Archive
#XenDesktop 7.1 on #Hyper-V Pilot Guide! – #Citrix
This is a great PoC guide, some thing I would have done differently in detail but overall great work!
You’ve heard of XenDesktop 7.1, experienced a demo and worked through the Reviewer’s Guide. Now where do you turn when you’re ready for a PoC, pilot and preparations for a full-scale rollout?
Here on the Citrix Readiness and Enablement Team, we’re always looking for ways to empower our customers to be successful on their projects. To this end, we’ve taken one of our most popular hands-on lab guides used to train hundreds of internal and external students and reworked it for consumption by the masses. The XenDesktop 7.1 on Hyper-V Pilot Guide can be download fromhttps://citrix.sharefile.com/d/scaa256260df4ab3b. In this guide we cover the following topics with step-by-step instructions and screenshots:
– Configuring System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Installing the Agent
– Setting Up SQL Server Mirroring for a XenDesktop site
– Setting up the XenDesktop Site
– Joining a Controller to an Existing Site
– Configuring StoreFront and Installing Certificates
– Configuring NetScaler for StoreFront Load Balancing
– Installing the VDA Software on Desktop and Server VMs
– Creating Catalogs of Machine for Desktops and Servers
– Creating Delivery Groups for Desktops and Servers
– Delivering Installed and App-V Applications
– Provisioning Services Configuration and Optimizations
– Using the XenDesktop Setup Wizard
– Setting up Remote Access with NetScaler and StoreFront
– Internal and External Connectivity Scenarios
– Load Evaluator Policies
– Monitoring with Director
– Exploring Configuration Logging
– Exploring Delegated Administration
– Working with PowerShell
And much more!
Take a look through the document and let us know your thoughts…
IMPORTANT: This guide is designed to be used as a reference for building PoC and/or pilot environments. Production environments should always be…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Windows #Azure Desktop Hosting Deployment Guide – #RDS, #BYOD – via @michael_keen
This is great! Have a look at this guide!
Hello everyone, this is Clark Nicholson from the Remote Desktop Virtualization Team. I’m writing today to let you know that we have just published the Windows Azure Desktop Hosting Deployment Guide. This document provides guidance for deploying a basic desktop hosting solution based on the Windows Azure Desktop Hosting Reference Architecture Guide. This document is intended to provide a starting point for implementing a Desktop Hosting service on Windows Azure virtual machines. A production environment will need additional deployment steps to provide advanced features such as high availability, customized desktop experience, RemoteApp collections, etc.
For more information, please see Remote Desktop Services and Windows Azure Infrastructure Services.
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Microsoft Desktop Hosting Reference Architecture Guides
Wow, these are some compelling guides that Microsoft delivered!! Have a look at them! But of course there’s always something more U want! Let Service Providers provide DaaS services based on client OS’s as well!!!
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Microsoft has released two papers related to Desktop Hosting. The first is called: “Desktop Hosting Reference Architecture Guide” and the second is called: “Windows Azure Desktop Hosting Reference Architecture Guide“. Both documents provide a blueprint for creating secure, scalable, multi-tenant desktop hosting solutions using Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager or using Windows Azure Infrastructure Services.
The documents are targeted to hosting providers which deliver desktop hosting via the Microsoft Service Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA). Desktop hosting in this case is based on Windows Server with the Windows Desktop Experience feature enabled, and not Microsoft’s client Operating Systems like Windows 7 or Windows 8.
For some reason, Microsoft still doesn’t want service providers to provide Desktops as a Service (DaaS) running on top of a Microsoft Client OS, as outlined in the “Decoding Microsoft’s VDI Licensing Arcanum” paper which virtualization.info covered in September this year.
The Desktop Hosting Reference Architecture Guide provides the following sections:
- Desktop Hosting Service Logical Architecture
- Service Layer
- Tenant Environment
- Provider Management and Perimeter Environments
- Virtualization Layer
- Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager
- Scale-Out File Server
- Physical Layer
- Servers
- Network
- Tenant On-Premises Components
- Clients
- Active Directory Domain Services
The Windows Azure Desktop Hosting Reference Architecture covers the following topics:
#Citrix #XenDesktop 7 released – #RTW, #BYOD, #HSD, #VDI
Ok, it’s here! The official release is now available for everyone!
There are tons of blog posts and materials already out there and some great features as well that comes with this new release from Citrix. If you haven’t already played with the Excalibur release and know about them I suggest that you start evaluating and testing now!
Here are some good links to have a look at:
- XenDesktop 7 Overview
- XenDesktop 7 Feature matrix
- Excalibur is XenDesktop 7: what does this mean for XenApp and XenDesktop customers?
- XenDesktop 7: Upgrade & migration paths for XenDesktop and XenApp customers
- XenDesktop 7: AppDNA and Platinum Activation
- Reference Architecture: Director and EdgeSight
- XenDesktop 7 edocs – Documentation
- XenDesktop 7 Admin Guide
- XenDesktop 7 Upgrade Guide
- XenDesktop 7 Install Guide
Enjoy! 🙂
//Richard
#VMware, #vSphere 5.1 Hardening Guide – Official Release – via @douglasabrown
Thanks Douglas for sharing this info, and thanks Mike and all contributors!!!
Hi,
I’m pleased to announce to availabilty of the official release of the vSphere 5.1 Hardening Guide. The guide is being released as an Excel spreadsheet only. This guide follows the same format as the 5.0 guide.
All reference and documentation URL’s and code samples have been updated for 5.1. The guide is available below.
Please note: The permanent home for VMware security/hardening guides is located here:http://vmware.com/go/securityguides
This guide will move to that location soon.
Also availabe is a separate document containing the Change Log for the guide. The Change Log is available below.
Thanks to everyone who contributed feedback on…
Continue reading and downloading it here!
//Richard
#Citrix #StoreFront Planning Guide
Ok, this product has caused some headache since it was released. And I must say that this guide is something that Citrix should have release a long time ago… there are so many companies out there struggling with how to deal with Web Interface being faced out and how/what to do with StoreFront!
So enjoy!
Download StoreFront Planning Guide!
//Richard
#Citrix #XenApp 6.5 Hosted Shared Desktop Sizing Example
Great Citrix blog post series from Andy Baker!
In this blog series I’m taking a look at scalability considerations for XenApp 6.5 Hosted Shared Desktops, specifically:
- How to estimate XenApp 6.5 Hosted Shared Desktop scalability
- What’s the optimal XenApp 6.5 VM specification?
- XenApp 6.5 Hosted Shared Desktop sizing example
My last post provided guidance on the optimal XenApp virtual machine specification. Now in the last post of the series, I’m going to walk through an example sizing exercise.
Scenario
Company ABC recently completed a user segmentation exercise. The following table includes 8 user groups that have been identified as good candidates for a Hosted Shared Desktop. None of these user groups requires the ability to install applications or the ability to customize their desktop beyond profile based changes. Three separate Provisioning Services images will be created due to application compatibility conflicts identified by Citrix AppDNA.
With Hosted Shared Desktops, it is important to consider the ‘Maximum Number of Concurrent Users’ column rather than the ‘Total Number of Users’ column. Sizing the environment for concurrency rather than the total number of users will help to reduce infrastructure costs without affecting performance or availability.
Sufficient redundancy should be incorporated into the sizing estimate so that a single XenApp server or virtualization host failure does not affect the total number of concurrent users that can be supported (n+1).
Company ABC wishes to use their standard hardware specification…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
UCS and XenDesktop – Best Practises guide #Cisco #UCS #XenDesktop #VXI
I must admin that the Cisco, NetApp and Citrix story around providing a great offering around a complete server hardware, storage and networking solution!
I’m currently attending the 5h SYNBCN12-614W-Platform training on XenDesktop with Cisco Unified Computing System and NetApp session here and I must say that I like the offering due to the broad capabilities of the products included in the solution.
I think that one of the real added values that companies will like is that you have ONE (1) support contact (Cisco) for the whole solution, then Cisco wodk with the others to solve any potential issue etc.
And while playing around here the trainer also mentioned this best practise guide, and it looks good;
Additional info about the Cisco VXI – Desktop Virtualization can be found here.
Cheers!
//Richard
Issue 23 – The XenDesktop Experience A Technical Publication for XenDesktop Customers
Ok, Citrix has again released the XenDesktop technical publication, have a look at it!
Example topics include;
- High Availability for Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp – Planning Guide
- How to Tighten the Security of Windows Desktops
- Tackling Windows Migration
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Oldie that’s worth another look…Logon Optimization Guide – XenApp/XenDesktop
Ok, it’s been around for some time. But we every now and then find a lot of implementations where the architect/SME that built the environment haven’t thought of the basics and best practises that are documented and out there for free!
Citrix Logon Optimization Guide – XenApp/XenDesktop
Have another go at reading it, just as a reference/checklist! 😉
Cheers!
//Richard
The IT Melting Pot! 