18702 North Creek Pkwy. #208Loading
Volume 3, Issue 11 - November, 2008 - © 2009 by Moose Logic, All Rights Reserved
Cover Story: Citrix Summit Update (As Much As We Can Tell You Without Getting In Trouble)
Calling Turkey Central...
Smarter Than Your Average Trade Show
This Month in History
Moose Logic Coming Events
(Moose Views is a monthly newsletter prepared by Moose Logic to bring you information and tips on maintaining a trouble-free network)
Citrix Summit Update (As Much As We Can Tell You Without Getting In Trouble)
The last week of October found Fenwick and Friends back in sunny Orlando, Florida attending the second Citrix Summit of the year. Some of the information that was shared was, of course, under the Non-Disclosure Agreement that always comes into play in events like this. But here’s what we can share with you without getting ourselves in trouble. (Note: The following are brief highlights from our Webinar on this subject, which can be viewed at www.mooselogic.com/webinars.)XenServer v5.0
The latest release of XenServer is truly enterprise-ready. If you’ve been holding off because you didn’t think it was ready for prime-time, you owe it to yourself to take another look. Here are a few highlights:
Automated “HA” - you can now configure your pool of XenServers to automatically restart critical VMs if the XenServer they’re running on should fail. The restarted VMs are automatically load-balanced across the pool, And the system is smart enough to prevent you from bringing up a new VM if it would cause you to no longer have enough resources to restart the machines you’ve designated for restart.
Scheduled Metadata export—Metadata is data about a Virtual Machine. And if you want to bring up a VM on a XenServer that is not part of the resource pool where it normally runs (for example, a XenServer in a DR site), you must make that Metadata available, or the XenServer won’t recognize the VM as “belonging” to it. Up until now, we’ve had to manually export the Metadata from time to time. We can now set up a regular, automated schedule for the Metadata export, export it to a LUN on your SAN, and let the SAN replicate the Metadata to your DR site right along with the VMs themselves.
More Stuff—like enhancements to the XenCenter GUI, Active/Active NIC bonding, broader guest support, and performance enhancements are discussed in the recorded Webinar.
XenApp v5.0
If you’ve been reading Moose Views for any length of time, you know that XenApp is the “Product Formerly Known As Presentation Server.”
The big news about XenApp v5.0 is, of course, Windows Server 2008 compatibility—but there are a lot of other things that come along with that, like better security, Windows Firewall support, a new Universal Print Driver, and easier redirection of special folders like “My Documents.” Here are some more highlights:
- Enhancements to the Application Isolation Environment that allow inter-isolation communication.
- A new version of Resource Manager that draws from the EdgeSight technology to bring better visibility into the performance of ICA sessions.
- Support for IPv6.
- Preferential Load-Balancing—the ability to assign a higher or lower level of service to specific user groups or applications.
- Clear Type support.
- Application Streaming via HTTP or HTTPS.
- A completely redesigned Web Interface (see recorded Webinar for screen shots).
Citrix has created a searchable Web space where people can post information about applications they know are compatible with XenApp, complete with any tips and tricks required to make them work. Others can chime in with their own comments. You can find this great resource at: http://community.citrix.com/citrixready.
Citrix and 3D Graphics
As you probably know, the performance of an ICA session is a function of (1) how much of the screen is changing how fast, and (2) the speed of the connection to the ICA client device. While Citrix has made amazing strides over the last several years, true 3D graphics support has been very difficult to provide, simply because so much of the screen is changing as the graphics are manipulated.
Citrix has been working on two approaches, both of which are intended to provide usable performance over a typical DSL bandwidth connection.
Virtual Design Studio is a server-based approach that is specifically designed to support OpenGL applications. The initial beta, which has now concluded, was based on the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003 R2, with an external “graphics appliance” associated with the server. For more information, including updates on the planning for beta2, watch www.citrix.com/vds
“Project Apollo” is a variation on XenDesktop that supports both OpenGL and DirectX applications. It involves a one-to-one association of ICA clients with physical PCs (e.g., blades or rack-mount PCs) running the 32-bit Vista Aero desktop. Graphics performance will be a function of the power of the GPU in the PC that’s being remotely controlled. There is a Tech Preview available now for those of you who have “mycitrix” logins. See www.citrix.com/apollo for more information.
EdgeSight v5.0
EdgeSight is an extremely powerful tool. Unfortunately, up until now, the biggest challenge was to figure out where to look to find out what you wanted to know. The new release has a completely redesigned user interface to make it easy to locate the best report for the information you need.
Citrix Workflow Studio
Last January, Mark Templeton, the Citrix CEO, half-jokingly said that the ideal staffing scenario for a data center was a man and a dog: the dog to guard your assets, and the man to feed the dog! Citrix Workflow Studio is a step down the road toward autonomous, dynamic datacenters. It is an awesome workflow tool, and you can get a Tech Preview at www.citrix.com/wfsinsider.
Calling Turkey Central...
The Butterball Turkey Talk-Line (also known as “Turkey Central”) has been answering consumer questions and helping cook those Thanksgiving dinners since 1981. Over the years, they’ve received many interesting calls…- A woman from Virginia called asking, “How do you thaw a fresh turkey?” The Talk-Line expert explained that fresh turkeys don’t need to be thawed.
- On Thanksgiving Day, a Georgian woman decided to be completely prepared. She had just agreed to host dinner the following year and called the Talk-Line a year ahead of time for turkey tips.
- The call from the most unusual location can be credited to a Floridian. Not wanting to miss his golf game, he called “Turkey Central” for tips while waiting to tee off from the 14th hole.
- A novice turkey-cooking chef wanted to know if the yellow netting and wrapper around the turkey should be removed before roasting. (The answer was, “Yes!”)
- A woman called the Turkey Talk-Line to find out how long it would take to roast her turkey. The Talk-Line turkey expert said that to answer the question, she’d have to know how much it weighed. The woman replied, “I don’t know, it’s still running around outside!”
Smarter Than Your Average Trade Show
For any and all of you who have not yet heard, there is a trade show coming to Seattle on December 3 called “Interface.” Now, I know most of you are thinking, “Great! More pens, note pads, clever variations on carabiner key rings, and other useless tchotchkes,” but Interface may be a bit of a surprise.Ignoring the standard sales floor model that is the typical trade show of today, Interface is a one-day education bombardment. It features over 20 seminars during the six-hour event, discussing just about every IT topic you can imagine. If you have any IT plans or initiatives for 2009, this is a great chance to learn about best practices and emerging technologies. Moose Logic will, of course, have a booth there, and we will be featuring Marathon Technologies and LeftHand Networks products, and talking about high availability and storage solutions for your virtual environment—complete with live demonstrations.
If you’re still not convinced by the prospect of educational seminars, live demos, and the inevitable tchotchkes, let me sweeten the deal: The show is free, lunch is provided, we’ll have some great prizes and giveaways (thanks to our good friends at Brooks Sports), and the show wraps up with a cocktail hour! + But here’s the catch—you MUST pre-register...there will not be any on-site registration.
If you’d like to attend, please pre-register at: http://f2fevents.com/?page_id=58 More info on the show is available on their home page at http://f2fevents.com
This Month in History
November 1, 1776—Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded in California.November 2, 1734—Daniel Boone was born in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
November 3, 1948—The Chicago Tribune ran the famous headline: “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
November 4, 1879—Will Rogers was born in what was to become Oklahoma.
November 5, 1912—Roy Rogers (no relation to Will) was born in Cincinnati, OH (his given name: Leonard Slye).
November 6, 1861 —James Naismith, the inventor of the game of baseball, was born in Almonte, Ontario.
November 7, 1944—Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented fourth term as President. November 8, 1900—Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind was born in Atlanta, GA
November 9, 1989—The East German government announced the opening of the Berlin Wall! (Something that I, a child of the Cold War, never thought to see in my lifetime!)
November 10, 1775—The establishment of the U.S. Marine Corps (“No better friend, no worse enemy.” Semper fi!)
November 12, 2008—Moose Logic achieves Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status! (Well, we think it’s historic!)
November 13, 1850—Author Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland.
November 14, 1972—The Dow Jones Index topped 1,000 points for the first time. (Yes, one thousand points.)
November 16, 1805—The Lewis & Clark Expedition reached the Pacific Ocean.
November 18, 1928—Mickey Mouse first appeared on the screen in Steamboat Willie.
November 19, 1863—President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.
