@Knoa IT
Not free, but should be part of XD infrastructure now so you basically pay for a bundle. When i got mine XD and PVS were two separate licenses. Lot of changes in Citrix licensing so you’d better ask through your local channel. With PVS remember you are not limited to streaming image to only any VDI, but it does physical devices as well (desktop, laptop, thin client, server). Just a matter of use cases.

Do you know if XEN Provisioning services and all its other components is a free piece or do we have to pay for it?

Thanks
Knoa IT

Generally about system management tools, desktop are more simplify if you compare to the number of system going to be run in the data center. How much do you think a Desktop guy can understand IO requirement, compute requirement when it come to a big scale virtualization for huge number of desktop you had talked about? At the end of the day, you will still need those expertise to assist in term of sizing, planning and execution.

You still do not understand what is the reason of not everyone will go for virtual desktop environment. Think realistically, there are a lot of users who are not suitable and require for a laptop for their day to day operation. My suggestion to you, should look at the bigger picture and do not always live yourself in the small world, there are absolutely many key pieces requirement to be in place before you can deliver the virtual desktop as you want. Or else, go back to the old days and run everything on the legacy desktop.

Putting all these into a bigger picture, do you think the next generation desktop life cycle should still be the same as what you claimed “I’m a server guy who does not require a desktop support to fix my pc, laptop or even a vm images with desktop operating system …”? You just proved my point.

@Jas
Wished I was one of them. It’s a whole camp of brilliant folks with great ideas!

@Knoa IT
#2 – Not really understand what you mean by “not restricted to first-come-first-serve basis on pooled desktops …”. Pooled desktop is always FCFS. Otherwise it would be Assigned Desktop (one-to-one relationship). Do you have Provisioning Service as part of your XD infrastructure? It enables the ability to compose a dynamic desktop on-the-fly by streaming a gold image to diskless VMs.

#3 – Linux desktop folks are out of luck. Citrix could have done great stuff on Linux environment (deliver/stream Linux apps/desktops to end point) but guess what MS is the man behind the scene. Citrix & MS are good buddies. If Citrix ever tries to step into Linux it’d be screwed big time.

I was threw into virtualization few years back then with ESX 2.x. Now I’m still doing server virtualization but have discovered desktop virtualization is another interesting game. I don’t have a VMware sticker on a laptop. My work laptop has been taken away long time ago. Am strictly working in a virtualized environment – Citrix hosted apps + streamed apps to thin client and VDI.

2nd question, how can we configure this so we are not restricted to FCFS basis on pooled desktops such that we can have multiple users get a copy of the same master image. We’d all heard about the Master copy and then images being spawned on-demand. How is that actually configured? is that by choosing “Assigned” as opposed to “Pooled”??

3rd question: Is there a way to virtualise linux desktops? We don’t see any agent that can be installed on Linux machines, only Online plug-ins for linux machines are available in the Express Edition of the XENDesktop

Lastly, guys, we have spoken to almost 3-5 Independant integrators who have hard-core VMWare fanatics as their chief engineers to the point where they have stickets on their laptops saying “I Heart VMWare”. Now these are guys who’s entire day job is to do virtualisation deployments, whether it be server or desktop or both and you ask them which VDI solution they prefer, and their response is XEN VDI.

At the end of the day, Server guy do desktop is a disaster? I am totally not agree. I been in IT for years now and I do not require a desktop support to fix my pc, laptop or even a vm images with desktop operating system. Even in my days for imaging automation, I can automate the installation for desktop and server images with all the customization require without using the GHOST Technology.

At the same times, most of the desktop guys will ask me to help & fix the laptop or desktop for them, whenever they had no clue what went wrong. Again, I am not here to show off, but not every server guy will be the 1 as you mentioned in the comment.

Desktop virtualization is completely different from server virtualization. ask a typical server guy to design and manage a desktop infrastructure and it tends to be a disaster.

Most of VMware enterprise features make sense for server virtualization, but just not desktop. Memory overcommit does not work for desktop virtualization and consolidation ratio is not a factor to drive desktop virtualization.

VMware is just not a desktop company. They are way behind in desktop technologies. Just not sure when they will change that. Running with both VMware View and XenDesktop, stuff from Citrix is a lot more complete.