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Hosting #Citrix Desktops from the #Amazon Cloud – #AWS, #BYOD, #DaaS, #NetScaler
A good blog post by Ken Oestreich.
That’s right. Run your XenApp on AWS and NetScaler on AWS .
Those capabilities has been around for a while, and over time Citrix has been working to make set-up and configuration even easier.
Whether you are a large enterprise, smaller business, or even a service provider, deploying on the AWS cloud could yield you many more benefits and operational advantages than you could get than deploying XenApp on your own equipment.
Is it for me?
It could be. If you answer “yes” to any of the following, you may want to look more closely:
- You’re Moving infrastructure to the cloud – if you wish to leverage the cloud to host infrastructure – either for convenience, cost, capital expense avoidance, availability, or other attributes.
- You’re Cost-conscious – Amazon’s EC2 cloud often provides customers with a significant reduction in hardware, networking and/or storage costs, particularly due to the pay-as-you-go nature of EC2 capacity. This helps avoid over-provisioning, and allows for real-time matching of capacity to demand.
- You don’t have a data center – Many customers chose to avoid building on-premesis data centers altogether while remaining staunch believers in Citrix software. These are small/medium businesses require agile – and often outsourced – infrastructure
- You have modest administration/deployment knowledge – Many customers prefer not to invest in the skills needed to maintain data center hardware, but insist on retaining application administration skills. Leveraging IaaS infrastructure in the cloud is the ideal approach whereby hardware configuration and maintenance is avoided.
- You have a dynamic business that needs to quickly react to change – Businesses with significant growth curves or seasonality often over-provision infrastructure for peak use, locking-up precious fixed capital that is frequently idle.
Tools, resources, economics
The Citrix community has made available Amazon CloudFormation scripts that greatly simplify configuration, set-up and operation of large-scale XenApp instances. We also have spent hours looking at the economics of running your Citrix infrastructure on AWS. These include
We also make it easy to use products/licenses on AWS…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
WOW! – MS readies ‘Mohoro’ Windows desktop as a service – #BYOD, #DaaS – via @brianmadden
What can you say!?!? It wouldn’t surprise me a bit!! Of course Microsoft would come out with an Azure based cloud offerings of Desktops as a Service! I will follow this progress for sure, interesting and NOT so nice for quite a number of partners out there…
Summary: Microsoft is believed to be building a Windows Azure-hosted desktop virtualization service that could be available on a pay-per-use basis.
In yet another example of its growing emphasis on remaking itself as a devices and services company, Microsoft looks to be developing a pay-per-use “Windows desktop as a service” that will run on Windows Azure.
The desktop virtualization service, codenamed Mohoro, is in a very early development phase, from what I’ve heard from sources. I don’t know the final launch target, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t until the second half of 2014.
Mohoro is a town located on the island of Grande Comore in the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean. Given that members of the Microsoft India Development Center may be playing a key role in Mohoro’s development, according to my sources, the codename choice seems appropriate.
Microsoft owns the Mohoro.com and Mohoro.Net domain names.
Mohoro, like another Windows service, Windows Intune, is a product of Microsoft’s Server and Tools unit, I hear. Windows Intune is still not yet hosted on Windows Azure (as far as I know), but supposedly the plan is to move it to Azure at some point. Windows Intune already does make use of Windows Azure Active Directory as its directory and authentication service.
The same way that Windows Intune is the cloud complement to System Center, Mohoro seems to be the cloud version of Remote Desktop/Remote App.
This is like “Remote App as a hosted service,” said one of my contacts. It could be for companies who want thin clients or to run legacy apps on new PCs. Right now, companies have to have their own servers in the equation to do this, but “with Mohoro, you click a few buttons, deploy your apps, use Intune to push out configuration to all of your company’s devices, and you’re done,” my contact added.
Microsoft currently offers multiple ways for users to access their Windows desktops remotely via different virtualization technologies and products.
The aforementioned Remote App/Remote Desktop allows Windows users to connect to a remote Windows PC and access resources from it. On the Windows RT front, given that operating system’s restrictions on use of almost any existing Win32 applications, Remote Desktop provides a way for users to continue to use apps they already have on new hardware like the Microsoft Surface RT. Licensing of Remote Desktop and Remote Desktop Services is complex, however, and requires access to server infrastructure on the back-end.
Currently, it is not possible under Microsoft’s licensing terms to run Windows client in virtual machines hosted on Windows Azure. (The new Azure VMs do allow…
Continue to read this great blog post by Mary Jo Foley here!
//Richard
VDI Smackdown: Head-to-head analysis of Citrix XenDesktop, Microsoft etc… via @rpruijt
Great work!!!! 🙂 Continue reading!!!
Are you looking for an independent overview of desktop virtualization solutions and curious about the different strategy questions? Do you want detailed information about the features and functions each desktop virtualization vendor is offering!? If so the VDI Smackdown you definitely must read!
In the current market there is an increasing demand for unbiased information about desktop virtualization solutions. This white paper is focused on solutions that are anticipated to have an important role in desktop virtualization deployments. An overview of available features of each solution has been created to allow an understanding and comparison of capabilities.
The latest solutions included in the feature matrix are: Citrix XenDesktop 5.6FP1, Citrix VDI-in-a-Box 5.2, Dell vWorkspace 7.6, Microsoft RDVH Windows8/Server 2012 and VMware View 5.2; The English whitepaper can be downloaded here. The Japanese version will be available as soon as possible.
Empowering the end-user by giving access to Windows, Web and Mobile applications so he can access data and information systems from both private and public datacenters regardless of the device or location is the ultimate strategic objective.
The delivery of the classic (Windows) desktop interface can be divided in two segments:
- the classic desktop and laptop, running Windows, Linux or Mac OS X;
- the virtual desktop running in the datacenter or local on the classic workstation.
In essence “desktop virtualization” is the de-coupling of the desktop, operating system and the applications from the underlying endpoint or device. This kind of virtualization can be subdivided into two types:
- With the first type applications are executed remotely, server hosted, and presented at the endpoint via a remote display protocol.
- With the second type applications are executed at the endpoint, client-side and presented locally.
Making Windows, Web and Mobile applications available to the end-user, regardless of the technology being used, is an important strategic objective of an advanced IT infrastructure. The Virtual Desktop (vDesktop) is an essential component in the range of Application and Desktop delivery solutions and in essence, it provides the following functions:
- Flexibility: Detach the vDesktop from the endpoint; Several vDesktops can be used next to one another
- BYO: enables delivery of applications and desktops for BYO scenario’s;
- Access: vDesktop works independently of location, endpoint and network;
- Security: Server Hosted – VDI; data in the computing center;
- Freedom: Every user can have his own desktop with administrator privileges when needed;
- Management: Centrally managed and hardware independent;
- Legacy: It is simple to offer legacy applications on a state-of-the-art platform;
- Sustainability: Power Management, handling the necessary resources in an efficient manner
The transition to a dynamic and optimized desktop is causing many IT organizations to reevaluate traditional IT operations, deployment, delivery, packaging, support, and management methods.
Desktop virtualization is a key component in the optimized desktop. It’s important to have a Vision and Strategy around application and desktop delivery and enterprise mobility. Designing, building, managing and maintaining the desktop virtualization…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
The IT Melting Pot! 