The News Section contains the latest news about Microsoft Terminal Services and Citrix. Find out about new thin client terminals, learn about freeware SBC tools and applications.
Updates on the newest versions of the RDP and ICA protocols, reports on all you need to know about server based computing and related technologies.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VD) is really combination of technologies including, but not limited to, hardware virtualization, application virtualization, presentation virtualization, desktop broker. Citrix has a really nice solution to VDI called XenDesktop. XenDesktop is one of the more complete solution out there since Citrix owns technology for each required piece. But, what is interesting about XenDesktop is that you do not have to use all Citrix components. For instance, you can use Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, or VMware ESX as the hardware virtualization component. Another component that XenDesktop offers that makes provisioning desktops easier is Provisioning Server (Ardence).
To learn more about XenDesktop, be sure to check out the Citrix TechTalk webinar by Daniel Feller titled “Implementing a Virtual Desktop Solution with Citrix XenDesktop“. Topics covered are:
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Brian Madden recently sat down with some of VMWare’s staff to discuss various technologies within the company. One of those sit-downs turned into a really interesting podcast about VMWare ThinApp. ThinApp is a technology VMWare acquired earlier this year (although at the time the technology/company was called Thinstall). ThinApp is an application virtualization technology that has some similarities to Microsoft App-V (there are quite a bit of differences too). Anyway, this podcast that Brian hosted reveals how Thinstall got its start and how it has evolved in to the technology it is today. I think it is quite interesting to know that some of the beginnings of Thinstall had to do with copy protection.
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There are many storage scenarios with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Since you are dealing with host and guest Operating Systems, it is important to know the storage combinations for Hyper-V. The host OS can support directly-attached storage (SATA, SAS) or SAN storage (Fiber Channel, iSCSI). Once storage is attached to the host, it can be exposed to the guest in a number of ways. These include:
Another important factor when dealing with Hyper-V VMs is moving disks between hosts. This is a little bit different than ESX or Xen. Since you are dealing with the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator, there are some limitations to shared storage. Although Windows Server Failover Clustering and System Center Virtual Machine Manager help automate things.
To help make sense of all these storage scenarios, check out the Dario IT Solutions blog post titled “Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Storage“. There is a lot of good information there with comparison charts and screen shots.
Technorati : Hyper-V, SAN, Server 2008, Storage, VHD
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Have you ever heard of PC-over-IP (PCoIP)? PCoIP is a presentation protocol (much like RDP or ICA) introduced by Teradici. The difference in PC-over-IP is that it utilizes hardware chipsets on the server and client. This technology enables centralized desktops and supports high definition audio and video, transparent USB support, web cams, Bluetooth, VoIP, scanners, printers (including multi-function), etc. This technology can also be used in a VDI environment as well as Dan Shappir explains in a nice blog post.
Check out this image from a virtualization demonstration involving multiple monitors:
Technorati : ICA, PC-over-IP, Presentation Virtualization, RDP, Teradici
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Microsoft recently announced that starting September 1, 2008 “…customers will be able to move any of 41 Microsoft server applications between servers within a server farm as often as necessary without paying additional licensing fees, and they can take advantage of expanded specialized technical support.” This licensing change makes it possible to reassign licenses from one server to another within a server farm as frequently as needed. Prior to this change, customers only had 90 days to reassign licenses (which was a legal hurdle to virtualization). There are currently 41 server applications covered under these new licensing terms including “…Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Standard and Enterprise editions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise and Professional editions, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center products.” Not only is this legal now, Microsoft also is officially supporting this by expanding technical support. To add to that, Microsoft is also launching worldwide events to help customers get virtual. Talk about getting on the virtualization band-wagon! Way to go Microsoft.
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So, how do you backup virtual servers? Traditionally, there have been two main schools of thought on this. One is to think of the virtual machine as a physical machine and install a backup agent on the VM. Then, just select what you need backed up just as you would a physical machine. There is nothing wrong with that school of thought, but what if you want to take it a step deeper and backup the actual virtual machine itself? That would be ideal for a disaster recovery situation since recovery time would be reduced. Some backup manufactures are taking advantage of Windows Volume Snapshot Service (VSS a.k.a. Shadow Copy) technology to accomplish this type of backup. Tim Jacobs recently expounded upon the details of this type of technology in a blog post. Tim does a good job of explaining VSS history and how this technology is being taken advantage of in the scenario of backing up virtual machines.
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Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is not really a technology in and of itself. Really, VDI is a combination of technologies. You need hardware virtualization (like VMWare ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V, or Citrix XenServer to name a few). You need some sort of application and/or presentation virtualization (like Citrix XenApp, Microsoft Terminal Services, Provision, etc.) to execute applications on the virtual desktops. You also need a remoting protocol such as RDP, ICA, or SPICE. You also need to have a desktop broker to “traffic” all this virtualization. There are many 3rd party brokers out there, but did you know that with a little you can extend the Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Session Broker to be a desktop broker as well? The Microsoft Terminal Services Team recently published a blog entry surrounding this topic. Here is an excerpt:
“While the built-in functionality of the TS Session Broker in WS08 only supports routing connections to terminal server sessions, we’ve created a set of APIs that ISVs can use to create connection brokers for other kinds of devices. Basically, these APIs allow you to lobotomize the TS Session Broker and replace its brain - its brokering mechanism - with a new plug-in. This plug-in can contain a new set of rules that support redirection to other types of destinations. It can also provide different means of deciding the best target for new connections, such as load balancing rules based on server resources or login time.”
Technorati : Desktop Broker, Server 2008, Terminal Services, VDI, Virtualization
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If you are running Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V in your environment (or even if you are thinking about running Hyper-V in your environment), then you should definitely take a look at this white paper published by Microsoft titled “Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008“. This white paper “…describes important tuning parameters and settings that can result in improved performance for the Windows Server® 2008 operating system. Each setting and its potential effect are described to help you make an informed judgment about its relevance to your system, workload, and performance goals.” There is an entire section on Hyper-V in this paper describing performance for processors, cache, memory, networking, storage, etc. The sections in the paper that are not directly related to Hyper-V are still useful in an overall architecture performance plan.
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During this year’s BriForum, Ron Oglesby did an independent performance comparison between the Xen hypervisor and VMWare ESX 3.5. Keep in mind that Ron does not work for either VMWare or Citrix (and, oh yeah, Ron wrote the book on virtualization). I must admit that the results were somewhat surprising. In almost every performance test Xen was comparable and even faster than ESX. But, you don’t have to take my work for it. Just check out the PowerPoint and video of Ron explaining the tests and results.
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