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Posts Tagged ‘virtualisation’

#XenApp 7.5 is launching! – #Citrix, #HSD, #DaaS, #VDI

January 25, 2014 2 comments

Wow… this is really interesting and “weird” I must say…

XenApp is back! 🙂

And of course AppDNA is in there as well to simplify software/application management on this platform.

Description

New Citrix XenApp 7.5 makes it simple to deliver any Windows app to an increasingly mobile workforce, while leveraging the cost saving and elasticity of hybrid clouds and the security of mobile device management. Learn more at http://www.citrix.com/xenapp

Hear more about it in this video!

The video above was removed because of that it was accidentally published too early.. but you can find it on YouTube here:

//Richard

NutaniXpress – January 2014 – #Nutanix, #IaaS, #Virtualization, #Storage

January 22, 2014 Leave a comment

Great NutaniXpress release!!!! There is a good prediction and I must say that I’m really impressed with this company and their product!!!

Read the whole NutaniXpress January 2014 article here!

Deliver High Performance & Scalable Microsoft Exchange with NutanixWith more than 50% of Microsoft Exchange installations now virtualized, it is critical to select the right server and storage architecture to support such critical workloads. Read this solution brief to learn how the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform overcomes the challenges of legacy storage architectures and makes for an ideal solution for your Microsoft Exchange virtualization needs. Microsoft Exchange

Learn More: Microsoft Exchange Solution Brief

 

Microsoft SQL Server on Nutanix:
Best PracticesThis document makes recommendations for the design, optimization and scaling of Microsoft SQL Server deployments on Nutanix. It shows the scalability of the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform and provides detailed performance and configuration information on the scale-out capabilities of the cluster when leveraged for MSSQL deployments.
Microsoft SQL Server

Learn More: Microsoft SQL Server on Nutanix: Best Practices

  Read more…

#Nutanix Triumphs at V3 Technology Awards 2013 for Best Virtualisation Product – #IaaS

December 4, 2013 Leave a comment

This is great! A great product takes another award!!! 😉

V3 Readers Award Nutanix with Prestigious Industry Recognition in Highly Competitive Category

Nutanix also won the Best of VMworld 2013 Gold Award for Private Cloud Computing!

LONDON, December 3, 2013 – Nutanix, the leading provider of hyper-efficient, massively scalable and elegantly simple datacentre infrastructure solutions, has been awarded for its continuing innovation in optimising datacentre infrastructure at the V3 Technology Awards 2013. During a ceremony at the Waldorf Hilton Hotel, the company was awarded Best Virtualisation product, beating a host of well respected and larger, more established organisations in the virtualisation market.

V3.co.uk is a leading source of news and analysis for technology professionals, written by a team of expert IT journalists in the UK and Silicon Valley. The awards were hotly contested this year, with more than 450 entries from 150 companies.

“It’s great to see a new company like Nutanix being recognised at the V3 Technology Awards, among the industry giants. It wasn’t an easy task whittling down the hundreds of entries to create the shortlist, and then V3 readers voted in their thousands for their favourites, making this a significant achievement and a well-deserved win. Well done Nutanix!” said Madeline Bennett, Editor, V3 and The INQUIRER.

Alan Campbell, Regional Director of Western Europe at Nutanix, commented on the success: “Nutanix is a company that is constantly innovating and striving to provide the best platform for its customers, so this recognition by a highly respected publication is a testament to the hard work of our team. Virtualisation is a rapidly evolving technology which we are proud to be at the forefront of and to receive an award in the UK, a key market for us, is an honour.

As the fastest growing enterprise…

Continue reading here!

//Richard

#Gartner report – How to Choose Between #Hyper-V and #vSphere – #IaaS

November 19, 2013 Leave a comment

The constant battle between the hypervisor and orchestration of  IaaS etc. is of course continuing! But it is really fun I must say that Microsoft is getting more and more mature with it’s offerings in this space, great job!

One of the things that I tend to think most of is the cost, scalability and flexibility of the infrastructure that we build and how we build it, I often see that we tend to do what we’ve done for so many years now. We buy our SAN/NAS storage, we buy our servers but lean towards Blade servers though we think that’s the latest and coolest, and then we try to squeeze that into some sort of POD/FlexPods/UCS or whatever we like to call it to find our optimal “volume of Compute, Network and Storage” that we can scale. But is this scalable like the bigger cloud players like Google, Amazon etc.? Is this 2013 state of the art? I think that we’re just fooling ourselves a bit and build whatever we’ve done for all these years and don’t really provide the business with anything new… but that’s my view… I know what I’d look at and most of you that have read my earlier blog posts know that I love the way of scaling out and doing more like the big players using something like Nutanix and ensure that you choose the right IaaS components as a part of that stack, as well as the orchestration layer (OpenStack, System Center, CloudStack, Cloud Platform or whatever you prefer after you’ve done your homework).

Back to the topic a bit, I’d say that the hypervisor is of no importance anymore, that’s why everyone if giving it away for free or to the open source community! Vendors are after the more IaaS/PaaS orchestration layer and get into that because if they get that business then they have nested their way into your business processes, that’s where ultimately that will deliver the value as IT services in an automated way once you’ve got your business services and processes in place, and then it’s harder to make a change and they will live fat and happy on you for some years to come! 😉

Read more…

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…

SummaryMicrosoft 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.

msdesktopvirtualizationstack

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!!!

by Ruben Spruijt 

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

Performance Tuning Guidelines for #Windows Server 2012

February 11, 2013 Leave a comment

This is a whitepaper that all techies out there should read if you’re dealing with Windows Server 2012!

About This Download

This guide describes important tuning parameters and settings that you can adjust to improve the performance and energy efficiency of the Windows Server 2012 operating system. It describes each setting and its potential effect to help you make an informed decision about its relevance to your system, workload, and performance goals.

The guide is for information technology (IT) professionals and system administrators who need to tune the performance of a server that is running Windows Server 2012.

Included in this white paper:

  • Choosing and Tuning Server Hardware
  • Performance Tuning for the Networking Subsystem
  • Performance Tools for Network Workloads
  • Performance Tuning for the Storage Subsystem
  • Performance Tuning for Web Servers
  • Performance Tuning for File Servers
  • Performance Tuning for a File Server Workload (FSCT)
  • Performance Counters for SMB 3.0
  • Performance Tuning for File Server Workload (SPECsfs2008)
  • Performance Tuning for Active Directory Servers
  • Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Session Host (Formerly Terminal Server)
  • Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Virtualization Host
  • Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Gateway
  • Performance Tuning Remote Desktop Services Workload for Knowledge Workers
  • Performance Tuning for Virtualization Servers
  • Performance Tuning for SAP Sales and Distribution
  • Performance Tuning for OLTP Workloads

Download here!

//Richard

 
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