This document introduces the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtualization platform. It provides an overview of Hyper-V architecture and features such as isolation, security assumptions, and live migration capabilities. It also demonstrates how to install and manage Hyper-V through tools like Hyper-V Manager and Windows PowerShell. Finally, it discusses the role of System Center Virtual Machine Manager in providing a centralized management solution for virtualized environments.
Overview of my VMware vSphere 5.1 with ESXi and vCenter class. Get an overview of the most powerful, enterprise class private cloud platform available.
This document provides an overview of virtualization using KVM and Xen hypervisors. It defines full and para virtualization approaches and type 1 and type 2 hypervisors. It describes the X86 architecture model and how virtualization abstracts privileged instructions. It then discusses parameters for evaluating hypervisor efficiency and provides descriptions of the open source KVM and Xen hypervisors, comparing their architectures, supported features, and operating systems. Key differences between KVM and Xen are outlined related to hardware support, complexity, paravirtualization, and memory management.
VMware vSphere Version Comparison 4.0 to 6.5Sabir Hussain
VMware vSphere leverages the power of virtualization to transform datacenters into simplified cloud computing infrastructures and enables IT organizations to deliver flexible and reliable IT services VMware vSphere virtualizes and aggregates the underlying physical hardware resources across multiple system and provides pools off virtual resources to the datacenter.
VM Virtualization
VMGate.com
V mware v sphere 5 fundamentals services kitsolarisyougood
This document provides an overview and summary of various VMware vSphere upgrade services and documentation. It includes a document map linking to guides, overviews, planning documents and other reference materials related to upgrading VMware vSphere environments from version 5.0 to 5.1. The summary also briefly outlines some key features of VMware vSphere such as vMotion, Storage vMotion, High Availability and vCenter Server editions.
Hyper-V Best Practices & Tips and TricksAmit Gatenyo
This document discusses best practices for configuring Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines. It recommends:
- Using Server Core installation and dedicating hosts to the Hyper-V role for improved security and reliability.
- Properly sizing host CPUs, memory, and storage and separating networks for management, storage, and VMs.
- Configuring virtual machines with fixed VHDs, proper RAM and network settings, and latest integration components.
- Implementing security practices like regular patching of VMs and limiting processor usage to prevent overcommitment.
- Using VSS-aware backups and excluding unnecessary files/folders from antivirus scans to optimize performance.
Nashville VMUG Keynote April 8 2015 - vSphere 6Adam Eckerle
This document provides an overview of vSphere 6.0 including key highlights, deployment options for vCenter Server and the Platform Services Controller, and certification updates. The main points are:
- vSphere 6.0 has seen faster adoption and fewer issues than previous versions. Key features include improved fault tolerance, larger cluster sizes, and simplified workload migration.
- vCenter Server now uses an embedded or external Platform Services Controller for single sign-on, licensing, and certificate management. There are multiple deployment configurations for high availability.
- New certification paths are available, including beta exams for VCP6-DCV and upcoming exams for VCIX6-DCV. Resources like hands-on labs and documentation
How to Optimize Microsoft Hyper-V Failover Cluster and Double PerformanceStarWind Software
High availability in a virtualized workload may require to sacrifice failover cluster performance. Using an optimized for virtualization approach on data storage and virtual machines placement and protection will give you desired boost of performance.
The presentation shows how to:
- Achieve true Hyper-V cluster high availability with just 2 Hyper-V hosts and zero storage hardware
- Boost Hyper-V cluster performance by configuring automatic dynamic optimization
- Effectively track VMs resources usage
- Save an extra 30% of Hyper-V cluster resources by utilizing agentless antivirus
This document provides an overview of vMotion capabilities in VMware vSphere, including:
- Types of virtual machine migrations like vMotion, Storage vMotion, and shared-nothing vMotion.
- Requirements for vMotion like compatible CPUs and network connectivity.
- Enhanced features in vSphere 6 like separate vMotion networking stacks and long distance vMotion.
- Best practices for vMotion planning, limitations, and troubleshooting migration errors.
Iwan ‘e1’ Rahabok who's working as a Staff SE, Strategic Accounts in Singapore ha created an awesome vCenter Operations 5 Training. It's available in PowerPoint format and I really would like to advise you to read the slide notes. The presentation serves 2 purposes, first it provides in-depth training for those who are learning or evaluating vCenter Operations 5 and second it provides materials that vCenter Ops champion can use to share with internal colleagues (e.g. storage team, app team, etc)
As the invited speaker during Microsoft Technical Partner Community Event @Microsoft KLCC Auditorium , i have presented 3 Key Area: Scalability,Mobility and Delivery High Availabili
Hyper v® 2012 vs v sphere™ 5.1 understanding the differencesSolarWinds
With Hyper-V 2012, Microsoft® has closed many of the gaps it previously had with VMware®, and this webcast will walk through a comparison of the scalability and features of both hypervisors:
· Architecture & footprint
· CPU & memory management
· Storage capabilities
· Mobility & availability
The discussion will provide a technical basis for understanding the pros and cons of both platforms for users looking to either choose one or who are considering using both.
VMware ESXi is a free bare-metal hypervisor that can be used to virtualize laptops. It has low resource usage which allows laptops to run virtual machines all day without overheating. The document provides instructions for installing ESXi on laptops and ensuring the network drivers are correctly configured by replacing the OEM file. Examples are given of running ESXi on different laptops and using it to virtualize an OpenSolaris environment.
Virtualization 101: Everything You Need To Know To Get Started With VMwareDatapath Consulting
This document provides an overview of virtualization and VMware's virtualization platform vSphere. It begins with defining virtualization as using software to run multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine, sharing resources to improve utilization. It then discusses VMware's history and role as the market leader in virtualization. The document outlines the key benefits of virtualization such as reducing costs, increasing flexibility and enabling business agility. It provides an overview of vSphere's capabilities to deliver high availability, live migration, storage efficiency and faster disaster recovery. Overall, the document promotes virtualization and vSphere as a way to simplify IT operations and lower costs while increasing business agility.
The document discusses a technology leader with over 10 years of experience in Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix platforms including Windows, Active Directory, private cloud, server and desktop virtualization, high availability, BYOD and other technologies. The individual holds several industry certifications including MCSE Private Cloud and VMware Certified Professional.
The battle to be your virtualization vendor is in full swing, and it
has important ramifications for the vendors involved, and for your
data center. The goal of this whitepaper is to analyze the
technical aspects of the two major choices: VMware vSphere 4
and Microsoft Hyper-V R2 (as part of Windows Server 2008 R2).
The two contenders are described in technical detail, and then
those details are compared head-to-head. Typical pricing in two
scenarios is included. Analysis of these tools, how they will
impact your datacenter virtualization, and what the future likely
holds is included. »
This document provides an overview of server virtualization and its benefits for Madison Plains Local School District. It discusses how virtualization can help lower costs by consolidating servers and improving hardware utilization. Specific benefits mentioned include reducing the number of physical servers needed, lowering power consumption, gaining hardware independence for virtual machines, and isolating virtual machines for improved security. The document also shows how most applications see performance on par with physical machines when run virtually. It promotes developing a plan that assesses the current infrastructure and provides a roadmap for virtualizing servers.
XenServer uses a control domain/Dom0 to manage virtual machines running on DomUs. It utilizes a Linux kernel with Intel-VT or AMD-V virtualization extensions. The hypervisor allows virtual machines to access physical resources like CPU, memory, network and storage. Networking and storage are virtualized using technologies like bonding, LVM, NFS and iSCSI. Performance analysis tools like iperf and hdparm can help optimize network and storage I/O.
This document provides an introduction to virtualization. It defines virtualization as running multiple operating systems simultaneously on the same machine in isolation. A hypervisor is a software layer that sits between hardware and guest operating systems, allowing resources to be shared. There are two main types of hypervisors - bare-metal and hosted. Virtualization provides benefits like consolidation, redundancy, legacy system support, migration and centralized management. Key types of virtualization include server, desktop, application, memory, storage and network virtualization. Popular virtualization vendors for each type are also listed.
XenServer 6.0 provides improved performance, scalability, and ease of use. Key enhancements include support for 16 vCPUs and 128GB RAM per VM, 1TB physical RAM, rolling pool upgrades, and simplified installation. It also features high availability, live migration, disaster recovery with storage replication, and support for SCVMM and SCOM management. XenServer is optimized for XenDesktop deployments with features like IntelliCache for storage optimization and GPU pass-through for 3D graphics.
The document discusses VMware Operations Manager and how it can help organizations manage their virtualized environments. It notes the increasing scale of virtualization and challenges of managing large virtual infrastructures. VMware Operations Manager provides monitoring, capacity planning, and automation features to help IT operations teams address these challenges and ensure performance and availability of virtualized workloads.
You don’t have to embrace the Private Cloud to take advantage of the powerful tools in SC2012!
View C/D/H’s slide deck and learn how to enable an automated helpdesk solution with Service Manager, the Self-Service Portal, Orchestrator, Configuration Manager, and Operations Manager.
Let us help you automate simple, repetitive, but time consuming tasks so you can focus on strategic projects like operating system deployment, proactive monitoring, and standardization!
This document discusses Microsoft's virtualization strategy and products. It highlights key benefits of virtualization like cost reduction through server consolidation, increased efficiency, and business agility. Microsoft presents Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager as solutions that offer high availability, rapid provisioning, management of both physical and virtual environments across hypervisors, and lower costs compared to alternatives. Customer case studies demonstrate how virtualization can virtualize various workloads and reduce costs.
Citrix CloudGateway 2.5 Technical Overview and TroubleshootingDavid McGeough
This is part of the Citrix Support Secrets Webinar Series.
CloudGateway is an enterprise mobility management solution that securely delivers mobile, web and Windows apps and data. This webinar will cover an overview of the features in CloudGateway 2.5, different options for deploying CloudGateway and troubleshooting. Join this webinar to learn about CloudGateway.
What you will learn:
- What is CloudGateway
- What’s new on CloudGateway 2.5
- Deployment scenarios
- Troubleshooting
This webinar took place on January 24th 2013, recording here
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/683430680
Presentation cloud infrastructure and management – from v sphere to vcloud ...xKinAnx
- VMware is a market leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure software, with over $3.77 billion in revenues in 2011. It has over 300,000 customers including all of the Fortune 100 companies.
- The document discusses VMware's virtualization and cloud products including vSphere, vCloud Director, vShield, and vCenter which provide capabilities such as infrastructure as a service, disaster recovery, and security.
- Case studies of NYSE Euronext and SAP are presented that discuss how they have virtualized over 80% of their infrastructure using VMware to gain efficiencies and agility.
Presentation cloud infrastructure and management – from v sphere to vcloud ...solarisyourep
- VMware is a market leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure software, with over $3.77 billion in revenues in 2011. It has over 300,000 customers including all of the Fortune 100 companies.
- The document discusses VMware's product portfolio including vSphere, vCloud Director, vShield, and vCenter which provide capabilities for virtualization, private clouds, security and management. It also discusses how these products work together to enable hybrid cloud environments.
- Case studies are presented showing how NYSE Euronext and SAP use VMware's virtualization and cloud solutions to improve the flexibility, availability and cost-efficiency of their IT infrastructure and applications.
Announcing Symantec & Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Disaster Recovery as a Service ...Symantec
Symantec today announced it will extend Symantec’s Storage Foundation High Availability for Windows and Veritas Volume replicator disaster recovery (DR) software solution to the Windows Azure cloud platform. Symantec’s solution will allow organizations of any size to recover business critical applications and their associated data in Windows Azure in the event of a local failure or site disaster. The solution will expand the ability of Symantec’s existing business continuity solutions for Microsoft Corp., providing on-premise-to-cloud disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS).
This document discusses VMware Operation Management. It begins with an overview of how virtualization has transformed IT and the management challenges that arise in virtualized environments. It then discusses the differences between infrastructure teams and operations teams, and how their roles converge with virtualization. Finally, it introduces VMware Operations Manager and its features for providing comprehensive visibility, intelligent automation, and proactive management of virtualized infrastructure and operations.
This document discusses how IT operations are becoming more complex with the rise of cloud computing and virtualization. It notes that managing technologies across on-premises and cloud environments introduces challenges around monitoring, automation, and maintaining processes. The document also discusses how NetEnrich provides services to help companies operationalize their virtual and cloud environments through consulting, monitoring, security, and managing the full lifecycle of virtual machines and cloud workloads.
Citrix provides cloud computing platforms and services that are used by 4 out of the 5 largest public clouds and 75% of internet users. Citrix's cloud solutions include CloudStack, an open source cloud computing platform that is powering over 150 large scale cloud deployments. Citrix learns from deploying CloudStack across 100 customer clouds to build its cloud offerings.
HP Blade matrix, HP Cloud a HP Virtual systém (prehľad HP virtualizačných rie...ASBIS SK
Konferencia Virtual Info jeseň 2011
HP, Ľuboš Šenkery, Michal Sapák
www. virtualinfo.sk
Video k tejto prezentácii si môžete pozrieť na: http://bit.ly/pnG0sf
VMware vSphere 4.0: The best platform for business applicationsVincent Kwon
This document discusses using VMware virtualization for business critical applications. It notes that over 50% of customers run major business applications like Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, Oracle Middleware and Database, IBM WebSphere and DB2, and SAP in production on VMware. The document also discusses how VMware ESX 4.0 can provide performance that matches or exceeds physical hardware for most applications while allowing better consolidation and management than alternative platform.
This document discusses using System Center to manage VMware environments. It describes how Operations Manager can monitor VMware vSphere using the Veeam nWorks management pack. This provides monitoring of VMware virtual machines, hosts, clusters and data stores with over 490 predefined monitors and 175 metrics. It also allows integration with other System Center components like distributed applications and service level monitoring. The management pack provides agentless, scalable monitoring of VMware environments from System Center.
The document discusses a customer's needs around managing their private and public clouds with a single solution, having over a dozen management tools from various vendors that do not integrate well, and wanting predictable spending on datacenter management; it then discusses how a solution can provide a single view of private and public clouds, consolidate management tools into a common solution, and provide predictable spending on datacenter management.
This document compares Zimbra and Novell GroupWise. It summarizes that GroupWise lacks consistent experience across clients, has limited web functionality, and does not support ActiveSync for mobile access. The administrator interface is limited and requires using the Windows admin client. GroupWise deployment is on-premise only without true multi-tenancy and lifecycle management is challenging due to differences across clients.
The document discusses eG Innovations' performance management monitoring solution. It provides an overview of eG and how it can monitor virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments. eG offers deep visibility into all layers of VDI, including the virtualization platform, connection broker, profile server, and individual user sessions. It monitors over 150 applications and infrastructure components to provide comprehensive performance monitoring of complex VDI environments.
Good news from the Worldwide Consulting Desktop & Apps (DnA) team! We’ve just finished updating theVirtual Desktop Handbook for XenDesktop 7, StoreFront 2.0 and XenServer 6.2.
The Virtual Desktop Handbook is an architect’s guide to desktop virtualization. It provides you with the methodology, experience and best practices you need to successfully design your own desktop virtualization solution.
Updates in this release include:
Resource requirements for Windows 8 and Server 2012
XD controller sizing
XenDesktop 7 policy guidelines
Database sizing for XenDesktop 7
SQL 2012 chapter
StoreFront 2.0 chapter
32-bit or 64-bit desktop OS guidance
Desktop group & StoreFront integration
In addition, we’ve also included a Citrix policy quick reference spreadsheet so that you can quickly identify default, baseline and template settings from XenDesktop 5 / XenApp 6 all the way up to XenDesktop 7. Thanks go out to Michael Havens, Maria Chang and Uzair Ali for creating this great reference spreadsheet.
I hope you find this handbook useful during your next desktop virtualization project.
And we’re not done yet, future updates will include:
Bandwidth
Hyper-V 2012
PVS 7
User data
And more …
The Virtual Desktop Handbook is not the only resource to guide you through your desktop virtualization journey. Citrix also provides Project Accelerator; an interactive online tool creating customized sizing and design recommendations based on the methodology, best practices and expert advice identified within this handbook.
You can still reach the XenDesktop 5 handbook using the old URL – CTX136546
Andy Baker – Architect
Worldwide Consulting
Desktop & Apps Team
http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/10/10/new-xendesktop-7-handbook-published/
This document provides guidance on designing network configurations for Citrix XenServer. It discusses basic XenServer networking concepts, such as connecting virtual machines to networks. It then presents several sample networking scenarios and considerations for specifying networking requirements. The document also offers recommendations for designing XenServer networks, including using the distributed virtual switch, network redundancy, and bonding. Additionally, it covers designing storage networks and verifying XenServer networking configurations.
1. XenMobile allows you to manage mobile devices, apps, and data through its main components: NetScaler Gateway, XenMobile Device Manager, XenMobile App Edition, MDX Toolkit, and Worx apps.
2. You can deploy the XenMobile components in various configurations depending on your needs, such as deploying only NetScaler Gateway and App Controller to enable remote access to apps, or deploying all components for comprehensive device, app, and data management.
3. A common deployment involves NetScaler Gateway for secure remote access, Device Manager for mobile device management, and App Controller for mobile app and data access, with optional integrations with StoreFront and ShareFile.
This document discusses how Citrix CloudBridge can optimize video delivery in XenApp and XenDesktop environments through features like video caching, disk-based compression, and Quality of Service (QoS). Video caching improves performance by serving cached video over LAN speeds. Disk-based compression reduces bandwidth usage by eliminating duplicate video content. QoS allows administrators to classify and prioritize different types of video traffic to control bandwidth utilization. Together these features enhance the user experience and reduce WAN bandwidth consumption of video streams in virtual desktop and application environments.
The document contains event log entries from Citrix services and applications. It includes information, warning, and error log entries related to services starting and stopping, license checks, configuration changes, virtual memory optimization, and HDX MediaStream for Flash. Issues include services not starting, database errors, license failures, and client incompatibility.
Citrix CloudPlatform is a turn-key cloud solution that provides fast time to value through a simple one-package installation. It is proven to scale beyond 40,000 hosts per region and multiple regions, providing users virtually unlimited computing resources on demand. It offers granular tracking and metering of resource usage for showback/chargeback. The solution is hypervisor and storage agnostic, and supports enterprise-grade networking and security for multi-tenant environments through logical and physical isolation.
Cloud portal business manager product overviewNuno Alves
CloudPortal Business Manager is a cloud services delivery platform that allows organizations to aggregate, simplify the delivery of, and provide self-service access to internal, external, and third party cloud and IT services through a centralized catalog. It automates and streamlines provisioning, billing, user management and other operational aspects of managing cloud services. Key benefits include empowering users with self-service access, delivering any type of cloud service, and helping organizations and service providers transition to and manage an IT-as-a-Service model.
Reference architecture dir and es - finalNuno Alves
Citrix Director with EdgeSight provides a complete troubleshooting window to quickly resolve issues around desktops or applications. Previous versions of XenApp leveraged EdgeSight, while XenDesktop deployments looked to Director for assistance. Starting in XenDesktop 7, these two great technologies have been merged into one central point for troubleshooting.
The purpose of this document will be to provide you an overviewof all the necessary parts required to give your company a holistic view. With this being a new product with new features, this document will provide administrators the tools to feel comfortable moving forward with monitoring of a XenDesktop 7 deployment.
This document will cover the configuration of the Director server, as well as how to interface with the Insight Center provided from our NetScaler product line. For more of an overview of the EdgeSight product, please reference the whitepapersfound at www.citrix.com/xendesktop.
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX139051
Provisioning server high_availability_considerations2Nuno Alves
The purpose of this document is to give the target audience an overview about the critical components of a Citrix
Provisioning Server infrastructure with regards to a high availability implementation. These considerations focus on the
following areas:
• Virtual Disk (vDisk) Storage
• Write Cache Placement
• SQL Database
• TFTP Service
• DHCP Service
Xd planning guide - storage best practicesNuno Alves
This document provides guidelines for planning storage infrastructure for Citrix XenDesktop environments. It discusses organizational requirements like alignment with IT strategy and high availability needs. Technical requirements covered include performance needs like typical I/O rates and functional requirements like supported protocols. The document recommends avoiding bottlenecks, choosing appropriate RAID levels based on read/write ratios, validating storage performance, and involving storage vendors in planning.
This document is an introduction to Disk Storage technologies and its terminology. Within this
document basic disk and storage architectures as well as storage protocols and common fault
tolerance technologies will be discussed. It is not intended as a comprehensive guide for planning
and configuring storage infrastructures, nor as a storage training handbook.
Due to scope, this guide provides some device-specific information. For additional device- specific
configuration, Citrix suggests reviewing the storage vendor‘s documentation, the storage vendor‘s
hardware compatibility list, and contacting the vendor‘s technical support if necessary.
For design best practices and planning guidance, Citrix recommends reviewing the Storage Best
Practices and Planning Guide (http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130632)
This document provides an overview of how XenServer manages storage supplied to virtual machines. It describes how Linux views physical disks and partitions, as well as logical volume management and network file systems. The key concepts covered include storage repositories, virtual disk images, storage attributes, and different storage types like local, NFS, Fibre Channel, and appliance-based storage. The target audience is IT specialists who need to understand XenServer's storage concepts and terminology for planning virtualized infrastructures.
Citrix XenDesktop 7 provides a unified framework for virtual desktop and application solutions based on a 5-layer model. The blueprint details architectures for standardized desktops, customizable desktops, and applications. It recommends Machine Creation Services for image delivery and defines policies, personalization settings, and control components to meet requirements for different user groups accessing resources from various locations.
XenDesktop relies on the hypervisor for many core functions, including VM creation, power operations, performance and redundancy. Therefore, it is important that you take the time to design an appropriate hypervisor infrastructure (XenServer, Hyper-V or vSphere). Otherwise, you may experience performance, functionality or even reliability issues.
Most information required to design a XenDesktop deployment on your chosen hypervisor platform is available publicly, but it can be hard to find since it’s spread across a multitude of knowledge base articles or white papers. In order to simplify and speed-up the design process, we’re in the process of consolidating the information that you need into a single document and augmenting it with recommendations and best practices. We’ve just finished incorporating the Hyper-V 2008 R2 and SCVMM 2012 planning section into the latest release of the Citrix Virtual Desktop Handbook, which includes important design decisions relating to this hypervisor, for example:
Selecting and sizing the right physical hardware for virtual machines
Knowing what storage options available for Hyper-V 2008 R2
What type of networks to build on the Hyper-V host
How to size the SCVMM servers
Designing a highly available SCVMM solution
Planning an effective failover cluster
The products covered in this current release of the handbook include XenDesktop 5.6, XenApp 6.5, Provisioning Services 6.x and XenClient Enterprise 4.5. A version of the Virtual Desktop Handbook covering XenDesktop 7.x, Provisioning Services 7, Hyper V 2012 R2 and SCVMM 2012 R2 is in the works with an initial release scheduled later in Q4. As always your feedback is welcomed.
http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/09/05/citrix-virtual-desktop-handbook-hyper-v-update/
New eBook! Citrix howto build an all star app desktop virtualization teamNuno Alves
This document discusses how to build an effective team for an app and desktop virtualization project. It outlines four key competencies (prepare, assess and design, deploy, support) and the skills needed for each. It also provides principles for building a successful team, such as finding people with the right attitude, creating a learning culture, getting executive buy-in, and leveraging free resources. The overall message is that the people on the team and the skills they have are critical to the success of an app and desktop virtualization project.
CTX138217 - IntelliCache Reduction in IOPS: XenDesktop 5.6 FP1 on XenServer 6.1 - Citrix Knowledge Center http://ow.ly/o3Ma4
The purpose of this document is to provide testing results based on MCS-delivered streamed virtual desktops leveraging IntelliCache
This document provides guidelines for planning and designing a Citrix StoreFront infrastructure. StoreFront plays a critical role in user authentication, resource enumeration, and aggregation. Key recommendations include:
- Deploy at least two StoreFront servers and use an intelligent load balancer like NetScaler for high availability and load balancing.
- Implement SSL certificates to encrypt communication between Receiver and StoreFront. Also consider encrypting backend traffic between StoreFront and XenApp/XenDesktop controllers.
- Configure multiple controllers per XenApp farm/XenDesktop site and use load balancing for large environments or high login loads.
- Configure highly available internal and external beacon points to determine user network location.
- Use application
NetScaler Deployment Guide for XenDesktop7Nuno Alves
This guide demonstrates how to deploy Citrix NetScaler in conjunction with Citrix XenDesktop 7 with a focus on both simplicity in configuration and advanced features not easily delivered with other products. This guide shows how to provision the XenDesktop 7 infrastructure, the NetScaler appliance and NetScaler Insight Center services to extend Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure and services to remote users in small to medium-size enterprises.
XenServer is not a risky bet: It’s the second most widely deployed hypervisor in the enterprise with more than 150,000 customers in production. With the Xen hypervisor running virtually every cloud on the planet, including the world’s largest virtualization deployment, it’s also “cloud-proven”… with more scalability than most enterprises are likely to ever need.Customer types and usage150,000 unique companies of all sizesStrongest in NA and EMEA¼ Desktop; ½ Server; ¼ Cloud (public & private) On average 2,500 employees150 servers<30% virtual today; expect to get to >60%95% are satisfied or very satisfied and recommend the product to peers90% plan to expand their footprint in next year1/3rd plan to move to a premium edition
Third-party validation:XenServer was placed in the “Leaders” section in the 2011 Gartner Server Virtualization Magic Quadrant report. XenServer was also named a “Champion” in the Info-Tech Research Group Server Virtualization Vendor Landscape report for 2011. These reports continue the XenServer momentum that is driven by the strength of Xen in the world’s largest clouds and continued innovations to advance network and desktop virtualization.Read the full report: http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/additional/citirix_magic_quadrant_2011.pdfXenServer Key Strengths:Rich product capabilities for relatively low costVision of becoming “open” alternative for virtualization through to cloud computingCompatibility of XenServer with XenDesktop and other Citrix productsInfoTech also ranks Citrix as a Champion in the server virtualization space, highlighting the features to price and flexibility as key reasons to compare to Vmware’svSphere. Key Strengths:Citrix has developed a comprehensive product line from server to desktop virtualization, where Info-Tech sees Citrix as a leader. Citrix offers mature functionality for managing XenServerHighly manageable licensing costs[XenServer] provides the most comprehensive all around solution for the priceMore information on Info-Tech report: http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/subfeature.asp?contentID=2313314Customers Agree: We tried VMware first… but when we benchmarked VMware vs. Citrix, the XenServer actually performed significantly better than the VMware solution, and we ended up, from that, going the direction of choosing Citrix as our virtualization platform for our servers… - Fernando Bayuga Jr., IT Manager WEC Health UnitThe Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2011 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This Magic Quadrant graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research note and should be evaluated in the context of the entire report. The Gartner report is available upon request from Citrix.
More and more organizations are choosing to host different workloads on different hypervisors enabling them not only better overall performance of their environment by also better utilizing their budget. Over 40% of companies in a recent Info-Tech study said they were using 2 or more server virtualization vendors within their datacenter, with almost half of these using Citrix and VMware together. The major challenge of this model is day to day management tasks, such as live migration, that you ideally want to complete through one management console. Currently both Citrix and Microsoft can manage each others VMs as well as VMware. VMware is beginning to offer management of Microsoft VMs.
XenServer is designed to be simple, intuitive and easy to use. It can be installed and running in 10 minutes with only 4 megabytes of storage. It’s unique management architecture and console eliminates single points of failure so you can centrally manage hundreds of virtual servers.The free version of XenServer comes with enterprise class features including centralized management, disk snapshotting, and live virtual machine migration which enables organizations to manage their environment easily and intelligently while optimizing resources with zero-downtime to users. The premium editions of XenServer are conveniently priced per server and contain enhanced management and automation features such as high availability, dynamic memory control, workload balancing and distributed virtual network switch.Much simpler – "10 minutes to Xen"Far fewer "VMware Patch Tuesday" headachesDesigned to run on virtually any x86 hardwareOptimized for XenDesktop (e.g. IntelliCache)Equally matched to VMware in "green field" opportunities
XenServer is designed to address the virtualization needs of three critical markets.Within the Enterprise Data Center, XenServer solves the traditional server virtualization objectives of server consolidation, hardware independence while providing a high performance platform with a very straight forward management model.Since XenServer is a Citrix product, it only stands to reason that it can draw upon the vast experience Citrix has in optimizing the desktop experience and provide optimizations specific to desktop workloads.Lastly, with the emergence of mainstream cloud infrastructures, XenServer can draw upon the heritage of Amazon Web Services and Rackspace to provide a highly optimized platform for cloud deployments of any scale.
Since all these use cases depend on a solid data center platform, let’s start by exploring the features critical to successful enterprise virtualization
When resource pools are small, and the number of VMs under management are similarly low, it’s not unreasonable for a virtualization admin to make acceptable decisions about where to place a given guest for optimal performance. Once the number of VMs reaches a critical point, typically between 20-30, placement decisions and interdependencies become so complex that humans aren’t going to place VMs in the most optimal location. This is why VMW and others have implemented resource placement services, and if you’re familiar with vSphere DRS, then XenServer Workload Balancing will look very familiar. Like DRS, WLB takes into account CPU and RAM utilization when attempting to determine where the best host to start or rebalance a VM is, but unlike DRS, WLB also includes key IO metrics such as disk reads and writes and network reads and writes in those computations. This allows WLB to ensure IO dominant applications are rarely placed on the same host, and that overall resource pool operations are optimized.In addition to performing workload placement, WLB is also directly integrated into XenServer power management to perform workload consolidation on a scheduled basis. This feature allows for the consolidation of underutilized servers onto fewer hosts during evening hours, and the evacuated hosts powered down for the duration. When the morning schedule takes effect, the powered down hosts are automatically restarted and workloads rebalanced for optimal performance.Lastly, WLB incorporates a series of health and status reports suitable for both operations and audit purposes.Schedule pool policy based on time of day needsWhen starting guests, an option to “Start on optimal server” is available, and XenServer chooses the most appropriate server based on policyUsers have the ability to over-ride policy, or specify guests or hosts that are excluded from policy (eg high-demand applications)
Planning for and supporting multi-site disaster recovery within a virtualized environment can be quite complex, but with XenServer’s integrated site recovery option, we’ve taken care of the hard parts. The key to site recovery is that we take care of the VM metadata, while your storage admins take care of the array replication piece. What this means is that every iSCSI or HBA storage solution on our HCL is supported for site recovery operations, providing that it either has built-in replication or can work with third party replication. When site recovery is enabled, the VM metadata corresponding to the VMs and/or vApps you wish to protect are written to the SR containing the disk images for the VMs. When the LUNs are replicated to the secondary site, the metadata required to reconfigure those VMs is also automatically replicated. Because we’re replicating the underlying VM disk images and associated metadata, if VMs in the secondary site are running from different LUNs Integrated Site Recovery can fully support active/active use models. Note that due to VM replication, active/active will require a minimum of two LUNs.Recovery from failure, failback and testing of failover is accomplished using a wizard within XenCenter. Each step of the wizard validates that the configuration is correct and that the system is in fact in a state of “failure”.
XenServer Web Console GoalsEnable XenServer Mgmt from a Web based console Offer VM level delegation so end users can manage their VM’sWeb SS delivers Remote ManagementITadmins have long wanted a means to mange VM’s remotely via a browser based, non-windows platformEnd User Self ServiceWSS also allows IT to delegate routine management tasks to the application/VM ownerThis satisfies the more strategic goal of helping IT to enable customer self service in the datacenterFinally WSS also provides a foundation for future innovation in the areas of web based mgmt, self service and an opencloud director layer for x-platform mgmt
What differentiates Live Storage Migration from Live VM Migration is that with Live Storage Migration the storage used for the virtual disks is moved from one storage location while the VM itself may not change virtualization hosts. In XenServer, Live VM Migration is branded XenMotion and logically Live Storage Migration became Storage XenMotion. With Storage XenMotion, live migration occurs using a shared nothing architecture which effectively means that other than having a reliable network connection between source and destination, no other elements of the virtualization infrastructure need be common. What this means is that with Storage XenMotion you can support a large number of storage agility tasks, all from within XenCenterFor example:Upgrade a storage arrayProvide tiered storage arraysUpgrade a pool with VMs on local storageRebalance VMs between XenServer pools, or CloudStack clusters
Desktop virtualization is a core topic in many organizations today, and while some vendors would have you believe that a general purpose hypervisor is the correct solution for desktop workloads, the reality is that desktop workloads present a very distinct usage pattern not seen with traditional server based workloads. This is one reason why when you look at Citrix XenDesktop you see it taking advantage of specific features of XenServer which are unique to desktop virtualization. In this section, we’ll cover what the Desktop Optimized XenServer looks like and what specific benefits XenServer has when XenDesktop is used as the desktop broker.
Within desktop virtualization there are two distinct classes of users, those who are using general purpose applications and those who are using graphics intensive applications. Supporting the former is readily accomplished using the traditional emulated graphics adapters found in hypervisors, but when you need the full power of a GPU for CAD, graphic design or video processing those emulated adapters are far from sufficient. This is why XenServer implemented the GPU Pass-through feature. With GPU pass-through users requiring high performance graphics can be assigned a dedicated GPU contained within the XenServer host making GPU pass-through the highest performing option on the market.
One of the biggest areas of concern when deploying desktop virtualization isn’t the overall license costs, but the impact of shared storage. On paper if you were considering a deployment requiring 1000 active desktops, and assumed an average of 5GB per desktop, if you happened to have space for a 5 TB LUN on an existing storage array, you might be tempted to carve out that LUN and leverage it for the desktop project. Unfortunately, were you to do so you’d quickly find that while you had the space for the storage you might not have the free IOPS to satisfy both the desktop load and whatever pre-existing users were leveraging the SAN. With XenServer, we recognized that this would be a barrier to XenDesktop adoption and implemented IntelliCache to leverage the local storage on the XenServer as a template cache for the desktop images running on that host.
When desktop virtualization is the target workload, the correct hypervisor solution will be one which not only provides a high performance platform, and has features designed to lower the overall deployment costs and address critical use cases, but one which offers flexibility in VM and host configurations while still offering a cost effective VM density. Since this is a classic case of use case matters, take a look at the Cisco Validated Design for XenDesktop on UCS with XenServerhttp://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/Virtualization/ucs_xd_xenserver_ntap.pdf
As with desktop virtualization, there are unique characteristics of cloud workloads which make a general purpose hypervisor less than idea. The vast experience Citrix has with cloud operators such as Amazon, Rackspace and SoftLayer over the years has allowed us to develop features which directly address the scalability and serviceability of cloud infrastructure.
It is through the use of SRIOV and other cloud optimizations that the NetScaler SDX platform is able to provide the level of throughput, scalability and tenant isolation that it can. The NetScaler SDX is a hardware Application Delivery Controller capable of sustained throughput over 50 Gbps, all powered by a stock Cloud Optimized XenServer 6 hypevisor.
The U.S. Army Shared Services Center (SSC), part of the Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), leads the planning, design, build, test, training, deployment and sustainment of Army ERP solutions. In recent years, the Army SSC has replaced a wide range of legacy applications with SAP systems, including the FI/FM/CO, PS, AM, CATS, HCM, MM and PLM modules of the SAP Business Suite, Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), Netweaver Enterprise Portal and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence. Having reduced cost and conserved IT resources associated with its software applications environment, the Center turned its attention to its datacenter hardware infrastructure, beginning with the replacement of Oracle/Sun SPARC servers with commodity Intel-based servers. When the Army SSC changed its platform, it recognized an opportunity to leverage server virtualization to maximize the utilization of it server resources, reduce acquisition and maintenance costs, and lower administrative overhead while actually improving the performance of its SAP systems which support 4,700 users.After analyzing its options for server virtualization solutions, the Army SSC found that Citrix® XenServer® best met its requirements.Before virtualization, the Army SSC’s 21 Sun SPARC servers had a processing capacity of 45,510 SAPS. After implementing XenServer on commodity hardware, they had a processing capacity of 147,600 SAPS on only four Dell Intel X64 servers—giving the Army SSC almost 300 percent more processing capacity with 17 fewer servers. At the same time, the Army SSC was using 83 percent fewer watts, so they achieved a dramatic improvement in processing power per watt. Together, the Center’s reduction in operating costs (e.g., hardware maintenance, power, cooling and server administration) yielded savings of $414,181 in the first year (after initial server acquisition costs) and $471,649 per year thereafter. The Datacenter footprint has also been dramatically reduced since there are fewer servers.The ARMY SSC is building on its success with SAP by virtualizing additional systems on its XenServer platform, including Oracle Collaboration Suite, Adobe LiveCycle and Microsoft Enterprise Project Management.
Founded in 1824 in Charleston, The Medical University of South Carolina is the oldest medical school in the South. Today, MUSC continues the tradition of excellence in education, research, and patient care. MUSC educates and trains more than 3,000 students and residents, and has nearly 11,000 employees, including 1,500 faculty members. As the largest non-federal employer in Charleston, the university and its affiliates have collective annual budgets in excess of $1.6 billion. MUSC operates a 750-bed medical center, which includes a nationally recognized Children's Hospital and a leading Institute of Psychiatry.MUSCis dedicated to providing community healthcare services to patients across the state while supporting doctors and research efforts around the world. Faced with huge reductions in state funding, the university had two choices: to reduce the scope of its mission—or transform how its mission is fulfilled. By using Citrix to virtualize its infrastructure, MUSC found a way to improve delivery of IT services to doctors and researchers while achieving the efficiency and cost savings to live comfortably within its budget. Citrix has helped MUSC meet the needs of the taxpayers of South Carolina. Server virtualization has shrunk the university’s IT footprint and capital costs, and reduced power costs by 73 percent while meeting its goal of 99.9 percent uptime to ensure uninterrupted service availability for doctors and researchers. By embracing innovation, MUSC has ensured that its commitment to excellence in healthcare will survive and thrive even under the most challenging conditions
1&1 Internet is a leader amongst global Web Hosting providers with data centers in both the USA and Europe. 1&1 Internet, Inc. is a subsidiary of United Internet, a profitable public company with a market cap of $3 billion. 1&1 was founded in 1988 and hosts more than 11 million domain names, while more than 70,000 servers run on the company's five state-of-the-art, green data centers. 1&1 uses both Free and Advanced XenServer to power it public cloud offering, Dynamic Cloud Server. In addition, the company is looking at Citrix CloudPlatform as their Cloud Orchestration solution.
Key FeaturesPlatinum: Integrated disaster recovery managementProvisioning services for physical and virtual workloadsEnterprise:IntelliCache™ for XenDesktop storage optimizationDynamic Workload Balancing and Power ManagementWeb Management Console with Delegated AdminEnvironment management using Role-Based Administration and StorageLinkAdvanced:High AvailabilityDynamic Memory ControlAutomated VM protection and recoveryDistributed Virtual SwitchingFree:XenMotion for live VM migrationShared storageUnlimited hosts Unlimited VMs
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The single vendor lock-in model only benefits the vendor. Choose the correct hypervisor for your workloads to ensure the best performance as well as extending your IT budget. Use POCs to measure how well each solution performs in your environment so you can truly gauge how much ROI you will get from a given implementation. Support is a valuable asset when deploying any environment and understanding each vendors model will make sure you don’t get stuck with a costly services bill later on.Understand the requirements of each project so you can assess the best tool for the job. Know what features are needed for your applications so you can spend money on costly features wisely.