6. April 2009 by Tony.

Executive Summary

Welcome to the XenDesktop Design Handbook. Virtual desktop delivery is a new enterprise initiative whose goal is to simplify, secure and deliver optimized desktops. Virtual desktops are a major change to the way organizations manage and deliver desktops. The Citrix XenDesktop solution builds a scalable approach for creating, building and delivering virtual desktops through hardware, operating system and application virtualization. These components are merged together to create a personalized desktop environment for each user from standardization. However, in order to create the best XenDesktop environment, requirements, goals and a complete design must be completed. The subsequent sections of the XenDesktop Design Handbook identify the core design considerations and offers options, recommendations and justifications to be used with every XenDesktop design project. With a proper analysis and design, a XenDesktop solution will be manageable, extensible and maintainable. This document focuses on the best practices around desktop delivery and focuses on the following topics:

• Operating System Delivery
• Application Delivery
• Virtual Desktop Delivery

The following sections will help identify, define, explain and propose options for each of the core design decisions.

Download now

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5. March 2009 by Tony.

Daniel Feller created a really nice set of Visio objects for the Citrix Delivery Center solution set. This is very useful for everyone who is involved in designing Citrix solutions.

The following products are included:

• XenApp
• XenDesktop
• XenServer
• NetScaler (includes rack-mountable stencils and NetScaler MPX)
• WANScaler (including the new Branch Repeater)
• Access Gateway
• Application Firewall
• Provisioning Server
• EdgeSight
• Password Manager
• Workflow Studio

Download Visio Stencils here

Posted in Citirx, XenApp, XENserver, Xendesktop, VDI, General Virtualization | No Comments »

30. September 2008 by Tony.

Brian Madden has recently posted his VDI Product Smackdown as presented at BriForum this year.

If your on the fence regarding vendors for a Virtual desktop initiative this is a Must See!

VDI Product Smackdown

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15. July 2008 by Tony.

I’ll be co-presenting two sessions at the IBM 2008 System x and BladeCenter Technical Conference in San Diego July 28 - August 1, 2008 With Tom Vezinia of IBM.

This session details an assessment (funded by IBM) for customers to determine the TCO/ROI benefits of:

1. Server Consolidation with VMware or XENserver
2. Desktop consolidation via VMware VDM/ESX
3. Desktop consolidation via Citrix XenApp / XenDesktop

Also included is a “State of Desktop Virtualization” that details the how/why/when you should deploy the different methods.

If you attending the event please stop by to say hi:

GS02 Consolidation: It’s not just servers anymore

7/29 1:15-2:30

7/30 10:15-11:30

Posted in Citirx, event, XENserver, Xendesktop, VDI, General Virtualization | No Comments »

1. July 2008 by admin.

Interesting dilemma…

I have high profile client that has a unique VDI implementation that we did last year. At the time Leostream was initially selected as the Broker of choice but during the Design phase it was decided that we needed no broker at all. Part of the specifcations was to have the Thin Client boot directly to a specific VDI instance with no portal (again a very unique environment)  So if you sit at seat 10 you get VDI instance 10, no matter what.

Eventually we modified the local devices to auto launch an RDP instance at startup to the specific VDI instance.

The Problem: Video sucks with RDP

At the time RDP was the only choice and we found a 3-5 second delay between audio/video (similar watching an old Godzilla movie)

The Solution: XenDEsktop

In our Solutions Center we setup both VDM 2.0 and Xendesktop for a bake off. Regardless of pools, and fetures the only requirement was to get video to wok better.

It DID.

Summary: if you need better video performance ICA still wins, hands down

See for yourself:

VDI with Citrix XenDesktop vs. VDI with VMWare VDM (you tube)

Posted in Xendesktop, VDI | No Comments »