Try XenApp for free from the Application Delivery Cloud

I previously posted the steps to prepare your own XenApp server in the Cloud. Having gone through the process of creating additional servers in the cloud for my lab, I figured I would create some and make them publicly available for you to try. If there is an application you want streamed from the cloud to your device, comment, and I will do my best to get it loaded onto the server. Whether you are located in the Americas, Europe or Asia Pacific, Amazon has a platform for you, and Citrix has a XenApp Application Delivery Cloud waiting you.

Americas	Europe	Asia

The Citrix Community is powerful!

Sprint, HTC, RIM, Samsung, Motorola

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that Citrix Receiver runs anyapplication, on anydevice, anywhere. If you are in Silicon Valley, you can see it in action by attending the session to be delivered by Chris Fleck of Citrix, at the Sprint Developer Conference. Mobile devices continue to proliferate across the enterprise creating new business challenges for users, IT and developers. Users want their devices to empower them to do more than just read e-mail and browse the web. They want simple and fast access to documents and the ability to run their business applications. IT needs a secure and scalable infrastructure for delivering business apps to mobile devices, anytime and anywhere. Developers want a common platform to create applications without duplication and little additional resources.

With Citrix Receiver™, accessing applications hosted on Citrix XenApp provides a common platform that both IT and developers can utilize to minimize development, run applications centrally and securely deliver apps to any device. The Citrix Receiver connects securely to the XenApp server using Citrix NetScaler SSL VPN technology.

In this session you will learn

• How to use existing development tools and resources like Visual Studio, Flash and Java to create business applications for any device
• How to use alternative, non-development tools to create compelling business applications and dashboards
• How Citrix Receiver enables tablets, smartphones, and other devices to quickly and securely enter the workplace
• How to optimize existing applications for Android, BlackBerry and even iPhone
  Session Demos: Citrix Receiver on Android and Blackberry devices: www.citrix.com/receiver

Session: Citrix: Build Once, Run Centrally and Deliver Business Applications Anywhere with Citrix Receiver
When: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 | 4:15 – 5:15 p.m.
Where: Santa Clara Convention Center, Room K
Who: Chris Fleck – VP Community & Solutions Development, Citrix Systems

Samsung Devices (Epic 4G Handsets, Transform Sprint ID Handset, Galaxy Tab)

Stop by the Samsung booth in the exhibit hall or attend the Samsung session Wed Oct 27, 10:00-11:00, and provide your contact information via business card to be eligible to win one of multiple Samsung Epic 4G handsets or Samsung Galaxy Tab Android Tablets via a business card drawing in the Samsung Booth and Samsung breakout session.

In addition, Samsung Epic and Transform handsets will be raffled off to attendees of the Android Coding Session, Thur 2:30-5:30.

A limited number of Samsung Galaxy Tab (Sprint’s first Android powered tablet) will be raffled off to Android Coding session attendees who have downloaded the Samsung Galaxy Tab SDK/Emulator http://innovator.samsungmobile.com/galaxyTab.do. Sprint employees will validate the emulator configuration on android coding session attendee laptops as attendees enter the android coding session.

HTC EVO 4G

Stop by the HTC booth in the exhibit hall or attend the HTC session Wed Oct 27, 11:15-12:15, and provide your contact information via business card to be eligible to win one of multiple HTC EVO 4G handsets via a business card drawing.

HTC will also be raffling off a limited number of HTC EVO 4G handsets following their presentation in the Android Coding Camp, Thur 2:30-5:30.

Motorola I1 (the first iDEN Android PTT capable handset.)

Forty attendees of the Motorola Motodev Session on Wed, Oct 27, 4:00-5:00 will be eligible to receive a Motorola I1 device. Specific information about how the devices will be awarded will be shared in the session itself. Must be present at the breakout session to be eligible for the device giveaway.

RIM Style (first Sprint RIM Blackberry 6.0 OS device, not yet available to the public)

This information is COMING SOON.

Get Citrix Receiver here

Get Citrix XenApp here

Get the most powerful Citrix Receiver Proxy here.

The Citrix Community is powerful!

Yes, and so is a Lego Racecar…

I’m not sure if it was the protesters outside Moscone Center West in San Francisco, Homer Simpson’s brain xray, or the wifi network that kept dropping as the 172 access points contended for airspace inside the hall. Yesterday was a full day of excitement as I am sure today and tomorrow will be also.

Samsung will announce the Samsung TAB today, although as you can tell from the Samsung booth, its no secret. The Samsung TAB has already been released in Europe. I originally thought, ok just a competitor to the iPad, but no. The formfactor is smaller, and everyone that came to the booth, said “wow, I will actually buy this over the other device because… it fits in my pockets” (slacks, jacket, sportcoat, lab coat). The speed is amazing, apps run in the background, and it is easy to use. Being a proponent of the “i” products, I am convinced I will switch to Samsung, as it runs on all networks, not just the call dropping AT&T.

The President of Samsung came by the booth for a demo of Citrix Receiver on Samsung devices and was impressed. I was just impressed by the fact that the president of all of Samsung came by. Adam Marano did an excellent job showing how Enterprise Apps can be delivered to any Samsung device, anytime, anywhere using Citrix Receiver.

In our pod within the Samsung booth we had a Samsung Galaxy S phone, Galaxy TAB and Windows netbook. Each of these devices was running Citrix Receiver connected to our demo cloud in Dallas, TX. In this demo cloud we have applications such as 3D Modelling, Medical Apps, and other Enterprise Applications such as Microsoft Office. Also on display was the GoldenGate email client that integrates with Microsoft Exchange.

Citrix Receiver is a high performance, universal client technology that enables IT to deliver virtual desktops, business applications, and content as an on-demand service to any user or device. With Reciever, IT has complete control over security, performance, and user experience, with no need to own or manage the physical device or its location. Receiver runs on any device – PC, thin client, smart phone or tablet…and its free. Receiver runs Windows Desktops and Applications, Web Applications or SaaS apps on demand. Receiver is simple and easy to use with one touch controls and navigation.

You can download the Citrix Receiver here.

Connect to the Citrix Demo Cloud, and create your account here.

View pictures of Homer Simpsons brain, 3D Lego Racecar and other Enterprise Apps running on Citrix Receiver here.

It’s powerful!

Explore the HDX™ user experience

Check out the new Citrix Virtual Computing Demo Center and test drive the HDX user experience to any device, anytime, anywhere. It contains an easy-to-use, high-performance, cloud-based virtualization environment used to demonstrate Citrix desktop virtualization and virtual computing solutions. The Demo Center allows Citrix partners to provision and demo a virtualized environment in minutes.

The Demo Center allows users to actually experience Citrix virtual computing. Partners can demo Citrix and show customers exactly what a virtualized desktop feels like and how it performs on the WAN. The Demo Center is an excellent tool to differentiate Citrix from the competition and show why Citrix virtual computing solutions provide the best user experience. The Demo Center is running in SoftLayer’s virtual cloud data center. SoftLayer provides global, on-demand data center and hosting services from facilities across the U.S. and is a Citrix partner.

There are some requirements, so go here to check it out!

Its Powerful!

Get Virtual Now

Welcome to the New IT, Information Technology Is Everybody’s Business. The role of IT is changing. Now, more than ever, IT needs to operate closer to the business and businesses need to transform their IT into a lean and integrated business tool. Here is how we can help.

Citrix® and Microsoft® are offering you the reality of The Optimized Desktop. Together with our V-Alliance partners, we will help you achieve your goals for efficiency, cost reductions, compliance, integrated management, and security. With Cloud Computing becoming more relevant, it’s important to prepare for the next IT evolution

The V-Alliance is shared between Microsoft, Citrix, and Intel®. The goal of the alliance is to provide you with a central place to find all the materials you need to address your customers needs for delivering the ultimate desktop.

Traditional Datacenter

What would be the best way to describe a traditional datacenter? When you mention these words, everybody nods, but do we all mean the same thing?

• It will run under your own control and on your own premises.
• It will host homegrown and other applications. This includes complex environments with thousands of different applications.
• Generally, there is no standard hardware platform enforced.
• There is a mix of platforms in use.
• The use of management tools is not always a given.
• There will be frequent updates and patches due to different applications and platforms.
• Traditional datacenters tend to have more complexity.

Virtualized Datacenter

A virtualized datacenter differs from a traditional datacenter in several ways:

• It runs fewer and more standardized applications.
• Virtual environments will run on a standardized hardware platform.
• It uses a standardized management system.
• Application patching and updating is reduced and streamlined and there are standard processes to execute.
• Workloads are optimized and standardized.

Private Cloud

A private cloud has most of the properties of the public cloud. However, instead of relying on a multitenant infrastructure model, you will now move to a single tenant infrastructure model.

This infrastructure can be on premises or can be purchased from a hosting provider. It will, however, be a dedicated and private resource.

This will then provide an internal service-oriented environment optimized for performance and cost that is deployed inside and under the control of your infrastructure.

Public Cloud

A public cloud is the vision of turning on a service in the same way as delivering on demand TV, water, or electricity. Just turn on the service, as much or as little as you want, whenever you want it. You pay nothing when you are not using it. Your experience using the Internet may be the best example of a public cloud infrastructure.

Cloud computing as a model for delivering IT infrastructure is as simple as water from the tap or electricity from the socket. Cloud computing makes IT infrastructure available as an on-demand service including operating systems, applications, storage, servers, appliances, and systems management. This provides you with a pay-as-you-go model and is based on a multitenant model where the backend is shared with other users and you have no control on its operation.

It is mostly provided by large, extremely efficient service providers that are able to produce IT infrastructure services in high volume at low cost.

Controlling Costs

When it comes to costs and the Optimized Desktop, it doesn’t matter where the desktop will run or what type of desktop it is. The Optimized Desktop will help your organization reduce your costs and increase efficiency. By streamlining IT management and processes, cost management and efficiency benefits are more quickly realized.

Resources

For more Resources on this subject, such as Briefs, Case Studies, Helpful Links, Kits, Presentations, Product Downloads, Videos and White Papers, visit the website here.

Its Powerful!

Work in your boxers

I don’t own Pajamas, so I work in my boxers, although it is starting to get cold heading into Winter. Mark T. talked about Workshifting in his keynote. See how Five co-workers come together to launch a virtual division in record time. They enable people to work from anywhere, securely. Their solution breaks cost saving records. When the unexpected hits, the business amazingly keeps running. See the triumphs unfold in every episode of The Real (Virtual) World.

Check out the background and bios of the cast. Visit the resource center to discover cost savings through virtualization, on-demand applications, workforce continuity, collboration & Support and Product Demos.
The News from the Virtual World is hilarious, one headline reads “Employee goes to work in pajamas for 24 straight days”. You have to read about the flying golf cart. It is now possible because pipes are fat, and Citrix makes apps thin. Check it out.

Visit us at CTIA in Moscone Center West

Did you know Citrix is Mobile? After all, Citrix is the king of content delivery to any device, big or small. In the mobile market, Citrix Receiver is all the rage. And you can see how Citrix delivers apps to any mobile device at the show, as we will have demonstration units in both the Samsung and Motorola pavilions.

You won’t want to miss Citrix Receiver on the hottest Android devices. With Receiver you can run any application on any device, including Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Applications such as Outlook, Word, Excel..

What application do you want to run on your mobile device?

Come by CTIA and ask us how.

Click here for more links to the CTIA show.

Receiver – Its powerful!

Citrix Community – It’s powerful!

Anatomy of Content Delivery

Follow the App. A complete end-to-end Application Delivery Network relies on more than just a single appliance inserted into the DMZ. An Application Delivery Network occupies the entire stack of the OSI Model, and stretches from the client, through the network, to the server farm into the application delivery infrastructure. Applications are best managed and delivered using a Reverse Proxy Load Balancer and Application Firewall. Forward proxies are less effective as they don’t perform TCP Multiplexing.

An Application Delivery Network (Application Delivery Infrastructure) is one that is capable of advanced server offload using load balancing, caching, compression, ssl acceleration, content switching. Scalable open architectures that include physical and virtual appliances. End-to-end security while delivering ease of use through prebuilt configurations and auto-configuration using visual tools. Any modern ADN of course needs dynamic workload response for capacity scaling in the datacenter and the cloud.

Citrix is best suited to fill the role of offering the products that complete the Application Delivery Network, starting with Citrix Receiver, XenClient, Branch Repeater WAN Optimization, Access Gateway for SSL Encryption and Offload, NetScaler for Load Balancing, Caching and COmpression, Vyatta for Routing, OpenvSwitch for Switching, XenDesktop for VDI and XenApp for application delivery. Whether you implement these technologies as physical appliances or virtual machines is entirely up to you, but if you are going to virtualize your infrastructure, you will definitely want to be using XenServer, the only high performance bare-metal Hypervisor in the market.

Whether it’s content delivery network, application delivery network, application delivery infrastructure – you can’t do it unless you have all of the pieces end-to-end. Currently there is only one vendor that does – Citrix Systems.

Performance is always important, so do the research on the platforms you need to scale up to your traffic needs. After all these years in the business, I’ve learned one thing for sure, not all vendors perform the same. Some use inferior hardware and spagetti code to cut costs – so make sure your device is engineered well.

From the Desktop, through the Network to the Server and into the Cloud, no one vendor does it completely like Citrix.

How it helps

How it works

It’s powerful!

or any other mobile device…

Talk about flexibility. NetScaler VPX and XenApp run on VMWare ESX. We know this because we recently helped SAP build a proof of concept for their upcoming SAP Tech Ed shows in Berlin and Las Vegas. Their labs are being converted to XenServer, but until then, we had to use VMWare ESX.

We installed XenApp 5.3 on Windows Server 2003, although we could have used Windows Server 2008, or even XenApp 6.0 on Windows Server 2008 R2. We installed two NetScaler VPX’s in HA mode, running on VMWare ESX. You will need the NS VPX host MAC address to get a license. We then configured the NetScaler VPX’s and XenApp according to the deployment guide for Receiver on iPhone/iPad.

We published the SAP NetWeaver ABAP application in XenApp, installed Citrix Receiver on the iPad, and then were able to access SAP NetWeaver.

What device will you run SAP on?

Check it out:

Get Citrix NetScaler VPX here

Get Citrix XenApp here

Get Citrix Receiver here

It’s powerful!

Build Your Own XenApp in the Cloud

I will cut to the chase. We have already built “ready to use” XenApp servers in Amazon EC2. Just search for Citrix in the AMI section and launch them. The basic XenApp server can be found here:
http://community.citrix.com/display/cdn/Windows+Apps+as+a+Service

Other flavors of XenApp servers have been built, and the AMI IDs and descriptions can be found here:
http://community.citrix.com/display/cdn/Citrix+C3+Lab

The topic has come up a few times lately, so I figured I would put this out there. The following are the instructions to create a XenApp server in the cloud, and then clone it. The instructions are for the Amazon EC2 Cloud, although they could be adapted for use with any cloud provider.

Creating a XenApp Server in the cloud (Amazon EC2 for example):

Windows Prep

• Sign in to the Amazon Web Services Console
• Select the Amazon EC2 Tab
• Select Images –> AMIs
• View Amazon Images
• Search for WIndows Platforms –> 2008
  • Select either 32 bit (i386) or 64 bit (x86_64)
• Launch the AMI
  • Make sure you launch it in the same Availability Zone as your other AMI’s and volumes
• Right-Click to Get Administrator Password
• RDP to the instance (command prompt, mstsc /console)
• Change password (Administrative Tools –> Computer Management –> Users –> <user> right click –> Set Password.
• Set Ec2Config Service Settings. Program Files –> Amazon –> Ec2ConfigSetup –> Ec2ConfigServiceSettings.exe.
  • Uncheck (disable) Set Computer Name.
  • Uncheck (disable) Initialize Drives
  • Uncheck (disable) Set Password, both random and feature after sysprep.
• Set Computer Name. My Computer –> right click –> Properties –> Computer Name –> Change –> <new computer name>.
  • You will use this hostname to apply for a XenApp license, so make note of it.
• Restart.
• Install Microsoft Terminal Server, by User, for 120 days.
  • You will need a Microsoft Terminal Server license
• Install IIS, ASP, .Net, Windows Authentication, WMI scripting
• Create an Elastic IP Address (Static IP), associate it to the AMI instance id. (optional).
• Install DotNet 3.5
• Install DotNet 3.5 SP1

XenApp Install

• Download the XenApp 5.3 ISO Image and Feature Pak
  • XenApp 5.0 for W2K8 can be downloaded from here
  • XenApp 5.0 Feature Pak 3 can be downloaded from here
• Mount the XenApp 5.0 ISO Image using Virtual Clone Drive
• Install XenApp 5.0 from the ISO image
  • Install XenApp license server only
  • Apply XenApp license
  • Install remaining XenApp components
• Install XenApp 5.0 Feature pack 3

Launch XenApp Delivery Services Console (Access Management Console)

• Publish Notepad, IE and Desktop
• Auto populate the Domain
  • AMC -> Citrix Resources -> Configuration Tools -> Web Interface -> XenApp -> Configure Authenticaiton methods -> Explicit -> Properties -> Authentication Type -> Settings -> Display Domain Box – Prepopulated.
  • Hide Domain Box.

Launch XenApp Web Interface Console

• Create Web Interface (Set as default for IIS)
• Create XenApp Service
• Set Client Secure Access mode to “Alternate” for EC2 Images only (not VPC images)
• Upload SetAltAddressService.exe to c:\drive
• Install SetAltAddressService.exe
  • b. From command prompt: c:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.*\installutil.exe c:\setAltAddressService.exe
• Username/password: <domain>\Administrator, <password>
• Set the service to start Automatically.

Clone the Server

• From the Amazon Web Services Console select Instances under navigation
• Highlight the server you just created
• Right-Click “Create Image (EBS AMI)”

Make it public

• When the building of the AMI (cloning) is finished, set permissions to public so others can launch it (unless you want to keep it a secret)

Note: To change the name of the server to eliminate duplicate hostnames & licensing

• If this is a single server farm you can just rename the server and get a new license file. Removing the server from the farm would have no affect as it’s the only host in the farm.
• If this is a multi-server farm, you should run XenAppPrep

It’s powerful!

Backing up Virtual Machines

If you are like me, you don’t sleep at night knowing your virtual infrastructure is not backed up. I have learned the painful lessons of having to rebuild my virtual environment a couple of times (actually four). Now, there is some relief in the form of a backup/restore solution.

XenServer will backup Metadata, but not the VM’s. That is where Arkeia comes into play. The Arkeia Network Backup suite, is delivered as a software application, physical appliance or virtual appliance.

We recently did a proof of concept in our XenServer, XenApp, XenDesktop lab in Santa Clara. We created a backup set for our virtual machines, including XenApp, XenDeskopt DDC, PVS, the virtual desktops (vDisks), NetScaler VPX’s, Branch Repeater VPX’s, and Vyatta virtual routers,… on XenServer. No agent is required on the machines that are targeted for backup and restore. This is particularly nice for a Xen environment, where, in our case, we have NetScaler VPX, Branch Repeater VPX and Access Gateway VPX running, and we would like to back them up in addition to the collateral Windows and Linux VM’s scatterred about.

We ran the Arkeia software on a Centos 5.4 VM – we recommend running this on a server external to XenServer as this is the backup/restore point. Arkeia network backup is easy to administer from a Web Interface, and scripts can also be run. Arkeia can backup over 150 different platforms, including Linux, Windows, AIX, BSD, HP-UX, Irix, Macintosh, Netware and Solaris. Arkeia supports backups to disk, to tape, or disk-to-disk-to-tape and allows replication of backup data across WANs to remote datacenters.

Read more here -> Arkeia

Arkeia is Citrix Ready!

It’s Powerful!

OSI Layers 1 – 7 ~ virtualized

Citrix owns the virtual stack, OSI Layers 1 through 7 that is. There isn’t any other solution that can claim the fact that they can install Virtual Machines on bare metal, run a Virtual Layer 2 Switch, a Virtual Layer 3/4 router, and applications all the way up to Layer 7.

If you haven’t virtualized your infrastructure, it’s time to do so, because Virtualization is radically changing datacenter and branch architectures. It is not just servers that are getting virtualized. Applications, hardware resources and everything in between can now be in its own virtual container. This is huge in providing you the capability to reduce costs, and increase your computing flexibility.

The vNetworkStack solution virtualizes switches, routers, load balancers, network firewalls, application firewalls, SSL VPN, IPSec VPN, intrusion prevention, content switching, compression, caching – all of the application delivery controller features – along with your virtualized application servers and virtualized desktops.

You can check out how to do it at http://vNetworkStack.com, or follow the blueprint we built just for this Proof of Concept.

The blueprint.

See it live.

It’s Powerful!

XenApp in the Cloud

Citrix XenApp™ is the on-demand application delivery solution that enables any Windows application to be virtualized, centralized and managed in the datacenter, and now the cloud, and instantly delivered as a service to users anywhere on any device.

XenApp reduces the cost of application management by up to 50 percent, improves application and data security and enables you to Simplify IT, Optimize delivery of virtual applications, and Accelerate business with efficiency.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. Amazon EC2′s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use. Amazon EC2 provides developers the tools to build failure resilient applications and isolate themselves from common failure scenarios.

When these two powerful technologies come together, amazing simplicity, scalability and efficiencies of scale are made possible. By utilizing Amazon EC2, XenApp administrators can quickly build and deploy XenApp farms in the cloud to meet capacity demands, or simply grow an infrastructure at a lower cost of ownership.

We wanted to show how you can create or extend your production XenApp farm into the cloud. A new Cloud Blueprint has been created and is available here – http://community.citrix.com/display/cdn/XenApp Production Farm in EC2. This deployment guide walks through the steps to create it in the Amazon EC2 cloud.

Deployment Guide

Production XenApp in Amazon EC2 Deployment Guide
Production XenApp in EC2 with Domain Trust at HQ
Security Groups for XenApp Farms in Amazon EC2

Network Diagram

See it live.

Its Powerful!

For XenApp farms in EC2

In a previous post, I talked about how to build a XenApp Farm in Amazon EC2. I was reminded through a comment on the post, that a XenApp Farm usually is deployed with certain degrees of security separation between the servers. Having left that out of the Deployment Guide, I decided to create an additional deployment guide that shows how to setup Security Groups in Amazon EC2, and place the XenApp Servers in the appropriate partitions.

This guide will walk you through creating two security groups in Amazon EC2, configure them to allow certain ports through (just like a firewall) and launch the XenApp Servers into those security groups. This has the effect of creating a DMZ for Security Group 1 where the XenApp Web Interface server resides, and a Private Network Security Group 2 where the remaining XenApp Servers reside.

Deployment Guide

Amazon EC2 Security Groups for XenApp

Its Powerful!

For XenApp farms in EC2

In a previous post, I talked about how to build a XenApp Farm in Amazon EC2. I was reminded through a comment on the post, that a XenApp Farm usually is deployed with certain degrees of security separation between the servers. Having left that out of the Deployment Guide, I decided to create an additional deployment guide that shows how to setup Security Groups in Amazon EC2, and place the XenApp Servers in the appropriate partitions.

This guide will walk you through creating two security groups in Amazon EC2, configure them to allow certain ports through (just like a firewall) and launch the XenApp Servers into those security groups. This has the effect of creating a DMZ for Security Group 1 where the XenApp Web Interface server resides, and a Private Network Security Group 2 where the remaining XenApp Servers reside.

Deployment Guide

Amazon EC2 Security Groups for XenApp

Its Powerful!

Or Windows on Mac, Thin Client, WinMo, iPhone…

The list grows as Citrix Receiver continues to make the end computing device ambigous. In a previous post I showed how Windows applications or desktops can be delivered to an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.

Right after the post, the guys in engineering called me up and said, “Hey, we’re not finished yet…”. In addition to iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, Citrix Receiver also runs on Android, WinMo, Thin Clients, Mac and PC platforms.

The small feat of magic is that all of this can also be run from a web browser.

I can see it now, you are roaming somewhere, and think, ok let me login to work for a couple of seconds to check something. You launch the browser on your mobile device, Mac, PC or Thin Client and your Desktop is streamed to you. While checking a few things in your work desktop, you navigate away to take a call or use a local app, then navigate back to your work desktop … the way you just left it.

Mobility and the way we live, play and work has just been turned on it’s ear. Bring your own computer (BYOC), an industry momentum started by Citrix, is now a reality for companies that don’t mind providing the desktops and applications for employees to get their work done, but would rather do without the time and expense of maintaining specialized hardware out in the field, or even on employees desks.

Citrix runs Windows applications and Desktops from a central server, called XenDesktop, and pipes it out to your mobile device through the NetScaler AGEE so the data is secure on both the Client and Server side. So, just in case you are not fanatical about the iPhone or iPad, you can still take advantage of the most awesome technology to hit the computing model for the average person. Citrix Receiver along with XenApp and XenDesktop becomes an incredible deal for organizations with a number of different Clients … after all the personal computing device is personal, and you can’t always choose the device the end user will show up with.

Having seen a Windows 7 Desktop running on an iPhone, a PC and a Mac, I wasn’t all that surprised when engineering showed me Windows 7 Desktop running on Android. If you don’t think you need the entire Desktop, you can pipe one or two applications to these devices using XenApp and Citrix Receiver.

We used the previous infrastructure for this Proof Of Concept, because it was already setup with XenApp and XenDesktop. The only new pieces were the end devices. Once again, we used the Citrix Web Interface in XenApp for authentication to keep it simple, however, we have done POC’s with the same setup using LDAP and two factor authentication from the NetScaler AGEE.

Guides

You can have this setup, by following the guides we wrote up as a result of this testing.

Download the Deployment Guide – ICA Proxy for Citrix Receiver.
Download the Deployment Guide – ICA Proxy for Citrix Web Interface.
Download the Deployment Guide – Self Signed Certificates for Access Gateway

Citrix Products used in this POC

XenServer
XenApp
XenDesktop
NetScaler AGEE
Citrix Receiver v2.1

Client devices

iPhone
iPod touch
iPad
Mac
PC
Android
WinMo
Thin Client

Watch it live

Tap into the power of AppExpert!

NetScaler SMS Authentication

Citrix NetScaler, the industry’s most popular load balancer, can also be configured to use SMS authentication, with Citrix Receiver, XenApp and XenDesktop. Our partner SMS passcode makes the SMS software, it is easy to install and easy to use. The Citrix Reciever already supports SMS Authentication.

In previous posts we show how Authentication can be done at the Citrix Server Web Interface, or using LDAP. Now that Citrix Receiver runs on a variety of mobile devices, you can use SMS Authentication and Receiver on your device of choice.

The technology leader in SMS Authentication now supports Citrix. Read more about it here.

We used the previous infrastructure for this Proof Of Concept, because it was already setup with XenApp and XenDesktop. The only new piece was the SMS Passcode server.

Guides

Download the Deployment Guide – ICA Proxy for Citrix Receiver with SMS Authentication.
Download the Deployment Guide – Self Signed Certificates for Access Gateway

Citrix Products used in this POC

XenServer
XenApp
NetScaler AGEE
Citrix Receiver
SMS Passcode

Read more about SMS Authentication

Text Message Based Authentication

Watch it live

Tap into the power of AppExpert!

For Access Gateway

Citrix Access Gateway™ is a secure application access solution that provides administrators granular application-level control while empowering users with remote access from anywhere. It gives IT administrators a single point to manage access control and limit actions within sessions based on both user identity and the endpoint device, providing better application security, data protection, and compliance management. Citrix Access Gateway is the first SSL VPN built to deliver both secure virtual desktops and applications.

Citrix Receiver makes going virtual as easy as turning on a TV. Users freely choose any device – it runs on smartphones, laptops, desktops and netbooks – turning any device into a powerful business tool to securely access corporate data anywhere.

When deployed with Citrix Access Gateway, the Citrix Receiver uses Certificates to validate connections and secure data. It is therefore a requirement that a valid Certificate chain of trust be established between the Citrix Access Gateway and the Citrix Receiver.

Purchasing a Server Certificate from a valid third-party such as Verisign, and importing it into the Access Gateway is the best way to do this. However, for proof-of-concepts, you might want to create and use Self Signed Certificates. The Self Signed CA Certificates generated on the NetScaler will not work with the Citrix Receiver, so you must generate Self Signed Certificates using a Windows Server – for proof of concept deployments.

This guide will walk you through creating a Self Signed Certificate for use on the NetScaler AGEE as a Server Certificate, and also the importing of the Windows Certificate Authority Root Certificate.

Deployment Guide

Access Gateway Self-Signed Certificates with Citrix Receiver

Network Diagram

Its Powerful!

XenApp in the Cloud

Citrix XenApp™ is the on-demand application delivery solution that enables any Windows application to be virtualized, centralized and managed in the datacenter, and now the cloud, and instantly delivered as a service to users anywhere on any device.

XenApp reduces the cost of application management by up to 50 percent, improves application and data security and enables you to Simplify IT, Optimize delivery of virtual applications, and Accelerate business with efficiency.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. Amazon EC2′s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use. Amazon EC2 provides developers the tools to build failure resilient applications and isolate themselves from common failure scenarios.

When these two powerful technologies come together, amazing simplicity, scalability and efficiencies of scale are made possible. By utilizing Amazon EC2, XenApp administrators can quickly build and deploy XenApp farms in the cloud to meet capacity demands, or simply grow an infrastructure at a lower cost of ownership.

We wanted to show how you can create or extend your production XenApp farm into the cloud. A new Cloud Blueprint has been created and is available here – http://community.citrix.com/display/cdn/XenApp Production Farm in EC2. This deployment guide walks through the steps to create it in the Amazon EC2 cloud.

Deployment Guide

Production XenApp in Amazon EC2 Deployment Guide
Production XenApp in EC2 with Domain Trust at HQ

Network Diagram

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Using NetScaler MPX – A How-To Webinar

Title: How to maximize XenApp high availability and security
Date: Thursday, April 29, 2010
Time: 2:00pm Eastern/11:00am Pacific
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/517385769

Web Interface is one of the principle attributes of Citrix XenApp and now NetScaler MPX provides the ability run the Web Interface service support directly, without requiring a separate server. This built-in support option provides a provides a host of benefits to your XenApp infrastructure, that includes – lower TCO, simple set-up, superior session capacity and reduced latency, increased performance and scalability, and enhanced security.

Find out how your organization can benefit from deploying your XenApp Web Interface on NetScaler.

In this webinar you will learn:

• Overview of current NetScaler solutions for XenApp
• Technical overview of Web Interface on NetScaler solution
• Key benefits of running Web Interface on NetScaler
• Best practices on the installation, customization, & configuration of NetScaler MPX
• Live Demo of the Web Interface running on NetScaler

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As a XenApp Published App

Avaya one-X Agent is an integrated telephony softphone solution designed for agents in a Communication Manager Call Center environment. The Avaya one-X Agent application controls the advanced telephony features through its direct communication with the Communication Manager.

In addition to providing the basic telephony controls, Avaya one-X Agent supports the advanced Communication Manager agent functions, such as, agent state control, call wrapup control, screen pops, VuStats screen, agent greeting controls, and video features. Avaya one-X Agent has an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) to provide a rich user experience for agents in contact centers. The application GUI occupies minimum space on the agent desktop, and provides the ability for agents to customize the application GUI to meet their individual needs.

Now that Avaya runs with XenApp, Agents can work remotely as if they were present at the contact center. Avaya One-X Agent runs with XenApp 5.0 (Windows Server 2008) and XenApp 6.0 (Windows Server 2008 R2).

Guides

Deployment Guide – Avaya One-X Agent with XenApp 5.0
Deployment Guide – Avaya One-X Agent with XenApp 6.0

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Beefy 7 on Skinny HP

Different types of workers across the enterprise need different types of desktops. Some require simplicity and standardization, while others require high performance and personalization. XenDesktop can meet these requirements in a single solution with our unique FlexCast™ delivery Technology. With FlexCast™, IT can deliver every type of virtual desktop – each specifically tailored to meet the performance, security and flexibility requirements of each individual user.

Only the best user experience will do, and is made possible by Citrix HDX. HDX technology is a set of capabilities that deliver a “high definition” desktop virtualization user experience to end users for any application, device or network. HDX technology provides network and performance optimizations to deliver the best user experience over any network, including low bandwidth and high latency WAN connections.

XenDesktop published Windows 7, and XenApp published Microsoft Office apps can be streamed to HP Thin Clients running Windows Embedded (WES) or linux. One of the architects called this better than sex, drugs and rock’n'roll. We’ve got a skinny little HP Thin Client (t5325 ThinPro) running 512 Mb RAM, with 1 CPU, the size of a hockey puck, albeit square, you can see it in the video under the monitors. We then have a Windows 7 virtual desktop built with 4 GB RAM, running on 4 x64 bit CPU’s, with a user drive mapped to the network storage. This thing kicks sand, you’ve got to see the video. The ramifications for the next generation of Operating System usage are huge.

If you need Microsoft Office, or any other app that runs on Windows 7, it can be launched from XenApp and run within the same XenDesktop session … also demo’ed in the video. In this setup we also used HP Procurve Gigabit Ethernet switches – these babies scream with speed and they are dirt cheap. For our WAN, we used an Apposite technologies simulator, running 1Mbps, 100 ms latency, 1% packet loss.

HP Client Virtualization solutions help resolve the most common business challenges associated with traditional, distributed PC environments by centralizing compute resources in the data center where they can be easily secured and managed. Using standard network connections, it also delivers the exceptional, personal client computing experience end users expect. HP and Citrix Welcome you to the next generation of business computing.

Network Diagram

Guides

Deployment Guide – BR VPX
Deployment Guide – XenDesktop 4.0 w/ XenApp 6.0
Deployment Guide – HP Thin Client w/ Citrix Online Plugin

Citrix Products used in this POC

XenServer 5.5
XenDesktop 4.0
XenApp 6.0
Branch Repeater VPX 5.6
Receiver for Linux 11.100
Online Plugin for Windows 12.0

HP Products used in this POC

Thin Clients – Citrix Ready

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Or any Application for that matter.

Chris Fleck gave fair warning. I’m here to tell you that it works and its here, now. The computing model just got turned on it’s ear.

Why would you want this? Because it increases your mobility without having to reboot your laptop everytime you want to use it, it saves time and money, and it delivers any Windows platform or application to your iPhone, iPod or iPad.

What was previously just a future scenario is now a reality.

Citrix runs Windows and Windows Applications from a central server, called XenDesktop, and pipes it out to your mobile device through the NetScaler AGEE. This is perfect for the iPad which has a screen size of 1024×768. Now the touch, squeeze and pinch is available for all of your Enterprise applications, making them usable on an iPad.

The small form factor of the iPhone was a little hindering for Enterprise applications. Now, with the iPad and Citrix Receiver, Enterprise Apps are usable. Although, while putting together this POC the Product Manager sent me an eMail from Microsoft Office 2010 running on a Windows 7 Desktop … from his iPhone. This confirms that form factors and the computing model is about to be rocked.

The magic is in the way that Citrix hosts the Windows desktops and delivers them to the mobile device. The advantage is all of the computing power of multi-core processors and large memory can still be utilized by Windows, while all of your touching and pinching power is localized at your mobile device.

All of the communication is done over secure tunnels, so all of the information is secure.

For this Proof of Concept, We started with XenServer, installed XenApp and XenDesktop, built a NetScaler to Front-end and secure the infrastructure, and fired up our iPhones and iPads. Its fast, easy and cool. We used the Citrix Web Interface for authentication to keep it simple. You can also use LDAP or any other type of authentication method.

Guides

You can have this setup, by following the guides we wrote up as a result of this testing.

Download the Deployment Guide – ICA Proxy for XenApp & XenDesktop for Citrix Receiver for iPhone, iPod and iPad.

Download the Deployment Guide – ICA Proxy for iPhone, using LDAP authentication.

Delivery Center has arrived.

Products

XenServer is free

Get XenDesktop here.

Download NetScaler VPX here

Citrix Receiver is available for Free on the App Store

Get an iPhone, iPod or iPad from Apple.

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Deliver any application to Citrix Receiver for iPhone, securely through the Access Gateway Enterprise Edition – AGEE.

Citrix Delivery Center is a dynamic virtualization system that transforms applications and desktops into on-demand services that enable users to securely and productively work and play from anywhere.

Citrix Delivery Center, composed of XenDesktop, XenApp, XenServer and NetScaler, virtualizes servers, desktops and applications, centralizes them in the datacenter and broadcasts them as an on-demand service.

When combined with the Citrix Receiver for iPhone, Citrix Delivery Center enables users to open documents, update reports, approve expenses, join a webinar, and make use of so many applications – from your iPhone. It is safe, simple and high definition using Citrix HDX technology.

This solution was built using the components of Citrix Delivery Center – namely XenServer to host the Windows 2008 Server running XenApp, which then published the applications, such as Microsoft Office. The applications were proxied through a NetScaler AGEE with SSL encryption for the ICA Protocol, to the end user on the iPhone running Citrix Receiver.

Download the Deployment Guide here.

Citrix Receiver is available on the Apple iPhone App Store.

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Oracle EBS 12.1 runs on XenApp

Citrix XenApp™, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, is the industry’s de facto standard for delivering Windows-based applications with the best performance, security and cost savings. XenApp is the most complete application virtualization system available with the ability to virtualize applications on both the client side and server side, delivering them on demand based on the user, the application or the location (online or offline).

By centralizing applications and data in secure datacenters, IT can reduce the costs of management and support, increase data security and facilitate business continuity. XenApp Platinum Edition adds critical capabilities for application performance monitoring, secure remote access, WAN optimization and single-sign-on application security.

Citrix XenApp is compatible with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. Organizations of any size can deploy XenApp on industry standard servers anywhere in the datacenter, on a single server or across all cloud computing datacenters. This simple integration takes Enterprise applications into the virtual realm, allowing customers to run Oracle on Virtual Machines, within XenServer, delivered to the end user through XenApp.

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NetScaler Virtual Machine

Today, Citrix announced a virtual appliance version of their NetScaler Application Delivery Controller – the NetScaler VPX, the first of its kind. All of the functions that traditionally were performed in the datacenter can now be performed in the domain of virtual machines. Load balancing, application acceleration, security and offload functionality are now available as a XenServer virtual appliance.

Industry’s first Virtual Load Balancer

No other vendor offers this type of software as a Virtual Appliance. By making advanced web application delivery functionality available as a virtual appliance, NetScaler VPX drives convergence of virtualization and networking. In the continued movement toward simple and affordable convergence, NetScaler VPX makes sophisticated application delivery functionality available to any size organization. This breaks down deployment barriers for all types of organizations.

What used to run on a proprietary piece of hardware now runs on any hardware that supports virtualization. Because there is no physical appliance to ship, install or move VPX can be installed at a moment’s notice, on any server running XenServer.

The challenge

• Check out The Great NetScaler VPX challenge and get $10,000.
• The Tech Preview will be downloadable from citrix on May 18th.
• If you are running VMWare, you need to run Xen – and why wouldn’t you, Xen is free.

NetScaler VPX

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Amazon announces VPC with support for Citrix C3

What is Amazon Web Services?

Since early 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has provided companies of all sizes with an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud. With AWS customers can requisition compute power, storage, and other services-gaining access to a suite of elastic IT infrastructure services as your business demands them. In AWS, customers pay only for what they use with no up-front commitments. The Amazon Web Services cloud is distributed, secure and resilient, providing reliability and massive scale. AWS includes a number of services such as EC2, S3, SimpleDB and others. Today AWS is making available their limited public beta for their Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

What is EC2?

Amazon EC2′s simple web service interface allows customers to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides companies with complete control of the computing resources and lets customers run on Amazon’s computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing companies to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing payment only for capacity used. EC2 is a key building block for VPC.

What is VPC?

Amazon is announcing a limited public beta of their Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). For the last three years, AWS has provided companies of all sizes with on-demand, highly elastic and highly reliable technology resources in the cloud. As more and more enterprises leverage the cloud, they want a simple, seamless way to migrate their large and complex IT infrastructures to AWS, and to use the security and management controls that their IT teams already know. Amazon VPC aims to address this need —to allow any company to seamlessly connect their existing resources to the AWS cloud as if it were a part of their own datacenter. To read the press release follow this link.

Using Amazon VPC, AWS customers can create an isolated set of AWS resources that they then access via an industry-standard encrypted IPsec Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection. Using API calls, users create their isolated network and then launch customer-addressed Amazon EC2 instances into that network. Users then create a secure VPN to bridge those AWS resources to their existing IT infrastructure. Cloud traffic bound for the Internet routes over the VPN where it is examined by the customer’s existing security and networking technologies before heading to the public Internet. With Amazon VPC, customers can access their resources running in the AWS cloud as if these assets were running within their existing IT infrastructure.

What is Citrix’s involvement?

Amazon is a top tier strategic partner for Citrix in the Cloud market. Over time, Amazon VPC will enable all our enterprise customers to seamlessly expand their Citrix infrastructures, starting today with XenApp, by adding highly secure and reliable on-demand resources from AWS as a natural extension of their current on-premises Citrix based applications. Citrix will be included in AMZN’s VPC press release on August 26 with a quote from Frank Artale. Other companies quotes are Intuit, Computer Associates and Eli Lilly.

What solutions or product scenarios are we launching with VPC today?

At launch we are starting with two simple use case scenarios. Over time these will be expanded upon. Use Case #1: “XA farm expansion – cloud data” includes a blueprint for customers that want to create another XA Farm in the cloud, with the datastore and license server hosted in the cloud also. Use Case #2: “XA farm expansion – premise data” includes blueprint for customers that want to expand the existing XA Farm from premise, into the cloud, using the datastore and license server at premise (Headquarters Datacenter).

Do we have an exclusive cloud relationship with Amazon?

No. While Amazon is the leader in the cloud space and thus provides us with a most important relationship, our partnership with them is not exclusive. Citrix is actively partnering with many other leading cloud vendors, hosting providers and IaaS vendors.

Is Amazon selling Citrix solutions?

No. While Amazon and Citrix endorse and promote each other’s offerings, there is not a reselling relationship. Citrix customers need to bring their existing licenses to AWS, leaving our channel empowered to add value as their usually do.

Prior to today’s announcement, did we already have a relationship with Amazon?

Yes. EC2 is built on opensource Xen. In addition, Amazon is a large NetScaler customer. Our partnership was officially launched on 5/6/9, when Citrix and Amazon announced the Citrix C3 Lab (press release: http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1690164 ). The Citrix C3 Lab was launched to run in EC2 (vs. VPC) and enables companies of all sizes to get started using Citrix technologies quickly in the Amazon EC2 environment. Since then, Citrix has been one of only nine “Amazon Featured Partners”. Here is a link to our partnership: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/featured-partners/citrix/ . Today’s announcement expands our alliance from EC2 into VPC.

Where can I learn more about the new Citrix scenarios for VPC?

The Citrix Community Website, has a dedicated section to our solutions in Amazon Web Services: http://community.citrix.com/display/cdn/Citrix+C3+Lab

What does this announcement mean to a Citrix customer?

Customers can more easily expand their Citrix environment into the Amazon cloud. Starting today, a Citrix customer can use the newly launched AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) within VPC (in addition to the already available Citrix C3 Lab AMIs within EC2), in conjunction with the blueprints, which provide technical guidance. Customers will need to bring their own licenses to use these AMIs for production, even though they should realize that VPC is currently in beta form by Amazon. To learn more about Amazon’s limited public beta for VPC, customers will need to visit http://aws.amazon.com/vpc/.

ICA Proxy for XenApp using CAG

Citrix Access Gateway™, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center, is an SSL VPN to securely deliver any application with policy-based SmartAccess control.

Citrix XenApp™, also a member of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, is the industry’s de facto standard for delivering Windows-based applications with the best performance, security and cost savings.

By centralizing applications and data in secure datacenters, IT can reduce the costs of management and support, increase data security and facilitate business continuity.

We at Citrix are often asked how to deploy a CAG in front of a XenApp server farm, to proxy application delivery over the ICA protocol, securely. The CAG secures XenApp delivered applications by serving as a proxy for those applications. CAG proxies the ICA connections delivered from XenApp, and then wraps those applications with HTTPS or SSL to secure the traffic before it leaves your organization.

This is possible by following the steps in the deployment guide. This guide is specific to the Citrix Access Gateway Standard Edition (AGSE), which is different hardware & software from the Citrix NetScaler Access Gateway Enterprise Edition (AGEE).

Download the deployment guide.

Its Powerful Citrix Developer Network!

ICA Proxy for XenApp using NetScaler AGEE.

Citrix NetScaler, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center™, is a purpose-built web application delivery solution that accelerates application performance up to five times while improving security and reducing web infrastructure costs. Access Gateway™, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center, is an only SSL VPN to securely deliver any application with policy-based SmartAccess control. Access Gateway, Enterprise Edition (AGEE) runs on the Citrix NetScaler.

Citrix XenApp™, also a member of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, is the industry’s de facto standard for delivering Windows-based applications with the best performance, security and cost savings.

By centralizing applications and data in secure datacenters, IT can reduce the costs of management and support, increase data security and facilitate business continuity.

We at Citrix are often asked how to deploy a NetScaler AGEE in front of a XenApp server farm, to proxy application delivery over the ICA protocol, securely. The NS SGEE secures XenApp delivered applications by serving as a proxy for those applications. NS AGEE proxies the ICA connections delivered from XenApp, and then wraps those applications with HTTPS or SSL to secure the traffic before it leaves your organization.

This is possible by following the steps in the deployment guide. This guide is specific to the NetScaler Access Gateway Enterprise Edition (AGEE), which is different hardware & software from the Citrix Access Gateway Standard Edition (AGSE).

Download the deployment guide.

Its Powerful Citrix Developer Network!

Cloud Networking is fast

You can create a complete end-to-end network from the datacenter to the cloud. All cloud servers communicate securely over SSL VPN.

Between the datacenter and the Amazon EC2 cloud is a site-to-site SSL VPN built with Vyatta. On the XenApp server in the cloud runs the Citrix Accelerator which connects back to the Citrix Branch Repeater/WANScaler at the datacenter, to accelerate data connections. The Citrix Accelerator makes cloud computing fast, Vyatta makes it secure.

The reason for using Vyatta site-to-site SSL VPN between the datacenter and Amazon EC2 cloud is there needs to be a secure network between the two for the transfer of data. The Vyatta AMI (Amazon Machine Image) can also function as a complete router and firewall. The Vyatta SSL VPN router provides security with scalability.

As you can see from the network diagram and video, complete routing from the datacenter to the Amazon cloud network is seamless. Data resides at the datacenter and is accessed, over the SSL VPN, by the Application running in XenApp. The remote user connects to XenApp, runs the application, and the application delivers the data to the remote user, quickly and securely.

To get your own cloud, go here.

Configurations used

Vyatta SSL VPN (V1) – Datacenter Configuration
Vyatta SSL VPN (V2) – Cloud Configuration
Windows VPN Client – Cloud Configuration

Links for this solution

Vyatta – go here
Amazon EC2 – go here
XenServer is Free! – go here
XenApp – go here
XenApp VPN Client – go here
Dell Server – go here
IP Addresses – go here

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Cloud Networking is secure and robust

You can create a complete end-to-end network from one cloud network, running on XenServer, through a VPN to another network in a different cloud. All servers and hosts communicate securely over SSL VPN. Amazon Machine Images are secured by the Amazon infrastructure using security groups.

The proof of concept speaks for itself. Between the Softlayer cloud and the Amazon EC2 cloud is running a site-to-site SSL VPN using Vyatta. All of the images in this architecture are running on XenServer. This proof of concept gives rise to many networking architectures for cloud computing.

The reason for using Vyatta site-to-site SSL VPN between the Softlayer and Amazon EC2 clouds is there needs to be a secure network between the two for the transfer of data. The Vyatta AMI (Amazon Machine Image) can also function as a complete router, firewall and DNS cache. The Vyatta SSL VPN router provides security with scalability. Suppose I wanted to separate the Vyatta SSL VPN from a Vyatta OSPF router, I would just launch another instance of the Vyatta AMI.

As you can see from the network diagram and video, complete routing from the Softlayer cloud to the Amazon cloud network is seamless, without having to buy any proprietary hardware. In fact, it is very low cost compared to traditional network solutions. Virtualized networking is here, it is fast, secure and cheap.

A CloudBurst happens when Citrix Workflow Studio determines that one of the devices in the Softlayer Cloud has reached a high watermark. WFS then instructs the NetScaler VPX to start sending traffic to the Cloud – CloudBurst.

To get your own cloud, go here

Configurations used

Vyatta SSL VPN (V1) – Datacenter Configuration
Vyatta SSL VPN (V2) – Cloud Configuration
XenApp VPN Client – Cloud Configuration

Links for this solution

Vyatta for XenServer – go here
Amazon EC2 – go here
XenServer is Free! – go here
XenApp – go here
Workflow Studio – go here
XenApp VPN Client – go here
Dell Server – go here
IP Addresses – go here

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Network Virtualization is secure and routable

You can create a complete end-to-end network from your corporate datacenter, running on XenServer, through the VPN to the network in the cloud. All servers and hosts communicate securely over SSL VPN.

The best part about this solution is that when one vendor said that virtualization breaks the network, it really doesn’t.

I just did the proof of concept between a Citrix datacenter and Amazon cloud services. Between the Citrix datacenter and the Amazon cloud, I am running a site-to-site SSL VPN. The SSL VPN running at the Citrix datacenter is running inside of XenServer on a Dell 2950 III server, optimized for virtualization.

The SSL VPN Gateway running in the Cloud is also running on Xen as a virtual appliance, or virtual gateway if you will. The Windows Server(s) in the cloud are connected to the SSL VPN using OpenVPN.

The reason for using OpenVPN on the Windows Server(s) to connect to the SSL VPN Gateway in the Cloud is twofold:

1. Amazon doesn’t allow the reconfiguration of default gateways on their Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). By configuring the OpenVPN client connection, you can send all traffic from the Windows Server (S3) through the SSL VPN gateway (V2), through the VPN (vtun0) Tunnel, through the SSL VPN gateway (V1) to the private network in the Citrix datacenter AND vice versa.
2. Provides an extra layer of security for traffic traversing the intra-cloud network.

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Cost Savings, Green Benefits and Improved Server Management.

Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery, recently announced that leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) manufacturer SAP AG will be virtualizing an estimated 500 servers with Citrix® XenServer™ by the middle of 2009. SAP has also deployed Citrix® XenApp™ application virtualization technology to deliver applications to both SAP employees and external partners. In addition, SAP expects to receive the benefits that a combined XenServer and XenApp solution provides – such as streaming standardized workload images and superior management functionality – which the company anticipates will generate a 35 percent savings in terminal server costs.

SAP was looking to consolidate its server infrastructure and also wanted to create a much more flexible and dynamic computing architecture. Following an extensive test of XenServer, the company decided to move forward with a multi-stage roll-out of the server virtualization solution onto 500 servers, initially in the company’s Saint Leon Rot, Germany office. In the next phase of the project, the servers that power the worldwide training centers will be virtualized, followed by the project management division with several hundred development, test, and support environments. After the server virtualization project in Germany is complete, the roll-out will continue at the end of 2009 to SAP’s offices in Asia and the United States.

SAP has also deployed Citrix XenApp application virtualization technology to deliver more than 40 applications, including Microsoft Office and the SAP Business Suite software, to its entire user base. In total, there are more than 50,000 end users who access the XenApp infrastructure to work on tasks such as product development and support.

XenServer is FREE !

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EasyCall Conferencing

One of the larger expenditures for enterprises is the cost of voice communications, specifically conference calling. Most enterprises use an outside vendor to host the conference calling capabilities for global communications between internal employees and external participants. You can completely do away with that cost with EasyCall Conferencing. Here is how it works…

EasyCall Conferencing, which is a feature of EasyCall, allows EasyCall users to quickly set up ad-hoc conferences by sending participants an EasyCall Conferencing URL. Participants join a conference call simply by clicking a URL instead of having to dial a conference phone number and complex access codes. The calls are hosted on the EasyCall Gateway, providing toll-free access at much lower cost than commercial audio conference services.

To enable external users to join EasyCall Conferences, join requests must be proxied to the EasyCall Gateway from the internet as the EasyCall Gateway is always installed inside the corporate firewall. This is similar to many web applications that require protected external access, and the HTTPS proxy is simple to configure on the Citrix Netscaler to provide the necessary SSL Offloading and Content Filtering.

The Citrix NetScaler System provides continuous service availability through application-level protection by blocking attacks and delivery of the EasyCall application securely. The Citrix NetScaler Content filtering prevents unwanted requests from reaching the EasyCall Gateway.

The EasyCall Conferencing configuration template for the NetScaler policies is provided free of charge right here on our community website. Just import it, and your NetScaler is setup for EasyCall Conferencing.

Together, the EasyCall Gateway and NetScaler provides a low-cost, non-recurring charge, to host global conference calls with your own equipment, making it easy for participants to join just by clicking a URL … no cryptic meeting codes or passwords.

Download the EasyCall Conferencing / NetScaler Deployment Guide Guide.

Download the EasyCall Conferencing – NetScaler AppExpert Configuration Template.

Watch how easy this is:

How it will look in your network:

Download the EasyCall Virtual Appliance here.

Get the NetScaler here.

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