Day 2 of HP Blades Day took place in a new location – the Customer Experience Centre.  This was due to issues with Wifi on day 1, now resolved in our new location.  Order of the day was:

• Review of the previous day’s presentations with a quick question & answer session
• Presentation on Client Virtualisation
• Factory tour

Client Virtualisation

Joseph George presented to the bloggers on client (aka desktop) virtualisation.  Whilst HP seem to have a story in this area, I’m skeptical about the whole process of virtualising desktops at this stage, other than in certain use cases.  I can see benefits for the following:

• High availability environments such as financial traders, where loss of a desktop translates to financial loss.
• Large scale desktop deployments where functionality is generic.  A good example of this is call centres; desks only require access to limited features (so don’t need high powered devices) and physical desktops may be used by multiple users.

Environments not suitable for desktop virtualisation will include mobile users and anyone running bespoke hardware or software with hardware dependencies.

HP pretty much accepted that hardware savings are not the main reason for virtualising.  This means a more intelligent model on TCO for desktops needs to be established, encompassing consequential loss through hardware downtime, processes cost for technology deployment and replacement and so on.  I think some of the thinking around security is a red herring as laptops are unlikely to be candidates for virtualisation and desktop data can be secured safely today.  I’ll be writing more on this topic over the coming weeks.

Factory Tour

We next moved on to a tour of the HP factory; this isn’t a manufacturing plant but rather purely an assembly line for server and storage components.  I’ve been on factory tours before and these days they pretty much leave me cold.  However HP had some interesting innovations to discuss.

• Customisation.  All HP server and storage builds are based on customer requests and so fully customised, including placing of kit into racks for shipping.  This means every configuration shipped is exactly as the customer ordered – and more;  HP also pre-cable the racks as the equipment is being installed.  Customers ordering multiple configurations can preview one rack of their order before the remainder are built.
• Testing.  Once servers are built, customers are provided the ability to VPN into their equipment while it is sitting on the factory floor.  They can perform load and performance testing before the equipment ships, saving valuable deployment time once the equipment arrives.
• POD (performance optimised datacentre).  This is HPs term for a datacentre in a container – which is exactly what they are.  Plug in power and cooling and you’ve a data centre on the move.  Except these devices aren’t really built to be picked up and moved around.  Rather they are aimed at providing temporary data centre facilities in scenarios where traditional data centres wouldn’t be possible – extension of existing facilities or perhaps creation of a data centre without planning permission were two good examples.

After the tour, we wrapped up at a local restaurant.

Overall the two days have been extremely informative and given me many subjects to blog about.  Look forward to more over the coming weeks!

© Chris for Gestalt IT, 2010. | HP Blades Tech Day 2
Read more posts categorized as Desktop, Server Virtualization

Some discussions on twitter last week triggered the topic of performance relating to the Drobo’s. This is the 5^th consecutive post on Drobo Series of products.

To read other Drobo related posts:

Drobo S and DroboElite – Introduced 11/23/2009

Some very interesting articles on Drobo S and DroboElite

The Drobo Math

I totally love my Drobo but

PLEASE SEE THE ATTACHED PDF FOR PERFORMANCE DATA

Here are some performance stats collected with running Drobo as a direct attached storage and using some benchmarking tools to compile these results.  All the performance stats are collected using different criteria’s that can affect the performance of the Drobo. Also used various connection methods including USB and Firewire to obtain these stats.

The entire series of tests have been performed using Mac OSX 10.6.2 host with either USB attached or Firewire attached to the Drobo.

These results are limited to the Drobo and cannot be compared to the Drobo Pro or Drobo Elite or Drobo S.

The test were carried out with using various combination of drives, rebuilt data protection, best-case scenario, worst-case scenario, 1 drive, 2 drives, 4 drives, different drive cache & capacity.

Enjoy!!!

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Drobo Performance Stats
Read more posts categorized as Desktop, Featured, Storage

There was a lot of excitement when Google announced it’s intent to develop the Chrome operating system (Chrome OS). Almost immediately journalists, analysts, and bloggers began speculating if Google’s future OS offering could pose a threat to Microsoft’s dominance on the desktop. VMware quickly added clout to Google’s plans by promising to support Google OS. VMware also expressed interest in the Chrome OS being used to develop specialized applications as virtual appliances. However, the most compelling question and use for the new Linux based OS to me would be if the Chrome OS could become relevant in connecting to VDI solutions. I feel that Google’s immediate traction and ultimate success with an OS relies on it’s ability to install VDI clients – not as a Microsoft desktop replacement, whether physical or virtual.

VDI has gained momentum. VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft all boast about the availability of an enterprise ready virtual desktop management solution. Storage technologies such as thin provisioning, deduplication, and rapid cloning are being perfected and optimized and will lower the total cost of ownership for VDI. 64 bit Hardware with virtualization assist technologies on host servers has enabled record setting ratios of supported users. It seems that OS licensing models formerly based on physical hardware are slowly morphing to support virtualized environments. But, in my opinion, there is still a major hurdle to the enterprise’s wide spread acceptance of VDI on a platform other than Windows.

Is enterprise business really ready to migrate the majority of their user applications and data to Linux, the web, or even the Cloud? For Chrome OS to challenge Microsoft for seats in the enterprise, this shift will have to happen, and it will have to be publicly reported as highly successfully and common. Are web based applications and software as a service (Saas) alternatives ready to handle main stream business services like email and office collaboration? More importantly, are enterprise IT departments ready to allow cloud providers to run, protect, and store their business critical applications and data? When that happens the OS on the desktop becomes less important. The browser will become the only application of importance.

Until then, Windows will continue to be the most popular desktop OS simply because it runs the most popular applications needed by business today. Therefore, the typical VDI solution in the immediate future will continue to consist of Windows VMs. Microsoft’s decision to strip down the bloat and replace Vista with Windows 7 was a wise move, and probably has ensured Microsoft’s position as the desktop market leader for many more years to come.

That’s why it more important to think about what will the users use to connect to those virtual desktops. Yes, VMware, and the competition, is developing their own desktop hypervisor OS. VMware calls their work in progress CVP (Client Virtualization Platform), but is VMware’s CVP (for example) really going to be able to run on all modern notebooks and desktops? To be specific, on the Lenovo T400 I am using to write this, will a VMware client hypervisor allow all of the volume buttons, wifi adapter controls, microphone, blue tooth, and other miscellaneous hardware features to work properly? What about all the other manufacturers of notebooks, netbooks, and desktops with their different models and hardware configurations too? This is where all the work put in to a modern Linux distribution appears to have the advantage. Otherwise, does the future client hypervisors requiring their own specialized hardware really sound appealing? Does expecting users to use today’s notebooks without the full functionality sound realistic?

Assuming Google’s product will be most like a Linux distribution, it seems to me that Google’s best bet for mass adoption of the Chrome OS would be to make sure that enterprises can count on installing VMware’s View Client (and the competition’s VDI clients as well). The real corporate desktop will still have to be a Windows virtual machine that can be synced between the data center and the client OS and even used offline. Eventually, as cloud based application replacements emerge in the future, Google’s OS could become more of a direct competitor/replacement to Microsoft’s OS.

© Rich for Gestalt IT, 2009. | VMware Will Virtualize Google Chrome, But Will Chrome Run VMware For VDI?
Read more posts categorized as Desktop, Featured

I’ve been meaning to write about the Citrix Branch Repeater product for some time now, so a timely reminder to actually do this was the release of Citrix Branch Repeater V5.5. Earlier this year I attended a branch office infrastructure event run by Microsoft and Citrix in Edinburgh.  This was the first time I had heard about this product, I luckily had the chance to follow up my interest at the recent Citrix iForum in Edinburgh.

Branch Repeater is the rebranding of the old WANScaler product, which, in its simplest form was a WAN acceleration product. The new branch repeater is still a WAN accelerator at heart;  however Citrix have added some clever branch office features as well as some new features for XenApp customers. From a topology perspective, you basically place a larger repeater appliance in your data centre and additional smaller repeater appliances in your branch office.  I was actually surprised to learn that this is not the only option available; there is also a repeater software plug-in for use by remote users.  The diagram below shows the basic topology overview.

Branch Office Operations

One of the most interesting aspects of the new branch repeater product is the branch-in-a-box concept.  You can purchase your Citrix Branch Repeater with Windows 2008 or Windows 2003 R2 built in.  This allows you to use your appliance to deliver DHCP, DNS, WINS, AD, DFS as well as file and print services through the onboard hard-drive.  Support for Microsoft’s read only domain controller configuration adds to the package, allowing you to actively consider consolidating an entire branch office infrastructure into one appliance.  Now it sounds like an appliance failure could have devastating consequences for your branch office and you’d probably be right.  It was one of the questions I had for the Citrix Consultants at the iForum, they informed me that you can cluster two appliances together for HA resilience.  Increases cost of course, but what price do you put on availability?

Citrix XenApp features

Citrix have added some nice features to encourage those of us who already use XenApp as a branch office delivery mechanism. ICA is already a very efficient protocol and Citrix have attempted to build on that with HDX IntelliCache and HDX Broadcast technologies.  HDX IntelliCache allows local caching and de-duplication of ICA traffic across multiple ICA sessions, it also allows for the local staging of XenApp streamed applications if that’s a technology you utilise.  HDX Broadcast on the other hand is the technology which optimises and gives granular control over the network elements of ICA.  The list of individual features is quite extensive so I won’t reproduce it,  you can check it out over at Citrix’s website by clicking the links above.  The benefits of the branch repeater when used with XenApp probably depend on the number of XenApp users in a branch or your current use of the technology. A branch with a small number of users may not see a benefit that justifies the cost, however  I can see immediate benefit if a branch office was to require expansion. Use these appliances and you probably wouldn’t need to change your WAN Links.  That has to work on the cost front!

Repeater Plug-in for Citrix Receiver

I mentioned the Repeater software plug-in earlier as this was one of the features that caught my eye, primarily because we have a lot of travelling Citrix users and home based users.  This part of the product set claims to “overcome bandwidth and latency limitations on WiFi, broadband and 3G Connections” while also delivering that high definition experience (HDX).  This in itself interests me enough to explore further, but then I find it also allows you to provide central administration of end devices covering software distribution and configuration settings.  It works seamlessly with the Citrix Access Gateway product and other leading VPN’s to optimise traffic within secure tunnelled network connections.  All in all it sounds brilliant and potentially allows you to deliver improvements for users who work outside the branch office, something that is becoming more common every day.

Conclusion

I mentioned before that this is a WAN Accelerator product at heart, with nice new shiny add-ons to meet a number of customer requirements.  I’m genuinely excited by this product as I think it has a place in companies global infrastructures, especially with remote data centres and Citrix based branch offices becoming more common place.  I myself am going to find this hard to sell to my current employer, mainly due to some nasty issues we once had with another WAN Accelerator called Riverbed.  However that was a long time ago and maybe the industry has moved on since then, maybe it’s time to take a fresh look.  Cost is the one thing I’m not 100% sure about at this point in time, there are a number of different models and it would appear that costs range from $5,000 for the branch side appliances to $11,500 for the data centre side appliances.

If anyone is using the Citrix Branch Repeater appliance, we’d love to hear about your experience of it and possibly you could clarify the cost element for us all.

© Craig for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Citrix Branch Repeater – WAN Acceleration / Branch office in a box
Read more posts categorized as Desktop, Featured, Networking, Server Virtualization

The fact that Microsoft has embraced virtualization is an understatement. The fact that Microsoft has been slow to embrace other virtualization vendor’s capabilities to run Windows operating systems as guests is equally an understatement, but what if this wasn’t the case? That is, what if Microsoft abandoned the licensing strategy of anchoring Windows to physical hardware? What if the folks at Redmond recognized virtual hardware and virtual machines (VMs) as equals to physical devices when assigning licenses? Taking it a step forward, what if specialized versions of the various Windows operating systems and applications were specifically developed for VMs along with special licensing? Maybe it will never happen, but there have been a few signs recently that give one hope for the possibility.

Like crop circles, the following are some posts that caused me to wonder “what if?”.
 

First, there was a rumor about a virtualized version of Microsoft Office.
latoga labs – Rumor: Microsoft Office Virtualization Edition

“I heard an interesting rumor this week that Microsoft is planning on updating their licensing model in the near future for Microsoft Office to introduce a virtualization version. The way it was described to me is that if you want to migrate your physical desktops to virtual desktops and run Microsoft Office on them, you will need to purchase a special Office Virtualized Edition.”

Interesting no doubt, but the more I think about this rumor it really starts to sound like a reason to justify making companies pay for another Office license – as if the first Office license can’t P2V with the OS? I have not heard anything else since about “Virtualized Office”.

Next there was the  announcement that Microsoft has identified a market opportunity for a low cost version of Server 2008 designed to run on low-end servers. To fulfill this need, Microsoft released Server 2008 Foundation, which comes pre-installed on hardware when purchased through original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Paul Thurrott’s post Windows Server 2008 Foundation Preview explains Microsoft’s vision for this version:

“Microsoft saw a glaring hole in its product line, one that was not filled by the consumer-focused Windows Home Server or the overly-functional SBS. This year, it’s possible to purchase perfectly capable low-end servers for well under $1000. So it doesn’t make sense that Microsoft’s lowest cost infrastructure server, Windows Server 2008 Standard, costs $500. Clearly what the company needed was something that offered core Server features but came in well under that price.”

Which makes me wonder if Microsoft would ever create a similar edition for virtual instances of server 2008?

Finally, the biggest news about a virtual edition of a Windows operating system was XP Mode in the upcoming Windows 7.

Again a post from Paul Thurrott along with Rafael Rivera - Secret No More: Revealing Windows XP Mode for Windows 7

“XP Mode consists of the Virtual PC-based virtual environment and a fully licensed copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3). It will be made available, for free, to users of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions via a download from the Microsoft web site. (That is, it will not be included in the box with Windows 7, but is considered an out-of-band update, like Windows Live Essentials.) XPM works much like today’s Virtual PC products, but with one important exception: As with the enterprise-based MED-V (Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization) product, XPM does not require you to run the virtual environment as a separate Windows desktop. Instead, as you install applications inside the virtual XP environment, they are published to the host (Windows 7) OS as well. (With shortcuts placed in the Start Menu.) That way, users can run Windows XP-based applications (like IE 6) alongside Windows 7 applications under a single desktop.”

My understanding of XP Mode is that it is a specialized VM edition of Windows XP.

What If?

Would it not be nice if a “Windows Server v12n Edition” existed? How about Windows Desktop V12N? Stripped of the extra drivers and applications. Licensed per virtual machine. Free to migrate between virtual hosts. Allow the hot add and remove of virtual RAM and CPU. Operating systems tweaked to be easily cloned for dynamic demand. Applications written so that they could be duplicated as needed with services that could self load balance. Able to leap tall buildings …

Is my head in the clouds, and, for that matter, are these crop circles just a hoax?

© Rich for Gestalt IT, 2009. | What If Microsoft Virtualization Editions Existed?
Read more posts categorized as All, Cloud Computing, Desktop, Featured, Server Virtualization

If you’ve been experimenting with ZFS, as we have, you’ve been struck by some of its limitations. One of the most common complaints is that it’s not flexible in terms of sizing – you have to add a whole new “vdev” (analogous to a RAID set) in order to expand, rather than simply adding new disks one at a time.

But there is one other way to expand a zpool – by iteratively swapping out every disk in the pool with a larger one and letting ZFS heal the pool. This is the technique demonstrated by Harry D in a two-part blog post:

1. How to resize ZFS
2. How to resize ZFS – Part 2 (the real world)

You still can’t shrink a zpool. Let’s hope that comes along soon, along with more flexibility in general. Otherwise, ZFS will be much less interesting in the desktop/workstation/small server space!

© Stephen for Gestalt IT, 2009. | How to Resize ZFS
Read more posts categorized as Desktop, Storage

You’ve probably already heard about VMware’s open source VDI client. VMware’s official announcement for the VMware View Open Client was released on February 4. Touted as the next step for creating a universal client to be used on any device from anywhere, VMware releasing the client as open source enables technology partners to start to fufill the vision. In VMware’s words:

“Now, VMware is providing VMware View Open Client for partners, enabling them to use VMware View source code to optimize their products to deliver rich, personalized virtual desktops to users. In addition, partners will be able to use the source code to help accelerate the development and delivery of solutions for enterprises to provision and manage thousands of virtual desktops simply, securely and at substantially lower operating costs.”

What I find most interesting is that Linux systems now have a installable VDI client. Unless I am mistaken, previously a web browser was the only way a connection to a virtual desktop could be made from Linux. Not only does this increase the functionality and features, but it could substantially lower the total cost of a VDI solution. Whether using a thin client or a desktop computer, using Linux as the device OS generally should reduce the cost of implementation.

Looking forward, I’m curious to see if specialized distributions are developed that integrate the Linux VDI client. I would imagine a “VDI LiveCD” from Ubuntu, Suse, or even Google’s gOS could be released to minimize the installation and administration learning curve and adoption barriers. Ultimately, this client could be a native feature of a desktop hypervisor too.

For a screen shot of the VMware View Client on Suse desktop check out Duncan’s post VMware View Open Client, test it! » Yellow Bricks.

The linuxdevices.com post VMware ships open source Linux VDI client summarizes information about specific features and differences in the commercial and open source versions of the Linux client.

“VMware will continue to offer its commercially licensed View Client stack for Linux and Windows. The commercial stack adds features like USB redirection, multiple desktop sessions, and multimedia redirection. Like the commercial version, though, the free, open source View Open Client enables a Linux desktop or thin client to connect to a remote Windows desktop managed by VMware’s “View” virtualization software. The free client boasts a “full” command line interface, and is said to support secure tunneling using SSL, and two-factor authentication with RSA SecurID. The release is said to work with VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) 2.0 and 2.1, as well as VMware View Manager 3.0. Posted on Google Code, the client software is licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 (LGPL v 2.1).”

VMware employees have also blogged about the new VDI client. Check out Mike Dipetrillo’s post VMware View Open Client and John Troyer’s VMware releases open source desktop client.

© Rich for Gestalt IT, 2009. | New Possibilities With Open Source VMware VDI Client for Linux
Read more posts categorized as Desktop, Server Virtualization

On 12.02.08 VMware announced the general availability of their latest version of VDI products and moved a step closer to fulfilling it’s vClient initiative discussed at VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas earlier this year. The new VMware View 3 is comprised of a suite of products that will work together to deliver virtual desktop infrastructure that expands beyond VMware’s current VDM 2.1 features and promises to provide VDI access from anywhere and from any device. There has already been a lot written about VMware View and about what VMware’s product offering now means for VDI today and it’s expected impact in 2009. Brian Madden provided some great insight on what pieces are strategic in terms of competition and what pieces are still futuristic. His 60 second overview post and his VDI to Apple Newton comparison are definitely must reads. You should definitely view Keith Ward’s VIEW on VMware View over at Virtualization Review. (Sorry, I get a kick out of that sentence ) However, my perspective on VMware View 3.0 is from the implementation angle, and specifically the Linked Clones feature and designing around the promise of significant storage reduction.

The following quote from VMware’s official announcement explains the new Linked Clones ability provided by VMware View Composer:

VMware View Composer is a new product that uses Linked Clone technology to create virtual desktops rapidly from a master image while consuming up to 70 percent less storage space. Automated image preparation and provisioning take only seconds and are centrally controlled by View Manager. In addition, View Composer can reduce management costs by enabling IT to update thousands of individual virtual desktops by simply updating the master image with a patch or application update and then applying the changes to each desktop cloned from the master image. View Composer provides this one-to-many image updating while preserving user data, settings, and preferences so patching is seamless to end users.

If you are already familiar with VMware Workstation 6.5 or VMware Lab Manager then you have already been introduced to VMware’s Linked Clones as features of those products. If you need some more background check out Tom Howarth’s post Linked Clones, what are they on his PlanetVM blog. From Tom’s post:

What is a linked clone?

Well Linked Clones are basically Snapshots on steroids.

For a slightly more technical look

A Linked Clone is a copy of a virtual machine that continues to share the virtual disks of its parents but basically runs of a snapshot. This special snapshot is often referred to as a Redo or Diff Disk. However because it is a Snapshot or difference disk the clone always requires access to the parent’s disk and therefore the term Linked.

As you can see the underlying technology is more akin to a snapshot than a clone but here is the magic you can have more than one active Snapshot coupled to the parent disk,

It can be seen that a major advantage of this is that each as linked clone operates as an independent virtual machine, a active guest can take up 100’s or MB of SAN storage rather than 10’s of Gigabytes utilised using traditional Cloning technology.

Now, when I think about implementing a VDI design Linked Clones introduce some new options and questions.

For VDI can I use local storage only? Do six 300 GB disks in a local RAID array provide enough throughput? Suddenly they provide more than adequate space for tens or hundreds of desktops!

What about combining filer based deduplication and thin provisioning with VMware Linked Clones? When will these 2 seemingly parallel highways meet and combine? Probably at an interchange called vStorage in the near future?

Not to mention the impact on desktop deployment strategy. That is, in my mind it almost justifies putting more applications in my base image again so that I can better patch and update just once. Is that taking away from the separation of applications and user data that has been talked about so much recently? It certainly makes user administrators happier with the justification for tighter, locked down desktop image deployment.

Finally, when does Linked Clones show up in production server virtualization? But, we can all guess this last answer, right?

Let me know your thoughts on new implementation options now that Linked Clones are part of the VMware VDI solution.

Other articles and posts worth reading about VMware View:

• With View 3, VMware moves VDI a few steps forward Alex Barrett
• VMware View 3 enhances virtual desktops Daniel Robinson

© Rich for Gestalt IT, 2008. | VMware View 3.0 perspective from the implementation angle
Read more posts categorized as Desktop