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Best of NVIDIA GTC 2015

NVIDIA GTC 2015

Hi All

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After a succesfull NVIDIA GTC (gpu technology conference) in San Jose, March 2015. It was amazing all the brain gathered in one place, at NVIDIA GTC 2015, I had so many great conversations with friends, partners and there was one sentence I thought through “try to imagine what could you do for the world if we tried to build 1 thing with all this brain power in joined forces” . NVIDIA is doing amazing things and this year it was all about “Deep Learning” and “NVIDIA GRID”. Google was part of the keynote and it was very interesting seeing how far AI is evolving, Elon Musk the guy behind Tesla, Space-X was also on stage.

NVIDIA GRID was big this year and all the vendors, Lenovo, HP, Dell, Cisco, Supermicro, Citrix, Vmware and such was there. There was tonz of success stories and best practices. So amazing to learn all the best on GPU enabled application/desktop using either Citrix or VMware, this is the conference to learn from people that are early adapters, the best of the best. If you feel missed out come next year and you understand what I mean. This conference is very different compared to other conferences. This is here it all happens, all industries meet and make a fusion across GPU’s. If you missed this year GTC, I highly recommend you go to the next year GTC which takes place in April 4-8th, 2016 in Silicon Valley

I have captured some of the best moments

Great meeting Lakeside Software and seeing they had the “print” of the case study I did with Magnar Johnsen we did for Firstpoint client AIBEL.

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I meet for the first time the CEO and founder of NVIDIA Jen-Hsun Huang, he is a very inspiring person.

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Another great friend was Fred Devoir from Textron “the man in the middle” and another great friend and fellow CTP, Dane Young.

Fred Devoir had two sessions at GTC, I highly recommend you watch them both.

If you attended and could see all the sessions or you couldn’t join GTC, now all 500 sessions are available for the public. #AMAZING, thank you NVIDIA for this.

I have in this blogpost made it easy to find all the great sessions about NVIDIA GRID

Learn the best of the best about NVIDIA GRID implementations:

If you want to Watch the session I did at NVIDIA GTC click here

Click the sessions with the “blue” link and the recorded session will start.

Citrix sessions

 

Gunnar Berger, CTO from Citrix
S5872 – Worlds Collide: What Happens When VDI Meets GPU? 

Derek Thorslund, Director of Product Management, HDX, Citrix Systems
Mayunk Jain, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, Citrix Systems
S5390 – Citrix HDX 3D Virtualization: Six Years of Remoting 3D Apps

Roland Wartenberg Director Global SAP Alliance, Citrix
David Cruickshank Sr. Director, Strategy and Operations, SAP Co-Innovation Lab, SAP Labs
S5377 – Running SAP 3D Visual Enterprise Using Citrix and NVIDIA – What about Performance?

Erik Bohnhorst, SR. GRID Solution Architect from NVIDIA
Ronald Grass, SR. Systems Engineer from Citrix

S5393 – Evolution of an NVIDIA GRID™ Deployment

 

Citrix customer success stories:

Success story – Ford Motor Company

Chip Charnley, Technical Expert from Ford Motor Company
S5206 – So You Want to Deploy High Resolution Graphics Desktop Virtualization

Success story – Roger Williams University

George Thornton, VP of Engineering from Logical Front
Jim Galib IT Director from Roger Williams University
Ryan Tiebout, System Operations Manager from Rogers Williams University

S5225 – University’s Desktop Virtualization Delivers Graphics-Intense Apps on Any Device

Success story – Duke University

G Allan Johnson Charles E Putman Professor of Radiology,Physics, and Engineering from Duke University

S5558 – Publishing Medical Image Studies with NVIDIA GRID™

Success story – Georgia Institute of Technology College of Engineering

Florian Becker Sr. Director, Strategic Alliances, Lakeside Software

Didier Contis Director Technology Services, Georgia Institute of Technology College of Engineering

S5128 – Case Study: Georgia Tech Uses Citrix XenApp with NVIDIA® GRID™ to Deliver Engineering Applications

Success story – Textron

Fred Devoir Sr. Architect, Textron Inc.
Randall Siggers Solutions Architect, Textron Inc.

S5485 – Exploring Design Considerations: CAD/CAM Experiences from the Experts Using Citrix and VMware

Success story – The Kanavel Group

Garrett Taylor CIO, The Kanavel Group

S5620 – Implementing NVIDIA GRID with XenDesktop: A Technical Deep Dive


VMware sessions

Mark Margevicius Director, EUC Strategy, VMWare

S5533 – Dedicating GPUs for VDI and SBC Workloads: How the ROI and Business Value More Than Justifies the Expense

Banit Agrawal Senior Performance Engineer, VMware
Luke Wignall GRID Performance Engineering Manager, NVIDIA
Lan Vu Performance Engineer, VMware

S5385 – Benchmarking 3D workloads at scale on NVIDIA GRID with Horizon View 6 using View Planner

Jeff Weiss NVIDIA GRID SA Manager, NVIDIA
Luke Wignall GRID Performance Engineering Manager, NVIDIA

S5405 – VMware Horizon 6 and NVIDIA vGPU: Installation and Configuration Best Practices

VMware customer success stories

Success story – Jacobs Engineering

Jeff Weiss NVIDIA GRID SA Manager, NVIDIA
Randall Siggers Solutions Architect, Textron Inc.
Ali Rizvi PLM Support Analyst, Bell Helicopter

S5345 – VMware Horizon 6 View with NVIDIA GRID: A Practical Discussion of a Real-World Deployment

Success story – USC Information Sciences Institute

John Paul Walters Project Leader, USC Information Sciences Institute

S5323 – Achieving Near-Native GPU Performance in the Cloud
Download PDF of presentation

Success story – HDR Inc

Clint Pearson IT Infrastructure Systems Lead, HDR, Inc.
Jeremy Korell IT Infrastructure Systems Lead, HDR, Inc.

S5414 – GPU-Enabled VDI and Rendering at Architecture and Engineering Firm HDR

Vendors (HP, Cisco, Lakeside Software)

System Integrators of NVIDIA GRID


 System Integrators success stories of NVIDIA GRID

Success story – Poppelgaard.com

Thomas Poppelgaard, Technology Evangelist from Poppelgaard.com

S5445 – Building the Best User Experience with Citrix XenApp & NVIDIA® GRID™

Success story – PQR

Jits Langedijk, Senior Consultant from PQR

S5265 – Customer Success Story: Desktop Virtualization with NVIDIA GRID for a Large Construction Company

Success story – IMSCAD

Adam Jull CEO, IMSCAD

S5219 – Delivering Production Deployments Using Virtualization and NVIDIA GRID™

Success story – Wipro

Michael Harwood Citrix Architect, Wipro Limited

S5283 – Remote Visualization in Healthcare


Panel discussions

Aivars Apsite, Technology Strategist, Metro Health
Cedric Courteix, Partner Alliance Architect, VMware
Clint Pearson, IT Systems Lead, HDR Inc.
John Meza, Performance Engineering Team Lead, Esri

S5542 – Scaling Out Virtual GPU with NVIDIA GRID and VMware Horizon


NVIDIA sessions about Citrix & VMware

Jason Southern Senior Solution Architect, NVIDIA

S5213 – Effective Planning for Density and Performance in a Virtual Desktop Deployment with NVIDIA GRID™

Manvender Rawat GRID Applied Engineer, NVIDIA
Jason K Lee GRID Applied Engineer, NVIDIA

S5560 – Scalability Testing for Virtualized GPU Environments

Citrix CloudBridge 7.0

Citrix have released a new version of Citrix CloudBridge 7.0

CloudBridge release 7.0 is compatible with partner appliances running Branch Repeater release 5.5 or later, Branch Repeater with Windows Server release 2.0 or later, and CloudBridge release 6.2 or later. It can be used in a mixed environment that includes appliances running these earlier releases. Enhancements in this release include video caching and a redesigned administrative interface. Additionally, other key enhancements include Microsoft Hyper-V 2012, support for CloudBridge VPX, and CloudBridge Plugin for Windows 8. Citrix recommends that you upgrade your appliance to this release if you need any of these features on the appliance.

Enhancements in Citrix CloudBridge 7.0

New Improved User Interface

The CloudBridge user interface has been changed to provide a better user experience, with easier navigation, less clutter, and other usability improvements. The Dashboard page and Monitoring pages are reorganized for a better visual experience. The main navigation menu items are organized as tabs on the header, and the navigation options are reorganized. The header provides bread crumbs for tracing your navigation path.

Video Caching

Release 7.0 adds a video caching feature to CloudBridge 600 and CloudBridge 2000 appliances. Video Caching improves the user experience for videos that are viewed more than once, especially on slower links, although first time viewing remains without benefit based on WAN speed. Due to video caching feature, video streams when re-watched will be delivered at the LAN speed from a CloudBridge device. Hence, significantly improving the overall viewing experience and reducing WAN usage for subsequent viewers.

Limitations:

  • Only Inline deployment mode is supported.
  • Support for CLI and SNMP are not available.
  • This feature is supported only on 001 and 002 models of CloudBridge 600 platforms.

CloudBridge Plug-in for Microsoft Windows 8

The CloudBridge Plug-in is now supported by the Microsoft Windows 8 operating system (32-bit and 64-bit versions of Enterprise Edition).

Support for Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 Standard and Datacenter Edition

This release supports hosting of CloudBridge VPX appliances on the Hyper-V 2012 virtualization platform.

GUI Navigation Changes

For GUI navigation changes in this release, see GUI Navigation Changes.

CloudBridge Connector on CloudBridge 4000 and 5000

Note: CloudBridge Connector is included as a Beta feature in this release.

The CloudBridge Connector feature of the Citrix CloudBridge appliance connects enterprise datacenters to external clouds and hosting environments, making the cloud a secure extension of the enterprise network. Cloud-hosted applications appear as though they are running on one contiguous enterprise network. With Citrix CloudBridge Connector, enterprises can augment their datacenters with the infinite capacity and elastic efficiency provided by cloud providers. The primary purpose of the CloudBridge Connector is to enable enterprises to move their applications to the cloud while reducing costs and the risk of application failure. In addition, the CloudBridge Connector increases network security in cloud
environments.

Also, the WAN optimization feature of the CloudBridge appliance accelerates traffic in the CloudBridge Connector, providing LAN-like performance for applications running across enterprise datacenters and clouds. You can configure CloudBridge Connector between two datacenters or between a datacenter and a Cloud.

Source

Download Citrix CloudBridge 7.0 here (Require MyCitrix ID)

Citrix XenDesktop 7

At Citrix Synergy 2013, Anaheim, CA, May. Citrix announced the availability of Citrix XenDesktop 7, the software is now available for download.

In this article i will cover whats new and how “XenApp” & “XenDesktop” merges into 1 product, XenApp is now using the Architecture XenDesktop was build around, and now Applications/Desktop gets delivered either from a Client operating system (Windows 7 or 8) or a Server operating system (Windows Server 2008R2 or Windows Server 2012)
Read more  “components in XenDesktop 7”

I have been waiting for this release to be available. Now XenApp in XenDesktop have all the cool new features such as deep compression codec “HDX 3D Pro” and higher frame rates, so your virtualized 2D/3D applications can run over strict bandwidth with high latency, before this was possible with XenDesktop HDX 3D Pro now XenApp can deliver the same, and the cool thing is XenApp is included in the delivery mechanism of XenDesktop 7. Merchandising and Provisioning Services are still alive and strong and released in a new software version. AppDNA is now included in the XenDesktop Platinum edition with a limited edition Hosted App P2V Analysis.

Components in XenDesktop 7

If you already have experience with a XenDesktop or XenApp environment, it will be helpful to you to identify the components introduced in this release and learn how they work and communicate with each other. Under the new architecture, XenDesktop and XenApp are unified, including management and delivery components, to give administrators a unified management experience.

This figure shows the key components in a typical deployment.

The core components of this release are:

Director — Director is a web-based tool that enables IT support and help desk teams to monitor an environment, troubleshoot issues before they become system-critical, and perform support tasks for end users. You can also view and interact with a user’s sessions using Microsoft Remote Assistance.

Receiver — Installed on user devices, Citrix Receiver provides users with quick, secure, self-service access to documents, applications, and desktops from any of the user’s devices including smartphones, tablets, and PCs. Receiver provides on-demand access to Windows, Web, and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications.

StoreFront — StoreFront authenticates users to sites hosting resources and manages stores of desktops and applications that users access.

Studio — Studio is the management console that enables you to configure and manage your deployment, eliminating the need for separate management consoles for managing delivery of applications and desktops. Studio provides various wizards to guide you through the process of setting up your environment, creating your workloads to host applications and desktops, and assigning applications and desktops to users.

Delivery Controller — Installed on servers in the data center, the Delivery Controller consists of services that communicate with the hypervisor to distribute applications and desktops, authenticate and manage user access, and broker connections between users and their virtual desktops and applications. The Controller manages the state of the desktops, starting and stopping them based on demand and administrative configuration. In some editions, the Controller allows you to install Profile management to manage user personalization settings in virtualized or physical Windows environments. Each site has one or more Delivery Controllers.

XenServer — XenServer is an enterprise-class virtual machine infrastructure solution that creates the foundation for delivering virtual desktops and offers advanced management features. Multiple VMs can run on XenServer, which takes advantage of the advanced virtualization features of the latest virtualization-enabled processors from Intel and AMD. For more information about XenServer, see the XenServer documentation in eDocs.

Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) — Installed on server or workstation operating systems, the VDA enables connections for desktops and apps. For Remote PC Access, install the VDA on the office PC.

Machine Creation Services (MCS) — A collection of services that work together to create virtual servers and desktops from a master image on demand, optimizing storage utilization and providing a pristine virtual machine to users every time they log on. Machine Creation Services is fully integrated and administrated in Citrix Studio.

Windows Server OS machines — VMs or physical machines based on Windows Server operating system used for delivering applications or hosted shared desktops to users.

Desktop OS machines — VMs or physical machines based on Windows Desktop operating system used for delivering personalized desktops to users, or applications from desktop operating systems.

Remote PC Access — User devices that are included on a whitelist, enabling users to access resources on their office PCs remotely, from any device running Citrix Receiver.

Additional components provide the following features:

Secure delivery — When users connect from outside the corporate firewall, this release can use Citrix NetScaler Gateway (formerly Access Gateway) technology to secure these connections with SSL. NetScaler Gateway or NetScaler VPX virtual appliance is an SSL VPN appliance that is deployed in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) to provide a single secure point of access through the corporate firewall.

WAN optimization — In deployments where virtual desktops are delivered to users at remote locations such as branch offices, Citrix CloudBridge (formerly Citrix Branch Repeater or WANScaler) technology can be employed to optimize performance. Repeaters accelerate performance across wide-area networks, so with Repeaters in the network, users in the branch office experience LAN-like performance over the WAN. CloudBridge can prioritize different parts of the user experience so that, for example, the user experience does not degrade in the branch location when a large file or print job is sent over the network. HDX WAN Optimization with CloudBridge provides tokenized compression and data deduplication, dramatically reducing bandwidth requirements and improving performance. For more information, see the Citrix CloudBridge documentation.

License versions available in XenDesktop 7

The version comes in Evaluation, VDI edition, App Edition, Enterprise Edition and Platinum Edition.

In this topic i will cover which software editions you can download, and which software components are included you can use for each XenDesktop edition.

XenDesktop 7 – Evaluation Edition

Citrix XenDesktop evaluation edition have 99 licenses included and works for 90 days.
This release includes the core components Citrix XenDesktop 7 Core and Components + Receiver + XenServer

XenDesktop 7 – VDI Edition

This release includes the core components Citrix XenDesktop 7 Core and Components + Receiver + Provisioning Services 7 + XenServer + Merchandising Server

XenDesktop 7 – App Edition

This release includes the core components Citrix XenDesktop 7 Core and Components + Receiver + Provisioning Services 7 + XenServer + Merchandising Server

XenDesktop 7 – Enterprise Edition

This release includes the core components Citrix XenDesktop 7 Core and Components + Receiver + XenClient Enterprise + Provisioning Services 7 + XenServer + Merchandising Server

XenDesktop 7 – Platinum Edition

This release includes the core components Citrix XenDesktop 7 Core and Components + Receiver + Hosted App P2V Analysis (AppDNA) + CloudBridge (Branch Repeater) VPX + XenClient Enterprise + Provisioning Services 7 + XenServer + Merchandising Server

What’s new in XenDesktop 7

  • Machine Catalog Desktops and Applications
    • Desktops — Deliver managed desktops to multiple, simultaneously connected remote users. Server OS machine and Desktop OS machine desktops provide features such as SmoothRoaming, session reliability, license consumption, Receiver and Delivery Services authentication, and Desktop Viewer. This release introduces Windows Server OS machine catalogs and desktops as a cost-effective virtualization delivery solution because they provide a significant number of remote users per server and storage resource. This release also provides Remote PC desktops that let users access resources on their office PCs remotely, from any device running Citrix Receiver.
    • Applications — Integrate XenApp publishing capabilities within a deployment. Use this feature to deliver shared hosted applications to multiple, simultaneously-connected remote users.
  • HDX enhancements
    • Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 support — Deliver a high-definition user experience on Windows 8 virtual desktops and physical machines. HDX 3D Pro has also been upgraded to support Windows 8.
    • Desktop Composition Redirection — Extend the Aero Redirection feature introduced in XenDesktop 5.5 to provide users with a more fluid Windows 7 Aero or Windows 8 desktop experience by leveraging the graphics processing unit (GPU) or integrated graphics processor (IGP) on supported Windows user devices for local DirectX graphics rendering. This feature delivers rich multimedia applications to user devices, while maintaining high scalability on the server.
    • Windows Media client-side content fetching — Enable a user device to stream multimedia files directly from the source provider on the Internet or Intranet to improve network utilization and server scalability.
    • Multicast support — Reduce bandwidth consumption when streaming live video to branch offices. Multicast support enables a single Windows Media source transmission to support multiple users.
    • Real-time multimedia transcoding — Enable audio and video streaming to mobile devices, improving the way that Windows Media content is delivered. Host-based transcoding provides a seamless user experience, even in extreme network conditions. To improve server scalability, if the Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) has a supported graphics processing unit (GPU) for hardware acceleration, transcoding is done in the GPU.
    • User Datagram Protocol (UDP) audio for Server OS machines — Extend support for audio delivery over UDP/RTP to Server OS machines. This feature delivers superior audio quality for real-time applications like video conferencing and streaming media, even in environments when there is packet loss or congestion.
    • Webcam video compression — Reduce bandwidth consumption to improve performance when using supported video conferencing applications.
    • HDX 3D Pro — Deliver applications with graphics processing units (GPUs) for hardware acceleration to the desktop. This includes 3D professional graphics applications based on OpenGL and DirectX.
    • Server-rendered Rich Graphics and Video — Deliver rich graphics (including Windows 8 or Windows Aero) to virtual desktop users on any client, platform, and bandwidth condition by rendering the content on the server. When users have the latest Citrix Receiver, they will also notice improved performance for server-rendered video.
    • Improved Flash Redirection — Determine when to redirect Adobe Flash content to the user device for local rendering based on the user’s network type and environment. Flash Redirection helps reduce server and network load, resulting in greater scalability while ensuring a high-definition user experience.
  • New installer — Use a single, streamlined installer to guide you through installing the core components (Delivery Controller, Studio, Director, StoreFront, and License Server) and VDAs.
  • Profile management — By default, Citrix Profile management 5.0 is installed silently on master images when you install the Virtual Delivery Agent, but you do not have to use Profile management as a profile solution.
  • Configuration Logging — Capture Site configuration changes and administrative activities to a Configuration Logging Database. You can view the log in Studio using a variety of filters and generate HTML and CSV reports.
  • Director — Monitor and troubleshoot deployments using Director’s redesigned user interface with integrated EdgeSight features:
    • A new help desk view offers an improved troubleshooting experience for help desk administrators, allowing user, machine, and application issues to be resolved quickly.
    • Full administrators have access to other views, including a newly designed Dashboard to provide a graphical summary of your deployment in a central location, and a Trends page to provide improved, in-depth, graphical monitoring and troubleshooting of the entire deployment with various time ranges.
    • EdgeSight performance management provides the historical retention and trend reporting. With historical retention of data versus the real-time assessment, administrators are able to create Trend reports, including capacity and health trending.
    • EdgeSight network analysis leverages HDX Insight to provide an application and desktop contextual view of the network. With this feature, Director provides advanced analytics of ICA traffic in their XenDesktop deployment.
  • Delegated Administration — Group objects into administrative scopes. This feature provides an enterprise-class administration model with role-based access control, custom roles with configurable permissions, and fine-grained, object-based control.
  • StoreFront replaces Web Interface — Create centralized enterprise stores to deliver desktops, applications, and other resources to users on any device. This feature provides authentication and resource delivery services for Citrix Receiver.
  • Delivery Controller auto-update — Automatically notify Virtual Delivery Agents (VDAs) when Controllers are added to and removed from the Site. This feature helps prevent VDA rejection of sessions that are launched by unknown Controllers, and VDA startup delays or errors caused by invalid Controller information. For information about how to preserve the CNAME functionality, see CTX137960.
  • Client Folder Redirection — Change the way client-side files are accessible on the host-side session. When you enable only client drive mapping on the server, client-side full volumes are automatically mapped to host drive letters. When you enable client folder redirection on the server and then the user configures it on the user device, only the portion of the local volume that is specified by the user is redirected.
  • Improved Virtual Desktop Access Control Settings – Control user access to both Server OS Machines and Desktop OS Machines in a simple and unified way with a new, streamlined group of security settings.
  • Improved and integrated error reporting — Studio error reporting links directly to the Citrix Support website. When users encounter an error situation, choosing the Get Advice option submits information about the error to the Citrix website. The information is analyzed and the user is redirected to a Website containing remedial advice.
  • StoreFront enhancements
    • Desktop Appliance sites — Access Desktop Appliance sites through a website on the StoreFront store. The site is created automatically when a store is created. If, for example, the store has a path of path/Citrix/Store, the Desktop Appliance site path ispath/Citrix/StoreDesktopAppliance. Users can restart their virtual machine-hosted desktops on Desktop Appliance sites.
    • Database as a service — Write user subscription data for each store to the local disk on the StoreFront server by using the new subscription store service. The data is then propagated across the server group.
  • IPv6 support — Connect to clients and core components on IPv4, IPv6, or dual-stack (IPv4/IPv6) environments.
  • Personal vDisk — Personalize your virtual desktops. In addition, a dedicated storage disk is created, before logon, so that users can store their data on the desktop, including any applications they install.
  • Machine Creation Services (MCS) support for Microsoft Key Management System (KMS) activation — Each virtual machine (VM) created with MCS provides a unique activation for the Windows operating system and Office 2010, which enables the KMS system to record each VM as a separate machine.
  • Support for group policies configured in Citrix Mobility Pack — These policies for Citrix Receiver for mobile devices include Start menu redirection and removing common programs from the Start menu. For details, see Configure policies for mobility features.
  • Multi-touch support — Touch functionality is supported on multi-touch computers, including Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows 8 workstations and Windows Server 2012 for VDAs.
  • Remote PC Access — Automated administration of Remote PC Access is fully integrated into the core functionality of the XenDesktop Delivery Controller and Studio. One Remote PC machine catalog and one Remote PC Delivery Group are created automatically when you set up a Remote PC deployment; you can add more machine catalogs or Delivery Groups later using Studio. This process replaces the XML configuration file and PowerShell scripts used by Remote PC Access in XenDesktop 5.6 FP1. The current release also adds the ability to remotely access office PCs running Windows 8.
  • Support for Fast User Switching using RDP connections — This Microsoft Windows feature makes it possible for multiple users to share a desktop without closing programs or logging off existing users. Administrators can take advantage of this feature to troubleshoot problems and install updates, without interrupting tasks or programs in use by the logged on user, by initiating an RDP connection to the VDA.
  • Compatibility with AhnLab keyboard encryption used in Korea — This release is compatible with keyboard encryption that is installed on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) hosts.

Supported hypervisor

  • XenServer.
    • XenServer 6.2
    • XenServer 6.1
    • XenServer 6.0.2
  • VMware vSphere. No support is provided for vSphere vCenter Linked Mode operation.
    • VMware vSphere 5.1 Update 1
    • VMware vSphere 5.0 Update 2
  • System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1, plus any version of Hyper-V that can register with those System Center Virtual Machine Manager versions.

Source

Download Citrix XenDesktop 7 here (require MyCitrix ID)

Admin Guide for Citrix XenDesktop 7

Install Guide for Citrix XenDesktop 7

Citrix Branch Repeater 6.2.2

Citrix have released a new version of Citrix Branch Repeater. 6.2.2 is an maintenance release for 6.2.

This release is compatible with partner appliances running previous Branch Repeater releases 5.0 and later, and Citrix Branch Repeater with Windows Server releases 2.0 and later. It can be used in a mixed environment that includes units running these older releases.

New in This Release

Two New Hardware Platforms—CloudBridge 2000 and CloudBridge 3000

  • The Citrix CloudBridge 2000 and 3000 hardware platforms are 1U accelerators for use in datacenters and larger branch offices. These platforms offer a wide range of features, communication ports, and processing capacities. Both the platforms have multicore processors.
  • The CloudBridge 2000 can be thought of as a faster Repeater 8500 with two accelerated bridges, while the CloudBridge 3000 can be thought of as a faster Repeater 8800 with three accelerated bridges.
  • New management GUI for the above platforms.

Source

Release documentations

Download Appliance software upgrade 6.2.2 here (Require MyCitrix ID)

Citrix Branch Repeater 6.2

Citrix have released a new version of Branch Repeater 5.7.4 (Appliance, Software, Plugins)

New enhancements in 6.2

The following enhancements are available in release 6.2.

  • Repeater, Branch Repeater, Branch Repeater VPX, and Repeater Plug-in In general, use the Branch Repeater Family User’s Guide, Release 6.0-6.2, for this release, at http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX134093.
    Additionally, a new page has been added to the GUI, Monitoring: Server Load Indicator. This page shows the appliance’s overall load, LAN packet and data rates, and input queue latency, which can be useful in determining whether the appliance is lightly or heavily loaded.
  • Repeater 310 for NetScaler SDX Repeater 310 for NetScaler SDX is a new member of the product line that supports WAN speeds of up to 310 Mbps. It shares the hardware platform of the newest Repeater 500/1000 for NetScaler SDX appliances and can be converted through a license upgrade into a Repeater 500 or 1000 for NetScaler SDX.
  • Hardware Changes on Repeater 310/500/1000 for NetScaler SDX The hardware platform for Repeater 310/500/1000 for NetScaler SDX has been upgraded to support network bypassing on most of the Gigabit Ethernet ports. This changes the front panel of the appliances, as shown below. Other than changes on the front-panel Ethernet ports, the appliance remains the same.
  • Branch Repeater now supports the none encryption level when configured on XenApp or XenDesktop.
  • Hardware Bypassing on Older Units
    1. All Repeater 1500/2000 for NetScaler SDX appliances include network bypassing hardware.
    2. Only Repeater 310/500/1000 for NetScaler SDX appliances that are shipped from the factory with release 6.2 include network bypassing hardware.
  • Enabling WCCP SupportWCCP support on Repeater SDX is shared between the NetScaler instance and the Repeater. The NetScaler instance offloads GRE encapsulation/decapsulation from the Repeater. The NetScaler instance also performs NAT between the router and the Repeater, since the Repeater instances are on a different subnet from the router, and NAT is required to allow WCCP-L2 support. On Repeater, WCCP support is enabled as usual, with the following exceptions and limitations:
    1. The NAT address used by the router for the UDP-level WCCP control channel must be specified, along with its subnet size. For example, if the router communicates with the Repeater on address 10.11.12.13/24, the “NetScaler WCCP VIP Address” field on the Configuration: Advanced Deployments page must be set to 10.11.12.13, and the “VIP Network Prefix” field must be set to 24.
    2. Multicast WCCP is not supported.
    3. The WCCP status page does not show packet counts.
    4. The WCCP forward and return methods must match for a given router, with both being L2 or both being GRE.
    5. Load-balancing involving multiple routers will not work properly. Repeater SDX will unbalance or drop such traffic. On the NetScaler instance, contact your Citrix representative for configuration support.
  • Support for L2 forwarding within Repeater SDX, in addition to L3 routing.
  • Traffic shaping is now supported on Repeater SDX A single traffic-shaping engine handles traffic shaping for all the Repeater instances. This traffic shaper performs the same tasks as in other Repeater appliances, and is configured in the same way, but operates in the sending direction only.
  • Citrix Branch Repeater with Windows Server Previously, Citrix Branch Repeater with Windows Server (CBRwWS) was not supported on release 6.x. With Release 6.2, CBRwWS has the same feature set as other Citrix appliances.
    See the Citrix Branch Repeater with Windows Server User’s Guide, Release 2.0-3.0, at http://kb.citrite.net/article/CTX126635 for installation instructions and other platform-specific information.
    See the Branch Repeater Family User’s Guide, Release 6.0-6.1, at http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX134093, for the acceleration features of this release.
  • Group mode is no longer supported for CBRwWS appliances.

Supported Branch Repeater VPX Configurations

Release 6.2 is supported on Branch Repeater VPX running on XenServer, VMware vSphere, and Microsoft-Hyper-V hypervisors. See the following table for the versions of hypervisor that are supported.

Table 1-4. Hypervisors compatible with Branch Repeater VPX

Citrix XenServer XenServer 6.02/Hotfix 602E007,
XenServer 5.6.0 (but not 5.6 FP1 or 5.6 SP2), XenServer 5.5
VMware Vsphere ESXi 5.0, ESX/ESXi 4.1
Microsoft Hyper-V Hyper-V under Windows 2008 R2 SP1

Source

Download Citrix Branch Repeater 6.2 (appliance, software and plug-in components) here
(Require MyCitrix ID)