Hi all

I have had some amazing days at NVIDIA GTC 2013 where i did my presentation on how business adapt remote graphics solutions from Citrix.

The same week I did a Tech Talk webinar together with Yvonne Dresser, Sr Marketing Product Manager at Citrix HQ in Santa Clara. The topic we discussed Virtualizing 3D Professional Graphics Apps and. In this webinar you will learn how Citrix XenDesktop & XenApp can deliver remote graphics with 3D applications and how they can be virtualized in multiple layers from Servers to Desktops to Apps and how they can be delivered to any device from a PC to a tablet, phone or even a thin client.You will learn which graphic solutions from NVIDIA thats available and how the new NVIDIA GRID K1/K2 fits into these solutions from Citrix.

I covered the best practice part from the field i have experience in the years since 2008 and share this with the audience and we got 30 questions that we cover, so for me it was amazing having such a big audience attending and asking for very technical questions how to build these solutions and what the requirements are, whats available whats possible.

Source

Watch the recorded webinar here

Download the presentation here PDF format

Download the presentation here PPS format

Citrix have released this awesome whitepaper Citrix XenServer Design: Designing XenServer Network  Configurations

Original it was created back in August 2011 and now its updated to XenServer 6.1 that includes informations about LACP bounding, and networking for Storage XenMotion. Now its updated Its a MUST read if you are designing Citrix XenServer environments so go ahead make your day.. eat Xen for breakfast

A short introduction to the Whitepaper

This guide helps you understand design your XenServer networking and design a networking configuration for XenServer environments. It includes the following topics:

• Best practice information about the management interface, NIC bonding, jumbo frames, and storage networks
• High-level information about features you may want to enable as part of your networking configuration, such as the Distributed Virtual Switch solution
• The correct sequence in which to configure XenServer networking, including guidance about cabling XenServer hosts and connecting them to physical switches
• Checklists to help you gather requirements for your XenServer networking configuration

Audience

Before reading this guide, you should have a basic knowledge of networking. This guide has several audiences:

• Systems Architects. Systems architects who are designing a virtualized environment.
• Infrastructure Engineers and Network Administrators. Networking and storage professionals who configure storage or manage the Layer 2 network infrastructure in their organizations.
• Application Administrators. XenApp and XenDesktop administrators who are implementing a virtualization solution to virtualize Citrix products, IT infrastructure, or other applications they manage.

This guide assumes that you are familiar with basic XenServer concepts, including XenServer installation, XenCenter, resource pools, and the pool master.

Purpose of the Guide

This guide is meant to provide you with the best-practice information you need to design your XenServer networks.

To provide you with the foundation you need to understand the recommendations, the first half of the guide provides an explanation of XenServer networking concepts using a scenario-based approach.

The second half of the guide provides you with information to help you select between various XenServer networking options and information about the best ways to configure them.

Because this is a design guide, it generally does not provide configuration instructions except as needed to clarify concepts. As the most common way of managing XenServer and XenServer pools is through XenCenter, this guide mainly refers to XenCenter and XenCenter help, unless specified differently.

Read the full whitepaper under Source.

Source

Read the Whitepaper – here

Citrix Consulting have released a XenApp/XenDesktop Policy Planning Guide that is a must read for architects that design XenApp/XenDesktop solutions.

Overview

Citrix policies provide the basis to configure and fine tune your XenDesktop and XenApp environments, allowing organizations to control connection, security and bandwidth settings based on various combinations of users, devices or connection types. Correctly defining an initial baseline policy and assigning additional policies based on security requirements and specific access scenarios can be important in delivering a high definition user experience.

This planning guide is intended to be a guideline during the decision process for creating a baseline policy and additional policies based on connection, security, device and profile considerations. While it creates a baseline policy and recommendations for policy settings, it should not be assumed to be a complete configuration, or absolutely correct for every customer situation. Architects should review the recommendations contained in this document against desired outcomes within the organization to ensure requirements are met.
When making policy decisions it is important to consider both Microsoft Windows and Citrix policies as components within both policy configurations have an impact on user experience and environment optimization. Within this planning guide a base set of windows policies that can be used to optimize XenApp and XenDesktop environments is presented. For more details on specific Windows related policies, refer to the Group Policy Settings Reference for Windows and Windows Server, specifically settings related to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

To help architects design a XenDesktop and XenApp solution based on real-world projects, organizations can refer to the Citrix Desktop Transformation Accelerator for step by step assessment, design and deployment guidance, and the XenDesktop Design Handbook for reference architectures, planning guides and best practices.

Read the full whitepaper here

Conclusion

Creating policies for XenDesktop and XenApp configurations involves a combination of Citrix and Microsoft Active Directory group policy settings. Correctly configuring a baseline policy configuration and keeping policy exceptions to a minimum allows organizations to create an environment that meets user experience and security requirements, while providing a policy structure that is easy to review and diagnose. This planning guide has provided a suggested set of policies as a starting point for a XenDesktop or XenApp configuration. It can be used as a basis for architects to customize an initial policy configuration for an organization.

Source

Download the Policy Planning Guide for XenApp, XenDesktop here

Hi All

I wanna share this great article with you that Nick Rintalan from Citrix Consulting have wrote.

Nick have wrote multiple articles about Citrix Provisioning Services if you should virtulize PVS or not.
I really enjoy Nick’s article and that he shares he’s knowledge from the field. If you are working with Citrix Provisioning Services and you havent read any of Nicks articles before then go ahead and jump in. Its a must read about PVS.

Here is some of Nicks important quote from his article: (Read the full article to get a better understanding)

• if you are running a 10 Gb network, you will have a hard time saturating your network with PVS unless you are doing thousands and thousands of streams!  And I’ve seen a lot of production PVS implementations…we only have a few customers that fall into this category.
• Other folks might say to segment the PVS traffic to alleviate issues related to PXE, DHCP or TFTP.  With proper network design and manageable broadcast domains, many of the DHCP issues can be mitigated.  And I still find many customers and partners don’t know about our swiss army knife – BDM!  Instead of dealing with “fun” PXE traffic and trying desperately to load balance TFTP, simply boot from an ISO with BDM and you’ll eliminate a lot of the networking complexity associated with PVS deployments.
• separating PVS streaming traffic is no longer a best practice for the vast majority of our deployments.
• it might make sense –security.  The separation of traffic (whether it’s at the VLAN level or physical) reduces the possibility of someone getting into that precious streaming traffic and messing with i

Source

Read the article – Is Isolating the PVS Streaming Traffic Really a Best Practise here.

Citrix have released this Performance Benchmark Report  where Citrix demonstrates how powerfull Citrix Branch Repeater is combined with XenDesktop / XenDesktop.

** Note that the results is made with Branch Repeater v. 5.7 and the current version thats out is v 6.0.5 so with latest Branch Repeater + XenDesktop 5.6 and Receiver 3.2 you should get even better results.
Enjoy /Poppelgaard

Executive Summary

Desktop virtualization has grabbed the attention of the global IT community like never before. Server and desktop virtualization let IT simultaneously offer lower costs and greater access to the employees. The Bring Your Own PC (BYOC) movement, along with technologies such as XenDesktop and XenClient provide an opportunity to use any device – even computers owned by the employee – and work on the corporate desktop from anywhere, anytime.

The convenience and cost benefits of “work-shifting”come with its own set of challenges for corporate IT—two of those being security and user-experience. A significant number of remote users access virtual services from insecure locations, such as coffee-shops, airports, hotels and homes. These internet connections often have lower speeds, higher latency, and packet loss. Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp use the HDX™ technology to ensure high definition user-experience, no matter where the user works.

HDX WAN Optimization powered by Citrix Branch Repeater and HDX SmartAccesspowered by Citrix Access Gateway are integrated into the XenDesktop solution. Using the Repeater plug-in together with the Access Gateway plug-in, mobile users enjoy accelerated, secure remoteaccess to XenDesktop and XenApp. This paper describes the enhanced experience enjoyed with this “turbocharged Citrix” environment.