Archive
Windows 8 Business Intentions: Deployment Plans, Driving Factors, Roadblocks, and Strategies
This was an interesting report and I must say that I’m a bit skeptic that Windows 8 will get a large footprint within the Enterprise segment…
The Windows 8 Business Intentions: Deployment Plans, Driving Factors, Roadblocks, and Strategies report reveals key insights into who’s moving to Windows 8, who’s skipping it, and why. In this original research report from TechRepublic Pro and ZDNet, industry analysts break down the Windows 8 deployment plans of over 1,200 organizations from around the globe.
Some of the key takeaways include the following:
- 73.7 percent of respondents say their organizations have no plans to deploy Windows 8.
- Only 15.8 percent of respondents who run Windows XP or an earlier version as their organization’s primary OS say they plan to deploy Windows 8.
- Security and tablet/mobile integration top the list of factors rated important by respondents who plan to deploy Windows 8.
- The Windows 8 style UI and associated end-user training requirements are off-putting to many respondents.
- The number of respondents in Australia, Canada, Europe, and the US with plans to deploy Windows 8 was lower than in China, India, and Southeast Asia.
Download the report here!
//Richard
Heads up – Potential #StoreFront and .NET Security update KB2729452 issue – #Citrix, #StoreFront, #CloudGateway
Heads up out there! I’ve not verified this myself but it’s worth ensuring that you plan for an uninstallation in the event it’s true!
Command Center 5.1 Beta – A Complete New Face!
Ok, found another good and interesting blog post from Citrix. Even though this is great and I’ll try it out but I’m still awaiting more from Citrix on end-to-end monitoring and reporting… but lets give this beta a go! 🙂
This release, I am thrilled to unveil a new Face of Command Center!
Command Center 5.1 brings a fresh new appeal with an Absolute User Interface revamp. The new UI flaunts more organized and intuitive navigation which has been introduced with the aim to bring consistency across all the Citrix networking products.
The 5.1 release adds to Command Center’s analytics streak by introducing AGEE Syslog analytics. It breaks open the Syslogs into meaningful graphs and pie charts, laying out top 10 parameters of SSLVPN usage. The AGEE Syslog analytics answers questions raised around SSLVPN usage which comes across in day to day administration:
- Which are the top user sessions?
- Which are the top ICA application being used?
- Which users are consuming high bandwidth?
- While accessing VPN, which client type amongst ICA, Clientless or Agent has been used most ?
- Which users didn’t match EPA scan policies?
- Which users have had the most failed login attempts?
On top of these, it also lets you view the.. continue reading here!
//Richard
Access Gateway Licensing Demystified
Ok, this is a good blog post from Prashant Batra and touches an area that I get so many questions about!
Access Gateway Licensing Demystified
Access Gateway discussed in this blog is the Access Gateway based on NetScaler, which is popularly referred to as Access Gateway Enterprise. Citrix has recently announced End of Life for all non-NetScaler based Access Gateway platforms, which then makes Enterprise edition, the de-facto Access Gateway.
In this blog, we will discuss the two license types used on your Access Gateway appliance, the two kinds of vServers you can set up to leverage these licenses to provide standard / advanced functionalities, and an example scenario towards the end, to help illustrate these concepts in a real scenario.
License Types
Access Gateway is licensed at two levels:
- Platform License
- Universal License
Platform Licenses
Every Access Gateway (VPX/MPX) comes with a… continue reading here!
//Richard
#NetScaler #SDX design and best practise
Ok, I understand that this is something that I’ve touched upon before as well and received some comments on (NetScaler MPX vs. SDX dilemma). But I’ll still continue the reasoning behind why I think that the NetScaler SDX architecture is great, and that is needs to be offered on all the different platforms/appliance types/sizes!
To kick off the reasoning I recommend that you read this post; #NetScaler #AAA on NS 10.00 Build 70.7 = watch out!. When you’ve read both previous posts I hope that you see where I’m now going with all of this…
Just have a look at this picture where I’m trying to illustrate two design options for how you could build your NetScaler service for a tenant;
And if you then keep in mind about the AAA bug that caused the whole NetScaler engine to crash, what happens in the top scenario if this VPX had been affected? Think about if that NetScaler hosted network connectivity to you public cloud services with workloads, all SSL VPN users connected to the enterprise, all ICA/HDX proxy users into XenApp/XenDesktop, and also provided AAA features to the enterprise web apps used by customers and partners etc.? Wow, that would actually mean that one single 401 basic authentication could have taken down EVERYTHING!
But; if you would have separated your capabilities/features into separate VPX’s then you wouldn’t have had that issue. The “only” thing that would have happened if you ran into an issue that caused the NetScaler to crash then it would only affect that VPX (AAA VPX in the scenario above).
So my personal view is that it’s great that Citrix provides all the features on one appliance/instance. But it also adds quality and test efforts on Citrix to ensure that they perform testing of ALL features and functions before releasing a new build. And that may affect the lead-time to get fixes and new builds released and quality may also be impacted… and that’s what I’m afraid of is happening. So a little word of advice; separate workloads/features when you can and when you don’t want this big of a risk, and prey that Citrix soon delivers the SDX architecture on all appliances! And they would of course perhaps not just sell the larger boxes like they force us into today even if the bandwidth capabilities of that box isn’t required. But they would instead sell more VPX’ on top of the HW, that’s at least what I think.
Comments?
Cheers!
//Richard
#NetScaler #AAA on NS 10.00 Build 70.7 = watch out!
Ok, just received a heads-up from a colleague around a bug on NetScaler for the AAA feature that you should be aware of if thinking of using build 70.7!
AAA Application Traffic
- Issue ID 0319434: If 401 basic authentication is enabled on a load balancing virtual server, and authentication fails either due to invalid credentials or a Kerberos authentication failure, the NetScaler packet engine might crash.
The info received (I’ve not tested it myself but will) is that if you perform just one (1) 401 basic authentication and then the NetScaler engine crashes… so beware and upgrade to 71.6 instead!
Read more of the bug fixes in 71.6 here.
Cheers!
//Richard
#Citrix #XenDesktop Monitoring: Desktop Availability – #EGinnovations #HP #BAC
Ok, this was an interesting blog post from Miguel Contreras. First of all I’d like to thank you Miguel for this post!
You can read the blog post here prior to reading my ramblings… 😉
XenDesktop Monitoring: Desktop Availability
The whole blog post message hits a spot that I know many of our EnvokeIT customers are looking for: AN E2E (END-TO-END) MONITORING CAPABILITY!
Citrix has great products and they work from a technical point of view, but I think that most part of the time development and evolvement of the products goes to fast so that the product teams doesn’t have time to synchronise how well they work together or what the service provider will need cross-products in the stack to deliver a managed IT service!
This blog post really proves it as well… Miguel has developed a powershell script that he schedules to run so that he could see in the morning if he could go to work or if everything is ok with his desktop service (or Windows as a Service (WaaS) as Citrix now talks about this type of service). And is that the way to go? I’m still looking for this E2E monitoring solution from Citrix that can provide real and good facts about how the overall WaaS service performs. Is the NetScaler VIP up, StoreFront, AppController, PVS/MCS, XenServer, the VM, File Server that hosts profiles etc. It’s only if yo get this full picture and fact that you can say that the service WaaS is available. It doesn’t matter if the desktop is running if the AGEE vip is down and he/she cannot reach it… or?
If Citrix isn’t getting into the monitoring business then please guide your customers to who of the partners that does the job, for instance EGinnovations, HP BAC etc.
Yeah yeah… my ramblings are over for tonight and this was not my first complaint about this “service readiness” stamp I’d like to see on enterprise products…
But still = I think no one else right now does the WaaS-job like Citrix!! But they can always improve like all of us! 😉
Cheers!
//Richard
#Citrix #XenClient – Securing External-Facing XenClient Synchronizers with #NetScaler
Ok, an interesting blog post for you out there that are thinking of or already are using XenClient!
One of the key value propositions of XenClient is the remote image and device management capabilities of XenClient Synchronizer– the management server for XenClient devices. Synchronizer enables customers to centrally create, manage and update images for delivery to endpoints where the image executes locally. Synchronizer also enables administrators to specify client side policies and for users to back up their images.
A key use case for these capabilities is centralized image management for mobile users. A common question customers pose when dealing with the issue of mobile users that travel or those that are not located in the office is: what is the best way to expose the Synchronizer to the public Internet? Our response to date has been to offer three options:
Option A: Port Forwarding or forward requests (port 443) from the edge (firewall) to the Synchronizer.
Option B: Put the Synchronizer in the DMZ.
Continue reading here.
//Richard
#Citrix third quarter financial report
Have a look at Citrix 3rd quarter financial report!
//Richard
90% of enterprises will bypass broad-scale deployment of Windows 8
This picture/slide is so spot on! I couldn’t agree more! Great work Gartner!
I don’t think that Windows 8 will be adopted on a broader scale… it’s the new “Vista”. Win7 will and is being rolled out and will stay there for a long time as the new “XP”!
Thanks Charlie Isaacs for the picture!
//Richard
The IT Melting Pot! 