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, meani…
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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.
Get Virtual NowWelcome 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.
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?
A virtualized datacenter differs from a traditional datacenter in several ways:
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.
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.
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.
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.
For Enterprises and Service ProvidersCitrix OpenCloud Framework lets enterprises and cloud service providers build and operate private and public clouds by providing the core logic to rapidly provision, manage, and control applications deployed as cloud-based services. It supports interoperability with popular cloud interfaces to let customers leverage their existing investments for migration to the cloud.
Citrix OpenCloud Framework empowers the construction of enterprise class, policy-driven clouds on an open architecture with a high degree of technology interoperability. Specifically, Citrix OpenCloud Framework provides:
Citrix OpenCloud Framework allows enterprise and service providers to maximize return on IT infrastructure investments across all tenants and business units by providing the foundation for building and operating a cost-effective, fully customizable, business policy-driven service. Key benefits include:
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.
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
XenServer
XenApp
XenDesktop
NetScaler AGEE
Citrix Receiver v2.1
iPhone
iPod touch
iPad
Mac
PC
Android
WinMo
Thin Client
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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.
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 iPhone, using LDAP authentication.
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 ManagementCitrix 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.
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:
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
If your not running XenServer yet, you should be, its free
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Deployed in front of Web servers, NetScaler application delivery controller models combine load balancing and content switching. Potential benefits include application acceleration, content caching, SSL acceleration, network optimization, and application performance monitoring in a single built-for-purpose hardware platform. Unlike other approaches that require multiple point products, NetScaler is an all-in-one appliance that is easy to deploy, configure, and operate with AppExpert Visual Policy Builder GUI-based tools, AppExpert Templates, and multiple wizards.
NetScaler 9.1 is available in both hardware-based (NetScaler MPX) and application-based deployments (NetScaler VPX). All deployment options available in version 9.1 are compatible with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. Organizations of any size can deploy NetScaler VPX on industry standard servers anywhere in the datacenter. NetScaler VPX enables load balancing, application acceleration, application security and server offload to become virtual appliance-based services that can be easily and dynamically deployed; on-demand and anywhere in the datacenter. Whether installed on a single server or across all cloud computing datacenters.
Download the Citrix NetScaler, Oracle EBS 12.1 Deployment Guide.
Download the Citrix NetScaler, Oracle EBS 12.1 Data Sheet.
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Oracle EBS 12.1 runs on XenAppCitrix 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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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.
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.
ICA Proxy for XenApp using CAGCitrix 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!
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.
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.
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:
Download the Nixu / XenServer Integration Guide.
Read about 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.
Citrix & St.Bernard Deployment Guide!
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.
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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:
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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.
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