18702 North Creek Pkwy. #208Loading
Volume 4, Issue 5 - May/June, 2009 - © 2009 by Moose Logic, All Rights Reserved
Cover Story: Announcements and More Announcements!
Get Ready for BBQ Season!
Marathon Brings Non-Stop Computing to XenServer
Travel Photography for Kids
Are We There Yet? (Keeping the Kids Busy)
Bill Cosby on Fathers
Moose Logic Coming Events
May Recommended Reading
(Moose Views is a monthly newsletter prepared by Moose Logic to bring you information and tips on maintaining a trouble-free network)
Announcements and More Announcements!
Fenwick (the Moose) and several others of the Moose crew spent Cinco de Mayo in Las Vegas, attending the Citrix Summit + Synergy event. As you may know, if you’re a long time Moose Views reader, Citrix has traditionally had two conferences each year. One, which was Partner-facing, was called “Summit,” and the other, which was End User-facing, was called “iForum.”This year, they combined the two events, threw in some content from Network World and others, and called it “Synergy.” We had two days of Partner-facing content on Sunday & Monday followed by three days of End User-facing content Tuesday—Thursday.
We’re going to be conducting a Webinar on Wednesday, May 27, to share some of the highlights (as much as we can without violating our non-disclosure agreements), but in the meantime, here are some teasers:
The Citrix Receiver
If you’ve been using Citrix products for any length of time, you have probably, at least once, caught yourself muttering, “Another client!?”
If you’re running the Program Neighborhood Agent, you’ve got a client icon in your System Tray. If you’re using Password Manager, you’ve got another one. If you want to use XenDesktop, you’ll have a “Desktop Receiver” client with its icon as well. EasyCall? Another client, another icon. WAN acceleration? Yep, another client, another icon.
The Citrix Receiver is a single universal client app, and all the other components function as “plug-ins” to the Receiver.
Now, if you’re using some kind of Electronic Software Distribution tool to push the clients out to workstations, don’t panic — the individual plug-ins can still be pushed via your ESD tool without using the Receiver. But for most organizations, this is going to make client distribution much easier.
In fact, the Receiver and its plug-ins can be distributed, managed, and updated via a new “virtual appliance” that runs on a XenServer v5.0 platform and is called the “Citrix Merchandising Server.”
The Citrix Receiver and the Citrix Merchandising Server can both be downloaded now from the Citrix Web Site.
Citrix Receiver for iPhone
Yes, you read that right. There is a Citrix Receiver for the iPhone, and it’s available now on the iPhone “App Store.” Magnifying glass not included.
Citrix Dazzle
This one is not available yet, although we expect to see a technology preview later in 2009. Dazzle is intended to let the IT department build its own “App Store” for desktops and applications delivered via Citrix platforms. Users will get to pick and choose which of the available applications they want to “subscribe” to, how those apps are organized into folders, where they are placed on the Start Menu, etc. Eventually, when the Receiver for Macintosh is available, you’ll be able to place the icons directly on the OSX dock.
New NetScaler VPX Announced
Citrix is going to turn the NetScaler into a Virtual Appliance—again, designed to drop right onto a XenServer host.
Why a virtual appliance? Several reasons, actually. First, it allows Citrix to scale the product down as well as up to fit the needs of smaller clients who need the functionality but not the horsepower. But it also adds flexibility to the product for both enterprise data center deployments and “cloud” deployments. If you’re renting raw server capacity from a cloud services provider, you probably don’t have physical access to their datacenter. That makes it difficult to deploy an SSL/VPN appliance or a load balancing/acceleration appliance there. But if the appliance is virtual, you can simply load it onto a XenServer in that cloud data center and you’re off and running.
We’re expecting a public tech preview of the NetScaler VPX to be available for download somewhere around May 18.
Citrix has also announced their intent to offer virtual appliances for the Access Gateway and Branch Repeater (a.k.a. WANscaler) later this year. Looks like a trend!
Spring, 2009, Edition of “They Named It What???”
Citrix Access Essentials (the version of Presentation Server intended for small businesses) has been renamed to “XenApp Fundamentals.” Since the word “essentials” is now being used in “Citrix Essentials for XenServer” and “Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V,” they were apparently concerned about potential confusion if they continued to use “Access Essentials” as a product name. So “Access Essentials” is dead—long live “XenApp Fundamentals.” (To our knowledge, this involves absolutely no change in pricing, packaging, or functionality. Only the name has been changed to confuse the innocent.)
Get Ready for BBQ!
As the weather heats up, there is nothing better than grilling outdoors. Not only will you get a great tasting meal, but you will keep your home cooler by not heating up the oven! To make preparation even faster, instead of marinating your meats, simply use a dry rub.
To make each seasoning mix, toss all ingredients together. Coat the surface of the meat with the rub, let sit for approximately 10 min., and toss it on the grill. These rubs are great on all types of meats and seafood:
Basic BBQ Mix
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
1/2 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dark chili powder
2 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon cumin
2 tablespoons sugar
Cajun Seasoning Mix
3 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon black pepper
1-1/2 teaspoons thyme
1/2 teaspoons oregano
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
1/2 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dark chili powder
2 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon cumin
2 tablespoons sugar
Cajun Seasoning Mix
3 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon black pepper
1-1/2 teaspoons thyme
1/2 teaspoons oregano
Lemon Herb Rub
4-1/2 tablespoons basil
3-3/4 tablespoons oregano
1-1/2 tablespoons black pepper
1-1/2 tablespoons dried onion flakes
1-1/2 tablespoons whole celery seed
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon rind
Seafood Seasoning Mix
1 teaspoon lemon pepper
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons parsley
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
4-1/2 tablespoons basil
3-3/4 tablespoons oregano
1-1/2 tablespoons black pepper
1-1/2 tablespoons dried onion flakes
1-1/2 tablespoons whole celery seed
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon rind
Seafood Seasoning Mix
1 teaspoon lemon pepper
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons parsley
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Marathon Brings Non-Stop Computing to XenServer
Marathon Technologies will be shipping two new products later this month. Both offer true “compute-through” operation for those Windows workloads that absolutely, positively, cannot go down.
As you may know, the “HA” functionality that’s baked into Citrix Essentials for XenServer was actually developed by Marathon. “HA” is referred to as “Level 1” protection. It simply restarts a protected VM on another host if the host it is running on should fail.
About a year ago, Marathon introduced everRun VM, which you could add to XenServer to give it “Level 2” protection. When you protect a VM at this level, Marathon will create another instance of that VM on the target host that you specify, but will hold that copy in “standby” mode unless it is needed. If the primary host should fail, the “standby” copy goes live and takes over.
Level 2 can also handle component level failures. For example, if the network interface connecting your VM to your production network should fail, network communications can be re-routed across the “availability link” between your everRun VM servers and through an interface on the target server.
You don’t necessarily need shared storage (i.e., a SAN) to make use of everRun VM. If you have sufficient disk space in your everRun VM hosts themselves, the system can mirror the protected VM’s data between the source and target hosts.
What’s new is “Level 3” protection. This was previously limited to Marathon’s everRun FT product line, which required two dedicated physical servers.
Level 3 protection gives you two instances of a VM that are running in “lock step” on two different hosts. If one host fails, the server workload doesn’t skip a beat. It truly computes through the failure. This can bring true “five nines” of availability to a virtualized Windows workload. (That means 99.999% uptime, or no more than about five and a half minutes of downtime per year.)
As you might expect, this isn’t particularly easy, and there are a couple of caveats. For one thing, you can’t have more than one processor core assigned to a Level 3 protected workload...and it will take another processor core to handle the associated housekeeping. So this isn’t something that you can throw an extremely heavy (i.e., processor-intensive) workload at. If you have heavy workloads that will require multiple cores, stick with Level 2 protection.
The new everRun products will support up to four XenServers in your “availability pool,” provided you’re not tapping into their “SplitSite” capability, which allows you to physically separate the host machines—so long as you maintain less than 10 ms latency between them. SplitSite is strictly a 1-to-1 proposition.
If you have already deployed XenServer and want to add Level 2 and Level 3 protection, you can purchase the new version of everRun VM, which is designed to install on the free version of XenServer v5.0. Please note, however, that if you want Level 1 protection as well, you will need to purchase Citrix Essentials for XenServer, because the free version does not include HA. SplitSite is optional with everRun VM.
Your other option is everRun 2G, which is an all-inclusive product built on the OEM version of XenServer. It includes Levels 1, 2, and 3 protection and SplitSite capability in a single package.
Travel Photography for Kids
Going on vacation with your kids this year? Or maybe just planning some mini-vacations in the local area to keep the budget down?Photography is a great way to involve kids in a family vacation. It helps them to see things in a new way and allows them to document their own experiences. To help your child enjoy photography on your next trip, keep these ideas in mind.
Get your child a cheap camera. They will not have to worry about breaking it and you won’t have to hover over them all the time. Disposable cameras are especially kid-friendly. Look for waterproof ones to endure spilled juice and drops in puddles.
Let your child explore the world around him, and encourage him to take photos of what is interesting to him. It may not be what you expect, but sometimes these pictures can capture the spirit of the trip in a new way.
After your trip, go over your child’s photos and point out what makes them good and what could be improved upon. With practice, your child will soon be taking pictures that are sure to become family treasures.
To help your child take great photos, share these tips with him or her:
- Keep fingers away from the lens and hold the camera as steady as possible.
- Shoot tight to the subject and be aware of backgrounds and how they will affect the photo.
- Try not to cut off people’s heads.
- If there is strong light, keep your back to the light source to allow your subject to be well illuminated.
- Consider snapping a few good pictures yourself of your child using his or her camera. This will guarantee that at least some pictures will come out and your child will have some photos of himself to enjoy.
Are We There Yet?
If you are planning a road trip with small children this summer, you’re probably searching for ideas on how to help your kids pass the time. Take these activities and ideas along with those swimsuits and shorts:Travel Games
Most board games come in travel sizes. You might check the thrift stores in your area. You can find everything from Monopoly Junior to memory games, and even an electronic Wheel of Fortune.
Find It Games
Before you go, write the letters of the alphabet on index cards. During your trip, deal them out to everyone. Search for words starting with those letters or simply things out the window starting with those letters. The first one to go through all of his or her cards is the winner.
License Plates Games
Start by together naming all the states in the U.S. This can be harder than it seems! Keep this list handy and every time a license plate from that state is spotted, mark it off. Try to complete your list before your trip is over. Finding Alaska and Hawaii will be extra special.
Category Games
Pick a category. For example, you might choose cities, presidents, flowers, sports, or movie stars. Each player has ten seconds to name something that fits into that category. Continue playing until only one player is left. That person picks the category for the next round.
Never Ending Story
The first person begins this game by saying, “Once upon a time. . .” and then adding a sentence. The next person continues the story by adding a sentence or two. This can continue as long as you like.
Bill Cosby on Fathers
“Fathers are the geniuses of the house because only a person as intelligent as we could fake such stupidity. Think about your father—he doesn’t know where anything is. You ask him to do something, he messes it up and your mother sends you, 'Go down and see what your father’s doing before he blows up the house.' He’s a genius at work because he doesn’t want to do it, and he knows someone will be coming soon to stop him.”“If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.”
“Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.”
“My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood, but it didn’t, because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children.”
“Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.”
