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Cover Story: Citrix Announces XenDesktop 5
Multi-Processor Support from Marathon
Keeping Your Home Safe for Halloween
Breaking the Weight Loss Plateau
Happy Birthday to the Moose Logic Blog!
October Humor
Moose Logic Coming Events
October Recommended Reading

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

On October 6, at the Synergy conference in Berlin, Citrix announced the next generation of XenDesktop - XenDesktop 5 - slated for availability in December.

Most of the end-user-facing improvements in XenDesktop 5 are evolutionary, as opposed to revolutionary, and some were already introduced as part of Feature Pack 2 for XenDesktop 4 just a couple of weeks ago. (We wrote about XenClient and XenVault in last month’s issue of MooseViews.)

The Citrix Receiver now supports just about any endpoint device you would ever want to use, including the latest generation iPhone, Android, and Blackberry smartphones, and the new generation of tablets.

“Dazzle” has simply become the user interface for the Citrix Receiver as opposed to being a separate plugin.

It has become easier to provide seamless access to Windows, Web, or SaaS/Cloud applications, using the Citrix Receiver as a single point of authentication.

Citrix HDX has been enhanced with high-definition video conferencing, even faster printing, and dynamic color compression to better adapt graphics performance to network conditions.

Scalability has been improved: the new Citrix Delivery Controller can broker up to 15,000 virtual desktops from a single server.

But the really cool, revolutionary enhancements are on the management side, with the introduction of the Desktop Studio and Desktop Director tools.

The Desktop Studio console is a new, wizard-driven interface that lets IT administrators quickly install, configure, and provision a XenDesktop environment—in as little as 10 minutes.

But the coolest thing, in our opinion, is the new Desktop Director management tool, which gives you a single place to view, monitor, and manage your XenDesktop infrastructure.

Since a video is worth a thousand words, we encourage you to visit our blog site, where we have linked video demos of both the Desktop Studio and Desktop Director in our blog post about the big announcement. Take a few minutes to check them out—you’ll be impressed!

Multi-Processor Support from Marathon

We've written before about the Marathon Technology product line, which offers true non-stop operation for Windows Server applications. Last month, we wrote about everRun 2G, and the differences between “Level 2” and “Level 3” protection.

Level 3, or “lock step” protection, is the ultimate in high availability. With Level 3 protection, you have a Windows Server instance mirrored between two physical servers, and the processor and memory states are kept identical at all times. If one of your physical servers fails, the server instance continues to run on the other physical server, and your protected application doesn’t miss a beat.

This is not “High Availability” in the traditional sense of the term. Traditionally, “HA” means that if a server instance fails, it is automatically restarted on a surviving physical host.

But the server still failed, which means that you may have lost data. A critical transaction or email message may have been dropped. If you’re running, say, a pharmaceutical process control application, you may have lost the audit trail of your work in process, and have to discard thousands of dollars worth of raw materials and restart your production line.

And the server continues to be unavailable for the time it takes to reboot and restart your application on another physical host.

With Marathon Level 3 protection, a protected workload doesn’t fail over, it computes through a failure without any interruption in service...and when you fix what broke, it self-heals.

The drawback, up until now, has been that Level 3 protected VMs were limited to a single virtual CPU, which made it difficult or impossible to protect demanding workloads such as large SQL Servers.

But, on October 4, Marathon announced everRun MX — a new-generation product that will provide Level 3 protection for multi-processor workloads (up to a maximum of 8 virtual CPUs per workload).

At the same time, Marathon removed any restrictions on the number of protected VMs you can run on everRun MX — you can run as many as your hardware will support.

everRun MX will be available beginning October 15. everRun 2G will continue to be sold through the end of the year, but sales will terminate on December 31.

Customers who purchased everRun FT-2G, the version of everRun 2G that provided Level 3 protection, will be entitled to upgrade to everRun MX provided that their support & maintenance agreement is current. There will be an upgrade path for customers who purchased other versions of everRun 2G.

Keeping Your Home Safe for Halloween

Halloween is a fun time for adults and kids alike. If you are planning on welcoming trick-or-treaters to your home this year, be sure to make the experience as safe as possible.

• Remove tripping hazards from your front porch, yard, and sidewalk. This includes hoses, toys, flowerpots, and lawn furniture.
• Rake up any leaves and remove them from the walkways to your home. Wet leaves can be very slippery and pose a falling hazard.
• Make sure the front of your house is well-lit. If you have several outdoor lights, make sure the bulbs are working in all of them.
• Your pets should be restrained or put in a quiet back room or the back yard. This is not only safer for your young visitors, but also can help prevent your pet from escaping.
• Instead of open flames in your jack-o-lanterns, consider using flameless candles. Check any outdoor decorative lighting to ensure that the cords and sockets are not broken, frayed, or are exposing bare wire.
• If you are not going to be home, remember to lock all your doors and windows. Turn off your porch light, so trick-or-treaters will know you are not giving out candy.

Breaking the Weight Loss Plateau

If you are trying to lose weight, be prepared to hit some plateaus. These are times where your weight loss simply stops for a while. You may hover around the same weight (or even gain back a few pounds) for several days or even weeks. Why does this happen? Well, your body does not really want to lose weight. Evolutionary forces cause our bodies to try to maintain our weight. Losing weight can make our metabolism think we are heading toward a time of starvation, so weight loss is slowed down.

What this means is that, despite every effort to continue to burn more calories, your body will just stop responding for a while. There are a few things you can do to kick start your weight loss however. Try these solutions for combating the dreaded plateau.

1. Figure out how many calories your body needs for maintenance levels of weight loss and then reduce your calories to just under that number. If you try to lose weight too quickly, your body will rebel. Instead, concentrate on a slow and steady weight reduction.
2. Make sure you are getting the right nutritional combination of foods. If you are simply reducing your portions, but not concentrating on nutritional and healthy foods, you may have a deficit of energy. When you try to exercise, your body will try to protect itself by retaining body mass. Instead, focus on good nutrition and a multivitamin each day to round out any nutritional deficiencies.
3. If you are eating healthy, sensible portions of food and are finding you are not losing weight all of a sudden, try to jump start your exercise routine. Add an extra block or two to your walking route or try adding in some hills. Increase your weight lifting amounts by a few pounds, or add an extra 15 minutes to your workout for the next couple of weeks. You may find that this is all you need to get those pounds to start dropping again.
4. Beware of calorie creep. You may be eating the same foods you have since you've started your weight loss regimen, but it may be that you are eating more of those foods. An extra bite here, a nibble there--it can all add up. Look at your snacking habits. Often we grab more than we think we are eating, especially if we are distracted by work, television, or eating on the go.
5. Ask yourself if you are eating out more lately. Restaurant meals, with their big portions and high-fat and high-calorie meals, can be a minefield for those trying to lose weight. If you are eating out more than you were before, this could be the source of enough extra calories to sabotage your efforts. Spend some time planning your meals at home and bring your lunch to work. It will pay off quickly in your waistline and your pocketbook.

The Moose Logic Blog Is a Year Old!

It’s hard to believe it, but it’s been a year since we launched the Moose Logic Blog. The response has been amazing—in the last three months, we had over 9,000 page views of various blog posts. We’d like to say a big THANK YOU to all of you who have helped validate our belief that if we provided valuable information, people would come to read it. (If you haven’t checked it out yet, come be part of the conversation at www.mooselogic.com/blog.)

Three months ago, we began incorporating our own videos into our blog. We created our own YouTube channel, which we then link from our blog posts, so our video blogs have two chances to be found. We’ve done nine videos so far, and will continue to produce them on a regular basis.

Finally, beginning in early June, our own Garry Corbin began producing a weekly Webinar series, every Wednesday at 9:00 am Pacific Time. All of these Webinars are recorded and made available for viewing at www.mooselogic.com/webinars. Please check them out as well, and let us know if there are specific topics you would like us to cover.

October Humor

Bumper Sticker Humor "It doesn't matter what temperature a room is; it's always room temperature."

"You can't be late until you show up."

"If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it."

Halloween By the Numbers

• Each year, an estimated 36 million children ages 5 to 13 take to the streets for trick-or-treating.
• Over one billion pounds of pumpkins are produced in the United States each year.
• The value of all pumpkins produced annually in the U.S. is $141 million.
• Americans each eat an average of 23.8 pounds of candy every year.
• There are approximately 2,011 costume rental and formal wear establishments in the U.S.

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