The IT Melting Pot!

This is a great thing that you should have a look at and investigate how it would fit you and your organization! Finally Microsoft has changed the license model! They still have some work to be done on it though so we can run Virtual Desktops (VDI’s) as well!! 😉

Read this great blog post from lpanzano:

I’ve not seen a lot of news about this so I thought it was worth writing a short post just to remember everyone that on July 1st, Microsoft has officially changed Windows Azure licensing terms (PUR) to allow the use of Remote Desktop Services (RDS) on Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Previously this scenario was not allowed in Windows Azure. Before July 1st you could only access an Azure Windows Server VM for purpose of server administration or maintenance (up to 2 simultaneous sessions are authorized for this service).

Let’s see some details about this change:

• To enable more than 2 simultaneous sessions you will need to purchase RDS Subscriber Access Licenses (SALs) through the Microsoft Services Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) for each user or device that will access your solution on Windows Azure. SPLA is separate from an Azure agreement and is contracted through an authorized SPLA reseller. Click here for more information about SPLA benefits and requirements.
• RDS Client Access Licenses (CALs) purchased from Microsoft VL programs such as EA, do not get license mobility to shared cloud platforms, hence they cannot be used on Azure.
• Windows ‘Client’ OS (e.g. Windows 8) virtual desktops, or VDI deployments, will continue to not be allowed on Azure, because Windows client OS product use rights prohibit such use on multi-tenant/shared cloud environments.
• Customers can use 3rd party application hosting products that require RDS sessions functionality (e.g. Citrix XenDesktop), subject to product use terms set by those 3rd party providers, and provided these products leverage only RDS session-hosting (Terminal Services) functionality. Note that RDS SALs are still required when using these 3rd party products.

Continue reading this post here!

Citrix also created a good blog post on their view of the top 5 scenarios for putting XenDesktop on Azure:

Top 5 Scenarios for XenDesktop on Windows Azure

Since Windows Azure launched I have looked forward to the day Citrix would be able to work jointly with Microsoft to support XenDesktop and XenApp workloads. We are excited that today is the day we announce support for XenDesktop 7 and XenApp 6.5 on Windows Azure. Customers can now take advantage of the leading Citrix desktop virtualization solution and all of the HDX user experience goodness on Microsoft’s leading public cloud. With the announcement we’ve published two design guides (here andhere) to help get you started with your deployments.

But first a little known fact. For the past few years Citrix has supported XenApp in the Amazon public cloud.  In fact, we have a growing number of enterprises and service providers using our reference architecture and design guides to stand up new citrix environments in the cloud.

So why would you want to use Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp in Windows Azure? This is a question I want to discuss today and walk through the top 5 scenarios I hear from customers looking to deploy Citrix desktop virtualization in Windows Azure.

1. DOS – Don’t Own Stuff

I hear routinely in customer meetings about their desire to get out of the business of managing on-premise datacenters. The virtualization era began with test/dev workloads being virtualized first. IT was not confident their high performance and mission critical workloads could be virtualized effectively. We all know that wall crumbled years ago and now enterprises take a virtualization-first strategy.  The transition to cloud has paralleled this phenomenon within Enterprise IT. It started with shadow IT or low-risk workloads but now CIOs are asking themselves, why should I provision any workload (mission critical or not) on-premise instead of in the cloud? Since enterprise IT still overwhelmingly consist of Windows-based workloads this means that a growing number of Windows apps are now deployed in the public cloud rather than in traditional datacenters.

Citrix continues to lead the virtualization of hosted-shared Windows apps and desktops. If your IT strategy consists of DOS, you can now transition your virtualized Windows apps and desktops over to Windows Azure along with your other mission critical enterprise workloads.

2. Flexing for Additional Capacity

How to respond to transient demand is a topic of many customers. With every re-organization, acquisition, new marketing initiative, etc IT is asked to support their employees by providing them the set of productivity tools necessary to complete their job.  How can IT organizations plan ahead when they are one of the last groups to know when new demand is required and the first group responsible for delivering? Either they keep additional capacity on hand or the are conservative with the expected delivery of the new services.  Keeping additional capacity on hand can be an expensive proposition in terms of the compute and storage costs for Windows apps and desktop needs. But alternatively, not delivering on the business needs continues to paint IT as a necessity rather than a strategic arm of the company.

With Citrix XenDesktop and Windows Azure, customers can now quickly spin up a new environment in the public cloud and meet the business needs. In fact, to the employees accessing the Windows apps and desktops through Citrix Receiver, they will never even know their app or hosted-shared desktop are coming from the public cloud. It will be completely transparent to users.

3. Pre-production Validation

Every software release goes through a pre-production validation cycle where the software is run through its paces to evaluate the features…

Continue reading this blog post here!

//Richard