We have, for a long time, been fans of thin client devices. However, if you run the numbers, it turns out that thin-clients may not necessarily be the most cost-effective client devices for a VDI deployment.
Just before writing this post, I went to the Dell Web site and priced out a low-end Vostro Mini Tower system: 3.2 GHz Intel E5800 dual-core processor, 3 Gb RAM, 320 Gb disk drive, integrated Intel graphics, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OS, 1 year next-business-day on-site service. Total price: $349.00.
When you buy a new PC with an OEM license of Windows on it, you have 90 days to add Microsoft Software Assurance to that PC. That will cost you $109.00 for two years of coverage. You’re now out of pocket $458.00. However, one of the benefits of Software Assurance is that you don’t need any other Microsoft license component to access a virtual desktop OS. You also have the rights, under SA, to install Windows Thin PC (WinTPC) on the system, which strips out a lot of non-essential stuff and allows you to administratively lock it down – think of WinTPC as Microsoft’s own tool kit for turning a PC into a thin client device.
Now consider the thin client option. A new Wyse Winterm built on Embedded Windows 7 carries an MSRP of $499. There are less expensive thin clients, but this one would be the closest to a Windows 7 PC in terms of the user experience (media redirection to a local Windows Media Player, Windows 7 user interface, etc.). However, having bought the thin client, you must now purchase a Microsoft Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) license to legally access your VDI environment. The VDA license is only available through the Open Value Subscription model, and will cost you $100/year forever. So your total cost over two years is $699 for the Wyse device vs. $458 for the Dell Vostro.
After the initial two year term, you’ll have to renew Software Assurance on the PC for another two years. That will continue to cost you roughly $54.50/year vs. $100/year to keep paying for that VDA license.
Arguably, the Wyse thin client is a better choice for some use cases. It will work better in a hostile environment – like a factory floor – because it has no fan to pull dust and debris into the case. In fact, it has no moving parts at all, and will likely last longer as a result…although PC hardware is pretty darned reliable these days, and at that price point, the low-end PC becomes every bit as disposable as a thin client device.
So, as much as we love our friends at Wyse, the bottom line is…well, it’s the bottom line. And if you’re looking at a significant VDI deployment, it might be worth running the numbers both ways before you decide for sure which way you’re going to go.
But now, with the advent of XenDesktop 5, there is a new way to provision desktops: Machine Creation Services (“MCS”). As a public service to those who follow this blog, I thought I’d share Citrix’s official statement regarding MCS and KMS activation:
MCS does not support or work with KMS based Microsoft Windows 7 activation by default, however the following workaround has been provided and will be supported by Citrix Support should an issue arise.
For details on the workaround, click through the link above to the KB article.
It does not appear that there is a workaround that will allow MCS to be used with MAK activation, and I saw a comment by a Citrix employee on a forum post that indicated that there were “no plans to support it in the near future.” So…MCS with KMS, yes; MCS with MAK, no.
Not having MAK support probably isn’t a big deal, since the main reason why you would go with MAK activation rather than KMS activation would be if you had fewer than 25 desktops to activate, and if you have fewer than 25 virtual desktops, you may as well just stick with 1-to-1 images instead of messing around with provisioning anyway. But we thought you should know.
I’ve found that one of the least-understood features of XenApp is “VM hosted apps.” So, gentle reader, I thought it was time to try to bring some clarity to what is actually a very cool piece of technology, and may actually be the solution for how to continue to deliver IE6 for the Web apps that require it, even after you upgrade to Win7. (As you probably know, Microsoft has, so far, taken the position that packaging, streaming, or otherwise delivering IE6 by itself is a violation of their license – much to the consternation of users who have applications that depend on it.)
Why it exists
Anyone who has been around the block a few times with XenApp knows that there are some applications that just don’t play nicely in a multi-user environment. I can tell you that our own engineering team has become quite talented at making applications run in a XenApp environment even when the application vendors themselves said it couldn’t be done. And as the older DOS-based and 16-bit Windows applications gradually die of old age, things in general are getting better. Tools like application isolation and application streaming can help as well. But every now and then, you’ll run into an application that either just won’t run in a Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services) environment, or won’t play nicely with other applications, or misbehaves when more than one person at at time tries to run it.
We also occasionally run into applications that require some kind of hardware “dongle” as a license enforcement mechanism. Other applications have license mechanisms that are dependent on IP or MAC addresses, and/or save user-specific information that will require the application user to go back to the same system each time s/he wants to run the application. Finally, there may be users who need a very high-performance graphics processing unit, e.g., to run a graphics-intensive CAD program.
To help you deal with this, Citrix included a little bit of XenDesktop technology in XenApp, beginning with XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2. It’s only fair, after all, since XenApp functionality is now included in XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum Editions, but while XenDesktop 4 (and now XenDesktop 5) includes all the functionality of XenApp for delivering applications to your XenDesktop users, XenApp’s VM hosted apps feature contains just enough XenDesktop functionality to create virtual – or physical – desktop systems specifically to run individual applications. In fact, that’s all those systems do. You can’t deliver multiple VM hosted apps from a single PC Operating System (well, not very easily anyway).
How it works
First of all, you have to build out the basic components of a XenDesktop farm. Yes, it can share some components with the rest of your infrastructure, but you’re going to need to build a Desktop Delivery Controller, you’re going to need a XenDesktop farm database, you’re going to need either a virtualization host (if you’re going to use virtual PC instances) or some physical PCs or blades, and you’re going to need an Operating System image with the target application installed into it. You may also deploy Provisioning Services if you want to stream the OS image either to your virtual infrastructure or to your blade PCs. In short, you go through the same process that you would go through if you were putting together a XenDesktop infrastructure to deliver a virtual desktop…but in this case, we’re delivering an application, not a desktop.
Here’s a high-level overview of the process:
Create an OS image.
Install the XenDesktop Virtual Desktop Agent into the image.
Install the desired application. If the application needs “helper apps” (e.g., an accounting app may require Microsoft Excel to display reports), you can install them too. You can even install the Citrix Online Plugin, Offline Plugin, Single Sign-On Plugin, etc., if you want to launch those helper apps on a XenApp server or have XenApp stream them down to the desktop image for local execution.
Create a shortcut for your desired application. If you really need to launch multiple applications, or launch something like the Citrix Online Plugin, create a script or batch file to launch the applications you want to launch, then create a shortcut to that script or batch file instead.
Place that shortcut into the C:\Program Files\Citrix\ICA Service\SeamlessInitialProgram folder of your desktop image. NOTE: If you try to put more than one shortcut in that folder, you will get an error!
Using the Citrix XenDesktop tools, convert your image into a VHD if you’re going to be streaming it via Provisioning Services or deploying it in a virtual environment. Like any other XenDesktop image, it can be a private image that is either preassigned to a specific user or assigned on first logon, or it can be a public image that you use with Provisioning Services to boot and run multiple instances.
Publish that application. It can be displayed via the Citrix Web Interface right alongside other applications that are being delivered via XenApp.
When the user clicks the icon, the application will be launched within the desktop OS, but will run as a “seamless app,” meaning that it looks and feels to the user as though it was running locally (just as applications published from the XenApp farm do). The user will never know, or care, which apps are running on XenApp servers and which are running on desktop OS instances.
Just as you would with any other XenDesktop deployment, you can configure, via the Desktop Delivery Controller, how many OS instances you want running in an idle state at any given point in time during the day – this eliminates the need for the user to wait for the PC/OS to boot before launching the app. Remember, though, that a desktop OS is not multiuser…meaning that if you have ten people who may need to run that application at the same time, you have to provide resources for ten virtual PC instances (or ten blades, as the case may be). And if you have two different applications that need to be deployed this way, you’re probably going to need to provide separate resources for each application. (Yes, I suppose you could create a script that launched both apps – but do you really want your users to click on a single icon and launch two completely different apps? Never mind the fact that the users who need one of the apps may have no overlap with the users who need the other one.)
Here are a couple more things to remember:
Your users are going to be remotely interacting with a Microsoft Desktop OS. That means you’re going to have to comply with Microsoft’s VDI licensing requirements. We’ve beat that horse to death elsewhere in this blog, so we won’t go into it again here.
Citrix never expected that VM hosted apps would be used for more than one or two percent of all the applications you may need to deploy in a XenApp environment. But sometimes that one or two percent represent business-critical apps, even if they’re only business-critical to a handful of your users.
You do not need XenDesktop licenses to do this. Users who launch a VM hosted app will consume a concurrent-use license from your XenApp license server. Users who launch multiple apps, e.g., a VM hosted app and several other apps delivered via XenApp, will still consume a single license.
You could also use VM hosted apps to quickly deploy an application while you’re figuring out how to make that application run on XenApp. Once you’ve figured that out, just re-publish the application. The users will never know – they’ll go to the same Web Interface and click on the same icon, and the app will launch.
So – back where we started this: If you’re one of those who are struggling to figure out how you’re going to continue to support IE6 in your environment while still migrating your users off of Windows XP, this is one potential answer for you. Deploy IE6 on Windows XP using VM hosted apps. Your users will never see the XP desktop, so they’ll never know.
A very cool tool to have in your toolbox, in our opinion.
If you want to know more about VM hosted apps, here are a couple of videos from Citrix TV. The first is from the XenApp Expert Series, with our old buddy Vinny Sosa (on the left) and Modesto Tabares talking about various use cases for the feature. This one will take you about 25 minutes if you watch the whole thing:
…and here’s a more technical video from the Learning Lap series that actually takes you through the installation and configuration of VM hosted apps. This one is about 20 minutes long:
This is big news for anyone who wants to use XenDesktop to facilitate a Windows 7 migration. Here’s why: It only takes a moment’s thought to realize that if your desktop virtualization project simply trades inexpensive desktop SATA storage for expensive data center SAN storage, it’s not going to do good things for your ROI. So provisioning your virtual desktops from a shared Standard Image is a must. And that’s what Provisioning Services (“PVS”) allows you to do. If your standard Windows 7 OS image is, say, 15 Gb, you only need one instance of it on your SAN regardless of how many virtual PCs you’re provisioning from it. Then, using the Citrix Profile Management tool in conjunction with standard Group Policy folder redirection techniques, you can merge user personalization at logon time.
There was only one problem…turning a Win7 vDisk into a Standard Image broke the Microsoft license key. The only way around that was to use Key Management Services (KMS) to auto-activate systems as they were provisioned, but there were problems in using KMS with PVS, as we’ve documented in earlier posts.
I am happy to report that the problem has been addressed in PVS v5.6, SP1, which is now available for download at the Citrix download site. Not only that, but PVS v5.6, SP1, also works with a Multiple Activation Key (MAK) for smaller environments where KMS is not justified. Here’s the difference between the two activation methods:
KMS is a service that runs on a server in your own network. It supports Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, Vista, Win7, and Office 2010. However, it requires a minimum number of systems checking in for activation before any systems will be activated. That threshold is 8 systems for server activation, and 25 systems for workstation activation. Prior to SP1, systems provisioned from a Standard Image looked to the KMS server like the same system checking in again and again, so the threshold counter didn’t increment. SP1 fixes that. Please note, however, that you must be running KMS on a 2008 R2 server if you want virtual machines to increment the threshold counter.
With an MAK, the activation server is hosted at Microsoft. The MAK is a reusable key that’s good for a predefined number of activations. With SP1, PVS will cache the activation confirmation code for each system, so they will automatically reactivate on subsequent reboots.
Here is the configuration process, straight from Citrix. First of all, the Imaging Wizard allows you to choose which activation method you’re going to use:
Choosing the Activation Method
Once you’ve chosen either KMS or MAK, here are the next steps:
KMS Activation
Reset the activation status on the vDisk image:
Boot the master target device from vDisk in Private Image mode
Run slmgr.vbs -rearm in console on master target device
Shut-down master target device
Put disk in Standard Image mode and stream. Target devices will automatically register with KMS server, and activate (provided there are at least 25 systems checking in).
MAK Activation
Put disk in Standard Image mode and stream.
Use “Manage MAK Activations” to remotely activate streamed target devices. This is done only once per group of devices.
Provisioning Services will cache activation confirmation code for each device so that devices will automatically reactivate on subsequent reboots.
Kudos to the Citrix PVS development team for getting this done and out the door. Great job!
Volume 9 of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report is out, and it makes for some pretty interesting reading. Among other things, it talks extensively about botnets – the various “families” of botnets, how they are used, how they work, and how access to them is sold and traded on the black market. Why? Because (quoting from the report), “When we look at that intelligence as a whole, it’s clear that botnets pose one of the most significant threats to system, organizational, and personal security.”
One of the things you’ll find in the report is a discussion of the infection rates of different versions of the Windows Operating System. You may have noticed that every now and then, as part of the critical patches and updates that Microsoft pushes to your PC, there’s something included called the “Malicious Software Removal Tool,” or “MSRT.” Microsoft keeps track of how often the MSRT actually finds malicious software when it runs, and that information is presented here as the number of computers cleaned of bot-related malware per 1,000 executions of the MSRT. Take a look at the following graph, which covers just Q2 of 2010 (click to view larger image):
I would like to particularly direct your attention to the fact that the infection rate for Windows XP SP3 is four times the infection rate for Windows 7, and the rate for Windows XP SP2 is five times the Win7 rate.
I understand that, for some people, the issue of upgrading from Windows XP to something else borders on being a religious discussion. But, honestly, if Windows 7 is that much more secure – which it clearly is – isn’t it getting a bit difficult to justify the “you can have my Windows XP when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers” position?
Of course, larger enterprises have some challenges to overcome. As we discussed in our September post about the cost of a Windows 7 migration, Gartner recently reported that, since most organizations weren’t planning to begin their Win7 migrations until 4Q2010, and with PC hardware replacement cycles typically running at four to five years at present, most organizations simply will not be able to complete a Windows 7 migration through the normal PC replacement cycle before Microsoft ends support for XP SP3. There just isn’t enough time left.
But even if there was enough time – why would you not want to move to an Operating System that’s four times more secure as quickly as you possibly can?
As Gartner pointed out, one alternative is to move some users to a “hosted virtual desktop” instead of a new PC. Translation: Making VDI part of your migration strategy can help get you out from behind the eight ball. It can also boost the overall security of your organization. Doesn’t that make it a conversation worth having?
This is the conclusion of Steve Parlee’s interview with Josh Osborn and Dave Jolley of Wyse. In Part 1, they discussed the Xenith “zero-client” terminal and the new Windows Embedded Standard 7 thin client terminal. In this concluding segment, they talk in more detail about how the Xenith gets its configuration information, as well as the reliability and power savings of Wyse terminal devices compared with desktop PCs.
Recently, our own Steve Parlee sat down with Josh Osborn, the Wyse Regional Sales Manager for the Northwest, and Dave Jolley, our local Wyse Sales Engineer, to talk about what’s new in the Wyse product line. In this video, they talk about the Xenith “zero-client” device that was introduced last quarter, and the new Windows Embedded Standard 7 device.
One of the criticisms that’s been leveled at XenDesktop by its competitors is that it is too complex – too many components that have to be configured to get everything to work. And while that’s partially true, it’s not the whole story. As we’ve discussed in previous posts, XenDesktop is extremely flexible in that it allows you to mix and match different kinds of virtual desktops in your environment to best meet the needs of various groups of users. As you bring more kinds of virtual desktops into the mix, you add more infrastructure components to manage them. More infrastructure components = more complexity but also more flexibility.
If you don’t need all that flexibility – if, for example, you just want to deploy “classic” VDI, by which I mean a bunch of virtual PCs running on the hypervisor of your choice – then you don’t need all that complexity, either.
In this video, Dan Feller of Citrix presents a reference architecture for a straightforward VDI deployment of up to 500 users. The video takes about 50 minutes to watch, but it’s worth your time. You’ll learn some interesting things.
For example, you’ll note that Dan is recommending that the XenServers in the XenServer pool that supports the virtual Windows 7 machines should have local disk drives, in a RAID 10 configuration, that will be used for the local host cache for the provisioned Windows 7 systems, for two reasons: First, it’s less expensive than using SAN storage. Second, the limiting factor for how many virtual PCs you will be able to run on a XenServer host is not processing power, and it’s not RAM – it’s IOPS. And he walks you through the calculation of how many functional IOPS the local storage on the XenServer can support, and how many virtual desktops you can therefore reasonably expect to support.
In fact, my only reservation about this video is that, like just about every other discussion I’ve seen regarding Windows 7 virtualization, it doesn’t mention the Microsoft license activation issue that’s inherent in provisioning Vista and Windows 7 desktops, the need for the Microsoft Key Management Service, and the nuances of getting KMS to work properly. But we’ve pummeled that issue elsewhere in this blog.
So, with that in mind, heeeerrrrrreeee’s Dan (P.S.: the audio doesn’t start until about 15 seconds into the video):
According to an August 26 Gartner press release, your Windows 7 migration may have a painful impact on your budget. The heart of the problem is summed up in this quote from Gartner managing vice president Charles Smulders:
Corporate IT departments typically prefer to migrate PC operating systems (OSs) via hardware attrition, which means bringing in the new OS as they replace hardware through a normal refresh cycle. Microsoft will support Windows XP for four more years. With most migrations not starting until the fourth quarter of 2010 at the earliest, and PC hardware replacement cycles typically running at four to five years, most organizations will not be able to migrate to Windows 7 through usual planned hardware refresh before support for Windows XP ends.
Because of this time crunch, Gartner says that you really have only one of three options:
Accelerate your PC replacement schedule. This obviously will impact your capital budget.
Upgrade some of your existing PCs. Unfortunately, not all of your PCs are likely to support Windows 7 without some upgrades. In fact, Gartner estimates that 25% of the installed base of PCs will require some kind of hardware upgrade to run Windows 7. Also, unless you’re prepared to stretch out the life of these upgraded PCs beyond your usual upgrade cycle, those users are going to end up being migrated twice, not once, during the next four years. Gartner’s estimate of the migration cost per PC, assuming a large enterprise with 10,000 PCs where all PCs are upgraded: between $1,274 and $2,069, depending on how well-managed the environment is to begin with, which, by the way, is not a heck of a lot less than their estimated migration cost if you do just replace them.
Migrate some users to a “hosted virtual desktop” instead of a new PC.
If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know were we stand on the “hosted virtual desktop” issue. To most people, the term “hosted virtual desktop” refers to a virtual instance of a PC OS (e.g., Windows 7) running on a virtualized infrastructure such as VMware, Hyper-V, or XenServer. However, this is only one way to deliver a virtual desktop to a user. Other ways include:
Delivering a shared desktop from a server using Remote Desktop Services and XenApp (we’ve been doing this for years).
Streaming the PC OS from a common, shared image to a physical PC across the local area network. (Note that this would still require that the hardware in the physical PC be able to support the new OS.)
Streaming the PC OS to a client-side hypervisor (XenClient) so the client device can be disconnected from the network and continue to operate.
We’re also of the opinion that no single one of these approaches will fit all use cases. But the nice thing about Citrix XenDesktop is that you can mix and match any and all of these use cases to the needs of your users, all under a single license model.
It still isn’t going to be inexpensive. As Gartner points out, you have to build the virtual infrastructure to deliver those desktops, which will involve both capital costs and labor costs. Anyone who tells you that VDI will save you money in immediate capital costs compared with buying new PCs is not being straight with you. But you can, according to other studies, save up to 40% in your “Total Cost of Ownership” (“TCO”).
And your other alternatives aren’t inexpensive either. So why not take advantage of this opportunity to change the way you deploy and manage PCs? Take a look at what you can do with XenDesktop today, think about how much easier and less costly your Windows 7 roll out would be if you already had XenDesktop in place, and then think about how much easier and less costly your next major PC upgrade project will be if you deploy XenDesktop now.
Windows 7 is going to impact your budget one way or another. Gartner estimates that if you just decide to accelerate your upgrade cycle, the percentage of your IT budget that you spend on PCs will need to increase somewhere between 20% and 60% in 2011 and 2012. If, as in many organizations, your PC spending accounts for 15% of your overall IT budget, that means that in 2011 and 2012 you’re going to be spending between 18% and 25% of your budget on PCs instead of 15%. And that will impact other projects.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Gartner also predicts that the demand for “highly qualified Windows 7 migration IT personnel” will exceed supply in 2011 and 2012. Remember those discussions about supply & demand back in Economics 101? Yep, that means that IT labor costs are going to go up. In fact, Gartner predicts that the labor shortage, and higher costs, will persist into 2013 as organizations realize that they’re behind in their planned migration schedule and try to figure out what to do about it.
Mr. Smulders had a recommendation on that as well: “Begin talks with suppliers now about putting in place contracts that can deliver flexible levels of resources at a fixed rate over the migration period.”
