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.

Related posts:

1. XenDesktop License Server Flexibility

Went through a marathon troubleshooting with my client for the past 1 week to figure out the reason why a cluster failed in place and it could not easily rebuild back after 1 of the node evicted. We had gone through the process to re image both nodes and rebuild from scratch. Follow exactly the best practices and run through the cluster validation without any error. While we try to form the cluster, the system keep provide an unknown error which do not share much information from log. It just keep telling you that the node is not reachable or unauthorized due to security setting.

After few nights of troubleshooting, I was running out of clue. Came to the sudden, I accidentally search the computer name in AD under the category of Users object group, and I found an user account been created in AD with the same name as we define on the cluster name. I was wondering whether this could caused the confuse to the system. Therefore, I was suggesting to remove the user name temporally as it was not use at the moment and tried to reform the cluster. Guess what, the cluster form up as it needed to be in less than 1 minutes. We were so happy to end the marathon troubleshooting every night well and we were also very pissed off with the bugs we face here.

I am not very sure what is the real reason behind can really cause this, but this is the real case which take us few days to figure out. I think Microsoft should seriously look into this problem as it sound stupid to have this bugs in place today. User name and computer object name are always not the same thing in AD, how can the system confuse with it?If this is unavoidable, they should put in to the documentation or check list to remind the users on this. My personal comment on Windows 2008 Cluster technology, it does not make the administrator life simple, and it added too much dependency for the Microsoft AD. Please take note that this problem happen to both windows 2008 and windows 2008 R2.

You can view the Official VMware Documentation from here.

In case anyone of you had the similar experience, I will suggest you to power on the virtual server from Microsoft, and perform the migration process as physical mode.

You can read more from the original post here, have fun.

Microsoft touts Hyper-V as a lower-priced virtualization option than VMware’s ESXi, but for straight server consolidation, it’s unclear whether Hyper-V is that much cheaper than VMware because of Hyper-V’s system requirements and lower consolidation ratios.

More details article can be found at “Hyper-V vs. VMware : Which is cheaper?”

I am no “licensing expert” anybody which buddy with MS should verify this before walking into the trap.  Is this true?

The only difficulty I have now is Daemon Tools, which use for ISO purpose. Beside that, I am using it as my day to day operational purpose including Microsoft Office, firefox, IE 8, Live messenger and etc. Respond wise had been significant improve as compare to Vista previously.

I am not installed my Workstation to Windows 7 64 bits Ultimate version and use in full mode for my office work. I would like to say I am happy on it. If you want to have a try on this, you will always able to install the windows 7 on both VMware Workstation and VMware Server. Have fun.

Frankly speaking, I’m big fans of VMware and I would like to share the related news – Microsoft Hyper-V jokes.

Microsoft to do what VMware does nearly 10 years later – From Mike RTFM

ESX Server beats Hyper-V – DanteDog’s Blog

So how important is LiveMigration/VMotion now?

Hyper-V, not in my datacenter Part 1 – Gabes Virtual World

Hyper-V, not in my datacenter Part 2 – Gabes Virtual World

Hyper-V, not in my datacenter Part 3 – Gabes Virtual World

Will Microsoft sunset VMware? – 18 months later

Hyper-V with Server Core — Too Dry and Crunchy for our Taste

Hyper-V Server is Finally Here – But What Exactly Is It?

VMware ESX VMotion vs Microsoft Hyper-V Quick Migration, are they really comparable?

How VMware ESX performance trumps Hyper-V’s price.

What do you think? Please feel free to share with us.

If we analyze what happen to the IT spending on the financial and banking environment, you will not surprise to see that the amount of storage, servers, solution and unnecessary equipment been under utilized for every bank around the world. The IT department for financial sector had been comfort live for many years and is time now for them to review and revise their IT spending to ensure higher return from their investment.

Open source or reliable LINUX had not been really high utilize in financial sector are really due to the comfort living of their IT department. Personal point of view, why we have to run something else on the expensive IBM AIX, mainframe, HP UX, Microsoft, Oracle VS the reliable LINUX from x86 or x64 platform to perform the same result? The simple answer is really the mindset from the person.

If we compare the super computing for research and development, you will find that the top 5 fastest computing in the world are build from the x86 or x64 platform whihc you can common found from the market. If you are telling me that the x86 platform is under power, I will say is depend how you manage and deploy it. Looking at SAP, which is the biggest ERP solution around the world, and they even suggest to run on SUSE or Redhat Linux with the MaxDB and etc. My experience on that, it really perform as require and even outperform when we compare to the AIX machine that we previously have. We know the MAXDB are still far behind the Oracle, but at least from the operating system point of view, the LINUX always provide more reliable compare to Windows or proprited UNIX platform from HP and IBM.

Beside these, you may consider the operation maintenance cost, the open standard will provide more flexible and cost effective. Intel and AMD competition have also promise to increase from 6 cores to 12 cores in 2 years time. The processing power are always increasing from time to time.
I will not believe the x86 will not able to handle the load that require to run for any system in the world today, is really depend how we plan it and manage it. Some of the bank I know, they even run their critical machine on LINUX today, and I do not see the reason of others bank can’t. At the same time, Virtualization will provide the better utilization for every single dollar been invested by the business.

Moving forward to the current economy environment, to survive and sustain for IT department is challenge. Instead of sticking with old and expensive solution, it may end up the CEO will just fire the entire IT department and look for outsource vendor. I believe the IT department have to be more open and follow up with the open technology which are much more cost effective compare with those expensive solution. The more dollars for IT to save, that increase the percentage for the job security as well as business effective. Do not forget, IT is to assist the business to generate revenue higher and faster, you may not want to make IT as a cost and is not profitable when it show up in the entire financial summary to the boards. If that does happen, human will stop using IT and prefer to work on paper and pen again as traditional.