Recently inside Citrix we were notified of a podcast with Sumit Dhawan, Citrix vice president of product marketing. This podcast is available to the public so it seems like a good idea to forward this information on. It is worth listening to since Sumit is very open and honest about VDI and what needs to happen to broaden acceptance.
InfoWorld has posted a review of XenDesktop just recently. XenDesktop rated 8.3/10. The review covers the highlights and explains how things fit together. It’s good to see independent analysis.
Richard Croft in Sydney gets credit for finding this one.
Earlier this year, Citrix created a new track as part of Citrix Synergy in Houston. This track, which was called “Geek Speak Live”, was intended to address the more technical aspects of Citrix products. Not only that, it was intended to be largely driven by outside speakers.
The new model was very successful and addressed a gap in the standard Citrix events. Traditionally Citrix has not satisfied the needs of the most technical administrators, analysts, and resellers. The typical statement heard is that Citrix events are too marketing based.
“Geek Speak Live” was Citrix’s first serious attempt to bridge the gap and bring the technical community online. Much work was put together by the evangelist group to try something different.
Keep in mind that Citrix’s VDI offering had just been released (XenDesktop) just earlier on the first day. Later that evening, Shawn Bass gave a presentation about the limitations of VDI. I just discovered this week that his VDI speech is available from Brightcove. When this first happened (quite a few months ago) it caused a stir within Citrix. Some people saw it as inappropriate, especially based on XenDesktop just being released. I didn’t have enough evidence to judge then. From the general reactions inside the company, it had seemed that perhaps Shawn had gone too far.
However, now that I have seen Shawn at BriForum and have seen this video, I would conclude that the initial stir was a misunderstanding. Perhaps people saw Shawn as bashing VDI when really he is just trying to warn about the current limitations. He is trying to deflate the hype curve and make people realize the true value of VDI.
Shawn is a very clever and passionate person. He strongly believes that the truth be told. This was obvious during BriForum on the topics he covered there. If Shawn is telling you to watch out for something, then it would make sense that you should.
Another aspect of this that only through constructive criticism will products improve. VDI is destined to get quite a bit better in the next few years. Shawn’s observations highlight the areas that need the most improving. As he said during the session, VDI should not be seen as a panacea.
Based on several comments during BriForum, technical people are hungry for technical content. They, in general, are fed up with marketing messages. Along with that, they want the freedom to express their opinions. They want honesty and they want to be heard. So many times, the word “refreshing” was mentioned at BriForum compared to the typical iForum format. It is very good timing that Geek Speak Live exists and the hope of everyone is that it will continue for the next Synergy/iForum.
The key message that was repeated often is honesty is always better. If the product has limitations, then those limitations need to be known. Customers who are misled will remember the deception and be unlikely to try it again. Expectations set at the right level are more likely to lead to a long term relationship.
A good analogy is dating. You can start off by pretending to be something that you are not. You might even fool the other person for some time. Eventually your true self is going to emerge and the party is over. On the other hand, if you are only you and confess to your weaknesses, it is the other person that decides if they can handle it. You have given them the power to choose versus trying to misled them. If they decided that they don’t like you for who you really are, then it was not meant to be. It is far better to know up front than to make it to a much a later stage where everyone has wasted their time.
In this way, it is better to be straight forward. The customer will respect the honesty and be more likely to trust what is being said.
Having written all this, it is now time to say that Shawn had a lot of guts to say what he did. Brian Madden thought Shawn was either brave or naive to give such a presentation. However, Brian also confessed that “Shawn is my hero”. Potentially Shawn could have damaged his relationship with Citrix. I have heard nothing to say this is the case. I would interpret the results something like this: Citrix opens floodgates, Shawn takes Citrix for its word, Citrix realizes it might have opened too wide, Citrix then realizes later that this is the price of allowing open communication. Truthfully, I see this particular incident in a very positive light. One of the most dangerous things you can do is believe your own hype. Sometimes you need someone to remind you of this fact.
Posted in Brian Madden, BriForum, Citrix Synergy, iForum, Marketing, VDI, Video, XenDesktop
Tagged Citrix Synergy, Geek Speak Live, Shawn Bass, VDI, XenDesktop
In June, Adam Jaques from the Advanced Products Group in Sydney demonstrated the Citrix ICA client on an iPhone. The video is on YouTube and can be seen from here:
Keep in mind that this is just a demonstration. If you see this as a valuable thing, please request it either through your normal channels of communication or fill in the poll below:
The real question is whether or not you want support with the iPhone and Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp.
Posted in Advanced Products, Citrix Video, XenDesktop
Tagged Advanced Products, Citrix, iPhone, Video, XenDesktop
Just this morning I received an email internally about XenDesktop 2.0 documentation. Sometimes it is easy to lose track of this kind of information. Personally I had no idea where it was stored.
Here is a sample of what it has. Click on it to make it readable.
Recent experience says that it pays to read Citrix documentation. It might be more fun initially to try not reading the manual but this usually leads to frustration later on.
Citrix has officially announced that XenDesktop will be made available during Citrix Synergy on May 20, 2008. This project has been in the works for more than two years now. It saw a major shift when Citrix acquired Xen Source. Before that the project was more diversified in regards to virtualization. The focus on Xen is not a bad thing given that there is better integration work going on.
The XenDesktop hub is probably the best place to visit if you want more information. Another option is to read the XenDesktop FAQ. If you are wondering what kind of features it will have, look at XenDesktop Features.
There is only a month to go before launch. The internal excitement about this release is growing and the Citrix Synergy event should see this energy at a high level.
The development cycle for PortICA is coming to an end. Soon all the team members will be working on other projects in Sydney.
Brian Madden was in Sydney recently and got the chance to gather more detail about PortICA from the actual developers. As expected, he has taken the time to summarize his findings in a recent post about PortICA. It is a fair and comprehensive assessment of Citrix’s new ICA technology for XP and Vista.
What is really cool is that the industry is starting to catch on to the fact this is actually new technology. The catch phrase “same but different” rings true and I am pleased to see that Brian gets it and has captured it so well in this post.
If you are following XenDesktop, this is a perfect opportunity to understand the technology a bit more and contrast it with other vendors in the VDI space.
Besides that, I have worked on PortICA over the last two years and it feels good to get some outside feedback. The rest of the PortICA team feels the same way.
Posted in Brian Madden, PortICA, XenDesktop
Tagged Brian Madden, ICA, PortICA, XenDesktop
Did you know that typeface with Terminal Services is usually downgraded from the usual local experience? Microsoft has the ClearType technology which normally improves the look of text by rounding the edges with different colors giving the characters more rounded effect.
Computer displays in which the positions of individual pixels are permanently fixed by the design of the hardware—such as most modern flat-panel displays—can show strong aliasing artifacts, which manifest as jagged, saw-tooth edges (sometimes referred to as “jaggies”) when displaying small, high-contrast graphic elements such as text. ClearType uses anti-aliasing at the subpixel level to greatly reduce visible artifacts on such displays when text is rendered, making the text appear “smoother” and less jagged.
The technology has been around for a number of years but only recently has become mainstream with Microsoft products having it automatically turned on.
ClearType, a trademark of Microsoft, was first announced at the November 1998 COMDEX exhibition. The technology was first introduced in software in January 2000[1] as an always-on feature of Microsoft Reader, which was released to the public in August 2000. ClearType was later introduced as an operating system feature in Windows XP, where it was kept turned off by default. In Windows Vista, ClearType is turned on by default. In Microsoft Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 7, ClearType turned on by default, even if it is not enabled throughout the operating system. ClearType is also an integrated component of the Windows Presentation Foundation text rendering engine.
It is always good to check Wikipedia first. The catch here is that Terminal Services has typically turned ClearType off. At least this was true for Windows Server 2003.
Citrix has announced this in a support article about ClearType.
Symptoms
Microsoft ClearType works correctly inside an ICA session with Citrix Presentation Server running on Windows 2000 Server, but it does not work with Presentation Server version 4.5 running on Windows Server 2003.
Background
With Windows 2000 Server, Microsoft introduced ClearType, a font display technology that improves font display resolution.
In Windows Server 2003, Microsoft have released an update that now enables ClearType support for Terminal Services making it available for Remote Desktop users.
For further information please see Article 946633 The “Font smoothing” feature has no effect in Windows Server 2003 terminal sessions
Status
Citrix is currently working on an update to Presentation Server version 4.5 for Windows Server 2003 to utilize this new Microsoft Update for Terminal Services to provide ICA users with ClearType support.
Please note that Microsoft has only recently allowed this to work on Windows Server 2003. The hotfix announcement is from March 6, 2008.
Internally ClearType has been discussed several times as part of the XenDesktop and XenApp projects. XenDesktop received a benefit when ClearType just worked due to it not being Terminal Services based. XenApp needed the hotfix. There is one step left and that is to enable ClearType on XenApp for 4.5 and 5.0. Internal reports suggest that it does not suffer from the change for performance.
Internet Explorer 7 and Microsoft Office 2007 both expect ClearType and apparently Outlook looks pretty bad without it. At this point it really does not make sense to keep it off if there is no penalty for doing so.
Overall this is a very simple way to make things look the same between local and remote.
Posted in Citrix Video, XenApp, XenDesktop, XenServer
Tagged Citrix Video, Mark Templeton, Summit 2008, XenApp, XenDesktop, XenServer
Some people have had trouble downloading the XenDesktop Beta (Feb 2008) and I concluded that at least I could help by providing the XenDesktop Getting Started Guide online. The guide is provided with the download kit so this is really just a preview of what you are going to get if you haven’t downloaded already or are having trouble getting it.
The guide is thirty six pages long and includes a couple of diagrams that help explain what XenDesktop is composed of and how it actually works.
The simplistic view of how it fits together is depicted here:
Click this thumbnail to expand. A more detailed view of the components is this:
Just for reference, the PortICA team works on providing the remoting of ICA with XP and Vista from the virtual machines running on XenServer. In this case our software will be running inside VMs on XenServer 2.
The included components in XenDesktop Beta are:
All Citrix components are supplied on the XenDesktop Beta installation ISO images. It is important that you use these versions and not versions that you may have previously acquired.
- Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller Beta.
- Citrix Provisioning Server 4.5 (This is the generic version and it is not specific to this beta release)
- Citrix XenDesktop Setup Tool 2.0 Beta
- Citrix XenServer 4.1 Enterprise Edition Beta
- Citrix Presentation Server Client (XenDesktop) Beta 10.230. (This client incorporates advanced features that are specific to this beta release)
- • XenCenter 4.1 – Beta
Instead of repeating much of what is in the PDF document for Getting Started, I will recommend that you read it instead.
I’ll leave you with some tips from the document that may help.
The document states that it will take about a day to setup this environment. You will need at least four physical machines to test this environment (2 XenServer, 1 XenCenter, and 1 Endpoint). You will need a test domain controller and you will need real copies of either XP or Vista to put on XenServer virtual machines. XenServer 1 runs the infrastructure for getting things working. XenServer 2 runs the actual virtual desktops.
For those of you who are wondering what is new between this Beta and the previous Tech Preview Kit, there is a section towards the bottom of the document that explains:
What’s New in the XenDesktop Beta
XenDesktop Beta is the successor to the XenDesktop Tech Preview Kit. The main changes are listed below.Vista Support
This release supports both Windows XP and Windows Vista virtual desktops. This means that you can use an
XP endpoint to run a full-screen-only-mode Vista virtual desktop. Vista endpoints are also supported.
Note: Differences in the XP and Vista installation procedures are clearly shown where they occur. See to
the section Installation and Configuration Procedures for details.
User connection experience
The main use case in this release is for the full-screen-only-mode display of virtual desktops on an endpoint device. In this mode, when a user connects to a virtual desktop, the desktop is displayed as a full screen on the user’s machine. The user experience is nearly identical to that produced by using standard Windows XP or Windows Vista locally.Enhanced XenDesktop Setup Tool Beta
The new XenServer Setup Tool automates many time-consuming setup tasks including:
• Running discovery
• Creating Web sites for Web Interface and the Program Neighborhood Agent service
• Publishing DesktopsWhat’s happened to…
• Desktop Server – Desktop Server has been renamed as Desktop Delivery Controller.
• Web Interface – Web Interface is still part of XenDesktop, but it is no longer a separately installable product. Web Interface and it related components do not need to be configurable as part of the standard installation procedures.Supported Active Directory Modes
Active Directory in Windows Server 2003 can now run in both native mode and mixed mode. Previously only native mode was supported. Multiple domain controllers are not supported for this Beta.ICA features
The following ICA features are available on this beta release through the Citrix ICA Service:
• Session reliability
• SpeedScreen Image Acceleration
• SpeedScreen Browser Acceleration
• Endpoint device drive, LPT, and COM port mapping
• Printing using the Universal Printer Driver
• Secure ICA
• Audio is available when connecting to Windows XP desktops, but not those running on Windows Vista
• Multimonitor support
• Microsoft ClearType supportThere is no support for the following ICA features:
• Smart card authentication
• Kerberos single sign-on
• TWAIN mapping
• USB PDA synchronization
• SmartAuditor
• SpeedScreen Multimedia Remoting
• SpeedScreen Flash Acceleration
That’s probably enough information for this one post. There might be more XenDesktop Beta posts coming out later.
Posted in XenDesktop
Tagged XenDesktop, XenDesktop Beta, XenDesktop Getting Started
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