September 7, 2009
There is a lot of hype these days around VDI and it seems like every week there is some new VDI related product or company being announced. With all of these options available how is company ever to decide on which VDI solution to go with?
In my opinion you should first decide on whether or not you want to go with Terminal Services/XenApp or VDI. Both technologies offer the same advantages and feature sets but Terminal Services/XenApp has a much cheaper per user cost and is a proven solution that has been around for 12 years. VDI is cool, hip and is in all of the industry news but it is very young and still evolving.
In my opinion VDI is for special use cases and for applications that will not run in Terminal Services.
Brian Madden did a great session on this at VMworld Europe 2009.
Any company currently looking at VDI should watch this session and first decide if Terminal Services would work for them. If so you can save a lot of money in infrastructure costs by using Terminal Services/XenApp.
http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/videos/archive/2009/03/23/terminal-services-versus-vdi-brian-s-presentation-from-vmworld-europe-2009.aspx
August 22, 2009
If you are integrating Citrix XenServer with EMC Clariion storage the Navisphere Host Agent (naviagent) can be installed in the Linux management OS (domain 0) so that the host registers with Navisphere.
- Download the Navisphere Host Agent 6.28 from here (requires Powerlink login) - http://tinyurl.com/n5cbu2
- Unzip and copy the RPM to the /tmp folder of the XenServer host. I use a tool from Bitvise called Tunnelier to do this – http://dl.bitvise.com/Tunnelier-Inst.exe
- From the SSH shell go to the /tmp folder and give give yourself execute permissions to the rpm with this command “chmod 755 *.rpm”
- Type this command to install “rpm -i naviagent-6.28.20.1.40-1.noarch.rpm”
- Open the firewall ports using these commands
iptables -D RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -j REJECT –reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -p tcp –dport 6389 -j ACCEPT –src SPA-IP-ADDRESS
iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -p udp –dport 6389 -j ACCEPT –src SPA-IP-ADDRESS
iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -p tcp –dport 6389 -j ACCEPT –src SPB-IP-ADDRESS
iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -p udp –dport 6389 -j ACCEPT –src SPB-IP-ADDRESS
iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -p tcp –dport 6390 -j ACCEPT –src SPA-IP-ADDRESS
iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -p tcp –dport 6390 -j ACCEPT –src SPB-IP-ADDRESS
iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -p tcp –dport 6391 -j ACCEPT –src SPA-IP-ADDRESS
iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -p tcp –dport 6391 -j ACCEPT –src SPB-IP-ADDRESS
iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -p tcp –dport 6392 -j ACCEPT –src SPA-IP-ADDRESS
iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -p tcp –dport 6392 -j ACCEPT –src SPB-IP-ADDRESS
iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -j REJECT –reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
iptables-save >/etc/sysconfig/iptables
Reboot the host and then check Navisphere to see if the host registered.
June 25, 2009
With the new version of Provisioning Server Citrix changed the management console ports from 8000 and 8001 to 54321 and 54322. The reason for this change is so that PVS can be installed on the XenDesktop Desktop Delivery Controller without port conflicts.
The port change breaks the the XenDesktop Setup Wizard because by default the setup wizard tries to communicate with PVS on ports 8000 and 8001.
To fix this you must edit the SetupToolApplication.exe.config file that is located in the “C:\Program Files\Citrix\XenDesktop Setup Wizard” folder and change the two ports from 8000 to 54321 and from 8001 to 54322.
The Provisioning Server 5.1 release notes states that you only have to change the 8000 port but in my experience I had to change both.
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX121336
June 23, 2009
Citrix just released an updated build of the XenDesktop VDA.
I was experiencing slow login times at one of my clients with the previous 3.1 build and this updated build fixed the issue.
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX121590
June 1, 2009
Citrix XenConvert is a tool to migrate (P2V) physical (or virtual) Windows systems to XenServer.
XenConvert is similar to VMware Converter but without some of the advanced features and functions differently.
XenConvert is installed and executed on the source system and only one local disk can be converted at a time.
You must have 115% free space to convert a disk, the free space doesn’t have to be on the same local disk but cannot be a mapped network drive. XenConvert creates a local VHD file, mounts it as a new drive and then copies the contents of the local drive you are converting to the new VHD file.
If during the XenConvert wizard you chose to migrate to XenServer it then takes the VHD and creates an XVA (XenServer Virtual Applicance) and then moves it up to the XenServer and creates the new VM.
The process takes at least twice as long as it does with VMware Converter. Most of this time is spent copying the local disk to the local VHD file.
XenConvert does not have a feature that lets you resize the destination VHD, if your local disk is 72 GB then the virtual disk will be 72 GB.
Some other features of XenConvert include the ability to convert an offline VMDK to either a VHD or OVF and Microsoft VMs to OVF.
http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/simoncr/2009/04/16/XenConvert+v2+Tech+Preview+-+OVF+and+VMDK+Support+for+XenServer
May 14, 2009
I was showing a client the “Exchange Tasks 2007″ tool from U-BTech website yesterday and noticed some new free tools for Exchange 2007 and Windows 2008.
- Certificate Manager for Exchange 2007 -Exchange 2007 enables SSL within IIS by default. Using PowerShell commands, certificate creation and management is quite confusing and often results with incorrect results due to the nature of the syntax. U-BTech Solutions is providing Certificate Manager for Exchange Server 2007 freely, to ease the process with a simple, easy to use GUI.http://www.u-btech.com/products/certificate-manager-for-exchange-2007.html
- SimplyPSO – Windows Server 2008 introduces a new feature to create separate password policies for different users or groups within the same Active Directory domain. In all previous versions of the Windows Server family of products, password policy has been configured on the domain level alone. The new feature is called fine grained password policy objects and is available when the domain functionality level is set to: Windows Server 2008 native. Unfortunately, there is no simple user interface to configure Password Settings Objects in the Windows Server 2008 environment and in order to configure PSOs, we need to dive deep into the ADSI editing tool. SimplyPSO is a graphical and useful tool that can be invoked directly from the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in. http://www.u-btech.com/products/simplypso.htm
- ESIEMail Protector – ESIEMail Protector (pronounced EASY Mail Protector) is a product dedicated to one goal: “Securing your email communications”. By using ESIEMail Protector you can use Encryption, Digital Signature and IRM Permissions (Information Rights Management) to secure your messaging environment, hence the name. http://www.u-btech.com/products/esiemail-protector.html
I stumbled upon this after the VMware Site Recovery Manager service wouldn’t start. I looked in the log file located in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Site Recovery Manager\Logs” directory. I opened the latest vmware-dr-x.log file and found this.
