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 :)

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 :-)

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 :-)

DABCC Podcast – AppSense (Martin Ingram) And Doug Brown Discuss Citrix XenDesktop 4 & User Environment Management

Douglas Brown interviews Martin Ingram, Vice President of Strategy at AppSense. Douglas and Martin discuss the recent release of Citrix XenDesktop 4, what this means for the desktop virtualization, AppSense, and VMware. Martin also talks a bit about their upcoming “user installed applications” technology which will allow end-users to install their own applications and have those apps roam with the user while allowing IT to centrally manage these ‘one off’ applications centrally.

The podcast is hosted on DABCC.com and can be found here

DABCC Podcast

Migrating User Profiles And Existing Personalization Settings to Win 7 with AppSense

A major challenge in migrating existing users to Windows 7 is user profile data and desktop setup scripts. It’s highly unlikely that anything the user has done to their existing machine to personalize it will be compatible with the new Windows 7 desktop. The result? All upgraded employees have to re-personalize their desktop – not a quick task, especially as the process to make such personalization changes may require changing options and settings in new menu locations.

One of the most important things to consider in your Windows 7 migration project is the retention of all user-specific information (we call it the “user personality”) from the ‘old’ desktop and simply injecting this back into the new Windows 7 desktop following upgrade, ensuring a seamless experience to the user and a de-risked Win 7 migration. 

AppSense Environment Manager has been providing user profile migration solutions for global companies for several years, and fast becoming an essential component in many Win 7 migration projects.  AppSense automatically identify all existing personalization settings on the current OS platform, separate them from the desktop and store them independent of the desktop itself.  These settings can now be re-applied to the new Win7 OS platform, regardless of how the OS is hosted or delivered, either physical, virtual or provisioned..

For more information, please download our free Windows 7 Overview  here or visit www.appsense.com/solutions/migration

Win7 Migration

VDI Webinar: Citrix CTP Alexander ‘Ervik’ Johnsen hosts a VDI webinar with Citrix, AppSense & Commaxx

Citrix CTP and owner of www.Ervik.as - Alex ‘Ervik’ Johnsen – is hosting a VDI webinar discussing the challenges faced in rolling out VDI, along with best practices and discussions & demonstrations from Citrix, AppSense and joint VAR Commaxx.

This webinar will include a Citrix XenDesktop overview, along with why AppSense is the only solution recommended by Citrix for Personalization and Policy management to enable the customization of single OS and App images to be tailored for each and every user in an organization.

Join us to understand how Commaxx, AppSense and Citrix can simplify your desktop virtualization plans, reduce cost, simplify management and provide the best user experience.

The webinar takes place on Monday 19th October, you can register your place here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/937376570

Together Citrix and AppSense have over 4,000 joint enterprise customers and have deployed some of the largest VDI environments in the world… attend this webinar to see why..

Click Banner To Register For Webinar

 

AppSense Announces Support for Citrix XenDesktop 4 with Leading User Personalization Technology

The Only Partner Technology Recommended by Citrix to Ensure All Users Receive a Fully Personalized Working Environment at the Lowest Possible Cost

AppSense, the leading provider of User Environment Management solutions for the enterprise, today announced full support for Citrix XenDesktop 4,a groundbreaking new Citrix product designed to make virtual desktops a mainstream reality for hundreds of millions of corporate employees for the first time ever.

“AppSense has been working closely with Citrix and our joint customers for many years and we commend Citrix on this bold and significant move. By combining two market-leading products and introducing FlexCast technology to accommodate every user type, Citrix has been instrumental in further reducing the barriers to mainstream virtual desktop adoption,” said Charles Sharland, Chairman and CEO, AppSense. “As the only enterprise solution recommended by Citrix to provide comprehensive desktop personalization for all users, we look forward to providing our Citrix customers a way to scale their virtual desktop estates at lowest cost and with maximum user adoption.”

AppSense, a Citrix partner of over 10 years with some 4000 joint customers around the world, provides technology solutions that enable low-cost, standard desktop images to be delivered to employees as fully personalized desktops. This ensures maximum user adoption from just a few corporate base images, reducing cost, complexity and risk. Their User Environment Management solution is the only technology to provide on-demand desktop personalization across all delivery methods and operating system versions.

Based on this unique level of customer experience, AppSense is well positioned to work in conjunction with Citrix FlexCast to provide centralized management of the user personality for task workers, knowledge workers and power users in both server and client-hosted desktop environments.

“We look at the desktop in a different way at AppSense,” stated Pete Rawlinson, VP WW Marketing at AppSense. “We effectively separate the desktop into three layers; corporate operating system, corporate applications and the user. By managing all aspects of the user independent of the desktop, IT are able to standardize the corporate operating system and applications, delivering them on-demand only when needed. The combination of Citrix XenDesktop 4 and AppSense User Environment Management enables companies to truly eliminate unnecessary desktop management costs while ensuring users of all types receive the very best working experience – even in the most heterogeneous environments.”

This layered model looks to be the way forward for mainstream virtual desktop adoption, as Rachel Chalmers of The 451 Group states:

“Separating out operating systems and applications and provisioning them dynamically means that desktops can be assembled per session and disposed of when the session is over. To make all of this work like a physical PC, though, administrators need to store stateful user settings and preferences elsewhere. Separating out this layer of user data is what we call user virtualization. Citrix ecosystem vendors pioneered the art of maintaining these user profiles in terminal services environments, and AppSense has led the way in adapting it to desktop virtualization.”

AppSense will be a sponsor at the upcoming Citrix global online event on October 20, 2009, “Secrets, Lies and VDI: Dispel the Myths and Uncover the Truth about Desktop and Application Virtualization”.   Click here to register your place…

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.

Citrix XenDesktop 4 – Now Includes XenApp.

Today Citrix announced the availability of XenDesktop Version 4, to be released in November 09.  This is a significant announcement as it incorporates the combining of XenDesktop and XenApp into one (marketed) product – XenDesktop 4.  Effectively, XenDesktop 4 is now the Citrix virtual desktop solution for all user types (including task workers on TS) with XenApp providing the application / TS side.

Citrix have made a bold and significant move here.  By combining their new VDI solution with their long-standing and highly penetrated server-based computing solution, they have not only created a compelling product and simplified message, they have also provided a nice VDI on-ramp to their existing XenApp customer base, enabling them to potentially take a decent piece of market share. XenDeskop 4 will provide Citrix customers an easy on-ramp to VDI while maintaining their existing XenApp investment, as well as enabling them to leverage other technologies such as Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere.

What this move demonstrates is the high importance the major players like Citrix and VMware are now putting on VDI.  We’re starting to see some major moves in the space as companies make a play for market share and I’m sure there’s a lot more to come. 

As Citrix points out in their press release, the quality of the user experience is of paramount importance in the mainstream adoption of this new desktop estate – a desktop estate that will combine terminal server, server- and client-hosted VDI, blade systems, physical desktops and myriad other technologies, to deliver the lowest-cost, highest quality desktop to the employee.  Maintaining a consistent, personal and productive environment to the user regardless of how the desktop is delivered seems set to become a major objective in this ‘new world’.  Using Citrix FlexCast™ to accommodate the needs of all user types could be used in conjunction with a personality management solution to ensure a ‘follow me’ persona across all delivery mechanisms – effectively making the method of delivery seamless to the user.

With Windows 7 on its way, this could be just the catalyst needed for the VDI adoption curve to change its trajectory……….