Which #DaaS architecture is right? – #Azure, #RemoteApp, #Microsoft, #Citrix, #Workspace
I really feel for you Solution Architects out there that have to struggle with how to revamp your companies or customers Hosted Desktop/App services. They may be provided by a service provider today, or you do it yourself on-premise and manage them, or you’ve already taken the step to purchase it as a true DaaS/SaaS service from a public cloud provider. Today the options are many, and too many if you add all the hosting models and the technology options you have. From a business perspective you’re getting the heat to deliver something with the word “cloud” in it just because it’s hot, and management then expect that TCO is sooooo low and that you have now problems in delivering at all within a couple of weeks and you can scale up and down without any issues at all from a financial or technical perspective… 😉
Often you also don’t even have the business, security, functional or technical requirements either so you’re supposed to come with the magic solution that fits all needs! 😉
My personal view is also that some of our vendors/partners out there don’t seem to have one (1) clear strategy either (at least not officially).
Some are building and providing their own “cloud architecture” models for DaaS for partners to build on (VMware, Citrix, Microsoft etc.), and then they also are providing specific models for certain partners as well that run on top of other cloud solutions, like Citrix Service Provider (CSP) offerings on Azure or on-premise. As a partner to these companies you also are in a tough spot, are you to partner with them and deliver their technology on your infrastructure, or shall you wait until they deliver a fully working public cloud offering (like WorkSpace Services) and then add your added value on top of that? Options are many and I don’t think that Citrix has given their whole story yet, I still think that they business wise need to go where Microsoft is going by providing a DaaS service by themselves directly to customers and thereby also “cut” the partner network out because once the technology and self-service becomes to easy then what shall they add as value then? There will always be customers that wants help to onboard, operate etc. of course but this will be another type of service and many Citrix and Microsoft partners need to be become more solution focused and get away from the SME space and deliver integration and more IT management consulting skill sets instead.
But let’s get back to more technology…
I’ve been kind of waiting to get some time over to test the RemoteApp service in Azure. I personally think that this is the future and they way that many small to medium size business fairly short shall start to look at. Not all of these companies have the skill set or financials to look at building a good Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings of Windows applications internally. I’m a bit annoyed though that out of the box there isn’t any Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) offering and that it’s still just the RDS/Hosted Shared Desktop model that is provided. A real Hosted Virtual Desktop or VDI offering would be nice and a license model that goes with it from Microsoft.
There are today so many different options that companies that want to provide or consume a DaaS service can leverage today, Citrix Service Providers have all of their options in terms of technology stacks (CloudStack, CloudPlatform, CSP for Azure, App Orchestration 2.5, Microsoft System Center, Azure Pack and all options that are out there)… but which one shall/can you select? And what if you’re NOT a Citrix service provider and have a huge datacenter and haven’t already done your CAPEX investments around compute, network and storage etc..? Where do you then turn?
I think that here is where RemoteApp and a future Workplace Services offerings with Citrix on top would be great! You as a customer can turn to a partner/consultant company to get guidance and assess all your requirements and then easily be provisioned an environment that is of the “standard cloud offering” or get a customised one tailored specifically for your needs.
Like in my little demo scenario here I provisioned a fully functional RemoteApp environment that hosted all of the Microsoft Office 2013 apps that I use and also got a lot of storage at the same time… in almost no time at all!
Azure RemoteApp helps employees stay productive anywhere, and on a variety of devices – Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, or Android. Your company’s applications run on Windows Server in the Azure cloud, where they’re easier to scale and update. Users can access their applications remotely from their Internet-connected laptop, tablet, or phone. While appearing to run on the users’ local device, the applications are centralized on Azure’s protected, reliable platform.
Azure RemoteApp combines Windows application experiences with the powerful capabilities of Remote Desktop Services on Microsoft Azure – the cloud for modern business.
I also like the licensing model:
- Azure RemoteApp is priced per user and is billed on a monthly basis.
- The service is offered in two tiers: Basic and Standard. Basic is designed for lighter weight applications (e.g. for task workers). Standard is designed for information workers to run productivity applications.
- Pricing: Each service has a starting price per user that includes 40 hours of service per user. Thereafter, a per hour charge is applied for each user hour up to a capped price per user. You will not pay for any additional usage beyond the capped price in a given month.
RDS on Azure example quote:
More Azure solution pricing examples: http://blogs.technet.com/b/uspartner_ts2team/archive/2014/10/14/more-azure-solution-pricing-examples.aspx
What if you then also shall put Citrix on top of that… cost increases of course and still you’re kind of limited of being a SPLA or CSP in order to build this, or you go and ask a SPLA/CSP to provide it for you if you’re an end-customer.
But back *again* to the test-drive that I did of RemoteApp…
Official GA of Dell with Nutanix!! – #Dell, #Nutanix, #IaaS, #Web-Scale
It’s official! Finally! 😀
WEB-SCALE CONVERGED APPLIANCE
This disruptive solution integrates Dell PowerEdge servers, storage, and Nutanix software to create a scalable, simple, and easy-to-deploy, Web-scale appliance.
WHAT IS WEB-SCALE?
Web-scale is a transformative approach to buying, deploying and managing infrastructure. Pioneered by Internet companies, now available to enterprises. Benefits include:
- Predictable scale: Scale with the needs of your business, one node at a time
- Business agility: Deploy within an hour, update latest software within minutes, and shorten business processes
- Low total cost of ownership: Reduce upfront and ongoing costs by automating processes and spending less time trouble shooting
DELL XC SERIES
Meet the Dell XC Web-scale Converged Appliance – With Software by Nutanix.
FORRESTER REPORT
Forrester Research Evaluates the Web-scale Converged Appliance from Dell and Nutanix.
Read more here!
GARTNER REPORT
Why Your Legacy Storage Vendor Doesn’t Want You to Adopt Web-scale IT Infrastructure.
//Richard
Metro Availability – Nutanix site-to-site cluster! Sooo cool! – #Nutanix, #EnvokeIT
This is a really cool feature, I know many companies right now that are thinking about refreshing their platform (computer, network and storage) solution(s) and datacenter strategy. Most have dual datacenters today and would like to simplify the setup and ensure that they don’t have to handle two private clouds and manually create disaster recovery processes and technical solutions for ensuring that they can ensure high availability of their applications running on top of the IaaS solution.
This is where this new feature from Nutanix comes into play, now you can get data protection and mirroring of your data across two or more sites built into the product. Think about it, you can ensure your application availability in the event of downtime (planned or unplanned). Really cool!! 🙂
Introducing Metro Availability
Business-critical applications demand continuous data availability. This means that access to applications and data must be preserved even during a datacenter outage or planned maintenance event. Many IT teams use metro area networks to maintain connectivity between datacenters so that if one site goes down the other location can run all applications and services with minimal disruption. To keep the applications running, however, requires immediate access to all data.
Nutanix is the first hyper-converged infrastructure vendor to deliver continuous data protection across multiple datacenters. Using synchronous mirroring, Metro Availability stretches datastores for virtual machine clusters across two or more sites located up to 400km apart. All functionality is natively integrated into Nutanix software, and supported across all Nutanix platforms with no hardware changes. Enterprise IT teams benefit from improved business operations by maintaining application availability during planned and unplanned site downtime.
Virtualization teams can now non-disruptively migrate virtual machines between sites during planned maintenance events, providing continuous data protection with zero recovery point objective (RPO) and a near zero recovery time objective (RTO). Metro Availability is deployed within minutes and managed directly from Nutanix Prism UI, eliminating any need for additional management consoles.
- More Flexibility – Only Nutanix enables customers to deploy different configurations for primary and secondary sites, and support one-to-many and many-to-one topologies. Customers are no longer forced to have identical platforms and hardware configurations at each site
- VM Awareness – Individual VMs can be mirrored across sites using Metro Availability, giving administrators unparalleled flexibility in configuring multi-site deployments and improving overall system efficiency
- 2X Greater Distances Between Sites – Nutanix Metro Availability supports single datastores stretched up to 400km – twice what current systems support today
Metro Availability enhances and extends the already rich set of integrated data protection and high availability capabilities in the Nutanix solution, catering to the diverse needs of enterprise customers.
Official release not you can find here!
And contact EnvokeIT if you want more information on how this can provide value to you!
//Richard
Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2015 – #Nutanix, #WebScale, #Dell, #EnvokeIT, #Gartner
As usual it’s very interesting when Gartner takes a look at the trends for the coming year. I must say that I agree with many of them, one of the trends is very close to my heart and what I think should have been on the agenda of most CIO’s prior to 2015, and this is: Web-Scale IT.
Why haven’t more enterprise and solution architects been looking earlier at how to simplify the delivery of the “commodity” service that IaaS should be in todays IT world. Yes I know that most enterprises have a “legacy” environment that is hard to just transform, they have a service delivery organisation with certain competences and are being bombarded by salesmen from the older legacy providers that this new way is scary (up until they themselves come up with a story on web-scale of course). But it’s time to wake up and look at how you can change your Compute, Network and Storage components to reduce complexity, increase flexibility/agility, focus on core business (apps and services on top) and also reduce your TCO.
One way is of course to move to the cloud and let someone else bother about this, but I yet don’t see that the larger enterprises are looking at this and there is a hesitation though most haven’t gotten to the point of understanding the TCO model and how to compare their As-Is costs to the cost that they get from the costing tools of Azure, Amazon etc. Why is this? My view is that most don’t have a clear understanding of their own As-Is TCO, they understand how much a server costs, and storage costs, but not the TCO when it comes to facility/datacenter costs, power & cooling, HW costs, support and operational costs, license costs and the overview of that in a TCO model they can understand or compare with “the cloud”.
Ok, as usual I’m getting a bit sidetracked but I love this topic and I must encourage you to contact EnvokeIT if you need help to understand the Web-Scale IT concept and how it can add value to you and your business. We work with Nutanix and Dell and can assist in assessing your existing As-Is solution and forming the To-Be target architecture and the strategy to get there based on your requirements and needs. Of course we’re not locked into Dell or Nutanix and have experience within Azure and other public cloud providers as well as other hardware vendor solutions like HP, NetApp etc.
If you like to see a really cool solution that is coming then have a look at my previous post including a short and cool video: Dell + Nutanix = awesome!
Here we have the top 10 trends for 2015 that Gartner have identified:
Analysts Examine Top Industry Trends at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2014, October 5-9 in Orlando
Gartner, Inc. today highlighted the top 10 technology trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2015. Analysts presented their findings during the sold out Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which is taking place here through Thursday.
Gartner defines a strategic technology trend as one with the potential for significant impact on the organization in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to the business, end users or IT, the need for a major investment, or the risk of being late to adopt. These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives.
Read more…
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing – #ShareFile, #Citrix, #EMC, #Box, #Microsoft
It’s not new but it’s something that I discussed the other day with a customer; who is the market leader when it comes to “corporate dropbox” solutions for enterprises? Gartner did update the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing services/solutions and it’s a good read I must say.
You know I am a Citrix fan and a like their story and think that they from an overall virtual workplace offerings are far superior to the other players if you look across the stack from providing “legacy” services like Windows Apps and Desktop, Enterprise Mobility Management capabilities and all the network capabilities to provide the end-to-end service delivery. So it’s really nice to see that they are picking up in the ability to execute and are competing with EMC in the Leaders box!
I just hope that Citrix can stay int he lead and ensure that they price and capacity wise stay in synch with the up comers that are starting to offer really large storage capacity as a part of their cloud offerings. I still see that the capabilities and features of ShareFile are really great, and in some aspects others like Box, Microsoft and others are coming with nice features as well. So let’s see who will rule this market, but currently I think that ShareFile is a really strong player for enterprises but Microsoft will continue to grow and I just wish they add the additional features around security etc that enterprises often require so they can go into the bigger companies as well.
Source: Gartner (July 2014)
Market Definition/Description
This document was revised on 14 July 2014. The document you are viewing is the corrected version. For more information, see the Corrections page on gartner.com.
EFSS refers to a range of on-premises or cloud-based capabilities that enable individuals to synchronize and share documents, photos, videos and files across multiple devices, such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. File sharing can be within the organization, as well as externally (e.g., with partners and customers) or on a mobile device as data sharing among apps. Security and collaboration support are critical capabilities of EFSS to address enterprise priorities.
Beyond file synchronization, sharing and access, EFSS offerings may include different levels of support for:
- Mobility, with native apps for a variety of mobile smartphones, tablets, notebooks and desktops, as well as Web browser support.
- Security, for protection of data on the device, in transit and in cloud services (or servers), such as password protection, remote wipe, data encryption, data loss prevention, digital rights management (DRM), access tracking and reporting. Mature products ensure that files leaving the sharing location are DRM-encrypted and only readable by those authorized to access the data. Audit and compliance support are also present in complete products.
- Administration and management, including integration with an Active Directory and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) policy enforcement.
- Back-end server integration, e.g., with SharePoint and other corporate platforms. Integration is achieved through connectors (e.g., based on the Content Management Interoperability Services [CMIS] standard and APIs).
- Content manipulation, such as file editing, PDF annotations and note taking.
- Collaboration, such as cooperative editing on a shared document using change tracking and comments; and document-based workflow process support.
- Simplicity and usability, with optimized UIs and interactions, such as file drag and drop and file open in applications.
- Storage, i.e., cloud-based EFSS services often include cloud storage as part of the bundle to implement the EFSS repository. Software EFSS products, instead, may integrate with repositories on-premises or be implemented with a separate repository on-site.
Typical architectures for EFSS offerings are:
- Cloud: Corporate files are accessed via mobile devices, or shared and are stored in the provider’s cloud. Organizations that want to replace the personal cloud services adopted by employees with an enterprise-class alternative under IT control, while preserving the user experience and enhancing mobile collaboration, prefer the cloud method.
- On-premises: The remote access, synchronization and sharing component is deployed on-premises and integrates with corporate data repositories, without file replicas. This method is preferred by organizations under strict regulations about data storage.
- Hybrid: The user and device authentication, security and search mechanisms are implemented in the provider’s cloud. Files and documents are kept in their original location, or can be in third-party clouds. Organizations that want to simplify mobile users’ access to corporate data through the cloud, without creating data replicas in someone else’s cloud, prefer the hybrid method.
There are two types of EFSS offerings:
- Destinations — Stand-alone products with file sync and share as a core capability, which represents a new purchase for an organization.
- Extensions — File sync and share capabilities added, and wrapped around established products or applications — e.g., for collaboration, content management or storage. Organizations can use extensions as part of the broader platform (see “Destinations and Wraparounds Will Reshape the Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing Market”).
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Dell + Nutanix = awesome! – #Nutanix, #Dell, #EnvokeIT
Hi all,
It’s been a while since I posted something… so the blog backlog is huge right now but I’ll try to finalise all of the items I have prepared soon when time allows!
But this is a really cool thing that I think that many don’t understand the capabilities of! Dell will now provide the awesome Nutanix distributed file system on their XC series!
You all know much I already like Nutanix and the the way that it “just works”! Think about it for a while, it’s so easy just to build a platform that you can scale and manage in such a simple manner. It’s also like a match in heaven for the Hyper-V Failover cluster and VMM world with storage presented over SMB3.. so easy to setup, so simple to manage, and what a performance and scalable solution!
If you have any thoughts, questions or simply just want to learn more about Nutanix or Dell then contact us at EnvokeIT, we know how this works and can help you to simplify and modernise your IaaS service in a true web-scale way!
//Richard
Citrix releases Linux based XenDesktop VDA – #Citrix, #Linux, #XenDesktop
This is really cool! 😀
Finally there is something totally new released from Citrix, and I must say that there must be many enterprises out there that will like this new addition to Citrix XenDesktop.
If everything is based on standard ICA/HDX and full support through the whole of the Citrix end-to-end offering with NetScaler and integration with the Windows XenDesktop site/controller this will be really neat!
Citrix Offers Technology Preview of Linux Virtual Apps and Desktops Delivered from XenApp and XenDesktop
Customers Can Register Immediately to Request Exclusive Early Access to Test and Provide Feedback on the Citrix Linux VDA Project
SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Citrix today announced a limited technology preview of virtualized Linux apps and desktops that integrates with XenApp and XenDesktop and extends the FlexCast Management Architecture (FMA) to enable additional use cases in industries such as automotive, manufacturing, oil and gas and financial services. When used with Citrix HDX, the company’s market-leading user experience technology, customers will get unmatched performance and bandwidth efficiency for people accessing Linux desktops from any device, over any network. In the future, the HDX technology for hosted Linux apps will continue to evolve to enable even the most demanding GPU-based graphics applications. People interested in participating in the Citrix Linux Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) Tech Preview to test and provide feedback on this project may submit an application athttp://now.citrix.com/LinuxPreview.
With this new Linux support, customers can simply deploy the Citrix VDA on each server or desktop hosted in the data center. Administrators can use a single configuration and monitoring console for their Linux apps and their Windows apps to have a single view to deliver virtual apps to people such as engineers, designers, scientists and developers.
Many of the requirements around Linux applications relate to mission-critical research and development work that includes chip design, high-performance computing projects, and numerical computation done in financial and scientific modeling, big data analysis, and engineering tools. In addition, Citrixcustomers are asking for virtual desktop support for specialized 3D applications built exclusively for Linux, particularly in the oil and gas industry, manufacturing, and digital media and entertainment industries. These customers need to offer secure, global access to employees using a wide variety of mobile and desktop devices, while maintaining centralized control of business-critical intellectual property.
Availability
Citrix is currently taking applications to participate in the Linux VDA Tech Preview at http://now.citrix.com/LinuxPreview. The Tech Preview program offers a unique look into the development and innovation process at Citrix, and does not in any way represent a commitment to release, support or productize this technology.
Azure ExpressRoute is a really cool and important feature – #Microsoft, #Azure, #ExpressRoute
Everyone talks about the “cloud” and how you can leverage all the benefits or a public, private or hybrid cloud model. And one challenge and huge risks that enterprises see with moving into a public cloud like Azure is the dependency to the public Internet.
Is the connection secure, stable, available and how can you determine that I have the connectivity between my on-premise stuff and Azure..?
It’s here where I think that Microsoft really has made a HUGE step towards getting more traction with the larger enterprises with the new ExpressRoute feature! Now you can get your own dedicated connection to Azure through it’s partner network of service providers like AT&T and Verizon etc.!
Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute lets you create private connections between Azure datacenters and infrastructure that’s on your premises or in a co-location environment. With ExpressRoute, you can establish connections to Azure at an ExpressRoute partner co-location facility or directly connect to Azure from your existing WAN network (such as a MPLS VPN provided by a Network Service Provider). Read more…
#Hyper-V 2012 R2 Network Architectures Series (Part 1 of 7) – Introduction
This is a great blog post series! Good job Cristian Edwards!
Hi Virtualization gurus,
Since 6 months now, I’ve been working on the internal readiness about Hyper-V Networking in 2012 R2 and all the options and functionalities that exists and how to make them work together and I realize that a common question in our team or from our customers is what are the best practices or the best approaches when defining the Hyper-V Network Architectures of your Private Cloud or your Virtualization farm. Hence I decided to write this series of posts that I think they might be helpful at least to do the brainstorm to find the best approach for every particular scenario. The reality is that each environment is different and use different hardware, but at least I can help you identify 5 common scenarios on how to squeeze the performance of your hardware.
I want to make clear that there is no just one right answer or configuration and your hardware can help you determine the best configuration for a robust, reliable and performer Hyper-V Network Architecture. Please note that I will do some personal recommendation based on my experience. These recommendations might or might not be the official – generic recommendations from Microsoft, so please call you support contact in case of any doubt.
The series will contain these post:
1. Hyper-V 2012 R2 Network Architectures Series (Part 1 of 7 ) – Introduction (This Post)
5. Hyper-V 2012 R2 Network Architectures Series (Part 5 of 7) – Converged Networks using Dynamic QoS
6. Hyper-V 2012 R2 Network Architectures Series (Part 6 of 7 ) – Converged Network using CNAs
7. Hyper-V 2012 R2 Network Architectures Series (Part 7 of 7 ) – Conclusions and Summary
8. Hyper-V 2012 R2 Network Architectures (Part 8 of 7) – Bonus
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Nutanix Announces Global Agreement with #Dell
Wow! This is interesting! 😀
Strategic Relationship Significantly Expands Access and Distribution of Nutanix Solutions with Dell’s World-Class Hardware, Services and Marketing to Accelerate Adoption of Web-scale Converged Infrastructure in the Enterprise
SAN JOSE, CALIF. – June 24, 2014 – Nutanix, the leading provider of next-generation datacenter infrastructure solutions, today announced it has signed an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement with Dell to offer a new family of converged infrastructure appliances based on Nutanix web-scale technology. The combination of Nutanix’s groundbreaking software running on Dell’s industry-leading servers delivers a flexible, scale-out platform that brings IT simplicity to modern datacenters. The Nutanix and Dell collaboration is designed from the ground up to deliver innovative web-scale technology to enterprises of any size. The agreement also includes joint sales, marketing, support and service investments, as well as alignment of product roadmaps.
The new Dell XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances will be built with Nutanix software running on Dell PowerEdge servers, and will be available in multiple variants to meet a wide range of price and performance options. The appliances will deliver high-performance converged infrastructure ideal for powering a broad spectrum of popular enterprise use cases, including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), virtualized business applications, multi-hypervisor environments and more. Nutanix’s web-scale software runs on all popular virtualization hypervisors, including VMware vSphere™, Microsoft Hyper-V™ and open source KVM, and is uniquely able to span multiple hypervisors in the same environment. The Dell XC Series appliances are scheduled for availability in the fourth quarter of this year and will be sold by Dell sales teams and channel partners worldwide.
“Nutanix is a recognized leader in the converged infrastructure market with a software-driven offering that fits with Dell’s efforts to redefine datacenter economics and simplify IT for our customers,” said Alan Atkinson, vice president and general manager, Dell Storage. “By combining market-leading infrastructure and software technologies from both companies with Dell’s world-class go-to-market capabilities, we believe our new solutions will be positioned to be a significant player in the growing, multi-billion dollar converged infrastructure market.”
“Dell is a world-class leader in servers, storage and networking, and has established itself as a valuable IT partner for many of the world’s largest organizations,” said Dheeraj Pandey, co-founder and CEO, Nutanix. “Nutanix is teaming with Dell to accelerate our global sales growth through Dell’s vast direct and channel sales networks. In Dell, we chose a company that shares our vision of disrupting traditional datacenter infrastructures with intelligent software running on x86 hardware to power all datacenter services.” Read more…
The IT Melting Pot! 