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Team: Consulting
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Do you really understand the goal for your desktop virtualization project
Do you really know why you are doing desktop virtualization? As with most technical solutions, desktop virtualization has its place. It can enable flexibility, mobility, and a bunch of other "-ility" words. Unfortunately, I've seen people try to use a technical solution with the wrong goals. Take the following, which is a common occurrence: I have a distributed desktop environment. Over the years, my users have ...
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Designing your desktop virtualization architecture
One of the first questions someone doing desktop virtualization wants answered is usually one of the following questions How many servers do I need? How many IOPS? How many XenDesktop Controllers do I need? I've seen it many times and have been asked these questions many times. The typical answer is "It depends" (I really hate this answer BTW). The wrong answer is any number (You don't have enough ...
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Project Accelerator Question 3: Picking FlexCast
We all wish picking FlexCast was as easy as playing Rock-Paper-Scissors. In reality, the FlexCast decision is more like Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock. Unfortunately, many people go down the path of Rock-Paper-Scissors-Gun-Ligntning-Devil-Dragon-Water-Air-Sponge-Wolf-Tree-Human-Snake-Fire There is a lot of anxiety with making the FlexCast decision because it directly impacts the capabilities of the assigned users. When should I pick Pooled VDI vs. Hosted Shared Streamed VHD vs. Streamed VDI PvD vs. Remote PC This decision is even ...
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Project Accelerator Question 2: Importance of Personalization
I just got off the phone with Citrix helpdesk because I finally messed up my virtual desktop. I have a dedicated virtual desktop and I guess I installed/uninstalled too many things over the past few years. The same thing always happened to me with a traditional desktop. The good thing is that it only took the helpdesk a few moments to reset my virtual desktop ...
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Everything you need to know about desktop virtualization
What does it take to be a desktop virtualization architect? Being able to say "It depends" in twelve different languages is a great start. English (American): It depends English (Australian): It depends English (British): It depends English (Canadian): It depends German: je nachdem Spanish: eso depende French: elle dépend Dutch: het hangt ervan Italian: dipende Swahilli: inategemea Chinese: 视情况而定 Japanese: それは場合による Translations courtesy of Google Translator. For all I know, I just said "My hovercraft is full of eels" ...
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Project Accelerator and Technical Skillset – Why it matters
One of the first questions that Project Accelerator asks you is about your technical skillset, and then it provides a list of about 20 different technologies. Why do we care? Let's say you have App-V experience, then when you get to the application delivery portion, we will probably recommend you use App-V for a subset of applications. They same can be said for hypervisors as well. We ...
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Playing 20 Questions with Project Accelerator
Over a year ago (August 2011) we released an update to the Citrix Desktop Accelerator. That was a major update, as it provided a list of design decisions you would answer in order to properly design your XenDesktop solution. It’s great that we provided all of those decisions, but we started to wonder if people even knew how to answer them correctly? Could most people say ...
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XenDesktop Sites – Scale Up or Out
How many desktops can a XenDesktop 5.x site support? I get asked this question a lot. Tests have been done showing that a site can support 10,000, 20,000 or more desktops. But my question is if it really matters. After a certain number, I always am left to wonder if putting that many desktops in a single site is really a good idea. It all ...
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Safe Practice for Memory Overcommit
I've had another discussion with people passionate about memory overcommitting for virtual desktops. My stance is it can be dangerous if you take it too far. Unfortunately, many reports I see talking about the value of memory overcommit take it too far. So where is just far enough? Let's go through an example (I've generalized this as I don't want to talk about each different ...
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The desktop is just another application
Had a brief discussion on twitter the other day where people (@simoncrosby, @joeshonk, @RichCrusco) were saying that we only need to focus on delivering applications and NOT a Windows 7 desktop. I completely disagree. In fact, we should be treating the desktop interface as an application. Of course the desktop-haters immediately came out saying "No, the desktop is not an application." This was ...