Malaysia VMware Communities » Citrix

Database requirement in Citrix Xendesktop

craig — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 02:53:25 +0000

I had gone through few days of hands on training for Citrix Xendesktop. The experience of the training is good and it went through technical deep dive. 1 of the key thing we discussed during the training was about the databases requirements to support the Xendesktop and Xenapp infrastructure. Microsoft SQL will be 1 of the key component, and you will require to plan for the high availability architecture to support the production environment.

The best approach may just consider to build an independent Active/Passive or Active/Active SQL cluster to support the infrastructure. A backup for the SQL is always recommended to create recovery point in the event of data corruption. Most data on the SQL databases is the configuration changes, log and etc. Similar to VMWare vCenter Database.

XenDesktop License Server Flexibility

XenDesktop License Server Flexibility

craig — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 02:31:32 +0000

While I am attending the training for XenDesktop today, we had covered the topic of License Server for Xendesktop.
I had raised the question to the trainer.

what if the license server go down, will all the existing connections or sessions been terminated automatically?

He had explained as the configuration in the license server and license files are design to prevent the point of failure in the scenario of license server unavailable due to any failures. You will be given 28 days period of time with unlimited seats in the event of license servers unavailable during the outage.

In normal scenario, assume your license server is functioning with 1000 seats, you will also allow to provision 10% extra within 28 days before you increase the purchased licenses. This will allow you to turn on extra capacity temporally in the short period.

New license offer from VMware vSphere 5 on 3rd party VDI solution

Xencenter doesn’t work on Windows 7

craig — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 17:51:44 +0000

If you are trying to install the Xencenter on Windows 7, you may face an error which due to the pre-requirement for .net framework 2.0 as part of the installation. It will fail automatically as windows 7 doesn’t support with .net framework 2.0 anymore. As there are number of solution posted on the internet, but is not easy to resolve this issue. Most easiest way is to get an XP machines install with the xencenter and manage the Xenserver and VMs from there. It just weird that the support on windows 7 is not available up to date, Citrix need to react faster as Windows 7 adoption is big wave going on to many enterprise and newly purchase desktop and laptop.

Citrix XenServer 5: Optimized Performance for XenApp Compared to VMware ESX 3.5u3

jlchannel — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:22:09 +0000

Just got another report posted by Tolly Group:
Citrix XenServer 5: Optimized Performance for XenApp Compared to VMware ESX 3.5u3

Citrix Systems commissioned Tolly to evaluate the performance of Citrix XenApp when running on Citrix XenServer 5 and compare that with XenApp running on VMware ESX 3.5u3.

Testing focused on system scalability and user quality-of-experience. This test report was approved for publication by VMware. The VMware End User License Agreement (EULA) requires such approval.

The testing was conducted in accordance with Tolly Common RFP #1101, Virtual Server Performance. That document is available for license and you can find more information about it on the Tolly Common RFP website.

Download the free Citrix/VMware report as below:

Register and Download!

VMware and competitor

jlchannel — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:11:55 +0000

I was just came back from Sime Darby Convention Centre – HP ProLiant G6 Servers Launch event and VMware competitor “Citrix” and “Microsoft” representative talked about Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix Xen hypervisor. Anything interesting? Seriously, both of them talked about marketing bull shit! If I’m have not try VMware, Hyper-V or Xen before, probably I may interested with the presentation.

If you’re looking at technical point of view, personally I think VMware competitor is few year behind VMware vSphere. Check out more detail about VMware vSphere 4 Cheat Sheet posted by Jason Boche.

Referring to costing, I don’t agreed with what Citrix presented during the event this morning. You’re always try to tell customer pay if you need it. What are you talking about? Are you trying to tell Enterprise customers don’t use HA or don’t use those features provided? How about Microsoft Hyper-V cost comparison?

Again, I would said I’m not sure how true chart show as above and the most important is apple to apple comparison.

In fact, there are many many kind of comparison between VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix Xen. Please feel free to contact us, we’re willing to share with you!

SAP Virtualize with Citrix XenServer

craig — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:16:32 +0000

Just read through the virtualization info today and found the interesting post regarding SAP internal is going to virtualize with Citrix XenServer. I will not copy the full story as you can read more from here.

As the article stated, there are 500 machines which will be virtualized in Citrix Xenserver, are not be used in production environment. Those machines are development, test and training environment for SAP internally. We know SAP is 1 of the heavy user for VMware since years back. A move to Citrix Xenserver did surprise myself, but obviously it does provide more choice to SAP internal.

My Personal Experience about Citrix XenServer 5.0

jlchannel — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:12:06 +0000

Yesterday Craig mentioned about 8 VCPU per VM on Citrix XenServer 5 is really a good stuff from Citrix and I must admit that.

I did a quick test and I would like to share my personal review about Citrix XenServer 5.0:

Personally I think network speed is fast compare to VMware ESX. I have a physical 1Gbps NIC network speed and I can get 2Gbps network speed after install XenTools on Windows 2008 server but require 2 times reboot(SuSE Linux require 1 reboot). Anyway VM guest shutdown and reboot process is faster than VMware ESX.

I was try to install SuSE Linux 10 using 4 ISO CD (both NFS or CIFS), the Citrix XenServer always give me an error “The VM rejected the attempt to detach the device xxxxx refusing to close” when switch ISO CD1 to ISO CD2. You have to extract 4 ISO CD into one single location to make it work or copy ISO to local storage(provider you have enough local disk space).

The enterprise product should not have similar issue and this is not make sense at all.

Anyway, you can try alternative way using “Install URL” instead of using ISO Image once you have extract ISO CD into single folder on your web server.

Install URL: http://xx.xx.xx.xx/inst/10/32/SP2/ALL
Advanced Boot OS Parameters:
console=ttyS0 xencons=ttyS hostip=xx.xx.xx.xx/24 gateway=xx.xx.xx.xx dnsserver=xx.xx.xx.xx

Please make sure your have correct IP, gateway and DNS setup properly else you will getting error during installation.

Add and remove any disk/storage on Window 2008 or SuSE Linux 10 no downtime or reboot required. The VM guest OS will detect automatically.

Convert to template and VM clone features which are another features behind VMware ESX.

Once you have converted to template, you won’t have another way to reverse back as VM guest machine. It’s one way operation which you will received a warning before convert to template as show below.

Right click VM guest, and click Copy VM will do VM cloning but require downtime. The Copy VM feature is disable during VM guest is power on.

Overall, I would said VMware ESX still my first choice.