Archive
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
#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
#XenDesktop 7.1 Service Template Tech Preview for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager – #SCVMM
This is interesting! Really good and can’t wait to try it out!
Introduction
Let’s face it, installing distributed, enterprise-class virtual desktop and server based computing infrastructure is time consuming and complex. The infrastructure consists of many components that are installed on individual servers and then configured to work together. Traditionally this has largely been a manual, error prone process.
The Citrix XenDesktop 7.1 Service Template for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) leverages the rich automation capabilities available in Microsoft’s private cloud offering to significantly streamline and simplify the installation experience. The XenDesktop 7.1 Service Template enables rapid deployment of virtual app and desktop infrastructure on Microsoft System Center 2012 private clouds. This Tech Preview is available now and includes the latest 7.1 version of XenDesktop that supports Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager.
Key Benefits:
- Rapid Deployment – A fully configured XenDesktop 7.1 deployment that adheres to Citrix best practices is automatically installed in about an hour; a manual installation can take a day or more.
- Reduction of human errors and the unwanted consequences – IT administrators answer 9 questions about the XenDesktop deployment, including the VM Network to use, the domain to join, the SQL server used to host the database, the SCVMM server to host the desktops, and the administrative service accounts to connect to each of these resources. Once this information is entered, the Service Template automation installs the XenDesktop infrastructure the same way, every time, ensuring consistency and correctness.
- Reduction in cost of IT Operations – XenDesktop infrastructure consistently configured with automation is less costly to support because the configuration adheres to best practice standards.
- Free highly skilled and knowledgeable staff from repeatable and mundane tasks – A Citrix administrator’s time is better spent focused on ensuring that users get access to the applications they need, rather than lengthy production installation tasks.
- Simplified Eval to Retail Conversion – Windows Server 2012 and later, as well as XenDesktop 7.1, support conversion of evaluation product keys to retail keys. This means that a successful POC deployment of the XenDesktop 7.1 Service Template is easily converted to a fully supported and properly configured production deployment.
- Easy Scale-Out for greater capacity – SCVMM Service Templates support a scale-out model to increase user capacity. For example, as user demand increases additional XenDesktop Controllers and StoreFront servers are easily added with a few clicks and are automatically joined to the XenDesktop site.
The XenDesktop Service Templates were developed and tested with the support of our friends and partners at Dell, who, in support of the release of XenDesktop 7.1 and the Service Template technical preview, are expected to launch new and innovative solutions that include these and other automation capabilities this quarter. These solutions are based on the Dell DVS Enterprise for Citrix XenDesktop solutions.
Simplification of Distributed Deployments
The XenDesktop 7.1 in-box installation wizard is a fantastic user experience that automatically installs all the required prerequisites and XenDesktop components in under 30 minutes. The result is a fully installed XenDesktop deployment, all on a single server, that is excellent for POCs and product evaluations. The installation and configuration challenges occur when you want to install XenDesktop in production, with enterprise-class scalability, distributed across multiple servers.
Manual Installation Steps
The IT Melting Pot! 