#CitrixSynergy winding down

This was my first Summit/Synergy conference and I must say I was impressed. All my guys who attended were all alumni so I can’t give you the same context they can. Here’s my very high level observations:

-Citrix is growing like crazy
-The demos were awesome
-They are doing a really nice job of staying head of the competition by enhancing the products they have
-While adding onto their portfolio organically and through acquisition to fill out their strategy
-And have done a pretty darn good job of integrating the core elements into the complimentary products
-Have elected to fight the cloud battle at a higher level,e.g., closer to the management and app versus the infrastructure and with open source
-Their social networking was off he hook and really engaged folks and their enterprise social networking app looks pretty pimp

Again, these are high level impressions from a newbie. More details in this blog and at Citrix.com I’m sure.

If your a Citrix fan or just want to learn more, I would encourage the trip.

What’s that happ’s at #citrixsynergy today

At the customer keynote with the #LewanCorp SE team. Will take a few notes on stuff that sounds cool or interesting.

High-level themes….
We believe people should be able to work and play from anywhere using any device
We believe the cloud era is here
W believe IT consumerizaion is the next big IT driver

GoToAssist is now available on Android and iOS and they’re both free! Now you can provideIT support for your family easier :-)
New Wyse Xenith 2 client announced
VDI in a box is simple to belly to get going and they will trade in these licenses for full XenDesktop when ready. Voted best VDI at Interop. Dell has rolled this out at Dell DVS packaged solution.
Windows XP expires in 2014 and AppDna can help with these types of migrations. Shows you where the issues will be and which ones should easily migrate. The new version6 has a much better user experience and is simpler to deploy.
XenClient….announced acquisition of Virtual Computer today to enhance and accelerate this offering
The partnership with Cisco is really taking off and the vxi technology is very strategic

More info here as well:

http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=2324091

We’re rounding out our Managed Services Offerings again by adding Advanced Security Management

@LewanCorp has added more capabilities for our customers around managed security.

Our fully managed security service may well be the simplest, most cost-effective way to protect your network from attack. We provide a state-of-the-art security technology, 24×7 redundant NOCs and dedicated security experts to monitor and defend your network. All your basic network security needs are covered with security domain expertise to monitor and respond to threats 24 x 7 x 365 as a compliment to our portfolio of comprehensive IT management solutions.

Managed Services Solution stack:

Co-Location
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Managed Security Services
Managed and Monitored IT Infrastructure Services
End-user ServiceDesk Support
Managed Cloud Backup Services
Hosted Email and Collaboration

General Availability of VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5, 4.0, 4.1 and 5.0 Patches

A new patch release notification from VMware was received today, it’s copied below.

We are pleased to inform you that new VMware ESX/ESXi Patches are available as of May 3, 2012.

These patches address several critical security issues. Detailed information regarding resolved and known issues and enhancements can be found in these Knowledge Base articles:

3.5 EP2 Patch Release Notes:
ESX: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019535
ESXi: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019537

4.0 EP7 Patch Release Notes:
ESX: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019853
ESXi: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019855

4.1 EP2-1 Patch Release Notes:
ESX: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019859
ESXi: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019860

5.0 EP3 Patch Release Notes:
ESXi: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019857

VMware ESX/ESXi Patches are available for download at http://www.vmware.com/patch/download/.

Regards,

VMware vSphere Product Release Team

Cloud Storage is Getting Crowded – Google Drive vs. Dropbox, SkyDrive, SugarSync, and others: a cloud sync storage face-off

Google Drive has been released over the last couple of days, so it has prompted many sites to do comparisons of the different online storage cloud providers. A very good comparison that I have found is over at theverge.com. It’s over at: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/24/2954960/google-drive-dropbox-skydrive-sugarsync-cloud-storage-competition

Note- if you are a Microsoft SkyDrive user, they are changing the “free” account from 25GB down to 7GB. However if you already have a SkyDrive account, you can “claim” your full 25GB by heading to your SkyDrive “Manage Storage” page (conveniently linked from the client’s menu bar icon). There is a link on that page to claim your full 25GB.

The article above basically mentions that they feel SugarSync is the overall best solution. I would agree with that, I used SugarSync for quite awhile, however one thing that I didn’t like about SugarSync, is some of the sharing capabilities of folders. To share a folder with someone, you choose the folder, click on “get share link” and you send the link out to the person you want to share it with. What you might not know/see, is the person you’ve shared the folder with cannot access your link until they sign-up for a SugarSync account themselves- something that I didn’t want the people I share links with to have to do.

Here’s an example of the above so you can see what I mean:

For the above, I made a test folder with a test file inside the folder. I then shared the folder with a link. When you click on that link however, you’ll see the above page- SugarSync wants them to signup for an account before they can get access to the files you’ve shared with them.

Personally I’ve switched over to Dropbox, as their sharing capabilities are quick, easy and I can share files or folders through links– and they don’t require the person I’m sharing the link with to signup for an account in order to access the files.

Denver VMware User Group (VMUG) May 30th 2012

Pulled from the VMware User Group website…there is an upcoming all-day VMware User Group in Denver, register here http://www.vmug.com/index.php?mo=cm&op=ld&fid=222

Join your fellow VMware users at this free, full-day event for in-depth technical sessions, demonstrations, exhibits, and networking opportunities. Come to Denver to meet with your peers and industry experts to discuss virtualization trends, best practices, and the latest technology!

Visit the Denver VMUG User Conference event page to reserve your place at this event now.

Take advantage of these educational and networking opportunities:

  • 8 VMware educational sessions
  • 12 partner education tracks
  • Exhibitor area with VMware partners
  • Complimentary breakfast and lunch
  • Registration is complimentary, so register today!

How to Fail at VDI

Now obviously Lewan doesn’t want you to fail when deploying desktop virtualization solutions, it’s exactly the opposite, we want you to be successful, and to do that it’s important to understand why projects fail. Let us help you understand the issues that others before you have experienced and help you properly position this technology in your environment.  Desktop Virtualization isn’t for everyone and isn’t going to replace all of your physical PC’s…

http://blog.danbrinkmann.com/2012/02/22/how-to-fail-at-vdi/

Content-Based Read Cache for Citrix XenDesktop

Read here for how to enable vSphere 5 Content-Based Read Cache for Citrix XenDesktop. The Content-Based Read Cache uses vSphere memory to offload read IO of commonly accessed blocks of data, something very common in desktop virtualization when you’re provisioning from a gold image.  Note that this is not supported by Citrix or VMware at this time.

http://blog.danbrinkmann.com/2012/03/19/enabling-vsphere-content-based-read-cache-for-citrix-xendesktop/

Dan Brinkmann will be speaking at Citrix Summit and BriForum London in May

Dan Brinkmann, Solutions Architect at Lewan & Associates will be speaking next month at both Citrix Summit (partner conference followed by Synergy the user conference) and BriForum London (Desktop Virtualization conference).  Dan posted a little bit about what he’ll be speaking about at this conference on his personal blog, contribute!  http://blog.danbrinkmann.com/2012/04/10/my-upcoming-presentation-at-citrix-summit-and-briforum-london/