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Cover Story: Citrix Releases XenServer 6.0
What Business Are You In?
History of the Jack O'Lantern
Top Weight Loss Mistakes
The Lighter Side
This Month In History
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)

Last month, we wrote about the new releases of XenApp, XenDesktop, and the Citrix Receiver. This month, there’s one more new release that bears mentioning: XenServer v6.0.

There are a number of new features in XenServer v6.0. Some are not available in the free version. For a complete list of what features are included in what versions, please refer to this chart on the Citrix Web site.

Here's a summary of the new features:

• Integrated Site Recovery — Makes it easier to manage failover and failback operations. Note that this assumes that your storage repositories are being replicated to the DR site. This v6.0 feature replaces the “StorageLink Gateway Site Recovery” in previous versions, and removes the Windows VM requirement.
• Integrated StorageLink — Replaces the StorageLink Gateway technology in previous editions...but still only works with a very limited number of SAN vendors’ products.
• GPU Pass-Through — Enables a physical GPU card, or a GPU on a multi-GPU card, to be assigned to a XenDesktop VM to provide high-end graphics for HDX 3D Pro deployments.
• Rolling Pool Upgrade Wizard — If you’re upgrading from v5.6 or later to v6.0, you can use this Wizard to guide you through the upgrade process. It will upgrade each host in the pool, starting with the pool master. It will make a series of pre-checks to ensure that pool-wide features such as HA and workload balancing are temporarily disabled, and that each host in the pool is prepared for upgrade. Only one host in the pool will be offline at a time, and any running VMs will be automatically migrated off each host before the upgrade is installed. (This obviously assumes you’re using shared storage, so that live motion is available.)
• SCVMM and SCOM Support — v6.0 is compatible with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 and System Center Operations Manager 2012.
• Distributed Virtual Switch Improvements with a new fail-safe mode.
• Increased Performance and Scale — XenServer now supports up to 1 Tb of memory in a XenServer host (assuming you can find hardware that will take that much), and supports up to 16 virtual CPUs and 128 Gb of RAM per VM.
• Networking Improvements — v6.0 uses Open vSwitch as the default networking stack, and supports Active-Backup NIC bonding.
• Simplified Installer — now requires only a single ISO.
• Workload Balancing Improvements — now uses a free Linux-based virtual appliance with a smaller footprint.
• NFS Support for HA — The HA “heart-beat disk” can now reside on an NFS storage repository.
• XenCenter Improvements

NOTE: Please check the XenServer HCL to make sure your host hardware is compatible with XenServer v6.0 before attempting an upgrade!

What Business Are You In?

It's the time of year when many organizations are deep into the planning and budgeting cycle for next year.

When times are tough, as they have been for the last few years, it becomes even more important to take a step back and think about what business you’re really in.

You may think that your business is defined by the stuff you manufacture, or the service you provide. But I would suggest, as many others have before me, that your business is really defined by the thing(s) your customers want that you provide better than anyone else.

(That “better than anyone else” ties to your “USP,” or “Unique Selling Proposition” - why would people get from you whatever it is you provide rather than getting it from someone else?)

Theodore Levitt, former editor of the Harvard Business Review, is quoted as telling his Harvard B-School students, “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill—they want a quarter-inch hole.”

In the wake of Steve Jobs’ passing, many are observing that part of Apple’s success came from his clear understanding of what business they were in.

It wasn’t making computers, or there would be no iPhone, iPad, or iPod. According to their annual report, Apple is “committed to bringing the best user experience to its customers through its innovative hardware, software, peripherals, services, and Internet offerings.”

Apple Retail’s motto is “Enriching Lives,” not selling technical gadgets.

One thing that I’m pretty sure of is this: Unless you’re one of our competitors, you probably never intended to be in the computer technology business. The trouble is, because your business depends on computer technology to one degree or another, you’ve unintentionally ended up in the computer technology business anyway.

Part of what we do is take that burden off your shoulders so you can get back to focusing on the business you are in, however you define that business.

We can do that through our fixed-fee support programs, where our IT experts become your IT department. We can do that by helping you use virtualization technologies to make more efficient use of hardware resources. We can do that by helping you incorporate the cloud services that make sense for you, whether it’s just hosted email or whether you want to get rid of your servers completely and get your entire desktop from the cloud. Or we can do that by just helping you use technology more efficiently in your business.

Moose Logic is in the business of helping you, our customers, to reach your goals by matching your business needs to the best combination of computer technologies.

The ways that we do that have evolved over the last several years - from selling you, and helping you install, a bunch of new servers, to using server virtualization to consolidate infrastructure onto fewer physical servers, to using storage virtualization to make sure that you can allocate storage resources to where they are needed, to helping you navigate through the maze of “cloud this,” and “cloud that” to understand what cloud technologies really are, and what business benefits you may be able to gain by using them. But it's still fundamentally about your business, and how we can help you make it better by using technology appropriately.

We know what business we’re in. Do you?

History of the Jack O'Lantern

The tradition of the Jack O’Lantern began, surprisingly enough, with a turnip. Legend has it that in Ireland there lived an unhappy, mean old man called Stingy Jack. He often stole turnips from gardens in the village where he lived and could be seen carrying them around at night. Stingy Jack often played tricks on his neighbors and was generally avoided.

The story goes that one night, the Devil himself came to visit Stingy Jack. Jack offered the Devil some apples from his tree, but told the Devil he had to climb the tree to pick them himself. The Devil climbed high up in the tree. Stingy Jack quickly pulled several crosses from behind his back and placed them around the tree. The Devil was stuck in the tree and Jack told him he would stay there until he promised not to take Jack’s soul. The Devil finally agreed, climbed down the tree and left Jack.

Several years later, Stingy Jack died. He went to Heaven, but could not get in past the Pearly Gates. St. Peter turned him away, telling him he was too mean and miserable to enter Heaven. Jack went down to Hell, but the Devil kept his promise to not take his soul and turned him away as well. This left Jack with no where to go and he was now in utter darkness outside the gates of Hell.

Jack happened to have a turnip in his hands when he died, as he was stealing it from a field, and he now carried it with him. He begged the Devil for a light and was thrown a burning ember from the depths of Hell. He then placed it into the turnip. From that time onward, Stingy Jack roamed the earth with his “Jack O’Lantern” carved from the turnip he carried.

The Irish carried on the traditions in this legend by carving out turnips, gourds, and even potatoes, and placing a lighted candle inside them to keep Stingy Jack away on all Hallow’s Eve, the night before All Saints Day. Thus began the tradition of the Halloween jack-o-lantern. Irish immigrants brought this tradition to American and soon began using pumpkins because they were larger and easier to carve.

Top Weight Loss Mistakes

Are you looking to lose a few pounds? Hoping to slim down by the holidays? As you begin your weight loss program, be sure to avoid these top weight loss mistakes.

Not Enough Patience
Experts recommend dropping only one to two pounds per week. This means that if you are hoping to slim down by, say 30 pounds, you’ll have four to six months before you hit that goal. Patience is a virtue—and it also helps you lose weight in a healthy manner. Expecting immediate weight loss is unrealistic, unhealthy and can be discouraging to the point of making you quit your weight loss program.

Not Enough Time
If you are serious about losing weight, start by scheduling into your day time for exercise and meal planning. Treat these times as appointments that you can’t miss. Also, look at your exercise time as a reward, not a punishment, by choosing a type of exercise and a place to exercise that you really enjoy. You’ll find that you will look forward to this time of your day.

Not Enough Food
Eating a well, balanced, healthy and low-fat diet is the best approach to weight loss. Starving yourself is not. If you don’t eat enough each day, your plan will actually backfire. By doing this, your metabolism will slow down too much, making it harder for you to drop those pounds.

Not Enough Optimism
Make sure that your attitude is in the right place before starting a weight loss program. You should be doing this for you, not for your spouse, your mother, or to spite your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend. Your goals should be realistic, and you need a firm resolve to change the daily habits you have that do not help with your weight loss. Finally, ignore the scale for a while. While you burn fat by eating right, and gain muscle by exercising, you may have a slow down in weight loss or even a slight gain. But if your body is changing in ways that are positive, forget the weight and concentrate on the results.

The Lighter Side

Funny Epitaphs
(From actual tombstones around the world)

Harry Edsel Smith
Born 1903 - Died 1942
Looked up the elevator shaft
To see if the car
Was on its way down.
It was.

Sacred to the memory of my husband John Barnes who died January 3, 1803. His comely young widow, aged 23, has many qualifications of a good wife, and yearns to be comforted.

Here lies an athiest.
All dressed up, and no place to go.

Here lies Jane Smith
Wife of Thomas Smith
Marble Cutter:
This Monument Erected
By Her Husband
As A Tribute
To Her Memory
Monuments of this style
Are 250 Dollars

Football Fun
A college football player went to a fraternity party and was awestruck by a young female student. He struck up a conversation with her, but she cut him off. “I’m much more attracted to intellectual types. What’s your GPA?” she asked. The jock smiled and said, “Well, about 20 in the city and 35 on the highway!”

A man spent a whole day watching football and finally fell asleep in his chair in front of the TV. He ended up sleeping the whole night in the chair. In the morning, his wife shook him awake and said, “Honey, get up. It’s twenty to seven.” The man sat upright and said, “In whose favor?”

A college football coach was informed that one of his star players would soon become ineligible to play if his grade in his math course did not improve. At practice the next day, the coach called the player up and said, “They say you’re not doing well in math. I’ll ask you a question to see if they are wrong, so you can still play. What is two plus two?” The player paused a moment and then replied, “Four?” A loud groan went up from the other team members and they shouted, “Give him another chance, Coach!”

Tom finally arrived at the stadium as the game was entering the second quarter. “Why are you so late?” his friend asked. “I had to decide between going to church and going to the game. So I decided to toss a coin.” “How long could that have taken you?” his friend asked. “Well,” said Tom, “I had to toss it 16 times!”

“There are several differences between a football game and a revolution. For one thing, a football game usually lasts longer and the participants wear uniforms. Also, there are usually more casualties in a football game. The object of the game is to move a ball past the other team's goal line. This counts as six points. No points are given for lacerations, contusions, or abrasions, but then no points are deducted, either. Kicking is very important in football. In fact, some of the more enthusiastic players even kick the ball, occasionally. “ - Alfred Hitchcock

This Month In History

• October 1, 1890 - Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Bog Tree Grove were combined and established as Yosemite National Park.
• October 2, 1959 - The Twilight Zone premiered on TV.
• October 3, 1990 - East and West Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany.
• October 4, 1582 - The Gregorian Calendar was established.
• October 5, 1902 — Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds, was born in Oak Park, IL.
• October 6, 1866 - Brothers John and Simeon Reno carried out the first train robbery in America, making off with $13,000 from an Ohio and Mississippi railroad train in Jackson County, IN.
• October 7, 1913 — Henry Ford’s entire automobile factory in Highland Park, MI, is run on a continuously moving assembly line for the first time.
• October 8, 1871 — The Great Fire of Chicago was started when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern in her barn, eventually leveling 3.5 square miles, destroying 17,450 buildings, and leaving 250 people dead and 98,500 people homeless.
• October 9, 1876 - The first two-way telephone conversation took place.
• October 10, 1973 — Spiro Agnew became the second person to resign from the office of Vice President of the U.S..
• October 11, 1887 - A patent for the first adding machine, dubbed the “Comptometer,” was granted to Dorr Eugene Felt.
• October 12, 1810 - he annual German tradition of Oktoberfest began when Bavarian Crown Prince Louis married Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.
• October 13, 1775 - The U.S. Navy was established by the Second Continental Congress.
• October 14, 1905 - The New York Giants finally won the 1905 World Series - a series in which all the games played were shut-outs (they beat the Philadephia Athletics).
• October 15, 1990 — Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in ending Cold War tensions.
• October 16, 1859 - White abolitionist John Brown (whose body famously "lies a-moulderin' in the grave"), with a band of about 20 men, seized the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
• October 17, 1989 — A 7.1 earthquake hit San Francisco, causing over $10 billion in damage and killing 67 people.
• October 18, 1867 - Ownership of Alaska was transferred from Russia to the United States.
• October 19, 1781 — More than 7,000 English and Hessian troops, led by British General Lord Cornwallis, surrendered to General George Washington in Yorktown, Virginia, effectively ending the war between Britain and her American colonies.
• October 20, 1803 - The United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase, which effectively doubled the size of the United States.
• October 21, 1805 - Admiral Lord Nelson led a British fleet to successfully defeat a combined French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, fought off the coast of Spain.
• October 22, 1962 - In what is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy, in a nationwide television address, demanded the removal from Cuba of Soviet missiles and imposed a naval quarantine to prevent further weaponry from reaching Cuba.
• October 23, 1971 - Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, opened.
• October 24, 1861 - The first transcontinental telegraph line was completed.
• October 25, 1881 - Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain.
• October 26, 1881 - Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday engaged in the Old West's most famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, resulting in the death of three members of the Clanton gang.
• October 27, 1787 - Written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, the first of the 85 "Federalist" papers appeared in print in a New York City newspaper, arguing in favor of adoption of the new Constitution and the new form of federal government.
• October 28, 1636 - Harvard University, the first institution of higher learning in America, was founded in Massachusetts.
• October 29, 1929 - The Stock Market crashed, leading to the Great Depression.
• October 30, 1938 - The "War of the Worlds," a fictional account of a Martian invasion of New Jersey produced by Orson Welles, was broadcast on radio, causing panic among millions of Americans.
• October 31, 1892 - Arthur Conan Doyle published his collection of mystery stories, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

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