When layers become a problem

I have seen a lot of discussion on the subject of layering of software images to deliver virtualized client computing. There are some interesting opportunities here but also a number of serious potential issues. This is too big an area for a single blog post so I am going to look at this over a number of post in the coming weeks.

There are number of different ways the word ‘layers’ is used in client computing. Firstly, when we think of our software stack we unsurprisingly think of the layers that make up that stack. Those layers are typically operating system, applications and user environment. We then think about how we manage those layers, either as the complete unwieldy stack or individually. As  such we are thinking about layers as a handy shortcut for what we want to manage individually.

Another way that the word ‘layers’ is being used is as a way of splitting the stack into a large number of separate layers. A number of small vendors are launching early stage products to try and deliver solutions based on a layer per application with those layers being delivered selectively depending on the user. The problem here is that each of the layers then needs to be managed separately including the impact of every combination of layers. Many of the organizations I talk to have thousands of applications in use across the business, that means thousands of layers and a huge combinatorial problem.

The change between the two uses of the word ‘layers’ is dramatic: In one case we are referring to three layers that we want to manage individually in the other case attempting to manage thousands of layers in a way that may well prove to be impossible. As I think of managing all those layers I am reminded of the mess that usually results from my attempts at eating a Napoleon, also known to the French as a ‘Mille Feuille’ – thousand layers.

Entisys Host A Citrix, Microsoft & AppSense Event

Entisys Solutions (a Citrix Solution Partner Platinum, Microsoft Gold Partner and AppSense CSP) are hosting a desktop virtualization event at the Microsoft offices in California -  Join us and explore the technology of XenDesktop, Hyper-V and AppSense.

Discover how Citrix, Microsoft and AppSense provide a simple and reliable virtual desktop for users of Windows Server® environments. Citrix, the leader in Desktop Virtualization, AppSense, the leader in user environment management solutions and Microsoft have the most comprehensive virtualized desktop solution in the industry.  Citrix XenDesktop will deliver a full range of desktop virtualization technologies, ideal for everyone from task workers to mobile/remote employees. With the Microsoft-Citrix-AppSense partnership, there is no easier way to deploy Windows 7.

Seminar topics include:

• Reducing Desktop TCO and gaining the best performance with Citrix XenDesktop™
• Virtual Desktop Architecture – XenDesktop components with Hyper-V
• Citrix Provisioning Server – ease the deployment of your Windows 7 roll out
• Desktop deliver controller and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
• Technical deep dive for the engineer and technical savvy IT specialist

Date:
Thursday – December 17, 2009

Location:
Microsoft Corporation – Mercury Room in Building One
1065 La Avenida Street
Mountain View
CA 94041
(650) 693-4000 

Please Click Here To Register Your Place!

Look forward to seeing you there :)

Virtualization Executive Summit Event Review

Last week I attended the Virtualization Executive Summit, a great event attended by almost 100 Senior IT Executives (CTO’s, CIO’s, CEO’s, VP’s, Director’s etc..) from very large, international organizations. As the name suggests, the event focused on Virtualization, with a large proportion of the end user interest being in Desktop Virtualization.

I have to say, it was a very well organized and thought-out event, with each of the delegates having individual time tables based on their areas of interest. These time tables accommodated both vendor boardroom presentation sessions along with 1:1 meetings with the vendors too, so a busy two days for all involved.

As part of our sponsorship package, I was presenting in the AppSense Boardroom Session. It appeared to be very well received (with some of the attendees saying it was the best session they had been to <- queue big ego boost for me lol). There was a great mix of people in the room, some who had deployed Desktop Virtualization and some that had also done stateless / non-persistent Desktop Virtualization with a user environment management solution (like AppSense ;-) ) which was a great validation for the others in the room who are still in their planning stages.

Nearly all of the many meetings we hosted focused on the attendee’s plans for desktop virtualization in 2010, and I am glad to say, they were also asking how AppSense could help enable them to adopt the non-persistent virtual desktop model.

Thanks to all of those who helped make this a great event, and thank you also to all those who attended and are driving forward with desktop virtualization..

Looking forward to the next one :)

Deleting Orphaned Disks in Citrix XenServer 5.5

Recently I ran out of storage space on a Citrix XenServer because a number of local virtual disks had become orphaned and deleting them proved to be a little difficult, so, I thought it might be useful to share what I found lest others suffer the same issue.

I think the problem occurred because I removed disks which were attached to some VMs which had been created from templates, because I was using them with Provisioning Server and had run the XenConvert stage to copy the hard disk to the vDisk. This was so I could test that they worked without local disks, but didn’t want to delete them in case there was a problem.

I found two methods – the “hard” way and the “easy” way.  Guess which I found first?! ;)

Method 1.

From a console shell prompt run the command:

xe vdi-list

Note that vdi is short for “virtual disk image” in this context. This should result in a display similar to the following with one entry per storage item so will include ISO images as well as virtual disks. Note that this will list all items, not just orphaned ones. Pipe the output to “more” or redirect to a file and use “vi” or similar on the file produced to find the oprhaned items.

uuid ( RO)                : cb5781e0-c6f9-4909-acd6-5fd4b509d117

          name-label ( RW): Vista master for UIA

    name-description ( RW): Created by template provisioner

             sr-uuid ( RO): 72cc0d44-bea7-6c15-cf8d-c2965ca495b2

        virtual-size ( RO): 25769803776

            sharable ( RO): false

           read-only ( RO): false

Fortunately, I knew the name of the disks that were orphaned so passed their uuid values as an argument to the “xe vdi-destroy” command thus:

xe vdi-destroy uuid=cb5781e0-c6f9-4909-acd6-5fd4b509d117

The storage space freed up by deleting the disks will eventually be realized but to force this, you can manually instigate a re-scan of the containing storage repository. For this, we need to know the uuid of the storage repository which we have in in the “sr-uuid” field in the original “xe vdi-list” command above:

xe sr-scan uuid=72cc0d44-bea7-6c15-cf8d-c2965ca495b2

Method 2.

Add the disk to an existing VM and then delete the disk from the “Storage” tab in XenCenter for the VM when it is powered down :)

I hope this is of use to someone?…

 

 

AppSense Wins Best Desktop Software of 2009 at the TechWorld Awards

AppSense are very pleased to announce that AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 has won another high-profile award – The TechWorld Best Desktop Software Product of the year 2009.

The Techworld Awards reward innovation for all aspects of the IT industry and are evaluated on strategy, creativity, innovation and effectiveness. Winners are selected by an independent panel of judges consisting of highly respected individuals from the IT industry and Techworld editors.

This new award is a great achievement and comes only a short time after AppSense Environment Manager recently won Gold in the Desktop Virtualization category in the Best of VMworld 2009 Awards Program.  Combined, these awards, along with our recent record growth and ever strengthening relationships with Citrix, Microsoft and VMware confirm AppSense as the clear leader in the User Environment Management space.

Here is a copy of the AppSense Press Release to accompany this recent award:

AppSense Wins 2009 Techworld Award

AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 announced Desktop Software Product of the Year

 New York, NY – November 18, 2009 – AppSense, the leading provider of user environment management solutions for the enterprise, today announced that AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 has won the Desktop Software Product of the Year award as part of the Techworld Awards 2009. Recognizing both products and users, the Techworld Awards reward innovation for all aspects of the IT industry and are evaluated on strategy, creativity, innovation and effectiveness. Winners are selected by an independent panel of judges consisting of highly respected individuals from the IT industry and Techworld editors.

AppSense Environment Manager is the only enterprise solution that enables standardized desktop environments to be fully configured and personalized without the need for cumbersome profiles or scripts. From server-based computing environments through to virtual and physical desktops, AppSense Environment Manager ensures users always receive a consistent, predictable and personalized working experience. Full desktops can now be configured and business rules applied on-demand, enabling compliant, personalized virtual desktops to be quickly delivered to thousands of users at lowest possible cost. Additionally, AppSense technology is used in conjunction with many third party systems integrators, including CSC, HP, EDS, Dell and IBM.

“We are honored that AppSense Environment Manager has been recognized as the best solution to sit on the desktop by the Techworld editors and members of the IT community,” said Peter Rawlinson, vice president of worldwide marketing at AppSense. “AppSense’s unique approach represents a fundamental change in the way the corporate desktop is constructed and is a core solution in all desktop environments, providing a stable and consistent user environment. With the introduction of Microsoft Windows 7 and a huge uplift in VDI adoption, AppSense looks forward to continuing to provide enterprises with our award-winning solutions, allowing them to increase user productivity and dramatically decrease operational costs.” 

This award comes on the heels of the recent Gold award in the Desktop Virtualization category in the ‘Best of VMworld 2009’ awards for AppSense. For more information about the Techworld awards and to view a complete list of winners, please visit http://awards.techworld.com/2009/winners/.

About AppSense
Founded in 1999, AppSense is the leading provider of user environment management (UEM) solutions for enterprise organizations. UEM is a proven method of reducing desktop management costs by treating the user environment separate from the desktop and delivery method. This separation enables IT to standardize the corporate desktop and automate the delivery of the user’s working environment, significantly reducing operational costs. AppSense technology is used around the world by companies such as JPMorgan Chase, Lowes, United Airlines, Wachovia, Wal-Mart, ESPN and CB Richard Ellis. AppSense has main offices in New York and Manchester, England with additional offices in Palo Alto, London, Munich, Melbourne and Amsterdam.

PR Contact:
Heather Fitzsimmons
Mindshare PR
+1 (650) 947-7400
heather@mindsharepr.com

Please click on the TechWorld Winners Logo to be taken to the TechWorld Awards page to view the winners from other catagories.

Thanks to all those who have helped make Environment Manager the leading UEM solution that it is:)

The VDI Penny Is Starting to drop.

Enviroman (Oliver Sills, Product Manager for AppSense Environment Manager) was in the office the other day, pestering me about signing a petition to change the Environment Manager “colour” from green to Tangerine – something to do with some UK footy club. I told him the Budgie Smugglers don’t look any better in Tangerine, so stop sitting on my desk :-)

Just about then the phone rings, it was a Solution Architect from a large software company. “Tell him about Personalization”, Environman whispers in my ear. I covered the phone, told him to go way, and went back to the call.

Turns out one of his clients was trying to deploy 600+ Virtual Desktops, and it had just dawned on them that Policy, Profiles and the User Personality had become a nightmare to maintain when using a Non Persistent Pooled Desktop environment.

Think about it – each user, every time they log in, has a brand new base model PC.

This Client did a Proof of Concept – easy – P To V a couple of desktops, load a client, connect in using RDP – jobs a good’un – look Mum no hands – I’m doing VDI :-)

So then they ticked all the boxes, app compatibility – tick, ease of use – tick, centrally managed and deployed – tick, user acceptance – tick, user personalization – tick – hey, not so fast.

You CAN have a tick in that box if you are talking One to One, dedicated hosted virtual desktops for a small number of users – otherwise, you need to think again.

It’s like when I started talking to the Aussie market about AppSense back in 2004 “Yes I hear what you say, but I’ve only got 5 servers – it’s not a problem” 6 months later “Yes I hear what you say, but I’ve only got 10 servers – it’s not a problem” 6 months later “Our farm is out of control, now we have 15 Citrix servers we now understand what you guys were on about 6 months ago”

As we always say – we don’t hold a grudge – and we don’t ever say “I told you so”.  After all we’re from AppSense – we’re here to help :-)

Virtual Desktops are starting to ramp up, and unfortunately with some clients projects, the devil will be in the detail.

Like the client we are now helping, they thought the “Profile Stuff” built into the VDI solution would be the easy bit. “There’re tools built into the base product” they say – yes there are, but those built in tools can be compared to other in-built free software like NTBackup – yes it will backup a file, but it’s not granular enough, and it just won’t cut it in an Enterprise environment – that’s why companies invest in a Third Party backup products.

AppSense is exactly the same. Built in “Profile” tools or features are o.k. for a simple small deployment where one size fits all, but the reality is most organisations will need more.  The reason for this is simple, profile management tools are there to solve profile issues such as bloat and logon times.. they are not designed to be cross platform, cross delivery mechanism personalization solutions, not to mention the need for policy action control also.

It’s just not as easy as saying “We use Roaming Profiles and redirected folders” – try reimaging every PC in your business, every morning, and see if it causes a few hassles for users.

So we keep plugging away out there – educating the market in advance, some clients “get it” up front and they’re the ones with the smooth running, no surprises VDI projects.

As for the rest of you – we’ll be here, happy to answer questions, happy to show and tell – all with passion and enthusiasm.

After all – we’re from AppSense – we’re here to help :-)

User Installed Applications – won’t they just cause me a huge headache?

Do we really want to allow our users to have the ability to self provision / install applications? Won’t this just cause mayhem and anarchy? How will we ensure that we are licensed to install the applications that the users choses to install?

These are a small sample of some of the obvious and key issues that the IT administrator needs to seriously consider when thinking about allowing the user to install applications of their own choice.

Just this week, @HarryLabana asked the following question via twitter – “Are user installed apps a compliance nightmare waiting to happen?”. A very sensible question that effectively is asking, “WHY should we even consider allowing the user to install their own stuff?”

To labor on the need briefly, it is relatively simple as to why we need to cater for it (we don’t need to agree with it but we do have to accept it to a certain degree :-( ). Bottom line is that for years, there has been a challenge with packaging all the applications required by a user to conduct their daily duties. This is a challenge that traditional desktop managers have had for years, and now with desktop virtualization it is perhaps getting more noise. Unfortunately it is not going away any time soon, in fact may be getting worse as time progresses and the number of applications increases. If we choose to not allow users to install their own stuff, then how do we ensure that the user does not fall foul downstream of an application not being available and hence their inability to conduct their work? An obvious example would be the corporate user who uses Microsoft Live Meeting to conduct online meetings, who has a meeting booked with an organization that uses Citrix GoToMeeting. The GoToMeeting client would not be installed, and hence the user would only find this out 5 to 10 minutes before the session, and hence would be unable to join :-(

@coldroyd wrote about the various user installed applications a month or so ago and is well worth a read – http://appsense.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/what-is-a-user-installed-application-and-why-should-we-care/

So, now we have accepted that we need to cater in some form or another, we can move on to consider HOW. The key aspects to delivering users with the ability to install their own apps is CONTROL – it would be insane (most would argue) to allow ALL users with the ability to install their own stuff. Very quickly the enterprise would find themselves in a situation where literally 1000’s of applications have found their way in, and are posing a serious legal issue. It is [mostly] true that a typical enterprise using laptop devices has this very issue today, since the majority of users of laptop devices are administrators of them. There is usually a solid business reason [from years gone by] as to why the user is an administrator, whether that reason being a requirement to install printer drivers [pre Vista] or something like that. Typically, once a user has admin rights, it is nigh impossible to get them back again :-(.

Arguably this is all part of something called “User Rights Management” as well as “Personalization”. Both of these are clearly becoming markets in their own right with vendors appearing in it regularly, and many other vendors morphing their solutions to fit the model(s) also ;-)

In order to deliver against the need, but to do so in that all important controlled manner, we need to enable / allow for the following (there will be more – these are just the key areas);

• Only allow certain users to install apps (AD group based / end point device based)
• Only allow those users to install from certain [internal] network location(s) – that way the enterprise can control exactly WHAT a user who is authorized to install can install
• Only allow those users to install applications from certain vendors
• Full reporting is required to enable the administration team to be able to see what is out there in a quick snapshot
• Full administrative override to enable rapid removal of any applications as necessary

The overriding point here is simple – user installed applications is NOT for everyone, but it will be for a significant portion of the user population, so we need to provision for it in some way – simply saying no will not cut it.

I Love my Hyper-Wee

Yes, there I’ve said it, I’m in love with a technology that’s not from AppSense :-)

We had to present at a recent Microsoft Partner event.

Two things Microsoft wanted us to show:

1. License control for Microsoft Apps in Citrix/Terminal Server/VDI/Streamed App environments, and
2. How we can simplify Windows 7 migrations.

After a couple of demos from my trusty partner Jacob, they were also all over us about App-V integration.

There was a problem though – none of my demos were running on Hyper-Wee, I mean Hyper-V (must stop listening to PerfMan, his accent is starting to have an effect on me).

So the challenge.

I don’t normally do much between 12 and 6 in the morning, just lying around the house, so let’s rebuild everything on Windows 2008 and Hyper-V.

So a new disk was already available, remove the old one (Dual boot Vista and Win 2003 running VMware Server for VM’s). Demo laptop is a HP (the best) 6710b 4GB ram Dual core 2.4 GHz, with a 300 GB 7200 rpm disk.

Obtain a license, the media and boot up Windows 2008 – 64 bit – yes that’s right, the person who always said 64 bit was not the answer was now asking the question – can I get 64 bit to run all my apps and more importantly will all my drivers work.

To enable Hyper-V you need 64 bit so there was really no option. :-)

The first thing I noticed, Windows 2008 64 bit took around 20 minutes to load!!!!

I sat there thinking there must be something else I’ve missed, surely you can’t load a new O/S in 20 minutes – including the time to format a 140GB partition !!!

But that was it.

Bit of research on the web and now I have to download and run a service pack to get Hyper-V up and running.

Knew there was a catch – the service pack takes about an hour to install :-)

Still not that much effort and time required to get to a new platform. Now the tricky part, what will be the easiest way to get my demo servers back up and running.

More research – turns out there is a freebee download utility available from here http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry8.aspx which you point at a VMware VM which converts it to a VHD drive, and voila, it runs on Hyper-V.

I did find some extra info about Vm’s that have a SCSI disk as their base – you need to muck around with them a bit and add an IDE disk, so I decided to convert my VMs that used an IDE drive, and rebuild the ones using SCSI.

The longest part of the process was rebuilding the Windows 2003 DC for my AppSense Management Centre.

One thing I was looking for though - a “sleep” mode so I could have my servers boot quicker. When you are meeting a client the last thing you want to do is spend 15 minutes setting up before you start the preso or demo.

I suppose it’s o.k. if you have a big Irishman with you who can tell bad jokes for a while to distract the client, but most of the time I was by myself at appointments.

By accident I discovered the best feature (in my experience) of Hyper-V. Automatically it will snapshot servers if you turn off the host while they are still running. Very cool.

So here’s how my setup for a demo now goes…

08:30 power on laptop, shake hands, exchange cards

08:31 Login to Windows 2008 64bit

08:33 start Hyper-V consoles for my AppSense Management Centre, and my XP desktop

08:34 Demo Environment Manager Personalisation, the crowd goes…..   Oooh…… AAAAAh

08:35 My work here is done

Well not really, but my point is this sucker boots fast, starts my servers faultlessly, and just works.

Of course I have Performance Manager 64 bit running and I have configured it to favour the VM’s as far as CPU and disk priority goes and this definitely helps.

I’m a bit old school, so if I can get something that works for me, I’ll just stick with it. It takes a rocket – or a Microsoft Partner event – to get me to change.

But now that I’ve jumped the 64 bit fence, I’m glad I’m here :-)

Only thing I do have though, is how do I get my Wireless LAN on my notebook working – damn those 64 bit drivers :-)

AppSense Channel on YouTube

A few weeks ago AppSense HQ was the center point for our quarterly Systems Engineering / Pre-Sales Conference..

I thought, while I have 30 or so consultants at my disposal, to take this opportunity to catch them off-guard and have them white-board some of the key AppSense messages and overviews.

Videos / Whiteboard Presentations include (amongst others):

• User Environment Management Overview
• Windows 7 and VDI Overview
• Eliminating the need for Roaming Profiles
• Rolling-back User Personalization Settings
• Automatically Blocking Unauthorized Executables
• Controlling Microsoft Application Per Device Licensing
• Client & Cloud Computing

These videos have now been uploaded to YouTube and are available for viewing here – at the AppSense YouTube Channel

I hope these are of use to people, and where possible, I am keen to read your comments, so please do leave a note of your thoughts on there :)

AppSense on YouTube

Desktop Virtualization Technical Briefing with Citrix, Microsoft, AppSense and more key ISV’s

Learn the difference between just throwing in a VDI solution, and designing a true Desktop & Application Delivery Architecture. Learn why most VDI projects fail, and the best practices that will show a solid ROI to your CFO/CIO.

Don’t try to bolt-on a Frankenstein solution, – come hear from our team of technical experts. You’ll also experience a great networking opportunity to meet your peers, and learn from their projects as well. Some questions we will help you answer…

• Why is desktop virtualization different than server virtualization
• Is VDI the same thing as Desktop or Application Delivery (hint: it is not)
• What architecture/designs are available
• What are the SAN requirements for Desktop Delivery
• How do you handle user profiles
• How is printing different with virtual desktops or Terminal Services
• When do you use Terminal Server based Application Delivery versus Desktop Delivery (or both)
• What licensing is needed from each manufacturer to implement a solid desktop virtualization architecture

A solid line up of technical presenters; from Microsoft, Citrix, AppSense, and AGSI coming to a city near you…

 10/27/09 – Raleigh, NC

10/28/09 – Charlotte, NC 

10/29/09 – Charleston, SC

 More details: http://www.advantec.us/events-dtv.htm

To register: http://www.advantec.us/eventspdtv-reg.asp