PubForum 2010: What Has Citrix Done Lately?

The theme is move work to a more optimal place.

We were going to get a demo of a Citrix client on an iPad but the projector interface just woulldn’t work.  Guess it’s dodgy hardware 😉 OH you know the fanboys will flame me over that.

XenClient

72% of corporate machines will be laptops.  Synchronized VDI VM’s will be critical.  Citrix launched XenClient, a client hypervisor.  Question/Comment: There are only a few models of computer that have support for the client hypervisor.  I guess it is monolithic.  No AMD support.  The adoption rates of this will be quite limited without massively expanding the supported hardware list.

Synchronizer allows you to check out a VDI VM to your laptop running XenClient.  Nice.  Imagine that with OVF – could check out a VM to any client virtualization then – assuming OVF support in all products.

XenClient can passthrough the graphics card for 3D.  This is experimental and only supports 1 VM at a time. 

CItrix pitch the idea of the user having a public and private VM.  Good luck with that.  A user will not do that.  They’re either too lazy, will forget or find it to be a waste of time.  Another idea is that the user can supply their own laptop and a corporate build VM can go onto it.  Uh uh! THe hardware list is too limited, mainly to pricey h/w I guess, and end users will bring non-supported hardware in.  Also, the drive will be wiped when a XenClient will be done.  A P2V must be done before hand of the user’s build because thew will have an OEM install with no media, not to mention their personal data.  There will be a compliance issue regarding access and retainment of that P2V image on the corporate network.

Nice idea – but it needs to be a complete solution that is fully thought out.  I don’t believe it is anywhere near that yet, based solely on what I am hearing here

XenApp 6

Windows applications on demand, anywhere.  Out since March.  Dazzle provides serlf0service apps.  HDX provides “RealTime” and plug’n’play.  We may see some System Center integration.

FlexCast for Apps is a streaming solution including support for services.  A next release may include support for streaming drivers.

HDX provides USB PNP, 3D graphics, etc. 

NetScaler VPX

I guess VPX is their network traffic optimisation solution?

NetScaler VPX for Hyper-V will run as a service for Hyper-V to accelerate it.  Hmm, interesting.

Virtual Appliances

Workflow Studio, XenApp EVA and XenDesktop EVA are appliances that are based on Hyper-V.

XenServer 5.6

Citrix have 11% of the market share.

I see XenServer for the very first time.  It appears to have something like Dynamic Memory: minimum and maximum RAM setting per VM.  No shared paging in XenServer – the response to a question from a VMware user I guess.

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