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Cover Story: Last Chance to Have Lunch On Us In 2010
Moose Logic Welcomes Lawrence Brown
Citrix Access Gateway 5.0 Now Available
Cold Weather Tips for Pet Owners
Celebrate National Pomegranate Month!
November Humor and Thanksgiving Facts
Moose Logic Coming Events
November Recommended Reading

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

As we told you last month, Citrix has announced XenDesktop 5. Now, we’ve lived through enough product release cycles (and we suspect you have, too) to know that you’ll never really know when a product will be released until it’s released. That said, our expectation is that XenDesktop will be released before the end of the year.

So we’re offering you an end-of-the-year bribe: come out to Daniel’s Broiler in Bellevue to take a closer look at what’s new in XenDesktop 5, and we’ll buy you lunch. We’ll also be reminding you that the XenDesktop trade-up promotion (as it is currently constituted) will be ending on December 31 — just in case you missed it the last eight or nine times we reminded you of that.

The event is on Wednesday, December 8, from 12:00 to 1:30 or so. Seating is limited, so please register soon. You’ll also find the registration link at http://www.mooselogic.com/events.

This will be the last chance you’ll have this year to let us buy you lunch, so don’t miss out! Besides — after a week of eating leftover Thanksgiving turkey, just think how nice it will be to have a nice steak!

Moose Logic Welcomes Lawrence Brown

Moose Logic is pleased to welcome Lawrence Brown to the Moose Logic team as our new Managed Services Practice Manager. Lawrence will be specifically looking at how we can expand the services we offer under our MooseGuard^TM support plans so we can deliver more value to our MooseGuard^TM customers.

If you’ve been reading Moose Views for a while, you know about our MooseGuard^TM plans, which are designed to take the IT management burden off of your shoulders so you can worry about how to run and grow your business instead of worrying about how to keep your computer systems running. (And if you don't know about them, we'd be happy to explain them to you!)

Lawrence brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the team in some of the hottest areas of technology, such as cloud computing, VoIP, managed security services, and Wide Area Networking management.

Over the coming months, you can look forward to hearing about more optional services from us. And we’d also love to hear from you—what kinds of things keep you awake at night? What technology functions would you rather outsource so you can focus on your business?

You can let us know by emailing feedback@mooselogic.com

Citrix Announces Access Gateway 5.0

At the recent Synergy Berlin conference, Citrix announced Access Gateway 5.0. We have confirmed that 5.0 is now available for download from the Citrix download site – both as an update for the CAG 2010 hardware appliance, and in Access Gateway VPX (virtual appliance) format. (Note: you will need a “mycitrix” account to download the software.)

One of the things I really like about 5.0 is that it now supports running two 2010 appliances in an active/passive HA configuration with automatic failover. This was a serious shortcoming of the original CAG appliance.

In earlier versions, if you were using the Access Gateway as a general-purpose SSL VPN, you could configure HA of a sort within the Access Gateway client plug-in, by defining primary and (multiple, if necessary) alternate Access Gateways for the client to connect to. When you fired up the VPN client, if it couldn’t connect to the primary target CAG, it would step through the alternates.

However, if you were simply running the Access Gateway in “CSG replacement” mode to connect to a XenApp farm without requiring your users to first establish an SSL/VPN connection, you had no ability to provide automatic failover unless you had some kind of network load balancing device in front of multiple Access Gateway appliances.

That meant, of course, that to avoid having the load balancing device become a single point of failure, you had to have some kind of HA functionality there as well. By the time you were done, the price tag had climbed to a level that just didn’t make sense for some smaller deployments.

NOTE: This specifically applies to the 2010 appliance. The CAG Enterprise models, because they are built on the NetScaler hardware platform, have always supported operation as HA pairs with automatic failover. Of course, a CAG MPX 5500 also carries a $9,000 list price, compared to $3,500 for a CAG 2010.

Now, with the release of 5.0, you can purchase two 2010 appliances (which will cost you less than a single MPX 5500), and run them as an active/passive HA pair. Thank you very much, Citrix CAG team!

If you check out the “First Look at Citrix Access Gateway 5.0” post on our Moose Logic Blog, you’ll find a couple of embedded videos from Citrix TV: The first shows how to upgrade an existing CAG 2010 to the 5.0 software using a USB flash drive, and then set up the basic system parameters. The second walks through the process of configuring a pair for active/passive failover.

Cold Weather Tips for Pet Owners

Despite the crazy record-breaking high temperature we had back on November 3 (which was possibly caused by hyperventilating politicians and reporters), it is getting colder here in the Pacific Northwest. Here are some tips as you prepare yourself and your pet for winter:

• Any short haired animal should not be left outside for long periods during cold weather. If you must leave your dog outdoors, provide a dry, draft-free doghouse. Place it so that it faces away from the wind and make sure that it is large enough for your dog to sit or lie down comfortably. It should not be so large, however, that it cannot hold in your dog’s body heat. The floor should be covered with dry bedding, and the doorway should be protected from drafts with a covering of heavy cloth.
• Any animal with an outdoor water bowl should have fresh water available at all times. Make sure that water left outside has not frozen. Pets need more water in the winter, as they are using extra energy keeping warm. They also may need more food during colder weather.
• Keep antifreeze away from your pets, as it can be fatal. It is attractive to animals because it has a sweet smell. Wipe up spills immediately and watch for leaks underneath your car. Also keep rock salt and snow melting chemicals away from areas where your pet may play.
• Your pet will still need exercise in the cold weather, but if it’s really cold, you may want to shorten your dog’s walk. Watch for icy conditions and don’t let your dog run off leash, as cars may not be able to stop in time if your dog runs into traffic. Clean off your dog’s feet when you return home to remove any ice or snow melting chemicals that you might have picked up on the way.

Pomegranates? Really?

Yes, really - November is National Pomegranate Month. In case you're among those who have looked at those things in your supermarket produce section and wondered what the heck to do with one, we thought we'd share a few recipes for the Thanksgiving holiday.

First, unlike most fruit where you eat the fruit and throw away the seeds, with a pomegranate, you eat the seeds and throw away the fruit! To get to the seeds, cut off the crown and cut the fruit into sections. Place the sections in a bowl of water. Then roll out the seeds with your fingers. At this point, you can simply eat the seeds — but here are a few other ideas:

Tangy Pomegranate Dip
1 large pomegranate
2 cups plain yogurt
2 scallions, finely chopped
1/4 cup pomegranate juice
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/4 cup cilantro, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon salt
Fresh mint sprigs

Remove the seeds from the pomegranate. In a bowl, combine the yogurt, pomegranate juice, scallions, cilantro, lime juice, and salt. Gently fold in all but two tablespoons of the pomegranate seeds. Place in a serving bowl and garnish with mint and the remaining seeds. Chill for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Pomegranate Compote Relish
Seeds from 2 medium pomegranates (about 1 - 1/2 cups)
1 tablespoon finely chopped orange zest
1 tablespoon orange juice
1/2 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 teaspoon salt

Gently fold together all the ingredients in a medium bowl. Serve with pork, chicken, or turkey as a relish.

Spiced Pomegranate Apple Cider
6 cups apple cider
6 cloves
1 stick cinnamon, about 3 inches in length
1 - 1/2 cups pomegranate juice
1 - 1/2 cups rum (optional)

Heat apple cider, cloves, and cinnamon until juice just reaches a simmer. Remove from heat. Let steep, covered, one hour. Stir in pomegranate juice. For each serving, heat 3/4 cup juice mixture, and, if desired, stir in 3 tablespoons rum. To serve chilled, after the mixture has steeped, store sealed in the refrigerator. Makes 8 servings.

November Humor and Thanksgiving Facts

Bumper Sticker Humor
"My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right."

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you!"

Thanksgiving By the Numbers
(Source: US Census Bureau)

• There are more than 250 million turkeys raised each year in the United States.
• There are more turkeys raised in Minnesota than in any other state, followed by North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Virginia, and California.
• In the U.S., you can find three places named after Thanksgiving’s traditional main course: Turkey, Texas, is the most populous, followed by Turkey Creek, Louisiana, and Turkey, North Carolina.
• The typical American consumes almost 14 pounds of turkey each year.
• About three million people attend the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade each year. Another 44 million enjoy it on television.
• Benjamin Franklin criticized the choice of the bald eagle as the U.S. national bird, and suggested that the wild turkey was a “much more respectable bird.” (this from a letter he wrote his daughter on January 26, 1784)

Thanksgiving Quotations
“What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?” - Erma Bombeck

“An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.” - Irv Kupcinet

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” - John F. Kennedy

“Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.” - W. J. Cameron

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