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What Licenses Do I Need….

May 16th, 2012 | Posted by Sid Herron in Application streaming | Application Virtualization | Citrix | Licensing | Microsoft | Remote Access | VDI | Virtualization | XenApp | XenDesktop - (25 Comments)

Earlier this week, I had a long discussion with a client (you know who you are) about what licenses they would need for a deployment of “zero client” devices. We’ve written a lot about Microsoft and Citrix licensing, about XenDesktop and XenApp, about the Citrix trade-up, etc., but it occurred to me that it might be beneficial to pull all the licensing information together into one post instead of expecting you, gentle reader, to have to sort through multiple posts to pull it all together.

So, let’s discuss Citrix licensing first, then move on to the Microsoft licensing.

First of all, if all you want to do is to deploy VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), and you have a limited number of users, then you should probably purchase VDI-in-a-Box. You can read more about this in our April Moose Views article about XenDesktop vs. VDI-in-a-Box.

If you decide that VDI-in-a-Box is not the right fit foryou, the next question you need to answer is whether to use XenApp licenses or XenDesktop licenses. Beginning with the introduction of XenDesktop v4.0, Citrix concluded, reasonably enough, that an organization that was deploying VDI probably wouldn’t get much leverage from a concurrent-use licensing model, because their concurrency ratio (by which I mean the ratio of total users to concurrent users) would be pretty close to 1:1. So XenDesktop v4.0 was introduced with a per-named-user or per-device license model. These licenses were roughly half the cost of the comparable XenApp concurrent-use license: XenApp Enterprise Edition, for example, carries an MSRP of $450 per concurrent user. XenDesktop Enterprise Edition carries an MSRP of $225 per user/device.

At the same time, Citrix made the decision to include XenApp rights in the XenDesktop license. So if you buy XenApp, you get only XenApp. But if you buy XenDesktop, you get both XenDesktop and XenApp – so you can use XenApp to stream applications to your virtual desktops, or have your virtual desktops function as client devices that run published applications that execute on the XenApp servers, or simply deploy a mixture of XenDesktop and XenApp to your user community depending on what delivery method is best for a particular use case. This is what Citrix refers to as the “FlexCast” delivery model.

This created the interesting situation where, because of the difference in license cost, if your concurrency ratio was less than 2:1, you were better off financially to purchase XenDesktop licenses even if all you really wanted to run was XenApp. And, since delivering what Citrix calls “hosted shared” desktops from XenApp servers makes more efficient use of the underlying hardware and storage infrastructure, the bias should probably be toward XenApp unless there is a clear use case for why users need to connect to individual desktop OS instances rather than a shared XenApp desktop (and it isn’t just appearance, because with XenApp v6.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2 we can deliver a XenApp desktop that looks and feels like a Windows 7 desktop). But, for the sake of this discussion, let’s move on down the XenDesktop trail.

Citrix has re-introduced a concurrent-use license option for XenDesktop, which is a better choice for organizations who want to deploy both XenDesktop and XenApp, but have a concurrency ratio greater than 2:1, but so far, I haven’t seen very many use cases where that license model made sense.

If you already have XenApp licenses, and want the ability to deliver VDI as well, you can take advantage of the Citrix trade-up program to transform your XenApp licenses into XenDesktop licenses. And if you trade up all of your XenApp licenses, you can get two XenDesktop user/device licenses for each XenApp license. So 250 XenApp licenses would become 500 XenDesktop user/device licenses. If you want more information on how the trade-up program works, and what your trade-up options are, check out the handy Citrix Trade-Up Calculator.

As of the release of XenDesktop v5.0 Feature Release 1, the license service got pretty smart in terms of how it managed those user/device licenses. This is good news for, say, a hospital, which may have devices that are used by multiple users and other users who use multiple devices. The license server can intelligently and dynamically reassign licenses between users and devices to make the most efficient use of the available licenses. For example, consider the following scenario for a brand-new environment where no licenses have yet been assigned:

  • User 1 logs on from client Device 1. The license server will, by default, check out a license to User 1.
  • User 1 logs off, and User 2 logs on from the same client device. The license server, now sensing that two different users have logged on from the same device, will take the license that was assigned to User 1, and reassign it to Device 1. Any subsequent users who log in from Device 1 will not cause any action by the license server, because Device 1 is already licensed.
  • If User 1 logs on again from a different client device, the license server will again check out a license to User 1 (so, at this point, two licenses are checked out: one to Device 1 and one to User 1). Since User 1 has logged on from two different devices, the license will remain assigned to User 1 unless/until manually released by an administrator (e.g., in the case of the employee leaving the organization), or unless User 1 doesn’t log on for a period of 90 days, in which case it will be automatically released due to inactivity.
  • Likewise, since two different users have logged on from Device 1, that license will remain assigned to that device unless manually released or automatically released due to 90 days of inactivity.

So…how do you know how many licenses you really need? There is actually a formula that will tell you that. You need to know how many total users you have (let’s call that number “A”), how many shared devices you have (let’s call that “B”), and how many of your users will use only shared devices (let’s call that “C”). The formula is A – C + B. So, if you have 1,000 total users, 300 shared devices, and 600 of your users will use only shared devices, you need 1,000 – 600 + 300 = 700 total licenses.

For more information on exactly how this works, see the Citrix Community Blog post by Christophe Catesson, which in turn links to a recorded session from Synergy 2011 that was a deep dive discussion of XenDesktop licensing.

Now for the Microsoft licensing component.

If you have users who will be executing applications on a XenApp server, you will need a Remote Desktop Services (RDS) CAL for that user, or for the client device that user is using. It is very difficult to manage a mixture of user CALs and device CALs in a Remote Desktop Services environment, so, in most cases, you’re going to be better off purchasing user CALs.

If you have users who will be attaching to a virtual desktop instance, the licensing requirements are different, depending on the client device. If the client device is a Windows PC whose Operation System is covered by Software Assurance, you do not have to purchase any additional Microsoft license to use that PC to connect to a virtual desktop. If the client device is not a Windows PC, or that copy of Windows is not covered by Software Assurance, you need a Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) license for that client device. VDA licenses are only available under the Open Value Subscription license model at present, meaning that you will continue to pay for them every year. Forever.

But wait! That’s not all! As Gabe Knuth outlines in a recent article on Techtarget.com, there is a very strange loophole in the VDA license terms. If you have a VDA license for your primary device (or if it’s covered by Software Assurance), you have what Microsoft calls “Extended Roaming Rights,” which allow you to also use your home computer to access your virtual desktop, or use your iPad when you’re at home or traveling. But, technically, it does not entitle you to bring your iPad into the office and use it there! To solve that (using the term “solve” loosely), Microsoft recently announced something called a “Companion Device License” (CDL) which allows you to use up to four other devices (in addition to the primary licensed device) to access your virtual desktop. No word yet on what the CDL will cost.

So let’s see if we can summarize what our client would need for a deployment of “zero client” devices (like, for example, the Wyse Xenith thin client).

  • You’re going to need some kind of Citrix license, either VDI-in-a-Box, XenDesktop, or XenApp.
  • Since the thin client is not a Windows PC, and therefore cannot be covered by Software Assurance, you would need to purchase a Microsoft VDA license for it.
  • If the thin client will be used only to attach to a virtual PC desktop and execute applications within that desktop OS environment, no additional Microsoft license is needed. However, if the thin client will also be used to attach to applications that are executing on a XenApp server – either directly or indirectly by having the Citrix client baked into the virtual PC desktop – you will also need a Microsoft RDS CAL.
  • You do not need an RDS CAL if you are only using XenApp to stream packaged applications to a virtual (or physical, for that matter) desktop for execution there. Since you are not actually utilizing Remote Desktop Services by executing code remotely on a Remote Desktop Server, no RDS CAL is required.
  • If you want to institute a BYOD program, where users can bring whatever client device they wish into the office and use it to access your VDI, you’ll probably need some of the new Microsoft CDL licenses.

If I’ve overlooked anything, feel free to submit questions via comments on this post, and we’ll try to get them answered. Let the discussion begin!

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Thin Clients vs. Cheap PCs

June 1st, 2011 | Posted by Sid Herron in Licensing | Microsoft | VDI | Virtualization | Windows 7 - (3 Comments)

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.

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Machine Creation Services and KMS

March 30th, 2011 | Posted by Sid Herron in Citrix | Licensing | Microsoft | VDI | Virtualization | Windows 7 | XenDesktop - (0 Comments)

We’ve written extensively here about the challenges of using Citrix Provisioning Services to provision VMs that require key activation (i.e., Vista, Win7, and Server 2008/2008R2). We publicly rejoiced when the news broke that PVS v5.6, SP1, supported both KMS and MAK activation.

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.

You’re welcome.

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New XenDesktop Trade-up – and a New License Model

January 17th, 2011 | Posted by Sid Herron in Citrix | Licensing | VDI | Virtualization | XenApp | XenDesktop - (0 Comments)

Today, Citrix announced a new, permanent XenDesktop trade-Up program. (Well, mostly permanent – the special offer to users with expired Subscripion Advantage only runs through the end of 2011.) This new offer shouldn’t come as a big surprise, as all indications were that there would be some kind of upgrade path provided after the last trade-up program expired at the end of 2010. What did come as a surprise is the announcement of a concurrent-use (“CCU”) license model for XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum. The new CCU license is good news for XenDesktop v3 customers, some of whom have not upgraded to XenDektop v4 or v5 because they didn’t want to give up the CCU license model.

The new trade-up program will allow XenApp users to trade up to either the user/device-based license model or the new concurrent use license model. New concurrent use licenses cost roughly 2x the cost of a user/device license. Here are the high points of the new trade-up program:

  • As was the case with the earlier trade-up programs, XenApp users can choose a straight one-for-one deal, where they receive one user/device XenDesktop license for each XenApp license, or, if they trade up all of their XenApp licenses, they can choose a two-for-one deal, where they receive two user/device licenses for each XenApp license. It will just cost you a little more than it would have if you had done it before the end of 2010.
  • Through the end of 2011, customers with expired Subscription Advantage can trade up their licenses for the same price as customers with current Subscription Advantage – and take advantage of the two-for-one deal. After December 31, 2011, it will cost an additional $50/license if your Subscription Advantage is expired.
  • You can now choose to trade up your XenApp licenses one-for-one to XenDesktop concurrent use licenses – although it’s more expensive than trading up to user/device licenses.
  • “Trade-up PLUS” – If you trade up all of your XenApp licenses, you can purchase additional XenDesktop licenses (on the same order) for 10% off the suggested retail price. These additional licenses do not have to be the same product version as the version you’re trading up to, i.e., you could trade up to XenDesktop Platinum Edition, and purchase additional XenDesktop Enterprise licenses (although I’m not sure why you’d want to).
  • “Trade-up MAX” – If you trade up all of your XenApp licenses, and purchase additional XenDesktop licenses for all of your remaining users (on the same order), the additional licenses would be 35% off the suggested retail price. Again, the additional licenses do not have to be the same version as the trade-up licenses. The order must total a minimum of 2,500 XenDesktop licenses, including both the licenses received via the trade-up offer and the additional licenses. Citrix will accept data from Dun & Bradstreet or Hoovers.com, or the user count from an active Microsoft Enterprise Agreement as evidence of how many users you have.

Here is a summary of the new trade-up suggested retail prices:

Trade-up From Trade-up 2:1 (User/Device) Trade-up 1:1 (User/Device) Trade-up 1:1 (CCU)
XD-E XD-P XD-E XD-P XD-E XD-P
XenApp Platinum n/a $185 n/a $135 n/a $220
XenApp Enterprise $130 $275 $85 $225 $155 $330
XenApp Advanced $190 $330 $140 $280 $230 $395
XenApp Fundamentals n/a n/a $140 $280 n/a n/a

Note that if your Subscription Advantage is expired, all of the prices above will go up after December 31, 2011. Note also that if you purchased XenApp Fundamentals bundled with Microsoft Terminal Services CALs, and you want to keep those Terminal Services CALs after the trade-up, you must specify that on your trade-up order. Otherwise, the Terminal services CALs will be rescinded along with the XenApp Fundamentals licenses that you’re trading up.

Citrix has provided a new Trade-Up Calculator that makes it really easy to figure out what your trade-up cost will be. You simply enter your data – how many XenApp licenses you own, how many you’re trading up, what edition your trading up from and to, whether your Subscription Advantage is current, whether you’re trading up all of your licenses, and whether you want to purchase additional licenses along with your trade-up – and the calculator will give you the various options available to you, along with the suggested retail price of each option.

You can also download a Trade-Up Brochure, and a Trade-Up FAQ Document from the Citrix Web site.

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Citrix Fixes the Provisioning Services – KMS Problem!

November 17th, 2010 | Posted by Sid Herron in Citrix | Licensing | Microsoft | Provisioning Services | VDI | Virtualization | Windows 7 | XenDesktop - (9 Comments)

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:

PVS Imaging Wizard

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!

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More on Provisioning Services and KMS

August 17th, 2010 | Posted by Sid Herron in Citrix | Licensing | Microsoft | Provisioning Services | VDI | Virtualization | XenDesktop - (6 Comments)

Last fall, we posted about Citrix Provisioning Services and Microsoft KMS activation. To briefly recap, here’s the issue:

  • When you convert a Windows 7 OS image to a shared image for provisioning, it breaks the Microsoft license key.
  • The way you deal with that is to use Microsoft’s Key Management Services (KMS) to auto-activate systems as they boot.
  • A KMS server must have a minimum number of systems checking in for activation before it will activate anything (5 different server systems must check in before it will begin activating servers, and an aggregate of 25 servers and/or workstations must check in before it will begin activating workstations.)
  • If your KMS server is running on Windows Server 2008 R2, both physical and virtual systems will increment the counter. If it’s running on an earlier server version, only physical systems will increment the counter.

In the comment thread of that earlier post, “Chris” stated that he was trying to use Provisioning Server to provision Windows 7 systems, but that they were not incrementing the counter on the KMS server. It turns out that he was absolutely right, and I thought this was important enough to bump the issue by writing another post rather than just going back and commenting on the older one.

It turns out that, although Provisioning Server changes the host name as systems boot, it does not change the machine ID (“CMID”). And, unfortunately, the CMID is what a KMS server looks at to determine whether a machine that’s checking in is a new one that hasn’t previously checked in. Therefore, all of your provisioned Windows 7 systems will look to the KMS server like the same system checking in over and over again, and will not continue to increment the threshold counter.

According to a blog post by Thomas Koetzing a couple of weeks ago, Citrix has told him that this will be fixed in the next release of Provisioning Services, scheduled for sometime in Q4.

Frankly, I’m pretty disappointed by this whole issue. Windows 7 has been out now for almost a year. The big push by both Citrix and Microsoft is that XenDesktop is a great way to roll out Windows 7. Provisioning Services is a must for any significant VDI deployment, because otherwise you eat up far too much of your expensive SAN storage. But yet we’re still stuck in a situation where we can’t use Provisioning Services to provision Windows 7 unless we have at least 25 physical systems checking in with our KMS server for activation. In my opinion, there is no excuse for this issue not being addressed long ago…particularly when it’s been a known issue since the release of Windows Vista.

I did find a workaround described by Kirk Kosinski in a Citrix forum post:

What I did was create a VM with VL media, sysprep and power off, convert to a template, then deploy the template 25 times and boot each VM once (a few required a reboot before contacting the KMS for whatever reason). My KMS server could then activate clients successfully, at least for a while… the activation count will decrease over time if the machine doesn’t contact the KMS server, so you will periodically need to redo this process.

The VMs don’t have to join the domain to activate so you don’t need a complicated sysprep script, just make sure to not include any license key in the script…

This strikes me as a bit of a pain, particularly when you’ve got to do it every six months or so to keep your systems alive, but it should at least work until Citrix and Microsoft get this sorted out.

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Just Sign the Check Right Here – We’ll Fill In the Amount Later

July 20th, 2010 | Posted by Sid Herron in Citrix | Licensing | Microsoft | Virtualization | VMware | XenServer - (0 Comments)

Back in the old days of minicomputers and mainframes, we used to joke about IBM’s ability to, for all intents and purposes, get the customer to sign a blank check. They were better than anybody I’ve ever seen at getting people to commit to a solution when they really had no idea what the ultimate cost would be – and they were successful because of another cliche (which became a cliche because it was so accurate): “Nobody ever got fired for buying from IBM.” The message was basically, “Yes, we may be more expensive than everybody else, but we’ll take care of you.”

For the most part, those days are long gone, which made it all the more amazing to me to read that VMware is adopting per-VM licensing for most of its management products.

The article nails the basic problem with this licensing approach:

You know how many processors you have on a system, and that’s a fixed number. But the number of VMs on one host — let alone throughout your entire infrastructure — is regularly in flux. How do you plan your purchasing around that? And how do you make sure you don’t violate your licensing terms?

Hey, it’s easy – you just let VMware tell you what to put on your check at the end of the year:

You estimate your needs for the next year and buy licenses to meet those needs. Over the course of those 12 months, vCenter Server calculates the average number of concurrently powered-on VMs running the software. And if you end up needing more licenses to cover what you used, you just reconcile with VMware at the end of the year.

And, before you ask, no, you don’t get money back if you use fewer licenses than you originally purchased.

Sounds to me like a sweet deal – for VMware.

By comparison, the most expensive version of XenServer is $5,000 per server (not per processor, not per VM), and all of the management functionality is included. And the basic version of XenServer, which includes live motion, is free, and still includes the XenCenter distributed management software. (Here’s a helpful comparison chart of which features are included in which version of XenServer.)

A number of years ago, I attended a seminar that discussed the product adoption curve, and how products moved from the “innovation” phase to the “commodity” phase. The inflection point for a particular market was referred to as the “point of most” – where most of the products met most of the needs of most of the customers most of the time. When this point is reached, additional feature innovation no longer justifies a premium price.

The fact is that XenServer and Hyper-V are rapidly achieving feature parity with VMware. If we haven’t reached the “point of most” yet, we certainly will before much more time goes by. So even if you have a substantial investment in VMware already, at some point you have to re-examine what it’s costing every year, don’t you? Or are you OK with just signing a check and letting them fill in the amount later?

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The Trade Up Is Dead – Long Live the Trade Up!

July 13th, 2010 | Posted by Sid Herron in Citrix | Licensing | VDI | Virtualization | XenDesktop - (0 Comments)

As we told you many times, and in many ways, the special Citrix XenDesktop Trade-Up promotion ended on June 30. However, as we expected, Citrix has announced a new trade-up promotion. So there is still a migration path from XenApp to XenDesktop, although (as we also expected) it will cost you more than it would have had you acted before June 30.

You can still get the two-for-one deal if (1) your Subscription Advantage is current, and (2) you trade up all of your XenApp licenses.

Citrix has also extended the trade-up offer to customers who own XenApp Fundamentals (a.k.a. Access Essentials), which is great news. Under the earlier promo, these customers would have had to upgrade to XenApp Enterprise first, and then trade up to XenDesktop. Now they can trade up for the same price as customers who own XenApp Advanced Edition (although the two-for-one deal is not available for XenApp Fundamentals).

Here’s the pricing matrix for the new promo, which will run through December 31, 2010 (click graphic to view full size):

XenDesktop Trade Up Pricing, July 1 - Dec 31, 2010

XenDesktop Trade Up Pricing, July 1 - Dec 31, 2010

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Seven Days and Counting

June 23rd, 2010 | Posted by Sid Herron in Citrix | Licensing | VDI | Virtualization | XenApp | XenDesktop - (1 Comments)

Just in case you haven’t heard, there’s one week to go on the Citrix XenDesktop 4 Trade-Up Promotion. Here’s a quick recap:

  • The XenDesktop 4 Enterprise and Platinum Editions include all of the functionality of the corresponding XenApp edition. In other words, if you buy XenApp licenses today, you get XenApp. If you buy XenDesktop licenses, you get XenDesktop and XenApp.
  • …however, the license model changes: XenApp licenses have always been – and continue to be – based on concurrent use. If you own 100 XenApp licenses, it doesn’t make any difference how many users hit your XenApp farm, you’re just limited to a maximum of 100 at any given time. XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum licenses are non-concurrent – they are either per user or per device (your choice).
  • …on the other hand, XenDesktop licenses are only about half the price per license as XenApp licenses. That means if your concurrency ratio (the ratio of total users to concurrent users) is less than 2-to-1, you’re better off buying XenDesktop licenses even if all you plan to use today is XenApp! You’ll pay less money, and you’ll have all that XenDesktop functionality in your back pocket ready to be deployed when you’re ready.
  • The current trade-up promotion allows you to convert your existing XenApp licenses to XenDesktop licenses at a price that you will probably never see again. This promotion is ending June 30.
  • If your Citrix Subscription Advantage is current, and you trade up all of your XenApp licenses, Citrix will give you two XenDesktop licenses for every XenApp license you trade up. E.g., if you have 100 XenApp licenses, your Subscription Advantage is current, and you trade up all 100 of them, you’ll end up with 200 XenDesktop licenses.
  • If your Subscription Advantage has been expired for a while, you may find that it’s less expensive to trade up to XenDesktop (which will come with a year of Subscription Advantage) than to pay the fee to get Subscription Advantage reinstated on your XenApp licenses. You won’t get the 2-for-1 deal, so you’ll have to look closely at whether the new license model will mean you have to buy additional licenses, which will obviously affect whether or not the total cost is advantageous to you, but it’s worth running the numbers to find out.
  • If the Subscription Advantage renewal on your XenApp licenses is coming due soon, consider the benefits of redirecting those renewal dollars to help pay for the trade-up. That can make an already-sweet deal even sweeter.

Citrix has a helpful on-line trade-up calculator that you can use to help you compare costs. You’ll need to enter (1) how many XenApp licenses you own, (2) how many of them you want to trade up, (3) what version of XenApp you own, (4) what version of XenDesktop you want to trade up to, and (5) whether or not your Subscription Advantage is current.

I suppose it’s possible that, come July 1, Citrix will announce that they’re extending the promotion…but I doubt it. So far, everyone I’ve talked to at Citrix has assured me that it will not be extended. I’m sure that there will still be an upgrade path after July 1, but it will cost you more money than the current promotion.

One more thing – if you’re going to do this, please don’t wait until the afternoon of June 30 to issue your purchase order! June 30 is like the “triple witching hour” – it’s end-of-month, end-of-quarter, and end-of-promotion. So it’s bound to be crazy busy in the Citrix order entry department. We’ve been requesting that all of our customers get their orders to us by end of business on the 29th, just to make sure that we can get the order placed through distribution and into Citrix’s hands before end of business in Fort Lauderdale on the 30th.

P.S.: We’re frequently asked why Citrix is making the change to non-concurrent licensing for XenDesktop. The main rationale is that if you’re looking at a serious desktop virtualization initiative, your concurrency ratio is probably going to be close to 1-to-1 anyway, so you won’t get much benefit from a concurrent license model. It also aligns more closely with the Microsoft VDI licensing model.

The important thing to remember is that if you are in that situation, you’ll actually spend less money and get more functionality for it, because the XenDesktop licenses will cost you roughly half of what it would cost to buy an equivalent number of XenApp licenses.

And if your use case is primarily to support a large pool of remote users, but you will never have more than half of them logged on at any given time, you can still purchase XenApp licenses to support those users, and they will still be concurrent use licenses.

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Citrix Branch Repeater VPX Licensing Tutorial

April 29th, 2010 | Posted by Steve Parlee in Branch Repeater | Citrix | Licensing - (1 Comments)

I recently implemented both the new Citrix Access Gateway (CAG) VPX and the Branch Repeater VPX within our development lab. Both are “virtual appliances” designed to run directly on a XenServer host. Both are impressive products and work great – in fact, we can use “live motion” to move the CAG between XenServers while running video in a XenDesktop session with not even a pause in the video playback. The CAG moves with no interruption in service. NONE!

But this isn’t just a post to sing the praises of the virtual appliances. Rather, it’s about LICENSING!!! Specifically, licensing the Branch Repeater VPX.

As with many Citrix products, obtaining the license and getting it properly installed is not necessarily easy and intuitive…and in many cases (particularly with new products), we’ve found that the Citrix licensing support team does not know all the ins and outs of licensing a specific product either. That is not intended as a slam on this team. They do the best they can – but Citrix is a big company now, and sometimes it takes a while for information on new products to filter down to the front-line troops. In this case they worked with me for quite some time until we got this figured out (so there is at least one guy on the Citrix support team who now knows how this works).

So…now that I’ve gone through the pain, I thought I’d try to spare you from it if I can. (You’re welcome.)

One complication you’ll encounter is that, depending upon what you’re attempting to accomplish, these appliances may require one license or two. For example, with the CAG, if you are only going to use it for running secured sessions to a web interface (the equivalent of the legacy Citrix Secure Gateway) then you only need a “platform license.” However, if you also plan to run SSL VPN sessions though the CAG, you will need Access Gateway Universal licenses for your users, which will be rolled into a second license file.

Access Gateway licensing isn’t new and it’s pretty well understood. But what about the Branch Repeater? Just as with the CAG, the Branch Repeater may require one license or two, depending upon the functionality you need. If you are going to use the Branch Repeater VPX to connect to another (physical or virtual) Branch Repeater then you only need a platform license. However, if you want to take advantage of its ability to support client PCs that use the Branch Repeater Plug-in, you will need a second license to enable that feature. So we finally come to the topic of this post: how do you get the license file(s) onto your new Branch Repeater VPX?

First, you must log onto the “MyCitrix” web site with your account credentials, and access the Licensing Tool Box to activate and allocate the license. That part of the process is well documented, and if you’re a Citrix customer, you’ve probably done it at least once. The tricky part is what you have to do to download the VPX license file, what you need to enter in the Repeater itself, where to put it, and what you should see.

Here’s what we learned (NOTE: Click on any graphic to view full-sized):

  1. On the Branch Repeater VPX Web-based management interface, access the “Manage Licenses” screen, and in the right panel, choose “local” as shown below, and click the “Apply” button.
    License Server Configuration

    License Server Configuration

  2. Then click on the “License Information” tab and you will see something similar to this next image. What you will need from this screen is the “Local License Server Host Id:” Write down this information – you will need it in the next step.
    Information Used for License Management

    Information Used for License Management

  3. Now you can download the license file from your “MyCitrix” portal. Save it to your PC, and make a note of where you saved it. As part of the process of downloading the license, you must enter the license server ID. Traditionally, you would enter the name of the Citrix license server in this field (and it was case-sensitive, which tripped up a lot of users). But in this case, the system is expecting the MAC address of the Branch Repeater VPX itself…which is what you just copied in Step 2. Another difference is that in the past the License Server Host Type was always set to “HostName.” However, there is now a drop down box with a second choice, “ETHERNET.” For the Branch Repeater VPX, you want to select “ETHERNET,” and then enter the host id that you wrote down in Step 2:
    Downloading the License File from MyCitrix

    Downloading the License File from MyCitrix


    In case you’re wondering, the MAC address we’re using is the address of the first interface on the Branch Repeater VPX, as displayed in XenCenter. If you want to find it in XenCenter click on the VM in the left column and then select the Network tab in the right window and you should see it there:
    XenCenter Display

    XenCenter Display

  4. Now that you have your license downloaded to your local PC, you need to add it to your Branch Repeater. Access the “Local Licenses” tab and click the Add button (note that you will not see all the content in the window as shown here until you’ve added your license):
    Local Licenses Display

    Local Licenses Display


    After you click Add, this screen will appear and you will need to browse to the location where you saved your license file, and click the “Install” button:
    Add License

    Add License


    Now the “Local Licenses” tab should be populated with content:
    Local Licenses Display

    Local Licenses Display


    Next, go to the “Licensed Features” tab. You should see your features listed as shown below:
    Licensed Features

    Licensed Features

  5. As mentioned earlier, if you plan to support client PCs that have the Branch Repeater Plug-in, you will need another license to enable this feature. Once again you will need to go to your MyCitrix portal and follow the same procedure as you did for your platform license to obtain the Plug-in license. Once you have the Plug-in license you will need to add it to the Virtual Appliance in the same manner as you added the platform license. Once that’s done, if you click the down arrow under “Local Licenses” you will see both licenses:
    Manage Licenses Screen

    Manage Licenses Screen


    Finally, if you click the “Licensed Features” tab, both licenses should show up with the number of licenses available:
    Licensed Features

    Licensed Features

This should be all you need to get the Branch Repeater VPX licensed. Now you just need to get it configured correctly… but that’s another blog post.

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