As a natural succession to a fact that Microsoft has now included App-V’s Terminal Server (Remote Desktop Services) version usage rights in its RDS CAL (previously known as TS CAL), this version is now downloadable straight from the Microsoft Download site instead of using Licensing -site as before.
However, to download this package, you first have to enter Product Identification Key of Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 TS into mandatory registration form..
I just got spam, err, marketing e-mail from Citrix (apparently I accidently signed up for something in somewhere at some point) which had an interestingly sounding title: “5 Features VMware Can’t Deliver”.
It says (those?) five things in the body of email and urges to download something called “VDI Comparison Kit”, which evidently talks about these issues in more details.
Well, here are the five things mentioned in the email:
* 10X lower bandwidth requirement for LAN or WAN
* Unmatched user experience on any device
* Unique performance monitoring of desktops
* Scalable, single image management
* Lowest TCO with both hosted and streamed desktops
While I haven’t (yet) read about the explanations behind these claims and thus cannot comment on their validity, I can only say that it would be interesting if Citrix would compare their solution to others as well (like Quest vWorkspace); I bet that at least some of the things mentioned do not hold up water (TCO comes to mind as a first thing, knowing general level of Citrix pricing) in that comparison.. The 10X bandwidth claim also sound quite incredible as a blanket statement.
Another interesting point is that Citrix openly compares themselves with the competitor, this is something that tech companies generally do not seem to do. Yes, they usually have internal/with restricted distribution documents for that purpose but not so often in the public.
Well, maybe I have to download the kit and see what sort of adjusted truths I can find from there. As we all very well know, VDI is still far from being cost-effective solution [as centralization technology] so it’ll be interesting to see how they spin the story this time.
The official blog for vWorkspace published an article over a year ago about how to publish automatic farm settings to vWorkspace client(s) via config.xml file, but it only concerned the usage of HTTP(S) protocol.
While this protocol is surely an usable one, and perhaps most common as well in normal circumstances, I was recently faced with a situation while doing PoC wherein no web servers were readily available and we had to be able to assign correct farm settings to the client regardless of who was logging on to workstation. After thinking a while, it occurred to me that from the AppPortal GUI you are able to download farm settings with file protocol, but this method wasn’t documented in the blog article or in the official documentation when it comes to using AutoConnectURL registry setting.
Hence I had to do little bit experimentation myself and came across this syntax which seems to enable automatic loading from the file-location, instead of more familiar HTTP:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Provision Networks\Provision-IT Client]
“AutoConnectURL”=”file://\\\\servername\\share\\”
Note that the backslashes are doubled in this regedit export, so the “human readable” form is: file://\\servername\share\
Hopefully this helps others in similar situation as I was facing!
Michel Roth, a Terminal Server MVP, has written an article about new VDI features in Windows Server 2008 R2.
Have to say, there’s a lot to it (meaning complexity -wise) but Michel’s article nicely overviews all the necessary bits and pieces (RD Connection Broker, RD Session Host, RD Web Access and RD Virtualization Host) you need to be familiar with.
So, if Microsoft’s take on VDI is of interest, check the article out!
Okay, here’s a pet peeve of mine and I cannot resist of writing about it.
Occasionally I see a phenomena of trying to do all and everything with a single product, as if expecting one technology to be a silver bullet that magically resolves all the problems that are for some purpose tied together to produce a whole. This is a problem that plagues especially [managed] service providers or organizations offering paid-for service to multiple customers.
The usual flow of reasoning in these situations goes somewhat like this:
- Does it do foo and bar, which – incidentally - are the main things we want it to do?
- It does? Okay, that’s good but then we would expect it to do quux and xyzzy, which – in no way, btw - relate to the core things that your product does but needs to be done within the same system anyhow.
- It doesn’t do those? Oh, that’s too bad, then it cannot be any good at all.
And herein lies the problem; these people are not willing to embrace the idea of choosing the best products – multiple products if needed to - for the job, each one focusing on their forte. Yes, this could and will mean integration to some extent, but the end-result surely is better overall solution than doing with just one product that tries to do everything but does all those parts little bit badly. Which is, btw, somewhat similiar to UNIX ideology of small little utilities building up larger wholes instead of single monolithic systems.. And from the competitive point of view, let’s not forget that if you add your own special “spice” by actually developing some of that glue that holds everything together, as opposed to doing integration purely with the interoperability capabilities of the products used, you are doing something that no competitor too can readily buy off the shelf.
In keeping with the spirit of this site, let’s take a simplified example from the one of latest trends in virtualization: providing desktops (VDI) to customers as a service (DaaS as some call it) from the datacenter.
In the typical (or should I say more realistic) desktops as a service scenario, there’s multiple components involved: brokers, hypervisors, storage optimization, management layers, automation, self-automation, protocols, billing, integration, web portals, maybe integration APIs exposed etc. Expecting one product, or even only couple of products, to actually do all of these is simply a pipe dream. Many of the different aspects mentioned above are completely and utterly separate and distinct concepts that no one company can really (realistically) be best at, so excepting one company to build and provide a such technological whole is like expecting a miracle to happen.
Yes, maybe I’m stating the obvious here, but I have actually seen these sort of illusions where one solution is expected to solve every demand there is to a complete system, not really stepping back and looking what parts can be lifted from the different vendors and technologies.
And yes, more often than not these companies also might have “hidden” ties to certain vendors or technologies that they have decided to keep or favor and so, little bit artificially, other technologies are unfairly looked at and maybe discarded for not a very valid reason. Existing investment is a valid argument for some cases, but it should not be show-stopper if you really aim to provide something completely new in any case. Competetive advantage demands agility to switch and move, if necessary!
There’s no silver bullet, you know?
-Kalle
Quest just recently released new 6.2 version upgrade to their vWorkspace product suite.
New version adds some more rapid deployment of VDI instances, but only when using VMware as virtualization platform and NetApp FlexClone as a storage. Hopefully similiar features will start appearing in Hyper-V’s side of the fence, which is still little bit lacking behind VMware in features being offered/supported through vWorkspace UI. Of course, this is most likely due to differences of underlying technologies, but hey! it would be nice to have e.g. sysprep options offered directly from the vWorkspace for Hyper-V/SCVMM as well..
Maybe more universally appliable enhancements in 6.2 releases are ones in EOP however. There is a new/rewritten graphics acceleration functionality that moved things from user- to kernel-mode and should also provide more higher-quality compression, which is of course very user subjective as things compressed with JPEG usually are. But should be better anyhow.
Also in the EOPs enhancements, there’s support for more oddball multi-monitor resolution/orientation configurations and some improvements on universal USB redirection. Which, IMHO, can never be “good enough” ;-)
The updated version is downloadable, as always, from the http://www.vworkspace.com/ website, after you have registered an account for yourself. Full features, but time-limited.
-Kalle