In a previous post, I mentioned how XenDesktop was hypervisor agnostic and how XenDesktop could use Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V as the hypervisor platform. Now, Microsoft and Citrix have teamed up to create an on-line virtual lab demonstrating how these technologies work together.
Want to test XenDesktop 4 on Hyper-V, but you cannot find the time to build a test environment? Well look no further, Citrix and Microsoft have teamed up to bring you the Hands on Lab. What is Hands on Lab, you ask? The Hands on Lab is a pre-built environment / training session that is interactive and totally usable for testing and seeing the combined power of XenDesktop 4 and Microsoft Hyper-V
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Microsoft has released a series of videos all about App-V (Application Virtualization). These videos range from basic introductory configuration, to using App-V with AppLocker, to using Dynamic Suiting.
Overview:
AppLocker is a new feature of Windows7 that allows administrators to define policies that can allow or deny a user’s ability to run or install executable, MSI, or script files. Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) separates the application from the operating system preventing application conflicts and enabling the ability to run multiple versions of an application of the same desktop. Virtual applications can be delivered in many ways - streaming by assigning applications to user, delivering to machines via Configuration Manager or by using file streaming from removable media. Using App-V and Applocker together ensures that no matter how the application is delivered or what format is takes, physical or virtual, it will respect the policies defined by IT. Watch these demonstrations to learn how to configure App-V; create, update, and publish virtual applications; and create and manage policies for virtual applications.
The following videos are currently posted:
- App-V Configuration Options
- App-V with AppLocker Executable Rules
- App-V with AppLocker Windows Installer Rules
- Create Virtual App
- Deprovision Virtual App
- Launch Virtual App
- Manage App Licenses
- Publish Virtual App
- Run Office Virtual
- Update Virtual App
- Use Dynamic Suiting
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Virtualization.info is reporting that Microsoft may starting hosting virtual machines in it’s Windows Azure platform as early as March 2010. Azure started out as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution encompassing things like SQL Server Data Service (SSDS) - now SQL Azure. Azure is growing beyond these initials offerings and is quickly becoming more of a full service cloud computing environment. A quick look at the Microsoft Azure website does, in fact, list “Windows Azure” as an option, but not a lot of details.
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Citrix recently released a white paper detailing findings of scaling XenDesktop to 5000 virtual desktops. What is interesting about this whitepaper is not only the results, but the methodology used. Citrix opted to use VMware ESX as the hypervisor in this testing. Also, NetApp was used for shared storage. Login VSI (Virtual Session Indexer) was used to simulate workloads. Testing was done in two phases - individual component scalability and full-system scalability. Central to both phases of testing is the use of a tool that simulates real-world workloads, as well as an internally built tool to measure session startup times (providing expected user logon times). This white paper is an interesting read for both small and large VDI deployments.
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One of the cool features of Citrix XenDesktop is that XenDesktop is hypervisor agnostic - meaning XenDesktop doesn’t care if you use XenServer, VMware ESX, or Hyper-V as the underlying hypervisor. Jarian Gibson put together a really nice step-by-step article with screen shots explaining how to use Hyper-V as the underlying hypervisor for XenDesktop. This is a must read if you are experimenting with using Hyper-V and XenDesktop together.
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What is VMware Storage Masking and what are the best practices around Storage Masking? Duncan Epping tackles both these questions in a recent article on yellow-bricks.com. VMware has a best practice pertaining to masking LUNs on a per cluster basis. The best practice has been around for years and basically is there to reduce conflicts. More hosts accessing the same LUNs means more overhead, just to give you an example every 5 minutes a rescan of both HBAs takes place automatically to check for dead storage paths. You can imagine that there’s a difference between 32+ hosts accessing your storage or limiting it to for instance 16 hosts.
Masking helps performance, but has a potential to lessen flexibility. Duncan explains a way to use a so called “Transfer Volume” to regain the lost flexibility when using masking.
Here’s the process:
- Storage VMotion the VM from LUN on Array 1 to Transfer LUN
- VMotion VM from Cluster A to Cluster B
- Storage VMotion the VM from Transfer LUN to LUN on Array 2
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If you are interested in a proof of concept for Microsoft’s VDI solution, all you need is a single physical server. People often ask how easy it is to install a complete MS VDI solution and how many servers does it take. George Zhu put together a quick video showcasing just how easy it is to setup all you need on a single physical Windows Server 2008 R2 box. The video uses Windows 7 for the guest. The video is short and to the point, unfortunately, it is a little hard to see at the broadcast resolution. Fortunately, George also posted links to step-by-step guides and scripts used.
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Citrix has announced the next set of features slated for XenServer codename “Midnight Ride”. The release is targeted for mid March. The announced features include:
- Granular Role-based access controls within XenCenter
- Dynamic Memory Control & Overcommit
- Enhanced snapshots, including full system state and one-click revert
- Administrative logging and audit reports
- Automation for Workload Balancing
- Host Power Management
- StorageLink Site Recovery for business continuity
- Enhanced CPU compatibility for XenMotion
- Streamlined XenCenter interface
- Support for “Supplementary Packs” for hardware vendor-specific features (i.e. Dell, HP)
Citrix will be discussing these new features during a webinar on Wednesday, March 17, 2010. You can register from the link below.
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VMware View 4 includes PC-over-IP functionality. PC-over-IP is a display protocol licensed from Teradici. There are 2 types of PC-over-IP - hardware and software. VMware View 4 includes the software version. Some details of the inner workings of the software version of PC-over-IP are explained in a recent article by Eric Siebert.
VMware’s software implementation of PCoIP uses Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) over port 50002. The TCP port is used for session establishment and control and the UDP port is used for optimal performance of media and streaming content. All traffic between the host server and remote user is encrypted with 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard encryption. One of the biggest challenges with remote desktops is dealing with remote users that have low bandwidth and/or high latency network connections; PCoIP handles these types of situations very well and still delivers a decent remote desktop experience to a user.
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Which protocol produces the best performance for vSphere? That is a question NetApp recently published a whitepaper about. The paper compares the performance of FC, iSCSI, and NFS connected storage along with the gains made in protocol optimization with vSphere as compared to VI3.
Some interesting information from the report states “…there is very little difference between the performance results of any storage protocol when running VMware on NetApp. This first graph is one of many showing I/O throughput.”
I would have thought there would a little more difference. More tests were performed with 10GbE for NFS and iSCSI showing little discrepancy.
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