HPE have released new server cartridges m510 and m710x for HPE Moonshot and Edgeline. These new server cartridges are the first units that have built-in HPE iLO, so customers can easy manage each server cartridge.
Below chart describes what HPE Moonshot/Edgeline current strategy is for GPU enabled apps and desktops with Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp.
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.
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.
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.
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
This release includes the core components Citrix XenDesktop 7 Core and Components + Receiver + Provisioning Services 7 + XenServer + Merchandising Server
This release includes the core components Citrix XenDesktop 7 Core and Components + Receiver + Provisioning Services 7 + XenServer + Merchandising Server
This release includes the core components Citrix XenDesktop 7 Core and Components + Receiver + XenClient Enterprise + Provisioning Services 7 + XenServer + Merchandising Server
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
Download Citrix XenDesktop 7 here (require MyCitrix ID)
Admin Guide for Citrix XenDesktop 7
Install Guide for Citrix XenDesktop 7
Citrix have released a new version of AppDNA 6.2. This is a major software release and this versions contains many new features, lets dig in whats new:
The AppDNA 6.2 release is focused on providing full support for Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and Internet Explorer 10, support for App-V 5 and System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) 2012, incremental loading of ConfigMgr data, Install Capture support for VMware vSphere 5.1, and reporting performance and usability improvements.
The Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 reports now have full general acceptance (GA) release status. You can switch these reports on in the Configure Modules Wizard. If you used the early access support in AppDNA 6.1 SP1 and want to take advantage of the new and improved algorithms, you need to re-analyze your applications.
AppDNA now captures more information about digital signatures when you import applications. Some of the Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 algorithms use this additional DNA in conjunction with the operating system (OS) DNA, to identify applications that will not run on Windows 8 and Server 2012 because of certificate trust issues. To take advantage of these algorithms for applications that you have already imported into AppDNA, you need to re-import the applications (in order to capture the additional DNA) and then run the analysis. For more information about the digital signature DNA, see Digital Signatures.
The Internet Explorer 10 algorithms now have full GA status. These algorithms are within the Internet Explorer (IE) report and you can turn them on in the Configure Modules Wizard.
Algorithms – There are a number of new Internet Explorer 9 algorithms, which also apply to Internet Explorer 10. For a list of the new and changed algorithms, see Algorithm Changes. If you want to take advantage of the new and improved algorithms, you need to re-analyze your web applications.
OS images – The Internet Explorer report includes a number of algorithms that check the OS image. For example, some of the ActiveX algorithms check whether a particular ActiveX control has been registered in the OS image. You can now analyze applications for IE compatibility against multiple OS families. This is useful, for example, when analyzing for compatibility with Internet Explorer 10, which is supported on both Windows 7 and Windows 8.
AppDNA 6.2 extends the existing App-V support with support for App-V 5.0.
Direct import of App-V 5.0 packages – Direct Import can now handle App-V 5.0 .appv packages. This means that you can now import applications directly into AppDNA using their .appv packages, like you can for App-V 4.6 .sft files.
Algorithms – There is not a separate report for App-V 5.0 – if you want to analyze your applications for compatibility with App-V 5.0, run the Configure Modules Wizard and select App-V 5.
App-V 5.0 has a new feature that enables the virtualized application to have more entry points to the base OS. For example, this means that applications can register themselves as the default email client or as a custom URI handler on the OS. A new algorithm has been introduced to test for this scenario in earlier versions of App-V where it is not supported. In addition, additional algorithms have been introduced to test for newer versions of Microsoft Office applications that are unsupported or that require special sequencing. For a summary of these new algorithms, see Algorithm Changes. To take advantage of these new algorithms, you need to re-analyze your applications.
Execution profile – AppDNA 6.2 comes with a new execution profile called App-V 5.0 Sequencer, which can sequence applications for App-V 5.0. See App-V 5.0 Sequencer Execution Profile for more information.
Support for ConfigMgr 2012 – AppDNA 6.2 introduces the ability to integrate with System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) 2012 and supports the new ConfigMgr application model for deploying applications, in addition to the legacy ConfigMgr package model for deploying applications. AppDNA 6.2 retains support for ConfigMgr 2003 and ConfigMgr 2007, and can handle integration with multiple versions of ConfigMgr. This is useful if you are implementing a phased migration to ConfigMgr 2012 and have two versions of ConfigMgr running in parallel.
New data load wizard – AppDNA 6.2 introduces a completely new wizard for loading Active Directory (AD) and ConfigMgr data into AppDNA. Designed for scalability, this has several advantages over the old feature it replaces. It has a more streamlined and attractive user interface and provides options to load only ConfigMgr data that has changed since last time, or to select applications and packages individually or in batches, by date, for example. These features provide support for loading data into AppDNA from large ConfigMgr sites. Like the old Import Data feature, you can run the wizard from within AppDNA or remotely – for example, on the ConfigMgr server. See Loading AD and ConfigMgr Data for more information.
Improved loading of ConfigMgr data – AppDNA now extracts only data that is relevant to AppDNA from the ConfigMgr server. In addition, the actual loading of the data into the AppDNA database has been improved not only to support loading data in batches, but also to conserve data that has not changed and to remove data that has been deleted in ConfigMgr. When removing deleted ConfigMgr items from the AppDNA database, any associated applications that have been imported into AppDNA are retained, but their links with the deleted ConfigMgr entities are removed.
ConfigMgr connectivity – The option to connect to ConfigMgr through a direct connection with the ConfigMgr database has been removed in favor of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), which is recommended by Microsoft. Using WMI requires Distributed COM (DCOM) to be enabled on the local computer. For step-by-step instructions for enabling it, see Troubleshooting Extracting AD and ConfigMgr Data.
Connection settings – When you enter the connection details in the wizard, AppDNA automatically stores them in the Settings dialog box. This means that you only need to enter the details again if they change.
You can now use a VMware vSphere 5.1 virtual machine for Install Capture (and for Forward Path tasks that automate the Install Capture process). This requires access to a fully licensed installation of vSphere 5.1, a virtual machine for the exclusive use of Install Capture, and a vSphere user account that provides permissions for advanced virtual machine operations through web services. The virtual machine must be configured to allow remote desktop connections and must have the VMware Tools installed. See Setting up a vSphere VM for Install Capture for more information.
AppDNA 6.2 introduces a new internal report view architecture, which can more easily handle very large application portfolios. This means that the reporting results are now faster to display within both the AppDNA desktop client and the web client. The performance improvement is particularly noticeable when displaying the results for very large numbers of applications.
In addition, there have been a number cosmetic changes to the report views to improve usability, provide a more attractive experience, and continue the Citrix re-branding that was started in AppDNA 6.0.
As a result of these changes, the old “Allow paging” reporting setting has been replaced by a “Default page size” setting. In addition a new “Show counts in PDF exports” setting has been introduced. See Reporting Settings for more information.
In order to simplify the initial configuration of AppDNA, there have been some changes to the AppDNA Web Site Credentials step in the Configure AppDNA Environment wizard. The wizard now provides an option to automatically create and configure a local service account. This change may not be apparent to existing users unless you use the option to create a new database. See Create a New AppDNA Database for more information.
In addition, when you use this wizard to reset the website credentials – for example, after a password change – it now automatically performs an IIS reset if this is necessary.
Previous versions of AppDNA installed only the Snapshot execution profile. The other standard execution profiles had to be obtained separately. AppDNA 6.2 now installs all of the standard execution profiles. However, only Snapshot is activated by default. For a full list of the installed execution profiles and instructions for activating them, see Execution Profiles.
You can now select multiple adjacent and non-adjacent applications in the Application List screen and the Select Applications window in the Report Viewer. To do this, hold down CTRL and click the applications that you want to select (or click the first application and then hold down SHIFT and click the last application that you want to select). Then press CTRL+M to select those applications or CTRL+U to deselect them. (In the Application List, you can click the options on the Edit menu instead of pressing CTRL+M and CTRL+U.)
Although AppDNA 6.2 is not available in translated versions, it has been tested on Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and German local language versions of Windows and has been found to provide general support for the following:
However, there are some known issues. See Known Issues for more information.
New Help system – AppDNA 6.2 comes with an improved Help system. This has a navigation pane that facilitates browsing the contents of the Help system and finding related topics. With one or two exceptions, the structure mirrors the structure of the AppDNA 6.2 documentation on the Citrix eDocs website (http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/).
Updates – Both the Help documentation and the documentation on the Citrix eDocs website have been updated for this release. In addition to the changes for the new and updated features, there have been a number of other improvements. For example, the following are new or significantly improved:
Requirements – The new Help system requires JavaScript to be enabled in Internet Explorer. JavaScript is disabled by default on Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2008. If you have installed the AppDNA server on one of these platforms and the security policies in your enterprise do not allow JavaScript to be enabled on Windows Server machines, you need to access the Help system from an AppDNA client machine. Alternatively, go to the Citrix eDocs website (http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/), where you can download a PDF of all or selected sections of the AppDNA 6.2 documentation.
Citrix have final released “Project Thor” or Citrix XenApp Connector for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager.
If you have Microsoft SCCM 2012 in your environment and XenApp 6.5 this is a must product to combine with this software release.
The XenApp Connector for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager enables administrators to orchestrate the tasks required to deliver applications both to end-users and XenApp Servers seamlessly with Microsoft System Center 2012 (and SP1).
The XenApp Connector for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager is compatible with XenApp 6.5 only. In addition, if you wish to use the XenApp Connector for XenApp farms that are streamed by Provisioning Services you will need to download and apply the hotfix listed below.
Download The XenApp Connector for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager here (Require MyCitrix ID)