TechAgility

Now I don’t always figure that the local Newspaper is going to be a good place to pick up this sort of info, but in this case I think Simon from the Sydney Morning Herald has done more than just a decent job – so for what it’s worth I’m reposting but add my 2 cents worth if and when I have something to add  

Top 10 business technology trends for 2010
SIMON SHARWOOD

December 15, 2009

Technology never stops moving, but what are the technologies that CIOs and IT managers really need to consider in 2010?

We sampled opinions among analysts, vendors, users, IT professionals, system integrators and pundits and came up with the following 10 to watch:

1. Cloud computing

Cloud computing now comes in at least three flavours: on-demand applications (software-as-a-service), clouds as a source of computing infrastructure (Amazon web services and its ilk), and as a paradigm for delivering services within an organisation (internal clouds). This means almost every CIO has one type of cloud computing to consider. All three are disruptive forces, with analyst firm Gartner ranking the cloud as the most strategic technology for 2010 because it “does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others.”

This will run and run for a wee while yet – but we are still at the peak of the Gartner’s Hype Cycle Report for 2009?

2. Four big Microsoft upgrades

2010 will see the emergence of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Throw in the late 2009 debut of Exchange 2010 and IT managers on long-term licensing deals with Microsoft have three big upgrades to consider. Office 2010 looks like another incremental update but the new SharePoint and Exchange will only ship in 64-bit versions, putting a server upgrade on many users’ roadmaps. And let’s not forget Windows 7, which many CIOs must surely be considering as XP runs out of puff.

Is this starting to emerge as a possible “Perfect Storm” type scenario? XP is going EOL on Support, so we have to upgrade ASAP. Do we want to do Office 2010 while we are at it? We don’t have the budget – but if we leave till later then it adds additional cost – best do it together then! Oh wait, we’re still on Exchange 2003? Look there’s just no way we have budget for that – yes I know that we need to consider 2008 R2 – but there is just no….  what do you mean? Direct Access? it’s like a VPN but comes free with Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7….  really? OK, well let’s just look at this project list for next year and see what we can do?  WHAT!! Direct Access needs IPv6? Pass me the Panadol…      (I can see plenty of scope for future Dilbert episodes?)

3. Virtualisation

Virtualisation has hogged headlines in recent years but continues to evolve at an impressive pace. In 2010, Gartner says virtualisation will become a standard disaster recovery and availability technique, as the practice of moving virtual machines from one location to another matures. The idea of desktop virtualisation is also powering a new round of thinking about whether thin clients are a cheaper alternative to PCs.

Yes I see Server Virtualization becoming more entrenched, however with Desktop Virtualization – it’s getting there – but there are still some potential roadblocks? see Musings on VDI performance?

4. Biometric authentication

2009 saw National Australia Bank adopt voiceprints as its preferred method of authenticating its customers for phone banking and general customer service inquiries because it improves security and customer service. Many call centres have noted this experience and this technology is ready for wider deployment in 2010.

One can only hope it is a better experience for the Public than the Voice Automated response systems? “Agent”, Auto: I’m sorry I did not understand you, can you please repeat?

5. Next-generation firewalls

Most organisations tend to operate a fleet of security appliances, with firewalls, intrusion protection devices and unified threat management devices all helping to build a layered defence. Firewalls, however, have grown up and can now take over some of the functions of other security appliances. CIOs wishing to consolidate their security infrastructure may welcome this evolution.

Not my area at all

6. Employee-owned IT

Traditionally, IT departments decide what kind of computers and software employees use and they take responsibility for all maintenance chores. Younger workers, however, have grown up choosing their own computers and applications and want to keep their personalised computing styles. Enter employee-owned IT, which sees workers bringing their own computers to work so that IT can lock them down with virtualisation or multiple operating systems that deliver security. IT departments save as maintenance devolves to computer vendors, while employees swear they are more productive using a machine of their choice.

So this is effectively an extension of the Desktop Virtualization concept where it is possible already today to run a Type 1 Client Hypervisor on a Laptop or Desktop and host one or more VM’s running on it with very little performance overhead – this means that it will quite likely be possible (with sufficient HW resources) to run Windows 7, along with a dedicated VM acting as the FireWall keeping it all secure provided by IT, and XP for your Games. All of this will be managed by Policies driven by IT and the various components will be updated on the fly by being provided by Delta changes that are smart enough to recognize what bandwidth you have available and know if they can proceed or wait until you’re connected via LAN? Virtual Computer and Neocleus are doing this now, Citrix and VMware have products in development.     

7. Loyalty schemes

Analyst firm Frost & Sullivan’s Industry Director Andrew Milroy believes loyalty schemes will go mainstream in 2010. Citing their mainstream acceptance in retail and aviation, Milroy notes their absence from telecommunications and other industries and expects newly mature loyalty software will be something many CIOs are asked to consider in 2010.

I’m not too big a fan of these unless there are substantial benefits to the Customer – there is way too much detail out there on me already – I don’t want to add to another CRM database all my personal details…

8. Solid state disks

Storage may not be fashionable but it remains a colossal industry, and right now that industry is shifting towards solid state disks – a technology that sees storage assigned to flash memory instead of magnetic spinning disks. Solid state disks are smaller, faster, cooler and use less power than conventional disks, which means they can speed up applications without the need for new servers while keeping electricity costs low – an irresistible combination. While we are on storage, note the 2010 release of LTO-5, a new standard tape format packing 3.6 terbaytes of data onto each tape.

For an example of how SSD’s make a difference see these comments –
Runcore SSD’s – promises to boost computer performance vs. the traditional 1.8" HDD by more than 400% with read/write speeds up to 75/40MB/sec. Experience with 128GB 1.8" ZIF in HP 2710p – Read/write performance for 4K random files has improved over 500% (even under Bitlocker). it just became the fastest computer I ever used… Word and Excel launch in one or two seconds (compared to 30-60 before)…

9. Smart grids

Smart grids are an emergent technology that imagines sensors embedded in devices to monitor electricity consumption so that they can “decide” to operate when power is cheaper. This in turn allows power companies to predict demand more precisely, reducing waste. The idea is a favourite of green IT boosters and is also seen as a likely source of traffic for the National Broadband Network.

This may take 3 – 5 years to be common place, but it will be coming as soon as possible, this is one way we can all be green. What it also means is that we will be charged for our power consumption much more accurately, which in itself is no bad thing, and as a consequence over time we will develop better habits with regarding conserving power. The real kicker is that in the process we will be able to “get away” with not having to build that new powerstation for a further 5 – 7 years, etc.. which will be further savings to the environment.

I see this as very similar to the “User Pays” model in Car Insurance today – you can now pay for your Car Insurance based on a max number of Klick’s a year, the less mileage you do the less you pay. DO NOT be surprised if/when this also applies to Car Registration? Here in NSW we pay an extortionate amount of money in Tolls already – and DON’T even get me started on the NSW Govt?

10. Hybrid servers

The big IT transaction of 2009 was Oracle’s acquisition of Sun. The former has been experimenting with all-in-ones that pack a server, storage and other goodies needed to run business applications into a single box, and is said to be keen on extending Sun’s work in the same space. HP is going down the same path, working to make its storage arrays more similar to its servers to make them cheaper to manufacture. If this trend continues, data centre hardware will start to look similar.

So this is not normally my area of expertise – so I can only guess this might be referring to the LH Storage side of things? As far as I am aware there is already a 30 day trial LH Virtual SAN Appliance available for download at VMware Appliance web site – I’m sure we’ll see more of this in the future?

Top 10 business technology trends for 2010

written by dcaddick

So as things slowdown in the lead up to the break I have had some time to get back and review some twitter posts and other blog articles that I have been meaning to catch up on. I must admit that I tend not to use Twitter that much but do find it quite useful as pointers to additional material for research and recently posted material on the topics that I’m interested in.

So one article that really caught my eye was this from Ruben Spruijt’s post at Brian Madden, because for a number of years now it is the Hard Drive that has not kept pace with advancements in technology for the rest of the PC/Laptop components, and in particular I have noted a number of people getting very enthusiastic about the performance improvements they have actually noticed when using Laptops with SSD’s

Runcore SSD’s – promises to boost computer performance vs. the traditional 1.8" HDD by more than 400% with read/write speeds up to 75/40MB/sec.
Experience with 128GB 1.8" ZIF in HP 2710p – Read/write performance for 4K random files has improved over 500% (even under Bitlocker). it just became the fastest computer I ever used… Word and Excel launch in one or two seconds (compared to 30-60 before)…

Just how fast does the storage component of VDI have to be?
So it stands to reason that if you are going to Virtualize your Desktops (and by definition centralize?) then you are going to need to give some serious throughput for the Disk I/O or IOPS? So for anyone who is embarking on this then I would seriously recommend giving this article a through read? Understanding how storage design has a big impact on your VDI!

Possibly the most interesting point that Ruben did bring to my attention with this is that in VDI implementation the Disk I/O is predominately Writes and not Reads – I know this sounds contradictory in some respects, but do review this for yourself – in particular is a good comment from Claudio Rodrigues regarding the nature of how the O/S’s deal with this, as well as confirmation from Dan Feller at Citrix who confirms that most of the numbers and math are in sync with his findings. Ruben has also supplied a Sizing Tool to get a good idea of what might be needed?

So it also starts to make sense that you make sure that you focus very sharply on the XP or Windows 7 Template VM’s in the first place to reduce the I/O required as much as possible?
Citrix has some great tips in this document - Best Practices – Citrix XenDesktop with Citrix Provisioning Server

So as this brought up some interesting thoughts I also found this article relating to sizing and best practices, VMware View sizing & best practices
which followed on from this original article Virtual Infrastructure best practices and in essence this confirms that the storage requirements will need to focused somewhere around an 20/80 split on the Read/Write (20% read and 80% write)

While this table gives a quick representation of what sort of sizing requirements are out there please make sure you research this subject thoroughly, and read the post in full? J

In all fairness I must also confess at this point that my weakest area in IT is storage, and as yet I have not had a functioning Lab running either Citrix’s XenDesktop or Vmware’s View to be able to play around with this and get my hands dirty with either Provisioning Server or Composer. From what I can see (based on Marketing so far J) both of these products have the ability to drastically minimize the storage needed for VDI and as a consequence I am assuming that this may indeed have a flow on effect to mitigating the IOPS issue? (Can anyone comment or set me straight on this?)

I then went on to find some more details around the costing and financial side of VDI implementations and found this article of Doug Brown’s regarding Cost Savings of VDI: Is It Possible? as the diagram below points out, it is complex, and as such it could be that the regular ROT/TCO calculations are not highlighting all the potential benefits and savings?

Changing the ROI/TCO Calculation?
So this then brings me to another update in my Twitter was from Tyler at LiquidwareLabs.com with a new addition to the ROI/TCO debate,
COP – Coefficient of Productivity in VDI the New Math , in which he points out that you should also factor in any additional productivity gains and use this to dilute the true cost of the CAPEX.

Now I wonder how many VDI proposals are brave enough to start assigning values to what has traditionally been seen as "additional" benefits related to an architectural change? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against it, but I can see the debate might start to get a bit heated in the boardroom? and in some respects maybe that’s exactly what’s needed – by assigning values and assumptions and then extrapolating them across an enterprise the resultant *potential* savings become too hard for the board to ignore?

Sure there will be debate, and rightly so, but in following this sort of process it should quickly become apparent that there is a technological shift under way where the concept of "My Desktop" still being something that can be pointed to in the Office sitting on a desk somewhere is rapidly becoming redundant?

Now having said all that – it’s interesting to note that Gartner’s Hype Cycle Report for 2009 seems not to have VDI listed? Maybe it’s hiding under something else here?

So will VDI make it to "mainstream"? AMD seems to think so, Taking Desktop Virtualization Mainstream, but also a lot of it will depend on a number of factors.

My main thoughts on this are:

To truly succeed VDI needs to be able to deliver a *High Fidelity* User experience equal to or better than what users have today – if what you are designing is unable to provide this then you should stop and re-evaluate now

If you can build a system that is able to provide this then users will want (no, Demand!) that they have it ASAP – you will know that you have succeeded when demand outstrips supply

To provide this *High Fidelity* User experience I’d suggest focusing on two key areas that may/or may not apply depending on your particular focus and what is considered in or out of scope for your project?

• Graphics
  
  • Bottom line – Graphics performance in this design CANNOT be measured, it has no metrics, or Best Practices. One persons "that’s fine" is another persons "there is absolutely no way I’ll put up with that", etc. This will always be a completely subjective assessment based on whoever is rendering the judgement.
  • You may think that you don’t need to focus too much on Graphics because "there isn’t much need or requirement for Video from the business" but I can almost bet that you would be wrong – if you are operating on this assumption be sure that you double-check with Stakeholders and get their agreement in writing?
  • So much content on the Internet is done in Flash today, it’s not just watching a CEO or Analyst briefing via YouTube, a lot of Web Based Training modules use the same or similar technologies, so even if you currently block YouTube and Facebook today it’s still quite likely that you need to factor this in to your design
  • Is RDP good enough? Check this assumption by giving targeted business users a Thin Client and removing their desktop to the lab and forcing them to access via the Thin Client – this is a simple but effective test that validates whether they truly need/demand High Fidelity, or will OK Fidelity do?
  • Do you need Citrix HDX? PCoIP? RGS? While I’m making the point about Remote Protocols – don’t forget to gather details of connecting accessories? Do you need to support serial or parallel?
• HDD or IOPS
  
  • Make sure the VM performs as well as possible while measuring the I/O on the VM itself? Check the disk queue, and ensure that it’s not the disk performance that’s holding this back – and make sure you have enough throughput to allow for Login’s etc.

So where does that leave us?
In the Graphics space there is already a number of solutions for VDI that have been out for some time (Citrix’s HDX) or have recently been released (Teradici’s software version of PCoIP). In addition to that there are other approaches if you need to support High Fidelity Users at the top end with HDX-3D taking advantage of Nvidias GPU’s that almost bring TeraFLOP performance to the Desktop.

A good introduction to CUDA – Just how powerful can GPU’s be? Back in mid-2008 the GT200 was able to deliver 1 TeraFLOP performance, the G80 supports 768 Threads per Core – on 128 Cores… Want a Personal Supercomputer? What would you use it for?

So I suspect that we are not far away from seeing vGPU’s being available to VM’s that will be able to deliver the performance on demand – the main thing is that you make sure you are either using a Remote Protocol stack that can provide this functionality – OR make sure you are using a Broker that supports a shift to one?

At the HDD level I’d suspect that as SSD prices come down and SSD longevity increases, along with improved methods of utilising this in some kind of shared caching mechanism in a VDI deployment we may well see some serious advances that enable VDI to overcome this IOPS roadblock?

With the monotonous regularity of Moore’s Law driving CPU performance up it should be possible to provide way more CPU power to users than they really need to enable this – but again – it’s quite possible that the Disk I/O that has the potential to spoil this party?

Please feel free to correct any of my ramblings?

written by dcaddick

It seems that although I have been running various early releases of Windows 7 since around late January I have had no real problems at all – but just prior to being out of the office for an event I found a few issues:

• VPN wasn’t working for some reason
• I didn’t have the time to troubleshoot it
• The event was Tech Ed 09 and as it was sort of like a soft Launch for Windows 7 I thought I’d do a final build with proper release code from MSDN

It seems that although the USB was working correctly through all the previous releases – it was this final release that tipped it over the edge and for some reason caused the USB subsystem to quite erratic and would only recognise very few devices.

And so the answer was to update the BIOS

I have not touched the BIOS since I got the device originally so it was still on F.0 – the latest currently available is F.14

When I went to install F.14 I was warned that I needed to upgrade to F.10 first…

Once this was installed ALL USB was working exactly as advertised.

I just thought it worth mentioning that before or after installing Windows 7 that it’s worth making sure the BIOS is up to date as well?

written by dcaddick

So it’s hardly a surprise that Citrix have decided to “Announce” the long awaited HDX-3D “high quality user experience” protocol enhancement in the early hours prior to the start of the VMworld conference? Pardon me for being something of a sceptic, but it seems that this might have more to do with the fact that Teradici are expected to release the Software only version of their PCoIP protocol stack in Public Beta at this event?

I’ve had a look around the MyCitrix.com site and from what I can see there is no new components as the latest update was the addition of the Feature Release 1 update of the XenDesktop Agent component back on the 5/1/09? I’d be more than happy to be proved incorrect, but I’d imagine that if Citrix had actually posted this new component up on the web site as an available download then they’d be making sure it was “in your face”?

I’m pretty well acquainted with RGS and it’s capabilities, so I’m quite keen to get my hands on both of these new technologies and give them a going over to find their strengths and weakness’s.  One of the biggest issues/problems is that the visual quality that is delivered is subject to “peoples perceptions” and as such can be quite difficult to comparisons? One persons “great”, can be another persons “rubbish”?

I’ll be at Microsoft’s TechEd 09 on the Gold Coast here in Australia next week (on the HP Stand) and I’m hoping to be able to do live demonstrations and comparisons of RDP6, RDP7 and RGS so that Customers can see for themselves why implementing the correct Remote Protocol stack can be crucial depending on their particular circumstances.

Citrix Enhances Market Leading HDX Technology for High-Definition Virtual Desktops

Mon Aug 31, 2009 3:01am EDT

Breakthrough New HDX 3D Technology Enables Citrix XenDesktop to Deliver High-End
Professional Graphics in Real-Time over Any Network
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(Business Wire)--
Today Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS), announced a new breakthrough addition
to its market leading HDX Technology, ensuring a high-definition virtual desktop
experience even for the most demanding high-end professional graphics
environments. The new HDX 3D technology, available as a feature of Citrix
XenDesktop, delivers a rich, high-definition desktop experience applications to
users in any location, over any network. Combined with the full portfolio of HDX
technologies in XenDesktop, the new HDX 3D capability allows organizations to
leverage talent globally, while still housing data centrally, assisting in
real-time collaboration among disperse design teams while still ensuring the
security of critical intellectual property. HDX 3D is part of an extensive range
of HDX technologies from Citrix that go well beyond a single protocol to address
potential problems in all parts of the IT infrastructure, from the datacenter,
to the network, to the device. Combined with the company`s groundbreaking HDX
Adaptive Orchestration technology, XenDesktop can also dynamically adapt to
changes in the environment by applying the best technologies for each unique
user scenario (see http://hdx.citrix.com for more detail).

Citrix Enhances Market Leading HDX Technology for High-Definition Virtual Desktops | Reuters

written by dcaddick

Some while back one of my US based colleagues passed on some advice about checking out some details on how to get the best out of Wireshark

For anyone interested in getting their feet wet using Wireshark the network protocol analyzer.  This knowledge can be useful to have when dealing with network anomalies.

www.chappellseminars.com/s-wireshark101.html

Download the latest 1.2.1

As you may or may not know this was originally called Ethereal, and then morphed in to Wireshark, and has recently had quite a number of improvements and has moved from ver. 0.9 to now 1.2 plus in the last few months. There has been quite a number of additions including the ability to graph throughput etc from within the tool, as well as it now supporting GeoIP DB’s so that you can carry out extensive mapping of where the packets are going to or coming from.

http://wiki.wireshark.org/HowToUseGeoIP

Running Windows 7?

If you are running Windows 7 – then do be aware that the WinPcap driver (the component that does the sniffing) will fail to install by default – but if you modify the executable to run in Vista SP1 compatability mode then all should be fine – as detailed below:

I’ve just downloaded WinPcap 4.1 beta5 from here: WinPcap, the Packet Capture and Network Monitoring Library for Windows Set the compatibility mode to Windows Vista (right click on the installer executable then select Properties; on the Compatibility tab, check "Run this program in compatibility mode for", select Windows Vista SP1 from the dropdown list, then finally click OK =)) and it will install as it should.
For me it worked flawlessly so far.

Further reading

I then followed this up a bit further and noted that after a recent Sharkfest event there were a number of presentations made by a chap called Ray Tompkins (CEO of Gearbit) and these are available at:

At Sharkfest 2009 gearbit presented 3 sessions::
Finding the Latency:
How Protocols Work:
Wireshark Charts & IO Graphs:
OSTU – Wireshark IO Graph for Response Time Analysis:
Understanding the Need for Protocol Analysis: HYPERLINK
OSTU – Wireshark Case Study: Benchmark Test
OSTU – Wireshark TCP Stream Graphs
OSTU – Wireshark Capture Filters
OSTU – Wireshark Display Filters
OSTU – Identifying Zero Window with Wireshark

If you do find that you have to dig in on a Customers Site to start doing some serious troubleshooting around Networks then I would seriously recommend the first two presentations in PDF format as they do appear to explain things in a very simple and matter of fact way.

Wireless Issues:

Now this should in no way be any sort of substitute for a proper Wireless Survey, but when you find that you are up against some issues then try using inSSIDer as a very good starting point? And it works on Windows 7 straight out of the box

written by dcaddick

**UPDATE** I have received the following comment:

has anyone had any luck with the Automating Citrix Xenapp whitepaper, as i have issues when trying to import the deploy XenServer Altiris job as both .bin files seem to contain the same jobs, which are for deploying clients.

And yes this is the case – I have contacted the Author and the doc should be updated, but if you need the *.bin file please drop me a line?

Essentially there are two PDF’s, the first is the Overview and the second contains the detail with the scripts embedded in the PDF document.

One key take-away from the Overview is this graph of how many users *you might* get from an x64 installation :

I don’t have the facilities or time to be able to test any of this but it certainly looks quite comprehensive and appears to leverage the HP RDP (Altiris Server) component quite well to Automate things as much as possible.

Two new white papers have been released to ActiveAnswers at HP.  These papers reflect a joint development effort by HP & Citrix which, when combined, provide customer value-add specific to our partnership.

"Data Center transformation – Citrix Deliver Center enabled by HP Adaptive Infrastructure" provides an overview of the collaboration:

"Automating Citrix XenApp on XenServer deployments on HP ProLiant servers" illustrates how HP Insight Rapid Deployment Software (RDP) can be used with Citrix-developed PowerShell scripts to automatically provision and manage XenApp on XenServer on ProLiant servers.  The paper provides the instructions and scripts to deploy a XenApp farm on XenServer from bare-metal to application publishing.

Please note that the scripts provided were originally developed for each company’s internal use and are not officially supported through tech support or escalation channels.  That said, the solution has been verified by the HP and Citrix engineering team and are being released to provide the scripts to customers who may find them useful.

written by dcaddick

***UPDATE***

Please check the comments below – but it appears I’m incorrect on the statement regarding Teradici PCoIP needing a PCI card, there is a SW/SW version in development and I’d be guessing this might be coming out sometime around VMworld as Beta? Just a guess on my part?

So just as we headed in to the weekend I noted Brian Madden’s post – Microsoft’s RDP host-side rendering (Calista) plans include optional GPU offload hardware & custom chips. (Oh, and Hyper-V is required!) as well as Alessandro’s post Is Microsoft silently building a better VDI? and realised that this also tied in with some recent articles earlier in the week from the MSDN side of things around the new Remote Desktop Services (RDS now effectively replaces the old Terminal Services) on Windows 2008, namely getting Aero Glass Remoting in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Running WS08 Terminal Server as a virtualized guest under Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

So now this started getting me thinking, there is an almost unbelievable amount of hype right now about VDI, where it’s getting to the point that as soon as we hear about either a Customer or a Partner telling us that they have installed a PoC/Pilot or deployed VDI we can almost guarantee the next thing they will be wanting to know is “how do I get decent Video/MultiMedia/USB performance, it’s not working correctly, and I want it fixed”.

Ideally what should happen when designing a Desktop Virtualization Strategy (in my opinion) is start with the Success Criteria that the design needs to meet as defined by the business units/stakeholders/users, and if they are unsure or don’t know, then the best way to think about this is to strive to provide a User Experience that is *indistinguishable* from a normal PC.

Which is why the first part of designing the solution should be deciding on the Remote Protocol that is needed to meet the Success Criteria?

• If you only need to supply standard Office Apps then RDP will likely be fine
• If it’s Office Apps plus some Video with some USB devices then you may find that you can get away with RDP plus one of the RDP enhancements like TCX, etc.
• If it’s Office Apps plus some Video with some USB devices and you need to make this work over something less than a 10Mb LAN with a possibility of anything greater than 150 – 200ms latency then you may want to seriously consider ICA as the only viable choice.
• Now if you have demanding users that require a true PC like experience regardless of how it’s done then there are a number of choices like RGS (from HP), PCoIP (from Teradici), SPICE (from Redhat?), etc. however as you start to examine the pro’s and con’s of each one you may find that each one of these may bring further limitations to yuor design?
  • The key takeaway from this is that you can have either a good 
    user experience *OR* low bandwidth – not neccessarily BOTH?

Desktop Virtualization today:

So my opinion is that currently there are two front runners out there today marketing, selling and deploying Virtual Desktop Solutions:

• Citrix XenDesktop
• VMware View

I know there are others of note, but generally these are the two main leaders today who are spending the most in Marketing trying to own the top spot in this area, and who both not only have a Solution and a Broker but also a Hypervisor that provides the grunt at the back end. However to a certain extent both of these solutions are fundamentally flawed in that neither of them *currently* have (or support) a Remote Protocol that delivers what I would refer to as a High Quality User Experience that is available today.

Side note on “High Quality User Experience”:

So far most of what I have seen in the field is examples of “Desktop Virtualization” that have been designed by IT for IT – not for the business or users. In some instances it has come as quite a shock to those designing the Solution that one or all of the various Stakeholders, Business or Users not only want the ability to view Training Video’s, but actually have the audacity to demand it as a Criteria of Success for the project? And USB redirection for their Blackberries too!

Bottom line, if your planned Desktop Virtualization solution does not include MultiMedia and USB as a measure of success then there is a good chance it’s fundamentally doomed? At the very least include some scope for a Phase 2 that will expand the project to include this and plan for it up front?

Yes VMware has announced a partnership with Teradici to develop PCoIP for VDI instances of View, (VMware does support HP’s RGS in View, but only to BladePC’s and BladeWS’s) but this appears that it will be based on a H/W PCIe card that will be capable of supporting 32 and 64 VDI instances from the hosted end, so there are some limitations like having to use Servers that can support PCIe cards, but the real kicker is that these cards won’t be available until mid-next year?

Yes Citrix has HDX, (re-Marketed term covering the ICA Protocol ) and although they have now started releasing the HDX-Flash add-on there is still no sight of the HDX-3D? For the life of me I can’t understand what is holding up Citrix on this, if it is really as good as it’s supposed to be then they should be releasing it now while they can beat VMware to the punch.

How to create a portable ver. of RDP7:

So with this in mind I looked a bit deeper at the RDP7 side of things to see what differences there were? First thing I noticed was that it’s still referred to as Ver. 6.1.7100.0 (this is Ver. 7, right?), and after some quick googling the next thing I came across is that it is relatively simple to take a copy of the MSTSC.EXE and save it to a folder on another machine and run this version (you will also need a copy of MSTSCAX.DLL and a folder beneath this named “en-US” and in this you’ll need a copy of MSTSC.EXE.MUI and MSTSCAX.DLL.MUI)

Once you have this accomplished you’ll be free to run the RDP7 Client to connect to either your Windows 7 or Server 2008 Host and see what differences there are. Essentially all of the differences are covered under the post:Aero Glass Remoting in Windows Server 2008 R2 but I must admit I was quite surprised at how well it was able to cope with a DiVX avi of Kung Fu Panda, the picture was really sharp and defined, the audio appeared to stay in synch and it didn’t appear to consume much more than 4 – 500Kb/s. When it came to Flash this again had good definition and sharpness – but there was lot’s of gaps in the playback – so on Flash it still scores a miss?

Putting this in context, here are some very rudimentary tests:

**NOTE** I did not test the Aero feature

Bandwidth was simply measured by using “Bandwidth Monitor” from www.bwmonitor.com
This also had the effect of causing 20 – 25Kb/s consumption just in the act of being displayed in the remote screen, so typically it was hidden until needed.

Conclusions:

• RDP7 is definitely an improvement – and provides a much clearer and cleaner display
  • Gone are the old days of RDP presenting the screen with 6 or 7 horizontal bars from left to right and top to bottom
  • It does appear able to deliver quite reasonable Video today
  • It does not appear to have delivered much or any improvements in Flash

written by dcaddick

I just wanted folks to know that there’s some new testing results out that would appear to indicate that with XenApp being virtualized on XenServer there is minimal overhead so long as you are not pushing the XenApp servers above 80% CPU

<snip>

A 4P/24C3 HP ProLiant BL685c G6 server blade equipped with the Six-Core AMD Opteron processor Model 8435 (2.6 GHz) can provide optimal support for up to 500 users when running HP’s most aggressive test workload (as described in User profile) in a 64-bit HP Server Based Computing (HP SBC) environment.

As a result of this and earlier test efforts, HP recommends enabling BBWC on HP SBC servers.

When the workload was virtualized, this HP ProLiant BL685c G6 server blade was able to support as many as 500 users, indicating that, for this particular configuration, virtualization overhead was negligible. However, common sense dictates that you are likely to encounter virtualization overhead with any HP ProLiant server platform running Citrix XenServer. Thus, HP extended this testing to compare the maximum – rather than optimal – numbers of users supported by bare-metal and virtualized configurations. These additional tests indicated that, with a maximum workload, there was a virtualization overhead of 30% – 33% for the tested configurations.

Since your production workload will not exactly match the workload used by HP for the testing described in this document, HP recommends sizing your HP ProLiant server platform to accommodate a virtualization overhead of at least 10% – 20%4.

more at….
Performance of HP ProLiant BL685c G6 with Six-Core AMD Opteron 8400 Series processors (2.6 GHz) in a 64-bit HP SBC environment

written by dcaddick

Over here in Australia we had a long weekend last week so I have only been using Windows 7 for three days so far, but for anyone else who has tried it on a Virtual Machine, I’d suggest they give it a try on the hardware – it’s not that bad at all – my thoughts so far:

Not forgetting that I found I couldn’t “upgrade” from Vista SP1 regardless of what the readme says? So this was a clean install, on a HP 2710p Tablet with 3Gb of RAM, and so far I’m quite impressed with the performance.

ISSUES:

• Had to manually install HP Universal Printer Driver
• Merlin XU870 PCI Express MobileBroadband Card – could not install “MobiLink” Software, fails to recognize O/S?

• Downloaded “Vista” compatible drivers without MobiLink SW and then manually added a “DialUp” connection using *99# as the phone number

TO DO:

• · Install Office 2007 – DONE (No issues with Outlook)
• · Install VMware Workstation 6.5 – DONE
• · Install ACA Capture Pro – DONE
• · Install Windows Live Writer – DONE
• · Install MS Communicator – DONE (needed the HP Root CA – see above)
• · Install FileZilla – DONE
• · Install WireShark – DONE
• · Install Google Chrome – DONE
• · Install LinkedIn Toolbar
• · Install UltraISO – DONE
• · Split Volumes to C and D? …..Still pending…..

So hopefully this will convince a few of you still sitting on the fence to give it a shot? If anyone is impressed with how easy it was to get it up and running in a VM then all I can say is try it on real hardware….

And when you do – try the Suspend/Resume – the speed it does this will blow you away!!

Cheers,
Dave

written by dcaddick

I recently was doing some final testing after installing a number of BladePC’s and I was pretty sure that I had connected to blade-003 via an RDP connection only to find the file that I was looking for wasn’t in the C:\Temp location at all – and I was certain that the Altiris Console had just reported the File Copy job that I had just started had gone through clean……  So what was going wrong?

It turned out that when I checked the host name of the Blade I was actually on blade-051 and not 003 after all (we were still just finalizing the images and hadn’t added BGInfo at this stage, so it wasn’t immediately obvious)

As I started to dig in to this with the local Admin it became clear that quite a lot of changes had happened to the system in the past few months and there was a still a lot going on, but the upshot of it was that the DHCP and IP address info I had received on my Laptop was inconsistent with what the servers were using.

The Altiris Server was using:

written by dcaddick