Citrix

WAN Optimization

Hi folks, here’s something that I think we should all pay more attention to…WAN Optimization! There are numerous products on the market for WAN optimization and acceleration, and they do cost a little bit of money but when compared to the long term cost savings of monthly WAN link costs you can start to see the value.

In most cities the telcos also have IT divisons that come in and consult and tell you that you need more bandwidth when you find that data isn’t moving from point A to point B fast enough. Now in some cases this might be very true, but a lot of the time I see people getting recommended to buy bigger/better/faster lines to address their bandwidth issues when more often than not the issues could be solved with proper configuration of QoS and the use of WAN acceleration/optimization.

I encourage network administrators to look into the myriad of products out there in this space, from Citrix, F5, and Cisco to name a few. Usually the telcos don’t like it when you suggest products like this because it takes away from their bottom line.

-RP

Epic Technology Day is here again!

Hi folks, once again it’s time for Epic Technology Day! This is the day long conference my company holds twice a year. Unfortunately due to many ongoing projects I won’t be presenting this year, but I will be in attendance.

Lots of new things to look forward to at Tech Day this year, including the Cisco Now Van which will showcase some of the cool equipment from Cisco.

Also VMware will be there as per usual speaking about their great products. HP and Citrix will also be there touting their wares. Technology day is a great opportunity to network in the Manitoba IT community and learn a lot about what’s new and wonderful in the world of technology. You can register for it here.

Hope to see you there!

-RP

Remote access when on the road

So I thought i’d talk a little bit about remote access since I was just away on vacation for a week. There are a lot of technologies out there you can use for remote access, all of them promising complete access to your network while you’re on the road. I’ve always found adopting multiple technologies for a good comprehensive remote access strategy works well.

One of the easiest things to implement for the network administrator on the road is Terminal Services. As long as you own Windows Server you can purchase terminal services licenses to give you remote access to your network for multiple users. If you just want administrative access then you can just use RDP (remote desktop). However if you want extra control and power then I would suggest using a product like Citrix to achieve your goals. For the small business Citrix Access Essentials is a great single server product you can use to give you access to published applications and granular control over what users can access remotely. You can also combine this with the Citrix Access Gateway and give yourself SSL access to your network and everything integrates quiet nicely.

You can get more information regarding Citrix at http://www.citrix.com.

 -RP

Citrix XenServer also Available for Free

Amongst all the hype about Hyper-V and VMWare’s ESXi 3.5, I think a lot of people tend to forget about the other offerings out there. Hyper-V is essentially free, available for a very low cost if you buy the Windows 2008 version with it on it. Frankly, I don’t know why you would buy the version without it. I certainly can’t think of a good reason. Also VMWare ESXi 3.5 is free now due to the recent announcement from VMWare. Based on this, it’s quick to get caught up in the virtualization fun since you can acquire either product quite readily.

 However, there is another alternative. You can try out Citrix XenServer Express Edition from Citrix. This is due to the latest acquisition by Citrix. The Express Edition version allows you to run 4 virtual machines for free. You can get it at this link here.

 -RP

Bare Metal Hypervisors

With Hyper-V out now, the virtualization marketing machine from all the different virtualization companies is in full swing. The battle is on and it looks like it’s going to be an ugly one. With virtualization pros on either side spouting the virtues of their product and claiming why one is better than the other.

Within the past few days I have read about a ton of cost comparisons between all the different offerings out there between Hyper-V, XenServer, and VMWare. I think at the end of the day, you need to delve a little deeper and look at the differences between the technologies that make up these products and what they mean to you and your business.

 One of the core differences that is important to me (and might not be important to you, depending on your needs) is the level/classification of hypervisor that is employed by the various companies. VMWare and Citrix both offer what are called level 1 or type 1 classification hypervisors. These are hypervisors that install on bare metal without an underlying OS. Whereas Microsoft offers Hyper-V only installed as a role on Windows 2008. This is what is called a level 2 hypervisor or type 2 classification hypervisor.

This is important because anytime you have a virtual product using a level 2 hypervisor, the hosting OS gives a larger footprint to attack and can compromise the security or stability of the box more than a level 1 hypervisor would. Now for non mission critical servers this wouldn’t be much of an issue, but for mission critical virtual machines this could be the difference between choosing which virtualization product is right for you.

However, it is said that Microsoft will be developing a level 1 hypervisor. We will have to wait and see how this progresses, because once this comes out, the lines will be even further blurred between the different competitors.

-RP

Terminal Services and Citrix printing issues

One of the most common issues in a Terminal Services or Citrix environment tend to be printing. If I were to survey people that use either of these technologies I can almost guarantee you that’s what they’d say. The reason that printing has been such a problem is because not all printers were made to work over Terminal Services/Citrix.

IMO Citrix does a much better job with printing than just using Terminal Services, however you still won’t be error free if you aren’t careful with what you buy. Luckily their is a regularly published list of HP printers that are supported with Citrix. If you stick to the supported printers list you will be happy to see your printer woes go away. When deploying Terminal Services/Citrix in an environment one of the policies you should have is an approved list of printers that people are allowed to buy so you aren’t stuck supporting a printer that isn’t up to the task.

You can find the supported list of printers here: http://support.citrix.com/article/ctx110571

Citrix Published Apps woes

So the other day we ran into an interesting problem for a client. One of the published apps in Citrix Presentation Server 4 wasn’t launching properly. Everytime we clicked on it the users were getting an “Invalid Working Directory” error.

I checked the settings on the published application and the working directory was set correctly. Even if I deleted it out of the field and then retyped it. We eventually figured out that by deleting the published application completely and then recreating it in Citrix we were able to solve the problem.

 It’s possible that their might have been some sort of bug or corruption where the settings for the published application is stored. If I ever find out more about this error I will post it here on my blog.

 -RP