix Secure Gateway.” But the CSG just wouldn’t die, for one simple reason: it’s free. If you own XenApp or XenDesktop licenses with current Subscription Advantage, you’ve got the rights to use the CSG software, and your only cost is a server to run it on…and that’s pretty low in today’s virtual world. Yes, it could be argued that the CAG appliance was somewhat more secure, since it ran on a hardened Linux-derived kernel. But it cost $3,500 plus roughly $100 per concurrent user. Hmmm… CSG, free, CAG appliance, several thousand dollars. That was an easy decision for a lot of users.

    Co-incident with the release of the VPX appliance, Citrix is announcing that they’re eliminating the Access Gateway Standard User Licenses. They will no longer be sold as of June 30. Instead, when you buy an Access Gateway (physical or virtual), you get a “platform license” that entitles you to use it to secure access to a XenApp or XenDesktop farm (i.e., what’s generally referred to as “CSG Replacement Mode”) at no additional charge. So now the equation is: CSG, free, but I’ve got to put it on a server, and if it’s a Windows Server, the OS is going to cost me $700 – $800 or so. CAG VPX, $995, but I import it directly into my XenServer infrastructure and don’t have to pay for anything else unless I want the advanced access functionality. Suddenly the value proposition looks a lot more attractive.

  • Speaking of the advanced access functionality, Citrix has made some licensing changes there as well. The Access Gateway Universal licensing model has been reduced from three tiers to two, and the prices have been lowered. So now, if you didn’t purchase the XenApp or XenDesktop Platinum Editions (which include Access Gateway Universal licenses), you can purchase the Access Gateway Universal licenses separately for $100/concurrent user in quantities up to 2,500, and $50/concurrent user for 2,500+ users.

What’s the down side? Well, I’m not sure there is one. The VPX appliance isn’t going to work well as a general-purpose SSL/VPN for thousands of concurrent users, but then neither did the 2010 hardware appliance. So if that’s what you need, or if you need the high-end enterprise features like Global Server Load Balancing to enable transparent failover to a Disaster Recovery site, then we need to have a conversation about NetScalers. But for basic CSG-like functionality, or a SmartAccess deployment for a few hundred concurrent users, the virtual appliance looks pretty darned attractive to me.

For more information on the Access Gateway VPX, including a demo of just how easy it is to import it into your XenServer environment and get it running, check out the following video from Citrix TV:

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