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See how Citrix XenDesktop for Linux looks – #Citrix, #XenDesktop, #Linux, #EnvokeIT, #BYOD, #DaaS
This is one of the coolest things a part from the Workspace Cloud service that Citrix is working on. I’ve had the pleassure of trying this out and we at EnvokeIT have been doing a lot of tests of this Linux VDA tech preview.
Isn’t it great that both Microsoft and Citrix now seem to love Linux 🙂 (and yes, I manipulated these images so it’s not an official Citrix statement!)
So this little blog post is just going to show of the capabilities and how nicely this integrates with the Citrix XenDesktop architecture. First of all I’d like to say thanks to my colleagues Björn Bekkouche and Peter Smali for letting me use their lab environment!
Before we get into showing how it works and looks I must just highlight that if you have any questions about how we can assist you to deliver Linux-based Terminal Servers or VDI’s to remote users in a secure and optimal just contact us at EnvokeIT here or pop me an email: richard at envokeit.com.
This is great for all of you with Developers on Linux! Have them code from anywhere in a secure manner! They can run their Linux VDA in your datacenter, connect to it from an Receiver compliant device and code from them and you have your intellectual property secured internally instead of having them checking out Git repositories to their local devices etc.!
So what is XenDesktop for Linux? Well, to answer that really simple I assume that you have some basic knowledge of the Citrix XenDesktop architecture.. if you don’t then please read up on that a little before continue reading, one really good contribution to bulding your architecture is described in this Citrix Virtual Desktop Handbook or this Citrix XenDesktop – Blueprint. These contains a lot of valuable information that you shall think of and how to configure the environment to fulfill you use cases.
But overall think of the XenDesktop architecture of something like the following pictures (click to enlarge them). The first one shows the new model where we could run and take care of the VDA’s ourselves on-premise but leverage the Workspace Cloud service from Citrix so that we don’t anymore have to bother about the XenDesktop infrastructure components and the life-cycle management etc. of those. The second one is the more overall traditional architecture overview that you’d see of the different layers.
And as you see above this details the standard architecture wher you would have your Server or Desktop VDA’s in the resource layer hosting the desktops for your users to connect to, but they have all been Windows-based up until now!
Now with the Tech Preview we can actually install the Linux-based VDA on a Red Hat or Suse machine and access that through the SAME Delivery Controllers and StoreFront stores that also manage our Windows-based VDA’s.
And this is awesome! 🙂 We can leverage the already existing Windows-based architecture to just “hook in” our Linux-desktops as well and get users to conect through Receiver for Web, Receiver and even through the NetScalers if you need (works like a charm!!).
So as you can see here we have a nice little landing page for our entry points that are running different versions and access different environments etc.
So we have Peters entry point running one NetScaler version and theme: Read more…
Synergy 2015 – A condensed recap of everything you need to know – via @gkuruvilla, #Citrix, #CitrixSynergy
This is a great summary recap that George Kuruvill has done of Citrix Synergy 2015! Great work and enjoy this blog post!
For those of you who were not able to attend Citrix Synergy this year & dont have the time to sit through the key note recordings, I decided to put together a condensed version of some of the key announcements. So here goes!
Citrix Workspace Cloud
- Citrix hosted control plane that enables customers to deliver a comprehensive mobile workspace to end users.
- Gives customers the flexibility to host workloads on premises, in public or private clouds.
- Control plane also provides end to end monitoring of user connections.
- Evergreen infrastructure since Citrix maintains all core infrastructure components.
- Workspace Cloud Connector installed on premises on a Win 2k12 server that establishes SSL communication between control plane and customer environment. Used to talk to infrastructure components like Active Directory and hypervisors hosting workload
I wrote a blog on CWC and the value proposition a month back that you can find here.
SYN 217 – Workspace Cloud – Technical Overview [Video]
Citrix Lifecycle Management
- Comprehensive cloud based service that can be used to design, deploy and manage both Citrix and other enterprise applications.
- Based on the ScaleXtreme technology.
- Lifecycle Management enables customers/partners to deploy infrastructure not only on premises but also public/private clouds (resource locations)
- Customers/Partners have the ability to create blueprints to automate infrastructure deployments end to end. Examples of blueprints include a XD deployment for instance where you could not only install all the XD infrastructure but also automate the installation of all supporting infrastructure like Active Directory, SQL etc.
- Vendors have the ability to create blueprints as well that can then be consumed by customers and partners alike.
- Customers/Partners also have the ability to incorporate scripts (new/existing) into the deployment.
- Once a blueprint is developed, its added to a library. Any resource within the library can then be deployed to a resource location (on premises, public/private cloud)
- Another key benefit of the Lifecycle Management technology is the ability to automate application upgrades.
XenApp/XenDesktop
- Xenapp 6.5 maintenance extended till end of 2017, EOL extended till 06/2018. Details here
- New Feature Pack for XA 6.5 (enhance storage performance, Lync support enhancements, UPM enhancements, Director “Help Desk” troubleshooting”, Storefront 3.0, Receiver.next)
- XenApp/XenDesktop 7.6 FP2 (End of Q2)
- New Receiver X1
- Lync 2013 on Mac
- Touch ID Support
- HDX with Framehawk
- Native Receiver for Linux
- Linux Apps and Desktops (Redhat and SUSE support)
- Desktop Player for Mac 2.0 (June)
- Desktop Player for Windows (Tech Preview)
SYN 233 – Whats new in XenApp and XenDesktop [Video]
SYN 319 – Tech Update for XenApp and XenDesktop [Video]
How to monitor your Internet facing service globally – #Azure, #ApplicationInsights, #Citrix, #NetScaler, #EnvokeIT
Hi again all!
It’s been quite a long time since I wrote a blog post.. I’ve just been too busy working! 🙂
But this is a really cool capability that I think that many of you will like, how often do your company or service provider have a good way of monitoring availability, performance etc. from the public Internet? And if they do then most of the time the larger service providers will build a service and install their own probes on different geographical locations and then they charge quite a lot for this service, and every time you change your application the charge you again for modifying the scripts that the probes use etc.
What I’ve tried and now think is going to be great for both smaller and larger organisations is the Azure Application Insights service. It’s really great and can assist with just this, it’s a service that microsoft provide from their locations globally where you can test your apps in Azure or course but also any web site out there on the Internet. And it doesn’t stop there, you can also use the server installer to also provide metrics from your Windows IIS server up to Azure to get more detailed statistics about the web server itself and requests etc.
Just think about how much it would take for you to setup monitoring from APAC, Americas and Europe for your NetScaler environment.. that would not be done in 10 minutes if you talk to your standard service provider. It took me 10 minutes to setup this reporting to ensure that the NetScaler is available from different locations around the world:
And this is just a simple url ping test to ensure that we get a proper 200 OK response from our EnvokeIT Lab environment that my colleague Björn have setup and modified so nicely with the X1 StoreFront look & feel.
Of course you can make a more proper test than just a url ping test like in this case, the service supports multi-step tests and also content matching etc. It’s also very easy to create one application/service that then consists of multiple locations that you want to monitor, for instance if you’re using GSLB FQDNs as well as regional to ensure that you get the full picture.
More information about what can be done you can find on the Azure Application Insights page. Read more…
The IT Melting Pot! 