Month: February 2012

System Center 2012 VHD

Hi guys,

With all the Windows 8 consumer preview you would almost forget that Microsoft has released a System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager RC – Evaluation (VHD) today.

You can download all 12 parts here.

System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager delivers industry leading fabric management, virtual machine management and services deployment in private cloud environments. System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager offers key new features that include hypervisor creation and management, network management, storage management, private cloud creation, self-service usage and service creation. It features deep investments in server application virtualization, service design and service modeling all of which can be used to efficiently offer an on-premises private cloud. Continue reading “System Center 2012 VHD”

Windows 8 consumer preview

As of today Microsoft has released the consumer preview of Windows 8.

There are several downloads for Windows 8 available at this time. Here’s an overview of the different kinds.

Windows 8 “Workstation” (All kinds of languages available)

Windows 8 “Server”

Windows 8 Consumer Preview Product Guide for Business

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Windows 8 Server Virtual Hard Disk (pre-installed)

Windows 8 Server Install, Deploy and Migrate documentation

Have fun downloading and remember if you have the Developer preview installed you cannot upgrade. You have to do a clean install.

Also this version doesn’t require a license key but will expire as of March 2013.

Exam prep guide 1Y1-A25

When you are preparing for the 1Y1-A25 Engineering a Citrix Virtualization Solution beta exam Citrix has released a prep guide for this. you can download the prep guide here.

Seating for this beta is limited when you want to enter. There’s now fee (as it is a beta exam). more information about this exam can be found here.

As always you need to register for this exam on the Pearson Vue website.

For those who are going good luck and post an update here when you have done the exam if you like.

 

Citrix support for vSphere 5 and Provisioning Server 5.6 and 6.0

Citrix support for the use of VMWare vSphere 5 and Citrix Provisioning Server version 5.6.x and 6.0.

Users running vSphere 5.0 could face the following problem:

“Provisioning Server 5.6 and 6.0 Target Devices hosted on VMware vSphere 5.0 becomes unresponsive after Windows operating system restart (at a black screen with PXE)
– Or –
“hang” after “Found “!PXE” @ xxxx:yyyy” (with BDM).”

This article on the Citrix knowledgebase site explains what to change to make it work.

Citrix XenServer 6 configuration limits

Just found this PDF online of the configuration limits for Citrix XenServer 6.0.

Citrix recommends using the following configuration limits as a guideline when selecting and configuring your virtual and physical environment for XenServer. The following information represents tested and recommended configuration limits that are fully supported by Citrix for XenServer.

You can download the PDF here from the Citrix website.

More whitepapers about the XenServer 6 product can be found here.

XenDesktop 5.6 & Upgrade to Microsoft SCVMM 2012

Hi guys,

Citrix has released an article on the possibilities of using Microsoft System Center VMM 2012 and XenDesktop. Here’s the outline and at the end is the link to the complete article.

“The purpose of this document is to highlight the potential issues for XenDesktop users who are planning to upgrade to Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM 2012), when SCVMM is being used by XenDesktop to monitor and control XenDesktop Virtual Desktop Agents (VDAs) hosted on a Microsoft Hyper-V server.

Although, at the time of documenting this article, XenDesktop 5.6 and SCVMM 2012 are not released products but the following points might prove to be useful for future references.”

Read the entire article here.

Field guide to XenApp 6.5 session pre-launch

While preparing for XenApp 6.5 I came across this good explanation by David Gaunt about session pre-launch within XenApp 6.5. David explains the CCU model very good and how it is used with session pre-launch.

“A bit of background

Before we go forward, lets take a few steps back over some familiar technology.

Remember in the old days when you would launch a Presentation Server app with a click of an icon and…wait…wait…logon script fires up…profile loads…wait a moment more…ta-dahh, you’re app is ready? Well we, and a few other clever partners, managed to reduce application launch time by doing clever things with the user profile or just trimming the fat that was the traditional roaming profile. But it was never going to be ‘like-local,’ which is really the end-goal of any virtual desktop solution.

In XenApp 6.5 we’ve cracked this launch delay by using a combination of the latest Windows Receiver and a new feature called Session Pre-Launch. Using this feature will mean than any application will start up immediately, without any delay.”

You can read the complete blog here.

XenApp on VMWare best practices

Hi Guys,

If you want to deploy Citrix XenApp on a VMWare hypervisor then you should read the guide provided by VMWare.

This guide provides best practice guidelines for deploying Citrix XenApp on VMware. The recommendations are not specific to any particular set of hardware or to the size and scope of any particular XenApp implementation. The design examples and considerations provide guidance only and do not represent strict design requirements. Flexibility in Citrix XenApp deployments combined with the flexibility of deploying on vSphere allows for a wide variety of valid configurations.

So download your copy now and read this guide.

XenServer 6 masterclass

Hi guys,

Ervik has posted this video originally (so credits to him). But I wanted to share this with you (my visitors) as well.

Lee Bushen and Steve Benton of the Master Class webinar series discuss why the time is right for you to stop snowballing virtualisation costs and move to XenServer. Run through the costs of each solution and get a side by side feature comparison. Demos of XenCenter, snapshots, backup, dynamic memory control, workload balancing, HA and Disaster recovery features are all shown in this 1 hour webinar. Continue reading “XenServer 6 masterclass”