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Cover Story: Last Chance to Trade Up!
Did You Know? (Summertime Facts)
A First Look At XenClient
Lawn Care Tips
Moose Logic Coming Events
June Recommended Reading

(Moose Views is a monthly newsletter prepared by Moose Logic to bring you information and tips on maintaining a trouble-free network)

If you’re currently running XenApp, and you have any plans at all to get into desktop virtualization, you need to be looking at the Citrix XenApp-to-XenDesktop trade-up offer.

This offer ends June 30, and everyone I’ve asked at Citrix has assured me that it will not be extended.

So what’s this all about? Well, remember that when Citrix announced XenDesktop 4, they also made the decision to include XenApp functionality in the XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum editions. In other words, if you buy XenApp, you get XenApp. If you buy XenDesktop (Enterprise or Platinum), you get XenDesktop and XenApp.

The trade-up program is a limited-time offer to let you turn your XenApp licenses into XenDesktop 4 licenses at a fraction of what it would otherwise cost you—and, if you trade-up all of your XenApp licenses, you will get two XenDesktop licenses for every XenApp license you trade up.

This 2 for 1 deal is important, because XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum is licensed either per user or per device (the same way Microsoft licenses Remote Desktop Services) - whereas XenApp by itself continues to be licensed per concurrent user.

Citrix’s rationale for this is that concurrent-use licensing doesn’t make sense if you’re going for desktop virtualization in a big way. Because if you are, your concurrency ratio is going to be close to 1 to 1 anyway.

Here’s how the math goes: XenDesktop 4 Enterprise Edition lists for $225 per user. (Yes, that’s exactly half the list price of XenApp Enterprise Edition—so if your concurrency ratio is 2 to 1 or lower, you’re going to be better off buying XenDesktop licenses even if all you need today is XenApp functionality.) The trade-up offer to go from XenApp Enterprise to XenDesktop Enterprise is $95 per license.

If your XenApp Subscription Advantage is coming due soon, that renewal is going to cost you $50/license. If you redirect those funds toward the trade-up (since you’re going to get another year of SA coverage with your new XenDesktop licenses anyway), your additional out-of-pocket expense is only $45/license.

If you need more information on this program, please give us a call. You can also check out our blog site at www.mooselogic.com/blog, and select the “XenDesktop” category — we’ve written extensively about XenDesktop and the trade-up program.

Finally, if you want the full story on all of your trade-up pricing options, you can view a pricing matrix. Note that these prices are all MSRP, and if you have a volume license contract with Citrix, your costs will be lower.

Hot Town, Summer In the City...

We generally don't have it too bad here in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, most of us don’t even have air conditioning in our homes. So on the few days when you wish you did, just remember that it could be worse:

• Occasionally during a thunderstorm, odd heat bursts can occur. One such incident occurred in Glasgow, Montana, in September 1994. At 5:02 a.m., the temperature was 67 degrees. At 5:17 a.m., a heat burst hit, sending the temperature up to 93 degrees. By 5:40 a.m., it was back down to 68 degrees.
• Only two U.S. states have record highs no greater than 100 degrees--Alaska and Hawaii (no surprise there!).
• The record for the most consecutive days above 100 degrees F (38 degrees C) is 160 days in Marble Bar, Western Australia. This occurred from October 1923 to April 1924.

A First Look At XenClient

- by Steve Parlee

If you’ve been with us for a while, you know that XenClient is the new client-side hypervisor from Citrix. It’s purpose is to allow you to take your virtual desktop with you and still have an elegant way to keep it up to date and to synch your important documents. We’ve been testing the “Release Candidate” that Citrix recently made available as a public beta.

Even though it is obviously not finished code, it’s pretty impressive!

Our Dell Latitude demo system is configured with two VMs – one Windows 7 and the other Windows XP. Further I have Access 2003 installed on the XP image and Access 2007 installed on the Win7 image and I’m “passing through” Access 2003 from the XP VM to the Win7 VM. In other words, I can “publish” an application from one desktop – in this case, I’m publishing Access 2003 from the XP desktop – and “subscribe” to it from the other desktop. In practice, this is similar in appearance to how a XenApp published application looks when it runs on the client device.

There are a couple of advantages to this. The obvious one is that an application that won’t run on Win7 can be installed on the XP desktop and made available to the Win7 desktop. A more subtle advantage is in the area of security. For example, let’s assume that the XP desktop is your “business desktop,” and is locked down such that the user has no administrative rights. Let’s further assume that the Win7 desktop is your “personal desktop,” and you have the rights to do whatever you want with it – which could include getting infected with malware. But the applications running on the business desktop cannot be affected by malware on the personal desktop – even if they’re being passed through.

In an April 9 blog post, we linked to a video from Citrix TV that illustrates this. In the video, they’ve deliberately infected one desktop with a keylogger. You can see that any interaction with a browser running on that desktop is being logged by the keylogger. However, a browser session that is running on the other desktop, but being passed through to the infected desktop, is immune to the keylogger.

With regards to functionality, I’m very hopeful that Citrix will fix some of the issues we’ve seen in the RC. Here are some of the things we’ve seen reported on the Citrix on-line forums, some of which we’ve seen ourselves:

• Many people are finding hardware problems with simple devices such as mice even for hardware on the Hardware Compatibility List. Smart cards are also an issue.
• XenClient requires that a few different Virtualization technologies be present in order to function correctly, so today the HCL is pretty limited. This should be improving each day but it is still something to watch out for so be sure to check the HCL carefully. There is an HCL included with the XenClient 1.0 RC User Guide.
• HDX (High Definition) video/audio:
  
  • If you run both a corporate Desktop and a Personal desktop at the same time, only one VM can have HDX running at a time – and to switch HDX functionality between VMs you have to shut them down…it cannot be done on the fly. This is unfortunate because without HDX, video is really choppy and difficult to watch. Citrix has already said this will not change before RTM (Release to Manufacturing).
  • If you are taking advantage of the feature we described earlier where you publish an application from one desktop and subscribe to it from the other, you can have HDX running in the subscribing desktop, but not in the publishing desktop.
• We’ve not yet been able to do a successful physical-to-virtual (“P2V”) migration of a desktop OS into the XenClient environment. Citrix has said it will release a version of XenConvert that will be able to do this, but they say it probably won’t be until after RTM.
• Integrated video cams do not work. This could be a significant issue, since the product is aimed at “road warriors” and many of them will want to use a cam for meeting. It supposedly supports USB video cams, but we have not yet tested this. However, I’m concerned that many users will push back on having to carry an extra peripheral with them. We’ve been told by Citrix that this should be working by RTM.
• OS Snapshots are not available yet but should be in a future release.
• No support for 64 bit guests yet.
• Graphic support for non-Intel graphic chip sets is limited.

Still, this is shaping up to be a great product that will make life easier for many a desktop administrator. If you’ve ever had to manage desktops, you’ve had to deal with this “Catch-22:”

1. My users are breaking their desktops…I need to lock them down.
2. When I lock them down, I end up with managers in my face because they can’t install their favorite (fill in the blank).
3. I back off and give them local admin rights so they can install (fill in the blank).
4. Return to Step 1, repeat ad nauseum.

XenClient gives us a glimmer of hope that we may be able, sometime soon, to break out of this cycle!

Lawn Care Tips

Everyone wants a healthy, green lawn, and it can be frustrating if, despite your best efforts, your lawn is brown and spotty. Here are some tips:

Don’t Cut the Grass Too Short
Don’t go for the “putting green” look—golf courses use special varieties of grass that respond well to a short cutting height. But most lawns require more water and are more stressed when you cut them too short. Your best bet is to cut no shorter than three inches. With this length, the grass holds moisture and can resist disease better.

Don’t Over-fertilize Grass can only absorb so much fertilizer before it starts to become stressed. Furthermore, the excess fertilizer is washed from your lawn, and will flow into waterways, becoming a pollutant. Most experts recommend fertilizing in June, August, and October. Too much in the early spring can cause grass to grow too quickly, resulting in a weak root structure.

Don’t Over-water Most people are concerned about not watering their lawns enough, but more damage comes from over-watering than under-watering. In general, most grass needs about one inch of watering per week. (Of course, if you have trees with shallow root structures that spread under your lawn, all bets are off!)

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