Citrix In One Breath : Video on YouTube – Provision 80 Desktops in 3 Minutes

You may remember back in August I blogged about a couple of parody style pop music videos Citrix and VMware released as part of some fun viral marketing.  The guys over in Citrix Germany have once again treated us to another video, this time a little harder hitting, especially with the music soundtrack ;)

The video shows Marc Borchert, who as well as being a Citrix Engineer is an Apnoea Free Diver, hold his breath underwater for 3 minutes.  During this time, Oliver Lomberg, a Citrix Systems Engineer, installs XenServer and provisions 80 desktops using Citrix and Microsoft technologies – the theme being “Achieve more for your business in one breath with Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V”.. a very well thought out and strong message!

Good work guys..

You can view the video on YouTube here

UK Snowfall, home working and virtual desktops

As you may be aware, the UK has recently been subject to some of the coldest weather and heaviest snowfall we have experienced in many year.. while it is not a lot snow compared to what other countries experience, our lack of resources available to clear to snow from the roads has confined thousands and thousands of people to their house, including myself. 

During this time my inability to simply get to work got me thinking about all the (simple) things we take for granted, whether that be the car starts in the morning, the coffee machine works or the PC powers on.  We also take for granted in the most part that we can either get into the office in the car / public transport or that the DSL / broadband connection at home is always on.

So, with the snow that we have been hit with, we were into going into “survival mode” where we stay at home and make the best use of the technologies that our strategists “forced us” us to consider some 12 months back – for example, this thing called hosted Virtual Desktops.  The AppSense business has for long made use of the Server Based Computing technology (with Citrix XenApp) since the day it was born, but only recently has a significant part of the power and knowledge based users of the workforce been able to use this “new stuff” – desktop virtualization. 

It is only now when we can take the benefit of looking back over the last week we can see that it just worked – our users had little complaints because their desktop(s) were still available,  even when at home on their kids gaming PC – OK, so there was a complaint or two about the low quality seat that they had purchased for their children to use while gaming, but the business can hardly be made accountable to those kinds of things?!  Strange though that the local stores have had a surge in deliveries of office chairs to households this past couple of days… 

Anyway, back to it, the only other issue area the AppSense IT team had to deal with was a user who lost telecoms at his home, along with all of his neighbours.  SO, this user was unable to access his online Virtual Desktop since he had no connectivity.  Again, this was no significant issue since the user in question was (fortunately) supplied with a laptop from the office, which as we here at AppSense eat our own dog food / drink our own champagne comes with AppSense Environment Manager and so all of his applications and personalization information was also available on the offline device as well as in the Virtual Desktop (that he couldn’t use).

Our lessons from this week to belileve  the strategy guys, they after all, were actually responsible for our technology vision and then our IT guys for delivering it using some of the world’s leading Desktop Virtualization software from Microsoft, Citrix, VMware and of course AppSense all coming together to enable my colleagues and I to continue working from remote locations around the country..

Inaugural Meeting of the Northern VMware User Group

On Wednesday 18^th November I had the pleasure of attending the inaugural meeting of the Northern VMware User Group (UK) at the Wellington pub in Leeds. There were about thirty five people in attendance, mostly administrators of VMware infrastructures, including some big ones, which was a pretty impressive turnout given the far from ideal weather conditions. A couple of VMware vExperts also attended the event.

A very informative presentation from Ross Bisby of b2net covering the details of investigating performance issues in ESX/ESXi environments kicked things off. Hats off to Ross for a top job given he was drafted in at the last minute. This was followed by informal breakout sessions covering topics such as VCP certification, iSCSI storage and VDI.  There was certainly a good deal of interest in VDI from many people there with a variety of experience from planning through testing to having, successfully, deployed it. It was encouraging too to find a number of the attendees already familiar with AppSense products.

Many thanks to the committee for organising such a successful event and to VMware and Veeam for sponsoring the bar – when in Rome …

Looking forward already to the next event!

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 :-)

AppSense University 2009

Last week saw the annual round of AppSense Universities taking place. A gathering of the best consultancy minds from AppSense channel partners and system integrators. The goal of this year’s University was to drive home the AppSense best practices when delivering AppSense solutions and to educate the attendee’s with an increased technical understanding of the Environment Manager product.

It is clear that User Environment Management has become a very hot topic within the technical community and so this year’s attendance was higher than ever with over 50 partners attending the 2 day event. The sessions were a mix of theory and practical work, culminating in an exam that tested both current skill levels and knowledge acquired over the 2 day.  Over 90% of the attendee’s have been working with AppSense for many years, but all that attended commented on how much additional technical content they had obtained by attending the event.

“The University and Inner Circle events give us the ability to educate our partners on areas of the products which may have changed since they attended the Certified Administrator Course and allow us to share our own wealth of knowledge regarding best practice. Partners who attend become more self-sufficient due to the education we provide regarding the inner workings of the products and troubleshooting sessions” – Simon Townsend, Director of Technical Services, AppSense

The practical sessions saw delegates solving real world challenges with ease when using an AppSense Solution.  The practical sessions provided delegates with a technical insight into Environment Manager via the Deep Dive sessions, this included how Environment Manager integrates with the logon process. While the hands on labs enabled delegates to migrate users from a current problematic Roaming Profile to an AppSense Managed Profile, there was also the chance for delegates to get a grasp of all Environment Manager Best practices as well as implement these in the lab sessions.

 The event also provided a solid platform to feedback into AppSense Product Management on features that would like to be seen and features that are already present. The University events prove to be one of the best sources of feed in for product features since the delegates are all seasoned professionals who need solutions to their own unique issue areas.

“Having been to several AppSense Technical Universities, I can genuinely say they are a valuable experience to anyone working with AppSense technology and is looking to expand their customer base in the user environment management space. There is always a great mix of theory, practical lab sessions and open discussion on personal experiences out in the field, which makes the event both educational and informative. It’s also good to see what’s next in terms of product development and refreshing to be able to offer input, which is often incorporated in to the new versions. I’d definitely recommend this event to anyone who is serious about AppSense.” – Simon Mulrain, Senior Consultant, Point to Point.

The exam was received positively with many wanting to test and prove their AppSense knowledge. On a whole the results were fantastic but a special mention must go to Esteem, ADD3, Centralis, ISC and Point to Point whose delegates on the day achieved the top grades.

Most walked away from the event feeling that the content was very relevant, and already asking the dates for the next University. We all look forward to seeing you all again next time.

Photo taken from midway back, right hand side of the room

 

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

 

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……….