Using Wavemaker

I previously posted about the Citrix and Wavemaker partnership. The NetScaler Nitro APIs are available now in NetScaler v9.3. Cloud Providers are deploying NetScaler within their cloud offerings. Cloud Providers can now provide a web-based user interface to their Subscribers, allowing the Subscribers to manage and monitor their NetScaler instances. WaveMaker has built a web application to manage and monitor NetScaler instances when deployed within a cloud environment.

Each Cloud Provider can tailor the application to suit their particular operating requirements and to deliver Provider-specific benefits to their Subscribers. Therefore, we have provided the WaveMaker project (i.e. source code) as a download so you can customize the management application to deliver a customized solution to your Subscribers. The application is customizable using WaveMaker Studio, a visual environment for developing enterprise cloud applications. Wavemaker Studio uses the NetScaler Nitro APIs in the NetScaler Cloud Management Application to retrieve information from NetScaler instances and configure NetScaler instances.

The solution has the following components

• Citrix NetScalers running in the cloud
• Wavemaker Studio
  • MySQL
  • Tomcat or other Java Server
  • NetScaler Cloud Management Application project
    

Benefits

• An easy to use and deploy development/test environment
• Provides end-users a customizable configuration, management and monitoring UI
• View, Create and terminate virtual instances in the cloud
• Manage multiple Virtual NetScalers

How it works

1. Import the NetScaler Cloud Management Application project into Wavemaker Studio
2. The NetScaler Nitro API is used to retrieve monitoring information and send down configuration information
3. Use Wavemaker Studio to customize NetScaler Cloud Management Application
4. Use Wavemaker Studio to generate a WAR file
5. Use Wavemaker Studio to deploy to Tomcat server
   

Watch it in action

Download the latest release of Wavemaker Studio here

Download the Citrix Cloud Management Application for Wavemaker Studio here

Download the Citrix NetScaler Cloud Management Documentation here

Wavemaker is Citrix Ready Certified!

Citrix NetScaler

It's powerful!

Citrix Master Class

This is your opportunity to learn the key skills you need to troubleshoot a Citrix XenServer environment. Join Lee Bushen and Steve Benton live, for another exciting Master Class experience.

Topics Include:

• XenServer architecture
• Advanced troubleshooting techniques
• Understanding the key log files and commands
• Troubleshooting tools and demos
• Where to find the tools and resources you need

Details:

Webinar: XenServer Master Class - Troubleshooting XenServer
When: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 2:00 Eastern/11:00am Pacific
Where: Register at http://bit.ly/XenServerMasterClass

The Citrix Community is powerful!

Including VPX's with Commvault

Operational spending on IT, primarily Data Protection, continues to be highly correlated around staff and infrastructure. Whether your data storage is local or in the cloud, driving down costs suggests that any approach must be highly automated and work toward containing those costs.

Data Growth remains an uphill battle as the amount of data is growing at rates far faster than the operational budget can support. That disparity means you are in a constant struggle to work smarter and more efficiently squeezing more utilization out of the resources you already own.

Cutting costs and managing growth are two leading drivers in the mass migration IT is undergoing in the move to virtualized infrastructures. This ongoing shift is now making your data dynamic by nature. Workloads, applications and data now float over servers and locations which pose problems for those older legacy backup tools which expected to find the same data in the same scripted location each night.

That problem is exacerbated by the viral nature of Virtual Machines which magically pop up on the network overnight without any advanced notice - we refer to this condition as dynamic sprawl. Combine this with the dynamic nature of Virtual Disks, shared or dedicated, and unquestionably any modernized data management system must have a way to overcome this sprawl by automatically discovering and adjusting to changes in the applications and systems. This ensures you are capturing and indexing everything you need, so you can immediately turn around and drive a successful recovery of that system, machine, application or a lost document.

Time is also critical and it is the one resource that is continuing to shrink - redcuing your backup window - and dictate how long you need to preserve those copies of data to meet compliance or governance requirements.

Shrinking backup windows, rentention, recovery, SLA's, cost management and data growth are colliding with the drive to virtualization. Traditional backup approaches are clearly not up to the challenge & a new way forward is needed.

This is where CommVault comes in to play. Simpana 9 software from CommVault delivers a centrally managed, scalable and automated data protection solution that Bridges data protection and data management capabilities for both physical and virtual server environments in a single console.

This unified solution for managing and protecting data is emerging as a key requirement in the drive to a modern data management solution. However, it is important for that data protection solution to be more than just a single pane of glass for management. This requirement implies that customers demand (and rightfully so) a solution that meets the same business and service level requirements for virtual server environments - like Citrix Xen - that they get today in their physical environment.

This is the value of the Simpana 9 Virtual Server Protection capabilities for CommVault. Not only does Simpana 9 deliver a singular management solution that bridges both physical and virtual environments. It delivers industry leading data protection and data management capabilities that meet the most demanding business and service level requirements.

We did a proof of concept in the Citrix Santa Clara lab, to show that CommVault easily backs up the Citrix Virtual environment - consisting of XenServer, XenApp, XenDesktop, NetScaler VPX, Branch Repeater VPX, and Access Gateway VPX.

Integrated protection for Citrix Xen Server environments

• Full VM-level backups:
• For all supported OSes including Windows vdisks, NetScaler VPX, Access Gateway VPX, Branch Repeater VPX, XenApp VM's, XenDesktop VM's
• VM or file-level recovery
• Autodiscovery of VMs:

How it works

• A VSA deployed on a proxy VM (guest) inside each physical Xen server
• Backup queisces VM, snaps VM and attached to the proxy VM.
• Proxy VM mounts the snapshot as a volume and transfers to backup media
  

The Citrix Community is powerful!

for all Citrix Products

I previously showed how to get a 1-Year License for the Citrix NetScaler VPX Express. Our partners don't only use the NetScaler VPX, and may need 1-Year Licenses for other Citrix products as well. These can be obtained by joining the Citrix Ready program. To join Citrix Ready and obtain 1-Year Licenses for your Citrix products, follow the procedure below.

Citrix Ready Process

1. Sign up for a new Citrix user account http://mycitrix.com
2. Sign up for Citrix Ready at http://citrix.com/joincitrixready
3. Questions? Send email to citrixready@citrix.com
4. Wait for Citrix Ready approval (about 72 hours)
5. Receive approval email from Citrix Ready
6. Login to MyCitrix at http://mycitrix.com
7. Select Choose a Toolbox -> Partner Demo Licenses -> Get Software
8. Select Citrix Product to license -> Retrieve Serial Numbers
9. Select and copy Serial Number to clipboard
10. Select Choose a Toolbox -> Activate System/Manage Assets -> Activate/Allocate
11. Paste in Serial Number -> Continue
12. Allocate, Download and Install License
    
    

See how easy it is

Citrix Ready NFR License Matrix

The benefits of Citrix Ready can be found here. The following shows the Citrix Ready NFR License allocations.

The complete Citrix Ready process can be viewed here

Frequently Asked Questions can be answered here

The Citrix Community is powerful!

NetScaler VPX Express supports SSL Offload; however, NetScaler VPX does all SSL processing in software, so NetScaler VPX will not offer the same SSL performance as NetScaler appliances. NetScaler VPX can easily support up to 500 new SSL transactions per second, and the same encryption ciphers that the NetScaler appliances use are supported. The main difference between the NetScaler VPX and NetScaler MPX appliances is performance and L2 networking on the VPX is done in the Hypervisor. NetScaler VPX Express throughput is limited to 1 Mbps (Full Duplex). If you need more throughput, just download a 90-day eval license for NetScaler VPX-1000 Platinum, here.

Packaging

Capacity

View the NetScaler VPX Express FAQ

Download NetScaler VPX Express & License

The Citrix Community is powerful!

The Citrix NetScaler VPX provides the complete NetScaler all-in-one feature set in a simple, easy-to-install virtual appliance. IT organizations of any size can deploy NetScaler VPX on demand, anywhere in the datacenter, using industry standard servers. The simplicity and flexibility of NetScaler VPX make it easy and cost effective to fully optimize every web application and more effectively integrate networking services with application delivery.

Download Citrix NetScaler VPX

Download Citrix XenServer

The Citrix Community is powerful!

PHD Virtual Backup that is

In August, 2010, PHD Virtual announced support for PHD Virtual Backup for Citrix XenServer. The backup and recovery solution is built specifically for XenServer environments. They are a Citrix Ready partner, meaning the solution has been verified to work with Citrix XenServer in our labs. PHD Virtual provides the ability to back up and restore business critical information quickly and efficiently, directly within the XenCenter management console, providing a single pane of glass to manage virtual machine backups. With support for XenServer, XenDesktop and XenApp, customers can leverage the same solution across their entire virtual environment.

Releasing this month

Is PHD Virtual Backup 5.1 for XenServer. It is built on the next generation of PHD Virtual's award winning VBA architecture and extends their XenServer backup and recovery solution with new capabilities providing:

• The fastest and most cost effective virtualization backup to meet RPO, RTO and SLA requirements
• Dramatically reduced storage requirements and efficient network backup with TrueDedupe™ Technology
• The most reliable solution for backup data integrity with TrueRestore™ Technology
• Seamless, integrated management of backup and restore directly from Citrix XenCenter
• Backup and recovery of XenApp and XenDesktop deployments on XenServer
• Completely virtualized solution footprint leveraging the PHD VBA (Virtual Backup Appliance)
  
  

PHD VBA Architecture

Provides a purpose-built virtualization backup solution giving you the ability to simultaneously backup and restore multiple VMs concurrently. The PHD VBA deploys as a small virtual appliance on XenServer that autonomously conducts hot backups of all your virtual machines.

• Purpose built for virtual environments and integrated with XenCenter
• Backs up and restores any VM running on XenServer
• Does not compromise hypervisor performance or impact Dom0
• Does not require dedicated proxy servers, additional hardware or software agents
  
  

New in version 5.1:

• Flexible Backup Storage Options
• Set it and Forget it Job Scheduling
• File Level Restore (FLR) Any OS, Any File System
• Application Object Recovery Enabling Existing Tools to Restore Application Objects from Backups
• Support for Tape Backup Solutions via Backup Data Connector
• Backup Retention and Archiving - Meet DR Objectives and Retention Policies
  
  

Read more about PHD Virtual here

PHD Virtual is Citrix Ready

Download Citrix XenServer here

Download Citrix XenDesktop here

Download Citrix XenApp here

Download Citrix Virtual Load Balancer & SSL VPN here

The Citrix Community is powerful!

hacking tool for Wordpress

Since the rollout of social media and blogging, I have wondered "why aren't these sites using SSL". When I told my wife my facebook account got hacked, she didn't believe me. Then her's got hacked. Session Hijacking has been around for a while now, so it's nothing new, but the hacking tool Firesheep, an extension to Firefox, is a new illustration of that vulnerability. It has built in strings to capture session keys from all of the favorite web sites, including twitter, facebook and wordpress among others. This is not just about social sites, it is about Enterprise apps also, being exposed. Companies are using Twitter, Facebook and Wordpress as business tools. So it is now an Enterprise security issue, a real risk to applications that run the business. And with many of our execs going mobile, they are using these tools from places with open WiFi such as airports, coffee shops and hotels. Fixing the threat is easy, by putting a NetScaler VPX in front of these site(s) and automatically redirecting HTTP to HTTPS. Here are the steps necessary to implement the fix, along with a video that shows how easy it is to hack using session hijacking, and how easy it is to fix this problem.

Steps for securing Wordpress with SSL - Wordpress hosted at a service provider:

1. Download and install XenServer
2. Download and install NetScaler VPX for XenServer
3. Install SSL Certificate on the NetScaler
4. Create a Load Balancing VIP with new publicly routable IP Address
5. Edit DNS entry for your wordpress site to point to the NetScaler Load Balancing VIP
6. Set Service to the IP Address of your wordpress site at the service provider
7. Set Load Balancing VIP port 80 to automatically redirect to port 443

Connect to http://<yourwordpresssite.com> and it should automatically redirect to https://<yourwordpresssite.com>.

Steps for securing Wordpress with SSL - Wordpress hosted in your own DMZ:

1. Download and install XenServer
2. Download and install NetScaler VPX for XenServer
3. Install SSL Certificate on the NetScaler
4. Create a Load Balancing VIP with a new publicly routable IP Address
5. Edit DNS entry for your wordpress site to point to the NetScaler Load Balancing VIP
6. Set the Service to point to the IP Address of your locally hosted wordpress site
7. Set Load Balancing VIP port 80 to automatically redirect to port 443

Connect to http://<yourwordpresssite.com> and it should automatically redirect to https://<yourwordpresssite.com>.

Its easy

Download XenServer here

Donwload NetScaler VPX here

The Citrix Community is powerful!

The Splunk for Citrix XenServer application manages Citrix XenServers. It includes inputs, indexing, searches, reports, dashboards and field actions. Splunk for Xen Installation and Configuration instructions can be found on the Splunk Wiki. To view versions, release notes and download the app, click on the image at left, or the link below.

Download the Splunk for Citrix XenServer here.

It's 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.

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.

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!

Multilayer Virtual Switch

Simon Crosby already talked about it, and it is already here. Open Source Routing's powerful counterpart, Open Source Switching is available now. Open vSwitch is a multilayer virtual switch licensed under the open source Apache 2.0 license. The goal is to build a production quality switch for VM environments that supports standard management interfaces (e.g. NetFlow, RSPAN, ERSPAN, CLI), and is open to programmatic extension and control. In addition, it is designed to support distribution across multiple physical servers similar to VMware's vNetwork distributed vswitch or Cisco's Nexus 1000V.

Open vSwitch currently supports multiple virtualization technologies. It is the default switch in the Xen Cloud Platform and also supports Xen, XenServer, KVM, and VirtualBox. The bulk of the code is written in platform-independent C and is easily ported to other environments.

To understand why virtualized environments require a new approach to switching, read the WHY-OVS document that is distributed with the source code.

Supported Features:

• Visibility into inter-VM communication via NetFlow, sFlow(R), SPAN, and RSPAN
• Standard 802.1Q VLAN model with trunking
• Fine-grained min/max rate QoS
• Per VM interface traffic policing
• NIC bonding with source-MAC load balancing
• OpenFlow Protocol Support
• Ethernet over GRE tunneling
• Compatibility layer for the Linux bridging code
• Kernel and user-space forwarding engine options

Roadmapped:

• L3 switching
• IPsec tunneling
• LACP
• LLDP / CDP
• ERSPAN
• Support for hardware acceleration (VMDQ, switching chips on SR-IOV NICs)
• Improved management interfaces (CLI, SNMP, NETCONF)

Read more here

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!

Connect to NetScaler VPX with Workflow Studio

By now you have heard of Citrix Delivery Center and it's various components. Automating resources in the cloud is easy. One way is through the use of Citrix Workflow Studio to automatically provision the Citrix NetScaler.

Workflow Studio is easy to use, but you might need some help getting over the hump, so I am going to walk you through getting the two working together.

First I installed XenServer 5.5 on a Dell 2950 I had running in the lab, it was leftover from other projects, so I didn't have to buy any new hardware. Then I installed Citrix Workflow Studio and the NetScaler VPX onto the XenServer. Both have free evaluation copies available on the Citrix Website. I now have a complete setup using virtual machines.

I launched Workflow Studio, created a Category and a new Workflow, connected to the NetScaler and then disconnected from the NetScaler.

Follow these simple steps and you will be on your way to data center automation.

Steps to re-create this POC

• Install XenServer - Its free
• Install Windows 2008 server & Citrix Workflow Studio in XenServer - Free eval
• Install NetScaler VPX in XenServer - Free eval

• Follow the steps in the video:
  • Create Workflow Category
  • Create Workflow
  • Connect to NetScaler
  • Disconnect from NetScaler

Its easy, try it

Download WFS here

Download NetScaler VPX here

If your not running XenServer yet, you should be, its free

Its easy, watch and learn

Tap into the power of AppExpert!

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!

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

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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

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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

Its Powerful!

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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Its Powerful!

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 1024x768. 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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NetScaler 9.1 has been integrated with Siebel 8.1.1 Customer Relationship Management

Citrix NetScaler 9.1 is a Web application delivery controller that ensures that applications such as those in Siebel CRM 8.1.1 are always available, performing well and protected.

Integration Details

Citrix NetScaler 9.1 is an integrated Web application delivery controller appliance that provides advanced traffic management through Layer 4-7 content switching and rewrites and redirects. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) offloading is also performed. NetScaler appliances are available in three editions running on a wide range of hardware platforms. NetScaler 9.1 is available both on hardware appliances (NetScaler MPX appliances) and as a virtual appliance (NetScaler VPX).

NetScaler 9.1 application delivery controllers are deployed in front of Oracle's Siebel Customer Relationship Management (Siebel CRM) 8.1.1.

NetScaler 9.1 performs:

• L7 content switching
• TCP multiplexing
• SSL termination
• Content rewriting
• Caching
• Compression

NetScaler 9.1 template for Siebel 8.1.1

NetScaler Application Templates - introduced in NetScaler 9.0 - provide an application centric view of the NetScaler's configuration. From a single place within the GUI NetScaler administrators can configure and view relevant application delivery policies such as content switching, Load Balancing, SSL Offload, Content Rewriting, Caching, Compression and Application Firewall.

A template was created and used for this NetScaler 9.1 integration with Siebel 8.1.1. It is available for download for free, and if you don't have any NetScaler or Siebel experience this is a great way to get your NetScaler pre-configured for Siebel application delivery.

Download Siebel 8.1.1 Application Template for NetScaler 9.1

Download NetScaler VPX here

If your not running XenServer yet, you should be, its free

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WFS dynamically provisions NetScaler VPX for SAP Load Balancing

In a previous post I discussed some use cases around the automatic provisioning of load balancing on a Citrix NetScaler using Citrix Workflow Studio.

We recently completed the follow-on project of creating a Workflow Studio script to perform a "Loop" to check the SAP Status Server on a regular basis, and dynamically Enable or Disable server load balancers in the NetScaler.

Drawing on the use cases from the previous post, we decided to build one WFS script to dynamically handle everything:

• Auto-configure new SAP services
• Graceful shutdown of SAP services

The latest script reads the SAP Status Server every x minutes or seconds, and based on the information in the SAP Status file, determines if a load balancing service should be enabled or disabled. This is useful for when SAP Servers are marked as "Down" and the NetScaler needs to reflect this change, dynamically. When the SAP Server comes back online, WFS enables the service in the NetScaler.

The WFS program that was designed to read the SAP Status Server is based on the SAP Message Server API specification, which can be found by clicking here.

SAP Status Message file format

<server-list> = "version" <major>"."<minor> CRLF
<sap-server-name> CRLF
<protocol-type> <host> <port> <description> CRLF
...
<protocol-type> <host> <port> <description> CRLF
CRLF
<sap-server-name> CRLF
<protocol-type> <host> <port> <description> CRLF
...
<protocol-type> <host> <port> <description> CRLF

SAP Message field to NetScaler Config Mapping

WFS Use Case

Read the file http://10.217.105.139/SAPStatus.htm
Skip 1st line. (version 1.2).

Loop1:
Read the sap-server-name, create Citrix NS Service.

  Loop2:
  Read message line.
  If Description LB=0, shutdown the service.
  If Description LB<>0 && doesn't already exists the service, add the server and service:
  Server = host
  Port = port
  Protocol = HTTP if J2EE, HTTPS if J2EES.
  Sleep 30 seconds
  End Loop2. (if line = blank).

End Loop1. (eof)

Sample SAPStatus.htm file used in this POC

version 1.2
J2EE187834720
J2EE Server1 51800 LB=2
J2EES Server1 51801 LB=2
P4 Server1 51804 LB=2
P4S Server1 51805 LB=2
IIOP Server1 51806 LB=2
IIOPS Server1 51807 LB=2
TELNET Server1 51808 LB=2

J2EE187834721
J2EE Server2 55000 LB=1
P4 Server2 55004 LB=1
IIOP Server2 55007 LB=1
TELNET Server2 55008 LB=1

J2EE187834722
J2EE Server3 56000 LB=0
P4 Server3 56004 LB=0
IIOP Server3 56007 LB=0
TELNET Server3 56008 LB=0

Where:
Server1 is the Citrix NS Service Name
J2EE indicates use the HTTP Protocol
J2EES indicates use the HTTPS Protocol also.
51800 is the port number to use on the backend
LB=2 indicates the service is up and running (LB<>0)

Get your own and try it

Download WFS here

Download NetScaler VPX here

Download the WFS Script here

Download NetScaler config file here

Download Sample SAPStatus.htm file here

If your not running XenServer yet, you should be, its free

Dynamic Load Balancing in action

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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

It's powerful - AppExpert!

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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Its powerful AppExpert!

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

Watch This

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Its powerful AppExpert!

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.

Its powerful AppExpert!

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.

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How it will look in your network:

Download the EasyCall Virtual Appliance here.

Get the NetScaler here.

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Now that a new year has begun, it is time to think about change. What did you do well in 2008, that you would repeat in 2009? What will you do differently?

Forecasting bad economic news for 2009 is old, and we all know it is going to be a tough year. I can think of several people I know personally that have already been affected. Among the predictions and forecasts from analysts is that IT spending will slow down. 2009 will be a tough year, and with spending on hold, if I was an IT infrastructure guy or a service provider, with all of the virtualization technology available, I would take more than a few minutes to rethink my strategy.

2009 Forecasts that cloud computing and virtualization will grow. It is not just a prediction that I believe in because I work for a virtualization company, I believe in it because I am an operations guy at heart and this virtualization stuff is real.

One of the things I am going to continue to do in 2009, is make use of XenServer and its tangentially related products. At Citrix, I spend a lot of time with my head buried in a lab working on several projects at a time. At any given time I may need to bring up Windows servers and clients, *nix Servers, install a partners product into a server, or install some enterprise application for testing. All of these I did in 2008 without spending any money on hardware. I had an existing Dell 2950 III that I use for XenServer. I can bring up, bring down any number of hosts at any time, for any purpose, without having to fill a rack with hardware that sucks the power grid dry, and depreciates in value the second I order it.

Not only have I done a great job of saving money on capital expenditures in my lab, I have also saved a lot of energy and rack space. In addition, with faster time-to-deployment and more resources at hand, I have increased my productivity immensely.

I work with our internal Citrix IT and Training departments who both make use of Citrix Virtualization technology – this has proven to increase their productivity as well, while reducing cost.

Looking forward, I know I will be able to keep costs and spending down to almost nothing this year as I make continued use of Citrix Virtualization technology. As an operations guy at heart, nothing brings greater joy in slashing a budget and saving money going into 2009 while increasing productivity.

One of the most requested features from Service Providers and Enterprises is IP Address Management (IPAM). I can't tell you how many times I have listened to customers ask for a platform that manages IP Addresses effectively on a large scale, even to the point of managing disparate classes and subnets. What happens when two companies merge, do you munge spreadsheets or do you have this software yet? It's not only the software that is unique but that it runs as a XenServer VM in Para-Virtualized mode, meaning it is high-performance. Even better is these run in linux.

Nixu Software specializes in software designed for DNS, DHCP and IP address management. To run Nixu Products in a virtual machine environment, simply download the ISO installation media from their website and boot up a new virtual machine. The installation media auto-installs the entire server stack.

Unlike traditional computing appliances that require specific hardware to run on, Nixu Products provide a quick and cost-efficient way to migrate and consolidate core network services such as DNS and DHCP to virtualized computing environments. By streamlining tedious network and system management routines, Nixu Products offer exceptional availability and ROI.

Here are some of the Highlights of using NIXU DNS and DHCP in a XenServer VM:

• Centralized IP Address Management
  • Merge/Join IP Blocks
  • Split IP Blocks
  • Subnets in use – report
  • Subnets free – report
  • Addresses in use – report
  • Addresses free – report

• Runs in XenServer as a VM, optimized for Para-Virtualization
  • Supports pv-ops

• Supports IPv6
• Uses secure communication between secondary name servers, using keys
• Role based administration
  • Assign subnets to administrative domains

• Supports BIND syntax
  • For the BIND junkies

• Has a configuration checker
• Automated installation and maintenance reducing management overhead
• Centralized management of all nameservers
• Hardened design for security

WATCH this video tip:

Download the Nixu / XenServer Integration Guide.

Read about Nixu Software here.

Download Nixu Software here.

Read about Citrix XenServer 5.0 here.

Download Citrix XenServer 5.0 here.

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The St.Bernard iPrism works with Citrix’s Application Virtualization platform – XenApp, and works quite well. Seen as a perfect complement to each other the Citrix NetScaler and XenApp products were tested with the St.Bernard iPrism Web Filter. Both companies offer architectures of one-arm (out-of-band) and two-arm (in-band) deployments. At Citrixlabs in Santa Clara, CA, USA, we tested both the out-of-band and in-band configuration of the iPrism Web Filter. We loved the fact that the iPrism is auto-discovered by the management software, so no console cable was needed.

With NetScaler:

We deployed the iPrism Web Filter behind the NetScaler in our proof of concept datacenter in Santa Clara, CA, USA, and configured the NetScaler for NAT (Reverse NAT) for outbound connections to the Internet. NAT is often performed by the Firewall. The Web Application Firewall, also part of the Citrix NetScaler, was configured for protection of inbound security threats to websites and web applications.

The iPrism was configured to monitor outbound traffic from the internal subnet of 172.16.104.0/24, and block all traffic to offensive websites, and monitor traffic to all other websites. The Real-Time monitor in iPrism gave us a detailed report on the users and IP Addresses that were going out to which sites on the internet. We could see who was accessing what, and which content was being blocked. Particularly nice, was the fact that the iPrism automatically authenticated each user to the Citrixlabs domain controller, every time they surfed a new website, without them knowing it. This was very useful for keeping a tight grip on security and for compliance reporting.

With XenApp:

The powerful value is in the integration with XenApp. We plugged the iPrism in as an in-line device, and configured it to work with Citrix XenApp©, formerly known as Citrix Presentation Server. One of the key questions that will arise in this situation is with all of those Citrix XenApp thin clients logging into the XenApp and then launching browsers to the internet, how does iPrism keep track of them. By adding the XenApp IP Address to the iPrism configuration, the users are tracked using "Session Based Authentication" – this catches each individual user and IP Address in each browser session and in the reports. We were impressed by this and determined the iPrism to be an excellent fit into a datacenter outfitted with Citrix.

NetScaler Developer Network!

Border Gateway Protocol, open-source and it’s para-virtualized. No more proprietary software and hardware, you can run as many copies of this as needed on one physical XenServer machine. As a proof point, we used the Vyatta Open Source router to build out our Link Load Balancing network in Santa Clara.  The Open Source Vyatta is running on a Dell server. We configured the BGP routing protocol, but could have have also configured OSPF or RIP and redistributed the routes. This configuration has been proven to outperform the incumbents, and is less costly by a wide margin.  Reduce opex and capex and start rolling this out today.  

What is needed:

• Vyatta Open Source Networking Software
• A Dell Server that supports Virtualization
• XenServer Enterprise 4.1

Watch this Video:

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Border Gateway Protocol, open-source and it's para-virtualized. No more proprietary software and hardware, you can run as many copies of this as needed on one physical XenServer machine. As a proof point, we used the Vyatta Open Source router to build out our Link Load Balancing network in Santa Clara.  The Open Source Vyatta is running on a Dell server. We configured the BGP routing protocol, but could have have also configured OSPF or RIP and redistributed the routes. This configuration has been proven to outperform the incumbents, and is less costly by a wide margin.  Reduce opex and capex and start rolling this out today.  

What is needed:

• Vyatta Open Source Networking Software
• A Dell Server that supports Virtualization
• XenServer Enterprise 4.1

The Network:

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And it's FREE! Throw away those behemoths that suck power from every grid in the state and drain your budget. This baby is Free, Open Source and VIRTUAL, meaning you can run as many instances of this router as you want on your choice of hardware. What is even more gratifying is it's faster than the old router technology.

Vyatta has commoditized router, firewall and VPN deployment in the same way that Linux commoditized the operating system market. Vyatta open-source networking offers you an alternative to over-priced, inflexible products from proprietary vendors.

Vyatta software enables customers to build routing and security solutions using standard x86-based hardware of their choosing, ensuring networks will always meet performance requirements. Vyatta open-source software delivers the unique advantage of allowing customers to scale networks from the simplest LAN configurations to large BGP WAN edge configurations using a single software package.

Vyatta software includes support for most commonly used network interfaces, industry standard routing and management protocols, and all of these features are configurable via a single command-line interface (CLI) or web-based graphical user interface (GUI) - avail Q3'08. The integrated features and functionality make Vyatta software ideal for SMB, Branch Office, Enterprise and Service Provider deployments.

Summary of features:
BGP, OSPF, RIP, DHCP, QoS, IPSec VPN, VRRP, PPP, 802.1Q, Complete List.

This open source router is already running on XenServer in a large service provider in Europe. We are using it in our Citrix Ready program as a multi-link Intranet with connections to the Internet along with high availability link load balancing.

This para-virtualized Vyatta image runs as a virtual appliance in XenServer v3.2.1 and v4.1.

The XenServer Platform we are using:

• Dell Poweredge 2950 server.
• 2 x Intel 64-bit Quad-Core Xeon Processors, Model E5335 @ 2.00 GHz each, for a total of 8 CPUs.
• 2 Intel 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet (on-board)
• 2 Broadcom NetXtremeII Gigabit Ethernet
• 16 GB of memory.
• 300 GB of Storage.
• XenServer v4.1
• *note: CPU's must support virtualization technology.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Virtual Router - Install:

Virtual Router - Config:

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We are all used to the familiar commands to configure IP Addressing on *nix and *dows types of systems, however there is a little bit of a trick involved with XenServer. 

Imagine if you had built your XenServer in one location and then transported it to another location where a different IP Addressing scheme was being used.  In order to have XenCenter come in contact with the XenServer again, you will need to re-configure the Management IP Address.  Since you probably won't RTM, and you don't want to rip your hair out trying to figure it out, the steps are outlined in this XenServer Tip.

Download this XenTip.

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