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 :)

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

CSC Dynamic Desktop – Citrix XenDesktop & AppSense

I have just returned from a successful 2 day IPexpo event in London, and was extremely excited to see the many Google Alerts for ‘XenDesktop’, ‘AppSense’, and ‘User Environment Management’ in my inbox.  Upon clicking on the alert I was taken to Daniel Fellers ‘Ask the Architect’ pages within the Citrix Community site.

In this instance, Daniel (a Lead Architect for the WorldWide Consulting Services at Citrix) interviews Sandy Kingdon (a Dynamic Desktop Architect at CSC) on how CSC has designed and is well into the implementation of Citrix XenDesktop, VMware ESX and AppSense User Environment Management to support a 40,000 user environment.

Sandy explains how CSC were able to overcome some notable challenges, including:

• Supporting multiple users across different sites using different language and MUI packs from just 2 vDisks
• Controlling Application Access
• Persisting User Personalization Settings between sessions
• Current and future plans for supporting User Installed Applications in a non-persistent environment

As AppSense are a core component of CSC’s standard offering for Dynamic Desktop, Sandy covers how by virtualizing the user and controlling Policy and Personalization separate from the underlying OS and App components that CSC were able to overcome the above challenges.

The podcast can be found here

Thanks to both Daniel and Sandy for the great podcast and an insight into a real world large scale XenDesktop deployments.

Sharing Personalization Settings between Operating Systems – Debunking the Myth

I have recently heard, from several different sources, that it is “best practice” not to share user profiles, or personalization settings, between different operating system platforms. On the surface, this seems a sensible limitation since different operating systems have different user profile structures. 

Vista and Windows Server 2008 (WS08) put most profile data somewhere in “\users\%username%\appdata”, whereas XP and Windows Server 2003 (W2K3) may place it in “\documents and settings\%username%\application data” or “\documents and settings\%username%\local settings” or somewhere else entirely.

We can’t predict where the data will go for a given application which doesn’t help us understand the “splatter” that it makes in the file system. This folder lottery is further compounded by the fact that Vista and WS08 implicitly add the “.v2” extension to any profile path you define for a user. What this results in is that with a roaming profile solution, you are forced to have different profiles, and therefore different settings, between XP/W2K3, which implicitly use a “v1” profile, and Vista/WS08 which explicitly use a “v2” profile (even though the path defined for this profile does not actually include the “.v2” extension).

Applications should get the paths to use within the profile folder hierarchy by using operating system API calls that are the same between the different operating systems but will yield the correct folder for the operating system it is being run on. Unfortunately, not all applications are written this way and some will make assumptions about paths and maybe even hard code them which is likely to cause problems even before operating system migration, particularly in Terminal Server/Citrix XenApp environments.

There is also the class of setting that is actually different between the different operating systems. Take for instance the good old desktop wallpaper which most people, if pushed, will confess is the one item that makes their PC experience “personal” (while this is not an essential productivity related personalization setting, it does however provide a good example as to how even the most basic of settings fail to migrate between OS platforms)  Although users don’t know, and indeed do not need to know, they are actually stored in different file formats between XP/W2K3 and Vista/WS08. Therefore if the setting for this, which is stored in the user’s registry hive, was just unintelligently transplanted between the two operating systems then one of the desktops wouldn’t show the correct wallpaper.

Some implementers may say that it is a good idea to start with clean profiles when moving from one operating system to another system since it is a good opportunity, in their view, for a clean start and to leave all the myriad of settings behind that aren’t apparently used for anything and just clutter the profile. However, against this has to be weighed the cost of the user having to re-personalize their applications and desktop. This costs both in terms of time (both users being interrupted during their workflow as they find a toolbar or application setting they need is missing, and then having to remember where and how to re-make the customization, which could be different to how they would have changed the option on their old OS)  and also can cause a certain amount of resistance when these users tell their yet-to-be-upgraded colleagues is that this great new operating system, which has been months in planning, has lost all of their settings and they are struggling to find the new ways to set things the way “they should be”.

Enter AppSense Environment Manager. All of the technical issues outlined above are addressed by Environment Manager making the migration from one operating system to another, and back again if required, a much less painless experience and instead now becomes an automated, seamless process for both the user and administrator alike. The files used by an application within the locally cached profile folders are stored in a relative, rather than absolute, form in the Environment Manager database which then allows them to be subsequently put back in the correct, operating system specific, folder hierarchies. Because Environment Manager functions on a per-application basis, it can much more accurately target which settings need to be brought over onto the new operating system and it also silently transmogrifies items and their settings, such as desktop wallpapers, to help ensure that seamless migration that administrators dream of. All this, of course, is done with next to no configuration by administrators so they do not need to understand the intricacies of any of the applications and subsequent registry settings and profile structures the user uses. This helps make for quick and easy migrations, although I don’t personally like the term “migration” since it implies a one way movement whereas Environment Manager provides bi-directionality with no extra effort.

So in summary…While it is right to say that it is NOT best practice to share ‘roaming profiles’ across OS platforms, AppSense Environment Manager dispels the myth that sharing ‘personalization settings’ between operating systems is not a recommended best practice –in fact AppSense recommend you embrace it…

Windows 7, The Secrets to Migration Success…

Unless you’ve been living on a desert island in the mid-Pacific for the past few months (actually, that sounds pretty good!), you’ve probably heard something about a new Microsoft OS called Windows 7.  By all accounts, this OS looks set to be the next logical upgrade from XP (with many companies skipping Vista for reasons I don’t need to go into right now!).  So not only will companies be looking to upgrade their existing physical PCs to this wonderful new OS, but the availability of Win7 will inevitably bring about a re-assessment of the corporate desktop estate. That re-assessment will of course consider the prospect of lowering management costs by moving from physical machines to a virtual desktop environment; Win7 seems much more ‘VDI friendly’ than any of its predecessors.

So….a company-wide OS upgrade is coming….  A migration from physical to virtual desktops is probably also coming…….

You might be thinking a couple of things about this….
1. “Will I see my family again?”
and
2. “I want to make this upgrade really work.  I’m not going to have any support calls on this and I’m going to use this to reduce my costs….”

Well, I’m not sure what we can do about the family challenge, but I do know how you can answer number 2.

Let’s break the problem down into two parts; 1. upgrading to Win7 on the physical PC, and 2. the migration to a virtual Win7 environment.

Upgrading to Win7 on the physical PC

Win7 is quite different to XP.  You may very well have problems running legacy or homegrown XP apps on Win7.  In order to solve this problem, you might have to consider virtualizing troublesome apps rather than wait for upgrades from multiple app vendors. 

Another problem you’ll have is the user profile data and desktop setup scripts.  It’s highly unlikely that anything the user has done to the XP machine to personalize it (at both the OS and the application level) will be compatible with the new Win7 desktop.  This is because XP uses a completely different User Profile format and structure to that of Win7, meaning it is not as simple as re-using their old profiles on the new OS.  The result?  All your upgraded employees have to re-personalize their desktop.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve done a lot to personalize my desktop and applications over the years.  I have all my apps just the way I want them, my email signature and rules are set just right and there’s probably a hundred other settings I’ve forgotten about and wouldn’t know how to re-do on a new OS.  What a great start to my Win7 experience….a bland, impersonal machine.  By the way, the same thing goes for policy settings, such as printer and file drive access as well as other ‘logon processes’.  So, one of the most important considerations in your Win7 migration is to retain all this user-specific information (we call it the “user personality”) from the XP desktop and simply ‘inject’ this back into the new Win7 desktop following upgrade to ensure a seamless experience to the user.

Migrating from an XP PC to a Win7 virtual desktop

Rather than just upgrading physical PCs, you might want to take this opportunity to move employees over to a virtual environment.  Not only does this provide the user with a nice, new Win7 desktop, it also can provide some huge desktop management cost reduction opportunities;  no need to upgrade the desktop machine with hardware capable of running the new OS (as this can now be re-purposed as a ‘thin client’), centralized management of desktops, monitoring of the environment to reduce support costs etc .  However, the real big opportunity to reduce costs here lies in the use of a single, standardized and leveraged Win7 desktop image across the entire company.  Imagine creating ONE standardized, corporate Win7 desktop (possibly with a selection of baseline corporate apps such as Outlook and IE) and to have this provisioned to each employee as they require it.  When the employee goes home, the desktop is deleted.  No need to store and manage lots of desktops….instead they’re delivered on an ‘as-needed’ basis.

However, this standard Win7 image is by no means personal to the user – not if it’s being used by thousands of employees!  This is where the user personality comes in.  By centrally managing the user personality independent of this standard Win7 desktop, it can then be applied to the desktop when needed.  So you now have a low cost, standard Win7 estate, with employees experiencing the same working environment as when they were using their desktop PC.  Sound like heaven?

Well, it certainly might sound like futuristic, but believe me this is happening today!  I see it in many of our enterprise customers, our VAR partners and our System Integrator partners – and it’s gaining huge momentum (see Sumit Dhawan’s latest blog on this here).

 Win7 will be a game-changing event in the corporate desktop world.  It will essentially be the catalyst to a whole new way of looking at and managing the desktop – and what we know to be true is that the user aspect of the corporate PC must now be treated as a separate entity unto itself – enabling the business tools (apps and OS) to be standardized and their delivery automated, leading to huge reductions in cost (management, storage, licensing) and productive employees.

Here are some of the things we believe you must consider as part of your Win7 migration.  Remember all these things are possible today. There are some vendors who can provide some of the items below…..but there’s only one that can do them all! ;-)

Pete Rawlinson
VP WW Marketing, AppSense

 

• Low cost, low risk migration to Win7 on your physical PCs

      Seamlessly decouple all aspects of the user from the employees existing PC (XP, Vista), and reapply this data into a fresh, standard Win7 PC.  The employee sees no change to the personal settings post-upgrade.

• Eliminate the costs associated with using legacy scripts and bloated user profiles

      Your Win7 migration affords the opportunity to replace outdated and management-intensive methods to manage the user experience on the desktop.  Complex, often large login scripts can be replaced and selectively executed dependent on the user needs.  Maintenance is reduced, as is the user logon time. 

• Low cost, low risk migration to Win7 in a virtual desktop environment

      Decouple the user personality from the existing PC and store this independent of the desktop.  The user can then be redirected to a low cost, standard, virtualized Win7 image, where their personality is applied on-demand.  A low-cost physical-to-“Win7 virtual” migration process, with the employee seeing no change to their PC experience.

• Ensure seamless user experience in multi-OS desktop estate

      Regardless of whether your desktop estate is a mix of XP, Vista or Win7, the same centralized, independent user personality is able to seamlessly ‘roam’ across each OS version.  This enables you to implement Win7 into your desktop estate gradually, without having to create multiple user profiles for each OS version. 

• Establish lowest cost Win7 desktop environment through standardized, personalized desktop images

      Desktop management and storage costs can be reduced significantly by standardizing on your Win7 corporate image.  By having one standard Win7 desktop provided to employees on-demand, desktop management becomes much easier and less risky.  Including personality management into this scenario enables this standard desktop to be dynamically personalized on-access, providing the employee with their familiar PC-type experience.

• Personalize virtualized applications

      Many legacy, home grown and XP-based applications are unsuitable for use in a Win7 environment, making application virtualization a necessity.  Unless the company is prepared to virtualize each individual employee’s applications, virtualized applications must be standard and therefore non-personal in nature.  Applications must be automatically configured for each specific user and/or connecting device, and automatically personalized to the user based on their personality. You can now accelerate the Win7 roll-out since incompatible applications are virtualized, yet still remain personal to the employee.

• Quickly and easily scale Win7 implementation with no impact to user experience

      The user is provided with a consistent personal experience across multiple client OS versions, multiple delivery technologies, multiple accessing devices and accommodates the employee context (e.g. security level, accessing location etc). 

• Ensure quality user experience as your Win7 implementation scales through visibility and remediation

      Migration to Win7 in your organization is a significant and on-going event.  Adherence to SLAs and reducing support loads are paramount during this process. In addition to ensuring a consistent and personalized user experience during the Win7 migration process, you must also provide desktop optimization and remediation through reporting, monitoring and auditing of the user personality.

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 TS/RDS CAL now includes App-V

 As of 1st September 2009, Microsoft is including an App-V (formerly SoftGrid)  licence within the Client Access Licence (CAL) for Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, meaning that a separate App-V licence is no longer required and shortly will not even be available.

http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/appv/howtobuy/default.mspx

 http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/rds-product-licensing.aspx

The media for the client, sequencer and server is available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0890d6cd-0d3b-4c9d-b208-231c65d3e55a

How To Guide: Streaming Microsoft Office with Citrix XenApp 5 – Best Practice Guide & Licensing Overview

Citrix Technology Professional (CTP) Alexander Ervik Johnsen has written a very useful piece on how to Profile and Stream Microsoft Office 2007 using Citrix XenApp 5.0

This is a great guide and covers how to stream Office to a desktop, or, into a Citrix XenDesktop session.  His article and guide can be found on his website here.

Further to the actual process of profiling and streaming the Office application, I also want to ensure everyone is aware of the Microsoft Per Device Licensing Model for Server Hosted Applications.

Many Microsoft applications, including Microsoft Office™, Project™ and Visio™, are licensed on a per-device basis. This means a desktop application license is required for each and every device that is able to potentially access the application or server where the application is installed, regardless of whether a user executes and runs the application of not.  This makes licensing Microsoft applications in virtual environments a tricky, potentially very costly, and misunderstood subject. 

One misconception is that by ‘publishing’ or ’streaming’ applications to a limited “user” group, that group is compliant with the Microsoft license agreement – in other words, Microsoft licenses their applications per user.  This is in fact in breach of the Microsoft licensing model, and can lead to legal action.

I have written a blog, which also includes official Microsoft approved whitepapers on how to control and enforce application access and license compliance on a per device basis  in such virtual environments,  that blog can be found here

In addition to helping ensure compliance, effective license control and management can also reduce Microsoft License requirements and associated costs – more information on this can be found here.

If anyone has any questions or comments, as always, please do let me know.

Thanks
Gareth