Cashing in on the art of Xen. - Catbird

VirtualizationReview.com

in

Cashing in on the art of Xen.

CITRIX CTO Simon Crosby:“Everything we do relies on virtualization in one form or another.”

+Management Strategies and Tools

Avoiding Virtualization Pitfalls

How Can VMware Guest Console Help You?

April/May 2010 | Vol. 3 | No. 3

CITRIX PRESIDENT AND CEO

Mark Templeton: “We have not only survived, but we have thrived.” Wbubb

Power your planet.

Sources for claims can be found at www.ibm.com/power/p7claim. IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, POWER7 Systems, Smarter Planet and the planet icon are trademarks of International BusinessMachines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. © International Business Machines Corporation 2010.

We live on a planet where nearly 6 terabytes of information are being exchanged over the Internet everysecond, and where billions of connected people are surpassed in number, only by trillions of connectedobjects and devices. Why then is the average server in the average business running at only 10% utilization?It’s hard enough for businesses to meet the demands of a smarter planet today, much less the unforeseendemands of tomorrow. The new POWER7 Systems™ from IBM are not simply servers—they’re fullyintegrated systems with the ability to run hundreds of virtual servers, helping you drive up to 90% utilization.These next-generation systems integrate massive parallel processing, throughput computing and analyticscapabilities to optimize for the complex workloads of an increasingly data-driven world. Learn how to power your planet at ibm.com/poweryourplanet

Smarter systems for a Smarter Planet.

http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

Where other vendors strive for success by beating their competitors head-to-head and seizing market share like so much gladiatorial booty, Citrix views itself as more of an enabler—a company that succeeds by working with, not against, its perceived competition.

VirtualizationReview.com | Virtualization Review | April/May 2010 | 1

APRIL/MAY 2010 | VIRTUALIZATION REVIEW | VOL. 3, NO. 3

VISIT VIRTUALIZATIONREVIEW.COM

contents

Virtualization is an inexact science with numerous potential pitfalls that can only be avoided through proper planning and testing.

10

2 Online TOC31 Ad/Edit Index

UPFRONT5 Review Private Cloud Automation6 Review A New Way to Back up Your

Cloud-Based Web Services8 Q&A Taking on the Goliaths

COLUMNS4 Hoard: BRUCE HOARD

Back in the U.S.S.R.

IMA

GES

FR

OM

SH

UTT

ERST

OCK

24

4

28 How-To Guy: DAVID DAVIS

Microsoft Off ers Under-the-Covers VDI

30 Everyday Virtualization: RICK VANOVER

VDI Display Protocols—Why They’re Important

32 Take 5: BRUCE HOARD

Why I Like Citrix

FEATURES12 Citrix in Sync Bruce Hoard talks to Citrix Systems Inc. President and CEO Mark

Templeton, CTO Simon Crosby and a number of analysts about the company’s current state in the industry, where Citrix is headed and how it will position itself against the competition.

17 Virtualization Management Tools & Strategies Enterprise-wide management platforms meet best-of-breed tools.

24 Avoiding the Pitfalls of Virtualization Virtualization is rarely as simple to implement and manage as

it has been made out to be. Here’s what to look out for when planning your organization’s next virtualization project.

Virtualization Takes Wing at Patrick Air Force BaseGovernment Computer News takes a look at the challenges the IT

managers at the Air Force’s 45th Space Wing at Patrick Air Force Base faced when they decided that virtualization technology was a good way to achieve more effi cient IT operations and better use of resources. Read how they completed the physical-to-virtual migration of 60 servers in less than three months at VirtualizationReview.com/Yasin0410.

Study: Security Lags in Data Center Virtualization ProjectsA Gartner Inc. study published in late January took a look at security risks in data center virtualization projects. Kathleen Hickey reports Gartner’s fi ndings: “… 60 percent of virtual servers become less secure than the ones they replace. The trend is likely to continue through the end of 2015, when the number of insecure virtual servers is expected to drop to 30 percent, according to Gartner.”

Read more about the report at VirtualizationReview.com/Hickey0410.

2 | April/May 2010 | Virtualization Review | VirtualizationReview.com

what’s [email protected]

VIRTUALIZATIONREVIEW.COMAPRIL/MAY 2010 ■ VOL. 3 ■ NO. 3

EDITORIAL STAFF

Vice President, Editorial Director Doug Barney

Editor in Chief Bruce Hoard

Managing Editor Wendy Gonchar

Associate Managing Editor Katrina Carrasco

COLUMNISTS

David Davis

Rick Vanover

ART STAFF

Creative Director Scott Shultz

Art Director Brad Zerbel

ONLINE/DIGITAL MEDIA

Editor, VirtualizationReview.com Michael Domingo

Director, Online Media Becky Nagel

Site Administrator Shane Lee

Designer Rodrigo Muñoz

President Henry Allain

Vice President, Publishing Matt N. Morollo

Director, Marketing Michele Imgrund

Online Marketing Director Tracy S. Cook

President & Chief Executive Offi cer Neal Vitale

Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Offi cer Richard Vitale

Executive Vice President Michael J. Valenti

Senior Vice President, Abraham M. Langer Audience Development & Digital Media

Vice President, Christopher M. Coates Finance & Administration

Vice President, Erik A. Lindgren Information Technology & Application Developement

Vice President, Carmel McDonagh Attendee Marketing

Vice President, Event Operations David F. Myers

Chairman of the Board Jeff rey S. Klein

Reaching the Staff

Staff may be reached via e-mail, telephone, fax, or mail.A list of editors and contact information is also available

online at VirtualizationReview.com.

E-mail: To e-mail any member of the staff , please use thefollowing form: [email protected]

Framingham Offi ce (weekdays, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET)Telephone 508-875-6644; Fax 508-875-6633

600 Worcester Road, Suite 204, Framingham, MA 01702

Irvine Offi ce (weekdays, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. PT)Telephone 949-265-1520; Fax 949-265-1528

16261 Laguna Canyon Road, Suite 130, Irvine, CA 92618

Corporate Offi ce (weekdays, 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. PT)Telephone 818-814-5200; Fax 818-734-1522

9201 Oakdale Avenue, Suite 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311

The opinions expressed within the articles and other contents herein do not necessarily express those of the publisher.

Storage Decisions for Small Virtualization FootprintsEveryday Virtualization columnist and blogger Rick Vanover recently checked out a handful of virtualization storage products aimed at small to midsize businesses.

Focusing on an environment of seven or fewer virtual machines with a “nominal” workload, Vanover started with Drobo, SnapServer SAN S2000 and HP MSA P2000 G3. Read what his fi rst impressions were at VirtualizationReview.com/Vanover0410.

Check out Editor in Chief Bruce Hoard’s blog at VirtualizationReview.com/Hoard. Recent topics include: a Vizioncore Virtualization Review study on manufacturers acknowledging virtualization as a strategic tool; a look at Refl ex Systems vProfi le and an overview of VKernel Capacity Analyzer 4.3.

The Hoard Facts

VirtualizationReview.com • Redmondmag.com • RCPmag.com • RedDevNews.comVisualStudioMagazine.com • MCPmag.com • CertCities.com • TCPmag.com • ENTmag.com

RedmondEvents.com • ADTmag.com • ESJ.com

mailto:@virtualizationreview.com

mailto:[email protected]

1HP Smart Buy instant savings reflected in advertised price. HP Smart Buy instant savings is based on a comparison of the HP Smart Buyprice versus the standard list price of an identical product. Savings may vary based on channel and/or direct standard pricing.Offer subject to CDW’s standard terms and conditions of sale, available at CDW.com.©2010 CDW LLC

Learn howwecanhelp you significantly reduce energy costs.CDW.com | 800.399.4CDW

HP PROLIANT DL380 G6RACK-MOUNT SERVER

$4399CDW1723415

VMWARE®VSPHERETM

4MIDSIZEACCELERATION KITCall CDW for pricingCDW1969735

HP STORAGEWORKS®

P2000 G3MSA FC/iSCSIDUAL COMBOCONTROLLERLFFARRAYCall CDW for pricingCDW2006327

HP SMART BUY1

Hard drives sold separately

Let’s squeeze evenmoreout of less.Virtualization from CDW is the answer. Because fewer

servers means less power consumption. Less maintenance.And more savings. Only CDW has certified specialists

and the top technology brands you need all in one place.Thousands of companies have already turned to us

for virtualization solutions. Now it’s your turn. So let’s do it together.

Let’s get going.

www.cdw.com


ED NOTE

Bruce Hoard

PHO

TO B

Y TERR

Y POW

ELL, PIN PH

OTO

FRO

M SH

UT

TERSTO

CK

HOARD

Back in the U.S.S.R.Virsto CTO Alex Miroshnichenko was in the belly of the red beast at the tail end of the Cold War. It was a time when working in IT meant working for the Soviet government, when the concept of computer technology advancements was oxymoronic, and when reverse engineering was something of a high, if bogus, art.

Born in 1962—during the era when Nikita Khrushchev was pounding his shoe on a lectern at the United Nations, and later proclaiming to Western diplomats, “We will bury you”—Miroshnichenko graduated from university in 1985 with a master’s in applied physics. Degree in hand, he was soon absorbed into the U.S.S.R.’s mammoth and monolithic communist bureaucracy, where he toiled until his eventual departure from Mother Russia in 1989.

Miroshnichenko wasn’t a classic IT guy in the sense that he managed a data center or wrote a lot of code for line-of-business operations. “I was kind of a student, a developer, an engineer doing advanced R&D in super computers and network workstations, things related to looking at and evaluating the western technology— whatever was smuggled in through the Iron Curtain,” he recalls.

Although he did a lot of work related to developing high-end Soviet electronics, much of which

was military- and defense-related, he was

not directly involved in the

electronic development of weapons design. Instead he was employed by the Academy of Sciences, which kept him at arm’s length from hardcore military electronics.

Miroshnichenko has no shortage of interesting and humorous anecdotes about the pathetic, can’t-shoot-straight condition of IT in the U.S.S.R. during the 1980s. For example, size mattered—but big didn’t mean better. “There were all kinds of weird designs for Soviet PCs, and they were huge, literally,” he says. “There was a PC called the EC 1830 that was supposedly a copy of the IBM PC. It had two boxes that were about three feet by three feet and one foot high. The mean time between failures was about two hours, in my opinion.”

Then there was the case of the Soviet PC that wasn’t. “One day we got a phone call from some guys in the industry, and they said, ‘Well, we built this Soviet PC, and it’s almost the same size as the original. It’s a breakthrough, and we’re all going to get medals for it.’” When the PC was delivered to Miroshnichenko for examination, he was immediately suspicious, so he popped out the CPU and noticed that its top had been painted very carefully, but not its bottom. “They forgot to paint the bottom side that said ‘Made in Malaysia,’” he recalls.

“On one hand, they were caught red-handed, but on the other hand, everybody knew it was a total joke in the grand scheme of things,” Miroshnichenko continues. “They were apparently fulfi lling some kind of order from their bosses and their bosses’ bosses, and everybody was part of this totally dysfunctional government system. So that was funny.”

Miroshnichenko eventually left the U.S.S.R. during its waning days to visit a well-connected friend who eventually became a high ranking offi cial in the Pentagon during the Clinton administration. He stayed and started a new life, but retains vivid memories of the not-so-glorious days of the Soviet Union. You can e-mail me at [email protected]. VR



news • trends • analysis

REVIEW

Surgient Cloud Express promises to deliver an on-premises (private) cloud in

just 30 days. Cloud Express includes Surgient’s patented cloud software components, documentation and implementation services for $50,000—a cost Surgient claims several of its customers have recouped in less than 30 days.

Surgient Cloud Express is a software/services package that integrates with existing servers, storage and networks. It includes:

■ The Surgient Platform for 30 managed CPUs (the number of managed CPUs can be grown incrementally)

■ Client-specifi c private cloud architecture

■ Implementation services■ Administrator training■ Documentation■ One-year standard support ■ ROI tracking and analysis

Cloud Express works with both Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware, and is said to be highly scalable up to thousands of VMs. The foundation of Cloud Express is the Surgient Platform version 7. Cloud Express provides virtualization and automation services that automate the delivery of IT services, including policy-based resource allocation, a self-service portal for reservations and scheduling of IT resources, dynamic capacity management, and the facility for charge-backs and pay-for-service. It is these characteristics that enable a virtualized environment to become a private cloud.

‘Timesharing’ Virtualized EnvironmentsWhat make Surgient unique are the elements of its patented technology that create a kind of “timesharing” of the virtualized environment. These elements are constantly monitoring

provisioning activities and dynamically managing the allocation of compute resources, storage capacity, software licenses, and, through an end-user portal, are fi xing reservations against available assets. Unlike other available provisioning solutions, Surgient enables users to add/remove one or more additional servers to a live, deployed service without causing downtime. Customers can add servers to a live service to dynamically address spikes in user demand and remove servers when demand declines to save operating expenses.

The Surgient Platform can scale to manage many servers in addition to the thousands of VMs, providing capital and operating expense gains beyond the benefi ts of virtualization alone. One client, a multi-billion-dollar information management fi rm, added Surgient to its existing large-scale virtualized infrastructure. With Surgient, the customer can automatically deploy environments of 200-plus VMs per instance in fi ve hours, down from two weeks, while reducing service provisioning time by 95 percent. The fi rm is now able to achieve 2,000 VMs in a single service instance—in much less time and with lower investment.

Where Surgient’s Cloud Express excels as a private cloud offering is in management functionality. One of the biggest challenges IT managers and administrators face when deploying VMs in cloud environments is managing the sprawl caused by large numbers of VMs. Surgient’s software environment focuses on returning unused VMs residing in clouds back to a cloud resource pool where those resources can then be used by applications looking for processing

Private Cloud AutomationUp and running in 30 days with Surgient Cloud Express.By Jane Clabby

Cloud Express provides on-demand virtualization infrastructure that can be used for a range of applications.


Coming next issue: New vSphere featuresUpFront

power. By returning resources to the cloud, IT managers are able to get higher utilization out of their existing servers—providing better ROI on servers their enterprises already own. By maximizing resource utilization, it’s easy to see why some organizations are recouping their investment in Surgient Cloud Express in 30 days or less.

Another standout feature of the Surgient Cloud Express offering

is its policy-based provisioning environment. IT managers and administrators can predetermine which applications are entitled to computing resources—and create automated policy scripts that ensure that priority applications get access to the resources they need before less-important applications are given resources. This automated, priority-driven provisioning of resources eliminates the need for

human intervention when assigning computing resources, helping drive down operational costs and bolstering ROI. VR

Jane Clabby ([email protected]) has been in the IT industry for over 25 years in a range of marketing, research and business development roles. Currently a research analyst at Clabby Analytics, Jane focuses on storage and storage management, and cloud computing.

REVIEW

One of the problems of using online services such as WordPress blogs, Facebook

and Twitter is that you can’t easily save the information you accumulate in the cloud. If you have a WordPress blog, you need to run a regular backup that saves your blog content into an .XML fi le, for example.

Now a new service from Backupify can help. Using Amazon Web Services and cloud-based storage, Backupify provides backup agents to more than a dozen services, including Google Docs, Blogger and Gmail, Zoho, Delicious, Hotmail and Basecamp. Coming soon are backups for YouTube, Tumblr and general RSS feeds. In addition to these services, business accounts will feature backups of CRM applications and online accounting programs.

Setup for the most part is fairly simple: you have to provide your authentication information, which in some cases is stored in an encrypted place by Backupify. Then the service goes to work on a weekly or daily basis to do the backups, moving your data from its original

repository to your account on Backupify. You can have the service notify you when a successful backup is complete via e-mail, along with other conditions, too. Also, you can download what is stored in your archives using a Web browser.

A couple of caveats: Gmail and Twitter backups are a bit lengthy, because of the volume of information stored on these accounts. (My Twitter account took more than two hours, for example.) The most trouble I had was getting the WordPress plug-in to install and synchronize: if you’re using Wordpress.com to host your

blog, you obviously can’t use this feature because you can’t install any of your own plug-ins. Once you add the plug-in to your site, you activate it on the Backupify settings page and then you initialize the backup back on your blog’s Plug-in control panel.

Bottom LineBackupify is no substitute for a good local backup of your Web services data, but it’s something nice to have.

Pricing info: The fee is $49-$79 per year for consumer accounts, and business accounts range from $19-$99/month depending on features. VR

David Strom ([email protected]) is an industry veteran trade journalist who’s been editor in chief at Network Computing, Tom’s Hardware and DigitalLanding.com. He’s written two computer books and many IT articles.

A New Way to Back up Your Cloud-Based Web ServicesBackupify provides daily and weekly backups.By David Strom

Backupify notifi es users via e-mail when successful backups are complete.



Q Who is AppSense?A AppSense is a software vendor providing user virtualization technology to enterprise organizations around the world. User virtualization is way of managing all user data independent of the desktop, and applying this information into any desktop on-demand. Virtualizing all that is user-specifi c about a desktop enables IT to standardize the desktop build, automate desktop delivery, and migrate users to new desktops—all while ensuring the user experience is seamless, personal, predictable and easily manageable. AppSense has focused on optimizing the working experience for users for over 10 years and has developed the technology, experience and operational capacity to off er a solution to what has been to date the most challenging yet important aspect of the desktop to manage—the user.

Q What is the AppSense off ering?A In the same way that desktop and application delivery requires an infrastruc-ture solution, so too must the user’s environment. The AppSense Virtualized User Infrastructure virtualizes the user environment, decoupling it from the desktop, and storing and managing it separately. The user environment contains everything specifi c to a user, including user-based corporate policy settings, personalization settings, user access rights and user-introduced applications. Infrastructure management tools optimize this user environment and reporting and auditing tools provide visibility into the environment, ensuring users have the best working experience at all times. The infrastructure delivers the user environment as needed into virtual, physical and streamed desktops and applications—or combinations of those mechanisms—and also can apply this user data across operating system versions (e.g. XP, Vista and Windows 7, Server 2008, 32/64 bit). For existing desktops, migration capabilities move employees into dynamically delivered, standard desktops seamlessly.

Q What is unique about AppSense?A Most organizations use combinations of diff erent technologies to deliver applications and desktops to their users. Whether that is physical PC, Terminal Server/Citrix XenApp, Application Streaming, virtual desktops, provisioned OS or combinations of these mechanisms, AppSense is the only user virtualization vendor that provides one solution across all technologies and OS and bit boundaries. This capability enables users to seamlessly ‘roam’ across multiple delivery technologies, multiple desktops (both personal and business) and multiple locations. From Terminal Services and Citrix XenApp environ-ments through to desktop virtualization, client hypervisor and cloud-based infrastructures, AppSense technology has evolved to ensure an optimum and seamless working

experience to the user regardless of how they receive their desktop. AppSense are a core solution to many of the world’s largest virtual desktop implementations and we have a portfolio of leading organizations including companies such as HSBC, Barclays, ESPN, Volkswagen,

Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Citigroup, UBS, BT and Shell. AppSense technology is also used in conjunction with many third party Systems Integrators, including CSC, HP, EDS, Dell and IBM.

Q Can you tell us about your relationship with Citrix?A AppSense shares a user-centric view of desktop virtualization with Citrix and we have many customers using our user virtualization technology with XenDesktop and XenApp. A big reason why they choose this combination is the focus on the user—not just cost reduction but eff ective, agile, satisfi ed (and therefore highly productive) employees. AppSense and Citrix have a strong ten year relationship and a track record in creating value for our 4000+ joint customers and 350+ joint reseller partners globally. We see this relationship going from strength to strength as the user environment becomes a vital component of the virtual desktop.

Pete RawlinsonVice President Marketing

AppSense

VRVPADVERTISEMENT

For more information please visit www.appsense.com

AppSense:Leading the Way in User Virtualization

VIRTUALIZATION REVIEW VENDOR PROFILE

0410vrm_VRVP.AppSense.final.indd 1 3/19/10 9:20 AM

http://www.appsense.com

Check out our latest blogs at VirtualizationReview.com/blogsUpFront

Editor in Chief Bruce Hoard recently had the opportunity to interview Benjamin Grubin, who manages data center solutions for Novell. The two talked about what it’s like to compete against the big vendors, and how Novell is out to gain a bigger piece of the virtualization pie.

VR: How does it feel to be a David in a world of virtualization Goliaths?Grubin: Clearly this is not a position Novell is unfamiliar with, and we view it both as a challenge and as a way to demonstrate the thought leadership and the market leadership we believe we have to offer. We have some of the smartest people under the sun working here and creating amazing products. I think one of the things that we need to do better is show the market that we may not be the Goliath, but that we have the agility and the freedom to do some very, very interesting things and really go out on the edge—particularly in relation to cloud computing, which is where we think the market is going today.

VR: Talk to me about the virtualization products that you’re most proud of, and that you think are really interesting.Grubin: I know you’ve looked at SuSE Linux Enterprise Server before, and the Xen offering that comes with it. Things like the PlateSpin acquisition have brought a lot to the table from a virtualization perspective. We think that SuSE Linux Enterprise Server is such a phenomenal platform to build a cloud computing offering on, such a big virtual infrastructure

offering, that it’s simply a matter of getting out there and demonstrating some of the value we’ve got. Previously, we had the platform, but we didn’t necessarily have the management layers we wanted to have. Through the PlateSpin acquisition and building out both products—like PlateSpin Orchestrate and some of the upcoming products in terms of our cloud management offering—we’re really going to have the ability to leverage the industrial-strength virtualization platform we have that’s proven and ready to work across a multitude of other platforms.

VR: How competitive do you feel against Red Hat, and how do you sell against them?Grubin: We believe we have a lot of opportunity to grow share against Red Hat in the next 12 to 18 months. Part of that is our offering on the mainframe, SuSE Linux on System Z. I think we have 85 percent market share, and that’s a huge market. I think it’s going to grow because mainframes are all of a sudden this great new central processing capability that’s going to power infrastructure clouds. SuSE Linux on System Z is an incredible capability, and the scalability that it brings to the table is something that can’t be dismissed.

VR: Is Novell working on a new open source project based on Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)?Grubin: Novell is committed to a heterogeneous, multiplatform hypervisor and guest OS approach that gives our customers maximum

choice, fl exibility and value. Novell has always taken pride in delivering the highest-performance Linux solution, and some Novell developers are contributing to an open source project that aims to deliver on this vision. The Alacrity/VM project is in its early stages. It’s focused on improving virtual guest performance—particularly I/O performance—via enhancements that sit on top of KVM. This fi ts in well with our strategy of offering the broadest range of hypervisor support without any compromise on performance. VR

Bruce Hoard ([email protected]) is editor in chief of Virtualization Review.

Taking on the GoliathsNovell aims to tackle big competitors with its cloud-computing offerings.By Bruce Hoard

Q&A

“One of the things that we need to do better is show the market that we may not be the Goliath, but that we have the agility and the freedom to do some very, very interesting things and really go out on the edge.”Benjamin Grubin, Solution Manager, Novell



Desktop virtualization does not have to be costly, complex and take years to deliver a Return on Investment (ROI).

Kaviza, a Silicon Valley-based company that Citrix recently invested in has redesigned VDI to deliver virtual desktops for a total cost of less than $500/desktop—including all hardware and software. By eliminating the expensive upfront infrastructure investment needed with traditional VDI, Kaviza removes over two-thirds of the costs. Kaviza’s VDI-in-a-box™ runs on inexpensive commodity servers without requiring shared storage and consolidates all the functionality needed to provision and manage virtual desktops into a single virtual appliance.

Kaviza makes desktop virtualization:

• Quick. Go from zero to production with high-availability in under two hours. Kaviza’s virtual appliance automates the provisioning, load-balancing, connection-brokering and management of virtual desktops in one self-contained package.

• Easy. Kaviza can be setup and managed by desktop IT— the management interface focuses on desktops and users, not virtualization details.

• Aff ordable. The total cost of a virtual desktop with Kaviza is less than $500, below the cost of a PC. Advanced features like linked-clones and high-availability are natively built-in and included with the core product.

• Flexible. Right-size Kaviza to fi t your deployment needs—you can generate immediate ROI on deployments of 25 desktops and up, and scale as demand grows.

• Scalable. Kaviza’s grid can be scaled on-demand— simply add more servers as your needs grow, and Kaviza automatically reconfi gures itself.

• Open. Kaviza is hypervisor and protocol agnostic, giving you fl exibility and choice in the platforms you want to use.

See why customers worldwide and leading publications like eWeek are recommending Kaviza.

Download a free trial at www.kaviza.com and visit us at Citrix Synergy Booth #613.

ADVERTISEMENT

For more information please visit www.kaviza.com

Kaviza:Simply Aff ordableVDI

VIRTUALIZATION REVIEW VENDOR PROFILEVRVP

We are impressed with Kaviza’s functionality, speed, and ease-of-use, and the cost savings are phenomenal—Kaviza is one-sixth the cost of alternatives.

Steve ArmstrongSenior Support Analyst

Parker SSD Drives, a division of Parker Hannifi n

Interest in virtual desktops is beginning to reach beyond large enterprises. We are impressed with how simply Kaviza enables customers to deploy desktop virtualization with minimal investment.

Andy CohenSr Director Strategic Development

Citrix Systems

0410vrm_VRVP.Kaviza_final.indd 1 4/9/10 5:32 PM

http://www.kaviza.com



IMA

GE FR

OM

SHU

TTERSTO

CK

FEATURE | Citrix

By Bruce Hoard

in

Cashing in on the art of Xen.


Citrix Systems Inc. is a company with a different agenda than most of its IT industry counterparts. Where other vendors strive for success by beating their competitors head-to-head and seizing market

share like so much gladiatorial booty, Citrix views itself as more of an enabler—a company that succeeds by working with, not against, its perceived competition.

At a time when hypervisors are largely viewed as commodities, Citrix solutions are increasingly supporting models from major vendors. This hypervisor-agnostic approach focuses the company on building a management layer that augments XenServer, VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V.

As Virtualization Review founding editor Doug Barney wrote in the March/April 2008 debut issue, “While Citrix has a complete virtualization platform, it’s not overly religious about pushing its own platform. In fact, Citrix is more than happy to support its own and Microsoft’s hypervisors” (“Citrix Aims High”). Barney went on to quote Peter Levine, now Citrix senior VP and general manager of the Datacenter and Cloud division, who said, “I always expect us to have two product areas based on two different hypervisors [Xen and Hyper-V].” Barney followed up with this observation: “The main goal for Citrix is building value on top of the core virtualization infrastructure.”

This is a noble quest, and a business strategy that has paid substantial dividends—but it hasn’t insulated Citrix from the dog-eat-dog world of corporate competition. In that world, Citrix has been harshly scrutinized for the shortcomings of XenServer in the server virtualization market, where VMware has carved out a lucrative, iron-clad leadership position, and Microsoft has been cast as The Next Big Thing.

XenServerMake no mistake about it, Citrix would have loved it if XenServer had captured a sizeable share of the server virtualization market and taken VMware down a notch, but XenServer is still viewed as a critical component in the company’s current—and ongoing—virtualization strategy.

According to Citrix CTO Simon Crosby: “Everything we do relies on virtualization in one form or another. For example, XenServer is a fundamental component to XenDesktop and XenApp, which is a $1.5 billion business. And, it’s now the foundation for the strategic direction of NetScaler, our application-delivery platform for Web apps and clouds, which is something like a $300 million business.”

XenDesktop (formerly Citrix Desktop Server) is Citrix’s desktop virtualization/Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

product. XenApp (formerly Citrix Presentation Server) is the company’s long-standing—and high-earning—application virtualization and delivery product. For example, in 2009, even though it was linked with XenDesktop, XenApp accounted for $1.5 billion of the company’s $1.16 billion in revenues. (Also in 2009, Citrix outgrew VMware in revenues, 8 percent to 6 percent.)

Emphasizing the foundational importance of XenServer, Crosby says that while traditional XenApp customers could support 40 to 50 users per server, now using the new Intel Xeon 5500 series CPUs (code-named “Nehalem”) with XenServer, they

can support 500 to 600 users per server. This would allow customers to consolidate XenApp implementations by a factor of 10, while also slashing their power consumption and vastly reducing the servers they need to manage. Crosby’s goal is to reduce the nearly 1 million XenApp servers in use to 100,000.

Burton Group Senior Analyst Chris Wolf has a slightly different take on Crosby’s consolidation plan.

“The consolidation numbers are impressive,” Wolf says, “but when they talk XenApp, they’re talking about several deliveries in one sentence, and the consolidation numbers are going to be very driven by the specifi c way you’re delivering apps.”

As he notes, in the case of streaming applications to a physical infrastructure (but not posting them on a server), the end result is more likely to be impressive consolidation densities; but in the case of presentation virtualization, where the applications are being run on a server, it’s a different model. Under those circumstances, the density is going to be high, but not necessarily 500 to 600 users per server. This is true, Wolf notes, because there are too many variables to make an unequivocal assertion, and results will vary based on the number of sockets, the amount of memory and other factors.

Challenges of Multi-Hypervisor EnvironmentsAs it’s highly unlikely that a resurgent XenServer will begin displacing legacy VMware infrastructures, Citrix’s best bet for

“We look at XenApp and XenDesktop together because both of them bring the value proposition of virtualization to the desktop.”Mark Templeton, President and

CEO, Citrix Systems Inc.


FEATURE | Citrix

getting its foot in the door at established VMware shops is as a second hypervisor—a trend that’s slowly developing. According to Wolf, however, this approach is challenging for large enterprises because it requires them to introduce additional lifecycle-, confi guration- and capacity-management tools for the second hypervisor.

He goes on to note that this second hypervisor approach may be best received in enterprises where there’s a clear-cut split between server and desktop business units. In these environments, where there are already separate management tools in place, Wolf says it’s “a little easier” to implement a second hypervisor.

“An example is organizations using XenServer as a platform for their XenApp farm, and at the same time having long-term plans to seriously look at XenServer as a back-end for their virtual desktop workloads,” Wolf explains.

Although the blogosphere has been rife with speculation about Citrix dropping XenServer in favor of Microsoft

Hyper-V, Citrix insists it will continue introducing a new version of the product once a year. The most recent version, XenServer 5.6, was in public beta during mid-March, and is expected to be available sometime after April 16. Highlights of the beta version included dynamic memory control, automated workload balancing and StorageLink Site Recovery for business continuity.

The Marriage of XenApp and XenDesktopCitrix has merged XenApp with XenDesktop in the Platinum and Enterprise Editions of XenDesktop 4. In support of this union, the company is currently running a promotion in which XenApp customers can trade up their existing licenses for twice the number of XenDesktop 4 user licenses. VMware has also integrated its ThinApp and View 4 products. However, according to Greg Shields, a contributor to Virtualization Review sister publication Redmond magazine: “XenApp is quite a bit more than ThinApp. XenApp does traditional presentation virtualization in addition to application virtualization, while ThinApp only does application virtualization—albeit on par with XenApp.”

So why mess with XenApp’s success? According to longtime Citrix President and CEO Mark Templeton: “We

look at XenApp and XenDesktop together because both of them bring the value proposition of virtualization to the desktop. They interoperate, they work together, so we really look at those two products in a single category that we call desktop virtualization,” Templeton says.

Despite their combination, however, Templeton says XenApp and XenDesktop actually serve distinctly different purposes. XenApp is a product for delivering applications in an on-demand fashion that can be used in two ways: One is for projects where delivering applications is diffi cult, either because of the applications themselves or connectivity issues. Templeton mentions as an example an offshore project or another scenario with a powerful application that requires access to vast amounts of data, such as a business intelligence system. The way to get maximum performance in that instance is to centralize the application, which plays to the strengths of XenApp.

The second optimal use and “rising-star dimension” of XenApp is as part of the overall desktop virtualization stack, where the goals include basic functions such as virtualizing applications, user preferences and even data.

“The trade-up program is designed to allow customers to leverage their XenApp investment into a larger investment—a more strategic investment, if you will—in desktop virtualization,” Templeton declares. He adds that another way to look at it is that XenApp is getting a new lease on life as part of the very strategic, high-growth product line that is XenDesktop.

XenDesktop: The New Flagship?Without a doubt, XenDesktop is the leading feel-good story at Citrix these days. Its VDI implementation has been praised by a variety of industry experts, the company’s desktop expertise is highly credible and the potential market is huge.

“The delivery capabilities in the Citrix suite are a superset of what you get with VMware View alone,” says Shields. “XenDesktop’s desktop focus, along with the application and session delivery focus of XenApp, has the potential to better right-size application delivery for business requirements.”

“XenDesktop has really now become the fl agship product of Citrix,” says Mark Margevicius, vice president and research director at Gartner Inc. “Technically, XenDesktop offers some of the most advanced features in the area of hosted virtual desktops. It’s not 100 percent complete, but it’s most certainly good enough for many customers that are getting started. The primary competition is VMware View, which is a good product, but not nearly as feature-rich as Citrix’s offering.”

XenDesktop 4 claims a couple of signifi cant advantages over View 4, starting with its use of FlexCast delivery technology, which Citrix says allows IT to deliver any type of virtual desktop in a VDI environment to any user on any device. Each desktop is tailored to meet the performance, security and fl exibility requirements required to provide the best desktop experience to every user.

“Everything we do relies on virtualization in one form or another.” Simon CrosbyCTO, Citrix Systems Inc.

Smarter technology for a Smarter Planet:

Why the old ways of working aren’t working.On a smarter planet, technology has made us more connected, but not necessarily more productive. As new global opportunities emerge, companies are finding that their internal processes aren’t as dynamic as the marketplace requires. In fact, employees spend up to 25% of their time just looking for informationthat should be readily available to them. Managers require visibility across their company in order to makefast, informed decisions. IBM can help optimize business processes to align with the way people actuallywork and provide a contextual, information-rich environment. By combining elements of business process management, collaboration and SOA solutions, employees can act on real-time insights and locate the right people to seize new opportunities—helping to reduce costs.

A smarter business needs smarter software, systems and services. Let’s build a smarter planet. ibm.com/connected

IBM

, the

IBM

logo

, ibm

.com

, Sm

arte

r Pla

net a

nd th

e pl

anet

icon

are

trad

emar

ks o

f Int

erna

tiona

l Bus

ines

s M

achi

nes

Corp

., re

gist

ered

in m

any

juris

dict

ions

wor

ldw

ide.

Oth

er p

rodu

ct a

nd s

ervic

e na

mes

m

ight

be

trade

mar

ks o

f IBM

or o

ther

com

pani

es. A

cur

rent

list

of I

BM tr

adem

arks

is a

vaila

ble

on th

e W

eb a

t ww

w.ib

m.c

om/le

gal/c

opyt

rade

.sht

ml.

© In

tern

atio

nal B

usin

ess

Mac

hine

s Co

rpor

atio

n 20

10.







www.ibm.com

XenDesktop 4’s newly enhanced HDX adaptive technology, which includes the ICA protocol, was unveiled as part of the XenDesktop package last fall. HDX was designed to provide high-defi nition delivery regardless of device or network—while reportedly using 90 percent less bandwidth than competitive solutions. It’s being compared to View 4’s use of the PC-over-IP (PCoIP) protocol, which VMware says compresses, encrypts and encodes the entire computing experience at the data center and transmits across a standard network to end points. The compression algorithm adapts dynamically with existing conditions to enable the optimal user experience for any network connection.

Via its use of FlexCast, Citrix says XenDesktop 4 fully supports Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESX and VMware vSphere, whereas Citrix claims View requires that virtual desktops be run only on ESX, providing no ability to migrate to other infrastructures.

For companies just getting started in desktop virtualization, Citrix is offering an Express Edition of XenDesktop 4 that includes 10 free licenses. It’s available for download at tinyurl.com/ydnzx4x.

Margevicius gives HDX an edge over PCoIP, saying, “PCoIP shows promise. It’s signifi cantly better than what VMware had been using under RDP [Remote Desktop Protocol], but writing a protocol is still pretty hard to do from a technical point of view.” He continues: “It’s our belief that we need to wait and see at least six-to-nine—maybe even 12—months of maturity before we’re actually comfortable saying, ‘Yes, this is as good as what Citrix is doing with ICA and HDX.’”

The Microsoft RelationshipMuch has been said and written about the joint development agreement between Citrix and Microsoft, which has been in place for 20 years. Recently, much of the buzz has centered around why Microsoft sticks with Citrix when it has the Hyper-V and System Center technology that could enable the company to go it alone. According to Templeton, the agreement is about joint collaboration in the area of leveraging Windows Server, whether it be with Terminal Services or Hyper-V. He says customers benefi t because they get prompt access to innovative products based on Citrix’s unique technology.

Any reasonable doubts about their future relationship were laid to rest on March 18, when Microsoft announced new agreements calling on the two companies to jointly enable HDX technology to “leverage and enhance” Microsoft RemoteFX—a set of RDP technologies being added to Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 that, according to Microsoft, enables users to “watch full-motion video, enjoy Silverlight animations and run 3-D apps—all with the fi delity of a local-like performance when in connection with the LAN.”

Microsoft also made clear it’s willing to go the extra mile with Citrix against VMware by announcing two programs

directly targeting the market leader: “Rescue for VMware VDI” and “VDI Kick Start.” The former lets Microsoft customers receive up to 500 XenDesktop VDI Edition annual device licenses and up to 500 VDI Standard Suite licenses in exchange for their VMware View licenses. The latter allows those same Microsoft customers to save more than 50 percent on Microsoft VDI Standard Suite and Citrix XenDesktop VDI Edition.

Together, these agreements amount to a major coup for Citrix, which is better positioned than ever to thrive in the emerging, highly lucrative desktop virtualization market.

Despite the HDX kicker, Templeton says the Citrix-Microsoft relationship is not primarily based on technology.

“Most of our agreement with Microsoft is not at the technical level,” he says. “It’s more about the customer and the go-to-market level because we run on public APIs like all ISVs do, and from time to time we do collaborate on a particular project, whether it’s a networking project or something on Terminal Services.”

Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of the Management and Services Division at Microsoft, oversees

all the management functionality built into Windows, including Windows Update, Group Policy and Windows PowerShell. He also oversees such management products as App-V, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, and all of the System Center products—Confi guration Manager, Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager. Anderson reports to Bob Muglia, president of Tools and Server Business, and meets monthly with Gordon Payne, senior vice president and general manager of Citrix’s Desktop Division. Along with Muglia, he and other Microsoft execs meet quarterly with Templeton.

Anderson has nothing but good things to say about Citrix, calling it “indisputably” the leader in presentation virtualization and praising the company for its joint work with Microsoft on bringing XenApp together with System Center to the benefi t of both administrators and end users.

“When I think about the best way to work with us, I use Citrix as the example,” he says, adding that Microsoft and Citrix consider each other to be “really important” partners. Based on Templeton’s leadership, Anderson says, a great deal of confi dence exists between senior leaders of both companies.


FEATURE | Citrix

“When I think about the best way to work with us, I use Citrix as the example.”Brad Anderson, Corporate

VP, Management and Services

Division, Microsoft

Finding meaning in the noise.Smarter technology for a Smarter Planet:

An unprecedented amount of information flows through companies every day. But to what effect? A recent study found that 52% of managers have no confidence in the information they rely on to dotheir job. Without the right approach to business intelligence, companies struggle to turn all that information into sound decisions. IBM business intelligence and performance management solutionsgive you the smarter tools you need to access the right information, making it available to the right people when and how they need it. Today IBM is helping over 20,000 companies spot trends, mitigaterisk and make better decisions, faster. In fact, we helped a major retail supplier achieve this by cuttingtheir average financial reporting time by almost 50%.

A smarter business needs smarter software, systems and services. Let’s build a smarter planet. ibm.com/intelligence

IBM

, the

IBM

logo

, ibm

.com

, Sm

arte

r Pla

net a

nd th

e pl

anet

icon

are

trad

emar

ks o

f Int

erna

tiona

l Bus

ines

s M

achi

nes

Corp

., re

gist

ered

in m

any

juris

dict

ions

wor

ldw

ide.

Oth

er p

rodu

ct a

nd s

ervic

e na

mes

m

ight

be

trade

mar

ks o

f IBM

or o

ther

com

pani

es. A

cur

rent

list

of I

BM tr

adem

arks

is a

vaila

ble

on th

e W

eb a

t ww

w.ib

m.c

om/le

gal/c

opyt

rade

.sht

ml.

© In

tern

atio

nal B

usin

ess

Mac

hine

s Co

rpor

atio

n 20

09.







www.ibm.com

FEATURE | Citrix

Wolf calls the joint relationship “tremendous,” citing Microsoft’s history of successfully tying its applications to infrastructure technologies, and Citrix’s track record of tight collaboration when it comes to sharing device drivers and management capabilities.

“Strategically, the relationship is a very big deal, because if Citrix is able to deliver Windows applications to the huge marketplace that awaits them, it will remain competitively strong and well-positioned for continued growth,” Wolf notes.

Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-VWhen it comes to management, Citrix prospered via Presentation Server, which was effectively a set of management improvements to core Terminal Services. However, the company needs a continuing management presence, and Templeton wants to be “a good citizen in the systems-management landscape,” which means plugging into popular systems management tools such as System Center, HP OpenView and offerings from the likes of IBM Corp. and CA. Of course, he also wants to provide the best-possible management capabilities for Citrix products, be they management tools and capabilities around server virtualization or desktop virtualization and “application networking.”

This drive led to Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V, two infrastructure-management packages designed to help customers get the most out of their virtualized server and desktop environments. Essentials for XenServer Enterprise is included in XenDesktop 4 Platinum and Enterprise Editions as a licensed component. Essentials for Hyper-V Express Edition is provided free with XenDesktop and it’s integrated with the Platinum, Enterprise and VDI Editions of XenDesktop 4. The Enterprise and Platinum Editions of Essentials for Hyper-V are not included with XenDesktop.

Like his boss, Crosby also recognizes the importance of Essentials in terms of competing strongly and making sure Citrix customers in the traditional server virtualization market are guaranteed a satisfying experience with XenServer. However, he says Essentials revenues—“in the tens of millions of dollars”—pale in comparison to those of XenDesktop, XenApp and XenNetScaler. “So we’re quite happy with the fact that the Essentials business is not the only metric by which we judge our success,” he states.

XenClient XenClient is a bare-metal, local desktop-virtualization platform based on the same technology that goes into XenServer, including the open source Xen.org hypervisor.

XenClient enables users to run multiple virtual desktops—for example, personal and secured lockdown environments—locally on the same device in complete isolation without sacrifi cing performance. The primary source of this performance is the hardware-assisted virtualization in the bare-metal Xen hypervisor, which is

optimized for Intel virtualization technology and other features of Intel vPro technology.

According to Citrix: “This new client hypervisor, which will be made available to PC manufacturers and enterprises worldwide, will enable IT professionals, for the fi rst time, to dynamically stream a centrally managed corporate desktop and all related applications directly into a secure, isolated, client-based virtual machine. This new technology will be productized in an upcoming solution from Citrix, code-named ‘Project Independence.’”

Templeton is particularly enthusiastic about the possibilities available in multiple virtual desktop environments. “One of the projects that’s near and dear to my heart is the whole notion of employee-owned PCs, otherwise known as the BYOC movement,” he says.

The Xen Cloud Platform Initiative Citrix is also well positioned for future business via its participation in the Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) initiative. XCP was announced by Xen.org and is designed to provide an open source cloud infrastructure platform that will streamline the path to cloud implementation for enterprise users by enabling cloud services providers to offer services that are compatible with legacy virtualized application workloads.

“It’s incredibly strategic to Citrix that not only do we enable our customers to use the cloud, but we enable our cloud partners to get the best effi ciency and least cost implementation of virtualization for their deployments,” Crosby says.

Wolf says Burton Group clients also view the cloud as strategically important, and see it as a long-term investment that they’ll use where appropriate to help them cut costs.

“Citrix has to go there, and they need to go there quickly because VMware, for example, sees that the market is heading in that direction and they’ve been extremely aggressive,” Wolf says. “They’ve signed up more than 1,000 services providers to deliver cloud services on VMware infrastructures.”

In the fi nal analysis, Citrix will continue to marshal its many assets—strong leadership, desktop virtualization, the Microsoft relationship, a large and diversifi ed customer base—as components of a strategy that exploits the company’s feel for the market and its unique view of the competitive process.

“We’ve not only survived—we’ve thrived,” Templeton says. “I think that when it comes to virtual computing and the outlook going forward, the opportunity is large. Microsoft and VMware don’t have to lose for Citrix to win, and through great strategic and operational execution, we’ll be able to carve ourselves a very important role in the industry. The truth always prevails, and as I’ve said before, we’ll continue to do the right thing every day with a focus on the customer. That’s how we built the company, and that’s how we’re going to keep going forward.” VR

Bruce Hoard ([email protected]) is editor in chief of Virtualization Review.



FEATURE | Management

Enterprise-wide management platforms meet best-of-breed tools. By Alan Maddison

VirtualizationManagementTools & Strategies

Virtualization provides a fundamental shift in the way that organizations manage their

infrastructures. From processes such as provisioning, monitoring, patching and troubleshooting, virtualization offers unique challenges and benefi ts. There’s a distinct difference in management approaches based on the maturity

of a company’s exposure to virtualization. For those organizations that are just beginning to use virtualization, this requires a signifi cant shift in how technology is managed and how IT as a service is delivered. For those that have been using virtualization for a number of years, those two processes must mature to accommodate shifting expectations and a deeper

understanding of the challenges of virtualization management. However, regardless of your organization’s virtualization experience, without the right tools and processes in place, virtualization has the potential to become diffi cult to manage. Choosing the right tools for your virtual infrastructure is the fi rst step in making sure you can meet your management objectives.

IMA

GE FR

OM

SHU

TTERSTO

CK


Diffi cult DecisionsSometimes deciding which tool or tools to acquire is quite diffi cult. Few IT departments have the luxury of starting from scratch when they consider which tools offer the most functionality and highest value for managing their virtual infrastructures. This is especially true of big companies with enterprise-wide management systems, because many of the hefty management frameworks—such as the IBM Tivoli product line or CA Unicenter—now offer integrated virtualization management as part of their infrastructure management capabilities. In addition to integration, other compelling features include common interfaces, standard data formats and uniform reporting.

The downside of these comprehensive management packages is that they tend to lack the fl exibility and depth available with some of the best-in-class virtualization management tools. For organizations lacking one of these monolithic frameworks, there are products from smaller vendors that can help them deal with critical defi ciencies in their legacy tools. Regardless of your current management strategy and tool assortment, if you are just starting to virtualize your environment, or you have begun moving onto tier-1 (mission-critical) applications, it’s important to constantly examine your options.

Many tools that have a strong virtualization heritage, that is, those tools developed specifi cally for virtual environments, often have the fl exibility and power that’s missing in some of the more traditional toolsets not designed with virtualization in mind. In fact, the benefi ts of selecting tools with a best-of-breed approach cannot be overstated. Moreover, most enterprise-ready virtual infrastructure management tools offer either built-in integration or some form of API that allows extensive customization and integration. This in turn enables an approach wherein organizations leverage their current investments in management technologies but continue actively

reviewing other applications. This approach can lead to the best of all worlds by combining a high degree of integration between applications, along with power, fl exibility and granularity that would otherwise be unavailable. Throughout the remainder of this article, I’ll take a look at some leading apps that tackle key management challenges in virtualized environments, including automation, lifecycle management, reporting and analytics, monitoring, capacity planning, and security.

DynamicOps: Virtual Resource ManagerVirtual Resource Manager (VRM) from DynamicOps is a sophisticated, powerful, cross-platform management tool that supports VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer hypervisors in both server and desktop virtualization deployments. As a sophisticated management tool, VRM provides a fl exible and highly granular policy-driven approach to virtualization management that can solve many of the operational challenges administrators currently face, including automation, lifecycle management, capacity planning, in-depth reporting and analytics, and chargeback reporting.

Clearly focused on the midsize to large enterprise, VRM’s core capabilities include automated provisioning and lifecycle management for virtual machines (VMs) that are driven by sophisticated and granular workfl ow processes that enable a high degree of fl exibility and control. In addition, the workfl ow processes are supported by VRM’s self-service portal. This means that users and business units can request and initiate provisioning of VMs while still allowing VRM to maintain control of their virtual infrastructures both fi nancially and from a management perspective. One of the main capabilities that makes this type of self-service provisioning feasible is lifecycle management. Without this capability, companies could control their virtual infrastructures and suffer

from ineffi cient resource allocation. VRM also offers a powerful provisioning process that optimizes resource usage by providing a high degree of granularity when defi ning VM builds.

VRM with lifecycle management also allows administrators to provision VMs on a lease basis. Once the lease has expired, workfl ows can initiate a reclamation process that automates the VM’s future. For example, it can be deleted or archived to less-expensive storage. In support of all this functionality VRM offers in-depth reporting and analytics with highly fl exible fi ltering to accurately identify and track all of the data associated with virtualized infrastructures, including VMs, resources and associated costs. Capacity analysis and trending are also key components of the reporting capability. In addition, the ability to quickly and accurately understand current and future requirements is extremely useful in terms of day-to-day operations and strategic, long-term budgeting.

VMware: New Management Off eringsThere aren’t many virtual infrastructure management frameworks as comprehensive as VRM, but VMware Inc. recently introduced a host of new management products under the VMware vCenter brand (formerly VMware Virtual Center) that offer an excellent alternative. These products were created to fi ll some signifi cant gaps in VMware’s offerings that were previously supplied largely by third parties. While VMware does not offer a cross-platform solution, as the leading virtualization vendor its product offerings are critical to the management strategies of the many pure or heavy ESX shops. This new wave of VMware applications include VMware vCenter Orchestrator, VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager, VMware vCenter Chargeback, VMware vCenter Confi gControl (due to be released in the fi rst half of 2010) and VMware vCenter CapacityIQ. While




most of these products are new releases, they’re based on products from companies VMware acquired, and are technically excellent, thanks to the work done by the VMware development team. Although lacking the cross-platform capabilities of VRM, the modular approach offered by VMware is more fl exible from a licensing perspective, and customers who buy all the modules have a suite that is comparable to VRM.

VMware believes that vCenter remains the preeminent management tool for smaller organizations with fewer than 100 VMs. However, the full value of the new vCenter management

products is only realized when organizations grow past the 100 VM mark and begin virtualizing mission-critical, tier-1 applications. This value can be measured not only from a purely fi nancial perspective, but also in terms of the reduced time required by administrators to do their jobs.

The one exception to this low-end rule of growth is VMware vCenter Orchestrator, which has a place in almost any size company. Typically used to create and automate the sequences of tasks that would normally be scripted, Orchestrator is an intuitive creation and automation tool that simplifi es these processes enormously, saves a lot of time and helps remove process errors associated with human intervention. VMware vCenter Orchestrator will also be leveraged by VMware vCenter Confi gControl when it’s released later this year.

VMware vCenter Confi gControl promises to be a valuable tool that will not only provide visualization of the connections between VMs, but also between the components that make up the resources a VM consumes. Moreover, by using a policy-driven approach, VMware vCenter Confi gControl will allow users to create baselines across their entire virtual infrastructures, and track confi guration drift. Its data can also produce insights into the impact of changes and provide the tools to manage these changes. Using the control and fl exibility offered by VMware vCenter Confi gControl,

administrators can take full advantage of VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager.

As a tool designed to automate the management of VMs from cradle to grave, VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager provides some impressive self-service capabilities that help make private clouds a reality for any organization willing to undertake the necessary work. Perhaps more importantly, it has a sophisticated approach to automating and segmenting VM-build confi gurations, as well as to provisioning processes. This capability alone will be of interest to many organizations.

As mentioned earlier, other new VMware management tools include:

■ VMware vCenter CapacityIQ—plays a critical role in providing operational insight into current resource usage as well as supporting trending to accurately predict future

requirements. Both of these tasks are vitally important for organizations with a heavy reliance on VMs.

■ VMware vCenter Chargeback—provides all of the capabilities required to assign and track costs associated with virtual infrastructures.

■ VMware vCenter AppSpeed—perhaps the tool that offers the most impact for organizations seeking to virtualize mission-critical applications. Designed to deliver performance insight for applications in physical and virtual environments, it provides important data for conversations with application owners. By identifying potential bottlenecks and measuring end-user impact, it provides a wealth of previously unavailable information and offers side-by-side comparisons of application performance in physical and virtual environments. It’s also designed to help eliminate the gap between applications that can and cannot be virtualized.

Catbird: vSecurityWhile DynamicOps and VMware offer a holistic approach to managing virtual infrastructures, there are a number of companies that excel in managing critical elements of the virtual infrastructure, including networks and security. One of the leading products for securing virtualized infrastructures comes from Catbird Networks Inc. Leveraging its strong roots in securing physical infrastructures, Catbird developed vSecurity to provide the same high levels of security and control found in virtualized environments. It currently supports ESX and Xen hypervisors, but the company has also done preliminary testing with Hyper-V; if demand is suffi cient, it may also offer support for it.

Through the use of vSecurity agents—virtualized appliances—deployed within virtualized infrastructures, Catbird provides sophisticated discovery, monitoring and enforcement capabilities for

Regardless of your organization’s virtualization experience, without the right tools and processes in place, virtualization has the potential to become diffi cult to manage. Choosing the right tools for your virtualization infrastructure is the fi rst step in making sure that you can meet your management objectives.


virtual network segments. These capabilities enable control of auditing, inventory management, confi guration management, change management, access control, vulnerability management and incident response. When deployed using a virtual appliance, this application scores high marks for ease of deployment, and also features an intuitive, wizard-driven discovery process. Further, vSecurity provides intrusion prevention system (IPS) and intrusion detection system (IDS) capabilities, as well as Network Access Control (NAC). NAC enforcement enables continuous monitoring across all VMs, and offers real-time inventory management.

Vulnerability management is also an important part of vSecurity. It includes a fully compliant scanner that’s correlated with other VM attributes to assess issues across a customizable compliance framework. Also, vSecurity offers support for compliance regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Payment Card Industry (PCI), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT), and Department of Defense Information Assurance Certifi cation and Accreditation Process (DIACAP). Of particular note for companies subject to the credit-card industry’s PCI standard are compliance measurements across 96 test requirements affected by virtualization.

Zyrion: TraverseIf you’re in the market for network- and service-monitoring platforms, Traverse from Zyrion Inc. should be on your short list. Providing a wealth of monitoring capabilities across entire infrastructures, both physical and virtual, Traverse offers helpful insight into the health and performance of IT infrastructures. Focused on two areas,

network performance and business service management, Zyrion takes a holistic approach to what constitutes a service or application. By allowing you to look at the entire picture, Zyrion has

provided a tool that shines a light on the relationships between the different elements that make up any given service. Its sophisticated discovery capability can be helpful when building a baseline topology. By allowing you to gather data from both VMs and the underlying physical hosts, it becomes easier to correlate the gathered data.

Traverse also supports multiple levels of nesting, which enables extensive drill-down capabilities. Add in the ability to defi ne dependencies and you have an extremely powerful monitoring tool. These capabilities can also be quite useful in troubleshooting and root-cause analysis. Traverse also makes it easy to be much more proactive about application performance in virtualized environments and allows users to more closely align IT with business units.

Fortisphere: Virtual Service ManagerReporting and analytics are also key management components, and there’s a broad group of products providing these capabilities. Fortisphere Virtual Service Manager (VSM) is an excellent example of this product category. VSM is an enterprise-class reporting and analytical tool that endows administrators with a high degree of

fl exibility and granularity. The current version 3.5 only supports ESX environments, but Fortisphere Inc. anticipates providing support for both Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix

XenServer in the coming months. VSM utilizes the JasperReports open source reporting server at its core, providing a high degree of extensibility and customization, which is often critically important for larger environments. Because VSM is delivered as a virtual appliance, Fortisphere has worked hard to ensure a smooth deployment process.

Utilizing the concept of service tiers, VSM can offer in-depth insights into both guest OSes and the hypervisor running on the physical host. By defi ning service tiers based on such metrics as uptime and resource thresholds, users can effectively segment their virtual infrastructures. Featuring multiple thresholds within each services tier, this approach has a number of benefi ts, and is particularly noteworthy for its alerting functionality, problem identifi cation capability, and support for remediation and service level agreements. The product also supports chargebacks by associating costs with service tiers. Via VSM’s granular role-based delegation, administrators can also assign VMs to specifi c users or business units, while providing these two groups with role-specifi c reporting on their assigned VMs. Its intuitive dashboard is also an effective communication tool.

VMware believes that vCenter remains the preeminent management tool for smaller organizations with fewer than 100 VMs. However, the full value of the new vCenter products is only realized when organizations grow past the 100-VM mark and begin virtualizing mission-critical, tier-1 applications.


800-754-3310www.aberdeeninc.com/vm004

WHAT’S THE DEALWITH THOSE GUYS?

Prices for the above specific configurations obtained from the respective websites on Jan. 27, 2010. Intel, Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Inside Logo, Pentium, Xeon, andXeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. VMware is a registered trademark or

trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. For terms and conditions, please see www.aberdeeninc.com/abpoly/abterms.htm. vm004

Who gives you the best bang for the buck?

Sometimes you have to ask, “What are they thinking?”Aberdeen gets it. Businesses are in need of cost effective,reliable, high performance, customizable servers that feature enterprise level benefits with entry level pricing.

DellPowerEdge

R710

HPProLiant

DL380 G6

AberdeenStirling

267

VMware® Ready CertifiedWindows Server® 2008 Models

Linux OS ModelsRedundant Power

Hardware RAID 0, 1, 5 & 6SAS / SATA Drive SupportAvailable with 2TB Drives

Out of Band RAID ManagementJBOD Storage Expansion

Dual Intel® Xeon® Processors E5504 2GHz E5504 2GHz E5504 2GHzMemory 6GB 6GB 6GB

PCI-E Expansion Slots 4 6 7Hot-Swap Drive Bays 6 6 8

Maximum Capacity 12TB 6TB 16TBConfigured Capacity 3TB 3TB 3TB

Warranty 3 Years 3 Years 5 Years

Price $4,462 $5,338 $3,995

Project1 2/4/10 11:51 AM Page 1

http://www.aberdeeninc.com/vm004



Another core capability is vRadar, which provides sophisticated visualization of the relationships and dependencies between VMs. Using this relationship-modeling tool, VSM provides the ability to identify problems that might otherwise be missed.

Finally, by offering built-in support for creating confi guration baselines, and making it possible to monitor subsequent confi guration drift down to the level of applications and patches, VSM shows itself to be an incredibly capable tool.

Citrix: Essentials, Workfl ow Studio, Stage Manager and StorageLinkEven though more and more third-party vendors are adding support for Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V, these hypervisors still lack the depth of functionality and

breadth of support available for VMware ESX Server. However, Citrix Essentials is an excellent management tool available for both XenServer and Hyper-V, and offers some sophisticated capabilities, including workfl ow orchestration, staging and dynamic provisioning.

Also in the Citrix fold, Citrix Workfl ow Studio is a powerful tool that allows administrators to create workfl ows using a GUI, which eliminates the need for scripts. Via Workfl ow Studio integrated scheduling, monitoring and reporting features, users also have the ability to closely track all workfl ows within their operating environments. This

allows them to defi ne and implement a standard set of processes.

Citrix Stage Manager provides a workfl ow-driven approach to managing the process of testing and implementing application updates and patches. Stage Manager has many benefi ts, including the ability to tightly control the software release and update process. For example, IT can more rigorously defi ne and administer user acceptance testing as well as ensure that all updates continue to meet compliance requirements. Dynamic provisioning services allow users to pre-defi ne workloads, and use streaming to optimize workload delivery. In addition, users can use the vdisks that form the basis of the workload on multiple physical hosts or virtual devices, thereby simplifying the server management and patching process. In addition to these

technologies, there are some sophisticated storage and recovery capabilities included.

Citrix StorageLink offers an interesting approach to storage virtualization in the form of a valuable tool for administrators working in heterogeneous storage environments. By automating discovery of iSCSI or Fibre Channel storage environments, StorageLink integrates deeply with storage environments so it can actually provision storage. Used in Hyper-V environments, StorageLink integrates tightly with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, which helps automate the recovery process.

Final WordsVirtualization has forever changed the way IT departments manage their infrastructures. As it becomes ubiquitous, the need to make sure that management strategies are adapted to enhance the power and fl exibility of virtualization is critical. When administrators think about developing these management strategies they often focus on the core competencies that span the entire IT infrastructure and develop processes that assist in achieving these long-standing goals. Making the right decision about which tools to acquire can make the difference between meeting long-term management objectives and surrendering to failure. Unfortunately, the selection process runs a bewildering gamut from monolithic management frameworks that aim to provide all of the tools that you need, to point products that provide specifi c capabilities to solve specifi c problems.

All of this is complicated by the fact that IT departments rarely have the ability to start with a clean slate because their constrained budgets do not allow them to replace legacy infrastructure investments. The challenge, then, is to continue leveraging existing management tools while keeping an eye out for new, cost-effective alternatives.

The products described here represent some of the best-of-breed virtualization management tools available. If you need to integrate these tools with existing products, you can use their open APIs to ease the process. Always remember that your particular environment is unique and you should always thoroughly test tools before deploying them in your production network. VR

Alan Maddison is a 15-year IT veteran who is currently a senior consultant with SBS, a division of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. In this position, he works with many IT pros and the organizations they represent.

Virtual Resource Manager from DynamicOps is a sophisticated, powerful, cross-platform management tool that supports VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer hypervisors in both server and desktop virtualization deployments.

• Unmatched inline deduplication ingestion & restore performance.

• Highly scalable I/O performance independent of “spindle count” via optional SSD provisioning.

• Flexible architecture supporting simultaneous SAN and NAS deployments (iSCSI, CIFS & NFS).

• Seamlessly scalable storage pools delivering the market’s largest inline deduplicated capacity.

• Purpose built hardware combined with MAID software intelligence for the lowest energy consumption/TB footprint available anywhere.

• High availability & reliability via: system redundancies; hot swappable components; synchronous & asynchronous replication; and snapshots, all backed by a World Class 7×24x365 customer support network.

GreenBytes’ GB-X Series of “next generation” high-performance inline deduplicating storage appliances provide organizations with signifi cant advantages over traditional storage solutions:

FEATURING INLINE DEDUPLICATION, SCALABLE PERFORMANCE VIA SOLID STATE TECHNOLOGY AND ADVANCED POWER MANAGEMENT DESIGN.

SALES: (877) GRN-BYTE PHONE: (401) 315-5580 GetGreenBytes.com

Bringing deduplication to primary storage

www.getgreenbytes.com


IMA

GE FR

OM

SHU

TTERSTO

CK

FEATURE | Pitfalls

Virtualization is rarely as simple to implement and manage as it has been made out to be. Here’s what to look out for when planning your organization’s next virtualization project. By Brien Posey

Avoiding the Pitfalls of VirtualizationNo technology in recent memory has come with as

many promises as server virtualization. As I’m sure you know, all of these promises can be broken down

into one simple concept: Virtualization allows you to consolidate a bunch of underutilized servers into a single server, which allows the organization to save a bundle on maintenance costs.

So with server virtualization promising such a dramatic boost to an organization’s return on investment (ROI), even in a bad economy, what’s not to like? What many organizations are fi nding out is that in practice, virtualization is rarely as simple to implement and manage as it has been made out to be. In fact, there are numerous potential pitfalls associated with the virtualization process. In this article, I want to take

a look at some of these pitfalls, and at how they can impact an organization.

Subpar PerformanceWhile it’s true that virtualizing your data center has the potential to make better use of server resources, any increase in ROI can quickly be consumed by decreased user productivity if virtual servers fail to perform as they did prior to being virtualized. In fact, it has been said that subpar performance is the kiss of death for a virtual data center.

So how do you make sure that your servers are going to perform as well as they do now when virtualized? One common solution is to work through some capacity planning estimates, and then attempt to virtualize the server in an isolated lab


environment. But this approach will only get you so far. Lab environments do not experience the same loads as production environments, and while there are load simulation tools available, the reliability of these tools decreases dramatically when multiple virtual servers are being tested simultaneously.

While proper capacity planning and testing are important, you must be prepared to optimize your servers once they have been virtualized. Optimization means being aware of what hardware resources are being used by each virtual server, and making any necessary adjustments to the way hardware resources are distributed among the virtual machines (VMs) in an effort to improve performance across the board for all of the guest servers on a given host.

Network Management Diffi cultiesWhen organizations initially begin to virtualize their servers, they’re often surprised by how diffi cult it can be to manage those virtual servers using their legacy network management software. While any decent network management application will perform application metering, compile a software inventory, and allow remote control sessions for both physical and virtual servers, there are some areas in which traditional network management software is not well-equipped to deal with VMs.

One example of such a problem is that most of the network management products on the market are designed to compile a hardware inventory of all managed computers. If such an application is not virtualization-aware, then the hardware inventory will be misreported.

Likewise, some of the network management applications on the market track server performance, but performance metrics can be greatly skewed in a virtual server environment. While the skewed data may not be a problem in and of itself, it is important to remember that some network management products contain elaborate alerting and automated remediation mechanisms that engage when certain performance problems are detected. These types of mechanisms can wreak havoc on virtual servers.

Finally, legacy network management software is not able to tell you on which host machine a virtual server is currently running. It also lacks the ability to move virtual servers between hosts. While most virtualization products come with their own management consoles, it’s far more effi cient to manage physical and virtual servers through a single console.

Virtual Server SprawlSo far I have talked about various logistical and performance issues associated with managing a virtual data center. Believe it or not, though, a virtual server deployment that works a little too well can be just as big a problem. Some organizations fi nd virtualization to be so effective, that virtual server sprawl ends up becoming an issue.

One organization ended up deploying so many virtual servers that it ended up with more server hardware than it had before it decided to consolidate its servers. This completely undermined its stated goal of reducing hardware costs.

For other organizations, virtual machine sprawl has become a logistical nightmare, as virtual servers are created so rapidly that it becomes diffi cult to keep track of each one’s purpose, and of which ones are currently in use.

There are some key practices to help avoid virtual server sprawl. One of them is helping management and administrative staff to understand that there are costs associated with deploying virtual servers. Many people I have talked to think of virtual servers as being free because there are no direct hardware costs, and in some cases there’s no cost for licensing the server’s OS. However, most virtual servers do incur licensing costs in the form of anti-virus software, backup agents and network management software. These are in addition to the cost of the license for whatever

application the virtual server is running. There are also indirect costs associated with things like system maintenance and hardware resource consumption.

Another way to reduce the potential for VM sprawl is educating the administrative staff on some of the dangers of excessive VM deployments. By its very nature, IT tends to be reactive. I have lost count of the number of times when I have seen a virtual server quickly provisioned in response to a manager’s demands. Such deployments tend to be performed in a haphazard manner because of the pressure to bring a new virtual server online quickly. These types of deployments can undermine security, and may impact an organization’s regulatory compliance status.

Learning New SkillsOne potential virtualization pitfall often overlooked is the requirement for the IT staff to learn new skills.

“Before deploying virtualization solutions, we encourage our customers to include storage and networking disciplines into the design process,” says Bill Carovano, technical director for the Datacenter and Cloud Division at Citrix Systems Inc. “We’ve found that a majority of our support calls for XenServer tend to deal with storage and networking integration.”

While it’s true that virtualizing your data center has the potential to make better use of server resources, any increase in ROI can quickly be consumed by decreased user productivity if virtual servers fail to perform as they did prior to being virtualized.


FEATURE | Pitfalls

Virtualization administrators frequently fi nd themselves having to learn about storage and networking technologies, such as Fibre Channel, that connect VMs to networked storage. The issue of learning new skill sets is particularly problematic in siloed organizations where there’s a dedicated storage team, a dedicated networking team and a dedicated virtualization team.

One way Citrix is trying to help customers with such issues is through the introduction of a feature in XenServer Essentials called StorageLink. StorageLink is designed to reduce the degree to which virtualization and storage administrators must work together. It allows the storage admins to provide virtualization admins with disk space that can be sub-divided and used on an as-needed basis.

In spite of features such as StorageLink, administrators in siloed environments must frequently work together if an organization’s virtualization initiative is to succeed. “A virtualization administrator with one of our customers was using XenServer with a Fibre Channel storage array, and was experiencing performance problems with some of the virtual machines,” explains Carovano.

He continues: “After working with the storage admin, it turned out that the root of the problem was that the VMs

were located on a LUN cut from relatively slow SATA disks. A virtualization administrator who just looked at an array as a ‘black box’ would have had more diffi culty tracking down the root cause.”

Underestimating the Required Number of HostsPart of the capacity planning process involves determining how many host servers are going to be required. However, administrators who are new to virtualization often fail to realize that hardware resources are not the only factor in determining the number of required host servers. There are some types of virtual servers that simply should not be grouped together. For example, I once saw an organization place all of its domain controllers (DCs) on a single host. If that host failed, there would be no DCs remaining on the network.

One of the more comical examples of poor planning that I have seen was an organization that created a virtual failover cluster. The problem was that all of the cluster

nodes were on the same host, which meant that the cluster was not fault tolerant.

My point is that virtual server placement is an important part of the capacity planning process. It isn’t enough to consider whether or not a host has the hardware resources to host a particular VM. You must also consider whether placing a virtual server on a given host eliminates any of the redundancy that has intentionally been built into the network.

Multiple Eggs into a Single BasketOn a similar note, another common virtualization pitfall is the increasingly high-stakes game of server management. A server failure in a non-virtualized data center is inconvenient, but not typically catastrophic. The failure of a host server in a virtual data center can be a different issue altogether, because the failure of a single host can mean the unavailability of multiple virtual servers.

I’ll concede that both VMware Inc. and Microsoft offer high-availability solutions for virtual data centers, but it’s worth noting that not all organizations are taking advantage of these solutions. Besides, sometimes it’s the virtualization software that ends up causing the problem. Take for instance a situation that recently faced Troy Thompson, of the Department of Defense Education Activity division.

Thompson was running VMware ESX version 3.5, and decided to upgrade his host servers to version 4.0. While the upgrade itself went smoothly, there were nine patches that needed to be applied to the servers when the upgrade was complete. Unfortunately, the servers crashed after roughly a third of the patches had been applied. Although the virtual servers themselves were unharmed, the crash left the host servers in an unbootable state. Ultimately, VMware ESX 4.0 had to be reinstalled from scratch.

My point is that in this particular situation, a routine upgrade caused a crash that resulted in an extended amount of downtime for three virtual servers. In this case, all three of the virtual servers were running mission-critical applications: a Unity voice mail system, and two Cisco call managers. Granted, these servers were scheduled to be taken offl ine for maintenance, but because of the problems with the upgrade, the servers were offl ine for much longer than planned. This situation might have been avoided had the upgrade been tested in a lab.

Best Practice RecommendationsI do not claim to have all of the answers to creating a standardized set of best practices for virtualization. Even so, here are a few of my own recommended best practices.

Test Everything Ahead of TimeI’ve always been a big believer in testing upgrades and confi guration changes in a lab environment prior to making modifi cations to production servers. Using this approach helps to spot potential problems ahead of time.

Many people I have talked to think of virtual servers as being free because there are no direct hardware costs, and in some cases there’s no cost for licensing the server’s OS. However, most virtualized servers do incur licensing costs in the form of anti-virus software, backup agents and network management software.


Although lab testing works more often than not, experience has shown me that sometimes lab servers do not behave identically to their production counterparts. There are several reasons why this occurs. Sometimes an earlier modifi cation might have been made to a lab server, but not to a production box, or vice versa. Likewise, lab servers do not handle the same workload as a production server, and they usually run on less-powerful hardware.

When it comes to your virtual data center, though, there may be a better way of testing host server confi guration changes. Most larger organizations today seem to think of virtualization hosts less as servers, and more as a pool of resources that can be allocated to VMs. As such, it’s becoming increasingly common to have a few well-equipped but currently unused host servers online. These servers make excellent candidates for testing host-level confi guration changes because they should be confi gured identically to the other host servers on the network, and are usually equipped with comparable hardware.

Some Servers Not Good for VirtualizationRecently, I’ve seen a couple of different organizations working toward trying to virtualize every server in their entire data center. The idea behind this approach isn’t so much about server consolidation as it is about fault tolerance and overall fl exibility.

Consider, for example, a database server that typically caries a heavy workload. Such a server would not be a good candidate for consolidation, because the server’s hardware is not being underutilized. If such a server were virtualized, it would probably have to occupy an entire host all by itself in order to maintain the required level of performance. Even so, virtualizing the server may not be a bad idea because doing so may allow it to be easily migrated to more powerful hardware as the server’s workload increases in the future.

At the same time, there are some servers in the data center that are poor candidates for virtualization. For example, some software vendors copy-protect their applications by requiring USB-based hardware keys. Such keys typically won’t work with a virtual server. Generally speaking, any server that makes use of specialized hardware is probably going to be a poor virtualization candidate. Likewise, servers with complex storage architecture requirements may also make poor virtualization candidates because moving such a server from one host to another may cause drive mapping problems.

Virtualization technology continues to improve, so I expect that in a few years fully virtualized data centers will be the norm. For right now, though, it’s important to accept that some servers should not be virtualized.

Consider Replacing Your Network Management SoftwareAs I stated earlier, legacy network management software is often ill-equipped to manage both physical and virtual

servers. As such, virtual server-aware management software is usually a wise investment.

Avoid Over-Allocating Server ResourcesIt’s important to keep in mind that each host server contains a fi nite set of hardware resources. Some of the virtualization

products on the market will allow you to over-commit the host server’s resources, but doing so is almost always a bad idea. Microsoft Hyper-V Server, for example, has a layer of abstraction between virtual CPUs and Logical CPUs (which map directly to the number of physical CPU cores installed in the server). Because of this abstraction, it’s possible to allocate more virtual CPUs than the server has logical CPUs.

Choosing not to over-commit hardware resources is about more than just avoiding performance problems; it’s about avoiding surprises. For example, imagine that a virtual server has been allocated two virtual CPUs, and that both of those virtual CPUs correspond to physical CPU cores. If you move that virtual server to a different host, you can be relatively sure that its performance will be similar to what it was on its previous host so long as the same hardware resources are available on the new server. Once moved, the virtual server might be a little bit faster or a little bit slower, but there shouldn’t be a major difference in the way that it performs, assuming that the underlying hardware is comparable.

Now, imagine what would happen if you moved the virtual server to a host whose processor cores were already spoken for. The virtualization software would still allocate CPU resources to the recently moved server, but now its performance is directly tied to other virtual servers’ workloads, making it impossible to predict how any of the virtual servers will perform at a given moment.

As you can see, there is much more to server virtualization than meets the eye. Virtualization is an inexact science with numerous potential pitfalls that can only be avoided through proper planning and testing. VR

Brien Posey is a freelance technical writer who has received Microsoft’s MVP award six times for his work with Exchange Server, Windows Server, IIS and File Systems Storage. In addition to writing dozens of books and thousands of articles, Posey routinely speaks at IT conferences and is involved in a wide variety of other technology-related projects.

It’s important to keep in mind that each server contains a fi nite set of hardware resources. Some of the virtualization products on the market will allow you to over-commit the host server’s resources, but doing so is almost always a bad idea.


HOW-TO

By David Davis

ILLUSTR

ATION

BY M

AX

GREG

OR

GUY

Microsoft Offers Under-the-Covers VDIIn the December 2009 Network World VDI Shootout, the editors didn’t even regard Microsoft as a VDI option, declaring, “Microsoft doesn’t offer a specifi c purpose-built VDI tool.” They also said that Microsoft recommends Citrix XenDesktop for desktop virtualization.

While it’s true that Microsoft recommends XenDesktop, it’s not true that the company doesn’t have a VDI connection broker built for desktop virtualization. In fact, it offers a VDI broker called Remote Desktop Connection Broker (RD Connection Broker), which is part of Windows Server 2008 R2. This capability was quietly released, and in my opinion is being poorly marketed on its virtualization page.

With RD Connection Broker, you can create pools of virtual desktops or do one-to-one mappings of Active Directory users with their own personal virtual desktops. All of these desktops run in Hyper-V, making Windows 2008 R2 both a server and a desktop virtualization solution.

Testing RD Connection BrokerBeing a technical guy, I couldn’t just take Microsoft’s word that it has a working VDI solution, so I had to put it through its paces. In order to do that, I used my existing Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and added on a variety of remote desktop components, including RD Connection Broker. Moving forward, I created a new Hyper-V Windows 7 virtual machine (VM), joined it to the domain, named it with its FQDN in Hyper-V and made remote desktop, fi rewall and registry changes. Then, using the Assign Personal Virtual Desktop Wizard in RD Connection Broker, I assigned a personal virtual desktop to an AD user.

From there, I connected my client PC to the personal virtual desktop via RD Web Access and logged in as my test user. I was then assigned the personal virtual desktop I had created for the AD user, and at that point, I was using VDI with one-to-one mapping. Success.

However, keep in mind that RD Connection Broker isn’t limited to just a personal virtual desktop. It can also provide pools of virtual desktops, similar to the basic virtual desktop experience provided by VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop.

Marketing MiscuesI said that I believe that the Microsoft VDI solution is poorly marketed. I say this for a variety of reasons:

The name: Most IT pros have never heard of it, and it’s hard to remember “Remote Desktop Connection Broker, which is part of Windows Server 2008 R2.”

Mixed message: The Microsoft Web site has its desktop virtualization solution buried inside the Microsoft virtualization page with only a couple of paragraphs of explanation. Plus, there are still numerous documents on the Web site recommending that customers use XenDesktop.

Too many pieces: To get VDI working, I installed Remote Desktop Services, RD Virtualization Host, RD Session Host server for redirection, RD Web Access and RD Connection Broker (not to mention the Windows Server 2008 R2 OS and Hyper-V).

Lack of features: The fact that RD Connection Broker is relatively new is quite apparent if you compare it to other competing VDI solutions like Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View.

So, yes, Microsoft does have a VDI connection broker in Windows Server 2008 R2 that you can compare against the other popular alternatives. However, in order for Microsoft to become even the No. 2 player in desktop virtualization, the company needs to simplify install and admin, send a unifi ed message that is easy to understand and choose a much more marketable name. VR

David Davis is director of infrastructure Train Signal Inc., which offers video training for IT pros. His certifi cations include vExpert, VCP, CISSP and CCIE #9369. He has authored hundreds of articles and nine different training courses at Train Signal.

While it’s true that Microsoft recommendeds XenDesktop, it’s not true that the company doesn’t have a VDI connection broker built for desktop virtualization.

www.techxtend.com1-800-330-9611 x7704

™

ShadowServer

ShadowUser

ShadowSurfer

vCenter Server

SERV

ER &

WOR

KSTA

TION

ADMI

NIST

RATIO

N

BUSI

NESS

CON

TINUI

TY

& DI

SAST

ER R

ECOV

ERY

SECURITY

PERFORMANCEMONITORING & MANAGEMENT

STORAGE MANAGEMENT

SOFTWARE

DEVELOPMENT & TESTVIRTUALIZATION

PLATFORM

Reflex VSA

vCenter Lab Manager

Workstation/Fusion

ProvisionIQ

Disk Director Suite

Disk Director Server

DataDomain Appliance Series

NetworkStorage Server

StarWind Server

Data Storage Server

PerfectDisk

SANsymphony

SANmelody

SANmaestro

UpTempo

vReplicator

vRanger

vConverter

Backup &Recovery Server

Snap Deploy

XOsoft HA

ARCserveBackup

esXpress

vCenter SiteRecovery Manager Traveller CPR

Veeam Backup

WebSphere

Virtual Enterprise

vFoglight

Desktop Authority

Virtual Appliance Suite vCenter Server

VirtuallQ Pro

Foglight

Veeam ConfiguratorVeeam Reporter

vFoglight

Veeam Monitor

AdminStudio

by Flexera

Orion NetworkPerformance Monitor

H O M E O F B A C K U P 2 . 0Replay AppImage

ShadowProtect

Vantage

2X LoadBalancer

2X ApplicationServer

ACE

ThinApp

View

vCenter Lifecycle Manager

vCenter Lab Manager

vCenter Server

VDI-in-a-box

vWorkspace

Real Selection, Real Service, Real ValueBest of Breed Software & Services for Your Virtual World Needs

Contact us for a FREE on-site or web-meeting introduction to the business and technical implications of virtualization and cloud computing.

ente rp r i s ePARTNER

techxtend.com/VirtualWorldView

REGISTER TODAY! TechXtend.com/WebinarsView other virtualization webinars on-demand: techxtend.com/cloud

FREE VIRTUALIZATION WEBINAR SERIES: Build on VMware ESXi and vSphere for Centralized Management, Continuous Application Availability, and Maximum Operational Efficiency in Your Virtualized Datacenter.This webinar series is focused on the implementation and optimization of VMware-based virtualized server, storage,desktop and application environments. VMware’s next generation ESXi hypervisor enables single-server partitioning and forms the foundation for a virtualized datacenter. You can build upon this base virtualization layer with third party applications to obtain centralized management, continuous application availability, and maximum operational efficiency.

http://www.techxtend.com


EVERYDAY

By Rick Vanover

ILLUSTR

ATION

BY M

AX

GREG

OR

VIRTUALIZATION

VDI Display Protocols—Why They’re ImportantAlthough there are many critical VDI components to consider in your implementations, the choice of display protocols should never be taken lightly. There are a number of them available, including Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), Citrix HDX 3D, Red Hat Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment (SPICE), Sun Appliance Link Protocol (ALP), Teradici PC-over-IP (PCoIP) and HP Remote Graphics Software (RGS).

The display protocol determines two critical measures: experience and resource usage. The sticking point for many organizations will be various levels of multimedia support. Regardless of VDI status, any organization can have issues with multimedia support. This is true not only in large implementations that push bandwidth limits— even smaller installations may consume enough bandwidth to push the limits of the display protocol without a bottleneck on the wire.

For most VDI solutions, there’s a limited number of compatible display protocols. VMware View is different in that it offers a broad selection of protocols; decision makers have their choice of using RDP, ALP, PCoIP or RGS, as well as enhancements to existing protocols. One example of this is Ericom Blaze, which has an upcoming enhancement to support the VMware View broker using RDP, and is currently in use with standard RDP connections for enhanced performance.

What factors determine which protocol to use? Simply put, it comes down to what level of multimedia support is required. RDP has broad device and broker support for VDI installations, but for demanding multimedia requirements, it may not be the best choice for the user experience. In VDI environments, resource utilization can be somewhat mitigated by increasing server processor compute capacity with potentially minimal gains due to the limits of the protocol.

Today’s landscape has protocols designed from the ground up with multimedia session experience as a priority. These protocols include PCoIP, SPICE and HDX 3D. They’re architected to deliver multimedia at the highest possible levels compared to traditional protocols such as RDP, ALP and Citrix’s Independent Computing Architecture (ICA).

There may be confi gurable options to designate when multimedia components are rendered. When used with XenDesktop, for example, HDX allows administrators to specify whether endpoints should fetch multimedia resources—including Flash content—directly from the endpoint, or make the server do the work. For example, in the case of a VDI implementation that hosts many locations on a WAN, it may not make sense for a VDI session to use a WAN connection to put the fetch and render work on the host for Web-based Flash content. This would be the case if a local Internet connection is available. If the endpoint does not have direct Internet access, then XenDesktop can perform a policy-based confi guration that prompts the server to perform the fetch and render.

SPICE offers similar in-band logic that determines, for example, if the endpoint client can provide an optimized experience for any multimedia, given the resources in play. If the endpoint is capable of providing local processing, SPICE will render the graphics command there.

PCoIP integration with VMware View also presents options for designing a VDI installation that uses host or client rendering. The Teradici product line includes hardware display protocol solutions, whereas the View integration is a software implementation.

What’s clear is that RDP and ICA are insuffi cient for robust VDI installations that are expected to deliver an experience equal to that of current client PCs. As a result of this more demanding environment, selecting a display protocol is a critical step, and should be one of the fundamental requirements of an internal VDI proof-of-concept installation. I suggest taking your planning one step further to include limited bandwidth modeling, because VDI is also destined to become the new remote access mechanism. Remember: If a robust display protocol isn’t selected, future limitations may begin appearing surprisingly soon. VR

Rick Vanover ([email protected]), VCP, MCITP, MCTS, MCSA, is an IT infrastructure manager for Alliance Data in Columbus, Ohio. He is a 12-year IT veteran and an online columnist for Virtualization Review magazine. Follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/RickVanover.



ADVERTISING SALESINDEX

ID STATEMENTVirtualization Review (ISSN 1941-2843) is published bi-monthly by 1105 Media, Inc., 9201 Oakdale Avenue, Ste. 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311. Complimentary subscriptions are sent to qualifying subscribers. Annual subscription rates for non-qualifi ed subscribers are: U.S. $39.95, Canada $54.95 (U.S. funds); International $64.95 (U.S. funds).

SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES, BACK ISSUE REQUESTS, AND ADDRESS CHANGES: Mail to: Virtualization Review magazine, 9201 Oakdale Avenue, Suite 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311, e-mail [email protected], call 818- 814-5353 or fax to 818-936-0267.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Virtualization Review magazine, 9201 Oakdale Avenue, Suite 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311. Canada Publications Mail Agreement No: 40612608. Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to 9201 Oakdale Avenue, Suite 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311.

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT© Copyright 2010 by 1105 Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Reproductions in whole or part prohibited except by written permission. Mail requests to “Permissions Editor,” c/o Virtualization Review magazine, 16261 Laguna Canyon Road, Suite 130, Irvine, CA 92618.

LEGAL DISCLAIMERThe information in this magazine has not undergone any formal testing by

1105 Media, Inc. and is distributed without any warranty expressed or implied. Implementation or use of any information contained herein is the reader’s sole responsibility. While the information has been reviewed for accuracy, there is no guarantee that the same or similar results may be achieved in all environments. Technical inaccuracies may result from printing errors and/or new developments in the industry.

CORPORATE ADDRESS1105 Media9201 Oakdale Ave. Ste 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311www.1105media.com

MEDIA KITSDirect your Media Kit requests to Matt Morollo, VP Publishing, Phone: 508-532-1418 Fax: 508-875-6622E-mail: [email protected]

REPRINTSFor single article reprints (in minimum quantities of 250-500), e-prints, plaques and posters contact:PARS InternationalPhone: 212-221-9595E-mail: [email protected]: www.magreprints.com/QuickQuote.asp

LIST RENTALThis publication’s subscriber list, as well as other lists from 1105 Media, Inc., are available for rental. For more information, please contact our list manager, Merit Direct. Phone: 914-368-1000E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.meritdirect.com

Matt Morollo VP, Publishing508-532-1418 phone508-875-6622 [email protected]

Al TianoNational Sales Manager818-814-5227 phone818-734-1529 [email protected]

Danna VedderMicrosoft Account Manager253-514-8015 phone775-514-0350 [email protected]

SALES STAFF

Tanya EgenolfAdvertising Sales Associate760-722-5494 phone760-722-5495 [email protected]

PRODUCTION

Jenny Hernandez-AsandasDirector, Print Production

Teresa AntonioProduction [email protected] phone818-734-1528 fax

Advertising IndexAdvertiser Page URLAberdeen 21 www.aberdeeninc.comAppSense 7 www.appsense.comCDW Corporation 3 www.cdw.comCitrix Systems, Inc. C4 www.citrix.comGreenBytes, Inc. 23 www.getgreenbytes.comIBM Corp. C2 www.ibm.comIBM Corp. 13 www.ibm.comIBM Corp. 15 www.ibm.comKaviza 9 www.kaviza.comMicrosoft Corp. C3 www.microsoft.com

Wayside Technology Group, Inc. 29 www.techxtend.com

Editorial IndexCompany Page URL37signals LLC 6 www.basecamphq.comAmazon.com Inc. 6 www.amazon.comBackupify 6 www.backupify.comCA 16, 18 www.ca.comCatbird Networks Inc. 19 www2.catbird.comCisco Systems Inc. 26 www.cisco.comCitrix Systems Inc. 10-12, 14, 16, 19, 20 www.citrix.com 22, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32DynamicOPs 18, 19 www.dynamicops.comFortisphere 20 www.fortisphere.comGoogle Inc. 6 www.google.comHewlett-Packard Co. 16, 30 www.hp.comIBM Corp. 16, 18 www.ibm.comMicrosoft 5, 6, 11, 14, 16, 19, 20, www.microsoft.com 22, 27, 28, 30Novell 8 www.novell.comRed Hat Inc. 30 www.redhat.comSun Microsystems Inc. 30 www.sun.comSurgient 5, 6 www.surgient.comTeradici Corp. 30 www.teradici.comVMware Inc. 11, 12, 14, 18, 19, 26, 28 www.vmware.comZoho Corp. 6 www.zoho.com

Zyrion Inc. 20 www.zyrion.com

SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES, BACK ISSUE REQUESTS, AND ADDRESS CHANGES: Mail to: Virtualization Review magazine, 9201 Oakdale Avenue, Suite 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311, e-mail [email protected], call 818-814-5353 or fax to 818-936-0267.


http://www.1105media.com



http://www.magreprints.com/


http://www.meritdirect.com






http://www.aberdeeninc.com

http://www.appsense.com

http://www.cdw.com

http://www.citrix.com

http://www.getgreenbytes.com

http://www.ibm.com

http://www.ibm.com

http://www.ibm.com


http://www.microsoft.com

http://www.techxtend.com

http://www.basecamphq.com

http://www.amazon.com

http://www.backupify.com

http://www.ca.com

http://www.cisco.com

http://www.citrix.com

http://www.dynamicops.com

http://www.fortisphere.com

http://www.google.com

http://www.hp.com

http://www.ibm.com

http://www.microsoft.com

http://www.novell.com

http://www.redhat.com

http://www.sun.com

http://www.surgient.com

http://www.teradici.com

http://www.vmware.com

http://www.zoho.com

http://www.zyrion.com



IMA

GE FRO

M SH

UT

TERSTO

CK

TAKE FIVE 5 TIPS AND TRICKS TO TAKE WITH YOU : : BY BRUCE HOARD, EDITOR IN CHIEF

Why I Like CitrixHere’s a situation where the nice guy fi nishes as President and CEO.

What do you think about Citrix and XenServer? E-mail me at [email protected].

Mark Templeton. I can’t help it, I just

like the guy. He was running late for our

phone interview, so I had some time to

chat with Julie Geer, the helpful PR person

who had lined up the interview, and she

was telling me how much everybody

likes Mark—I know, I know, it’s not as though

she’s going to say what a dirtball he is, even

if he was, which he isn’t. When Templeton

gets on the line, he apologizes left and right

about keeping me waiting. My reaction: Wow,

he’s totally unpretentious for a guy in his

position. There was no “slick” in him. On a

more professional level, you’ve got to admire

somebody who has been president and CEO

of a high-tech company for 11 years and has

not only hung onto his job, but has navigated

Citrix through a lot of turbulent waters. Mark

Templeton = good guy.

TAKE

1

Simon Crosby. When I think of Simon, I harken back to Eric Clapton (E.C.) talking about Stevie Ray Vaughan. E.C. said Stevie Ray was like an “open channel,” meaning that he never had to stop and regroup before taking off on another fabulous sonic blast. Simon is a great interview because he can

talk on and on—in detail—about whatever he’s asked to discuss. The only downside to that is trying to fi gure out what to use and what to edit out, which is a small price to pay for all that good content.

TAKE

2The Microsoft deal. When you take the time to

look at this long-standing agreement (it goes back

at least to the late ’90s), you can see how good it

is for both companies, which are complementary

as opposed to being competitive. As long as Citrix

can remain the company that best exemplifi es

what Microsoft is looking for in an OEM partner—which

Microsoft says is the case—they can continue to earn big bucks

by delivering Windows apps to that huge market. Adding to

the luster for Citrix: Microsoft makes no bones about saying

VMware is a competitor.

TAKE

3

The Citrix image. Citrix has been taking it on the chin

from bloggers, reporters and pundits of all kinds for quite a

while now, mostly around two topics: the possible demise

of XenServer as a result of its perceived poor performance

in the server virtualization market, and the possibility of

Microsoft abrogating its cooperative agreement with Citrix

and then blowing the company out of the virtualization market. To which I

reply: Citrix has announced that the next full version of XenServer will be

available by mid-year, and Microsoft loves dealing with Citrix, as I noted in

my third take. All of which goes to prove: indeed, image is not everything.

TAKE

5

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a profi le of Citrix. I’ve really enjoyed the research—because I felt like there was a good story lurking under the covers—and the writing, which has been made easier by the great interviews I had with Citrix CTO Simon Crosby, and Citrix President and CEO Mark Templeton. Here’s what I discovered.

XenDesktop. The buck stops at XenDesktop, which is the real deal for Citrix as a competitor to VMware, and which is now available as part of a suite with XenApp, which has been making Citrix a lot of money for a long time. Yes, VMware has excelled in the server virtualization market—

which seems not to bother Citrix because the company still has big plans for XenServer as the hypervisor of choice for XenDesktop, XenApp and NetScaler—but Citrix is at least VMware’s equal in the VDI/desktop virtualization space, which has huge potential. XenDesktop’s use of HDX adaptive technology (which includes the ICA protocol) looks to have an advantage over PCoIP, which VMware uses with its View VDI product. Bottom line: the future looks legitimately bright.

O

4TAKE


Productivity & Efficiency.Any time. Any place.

MikeIT Director

SallySalesperson

Don’t let anyone tell you that freedom comes at the cost of control. With Windows® 7 and Windows Server® 2008, users getmore powerful search, smoother multitasking and the ability to work from virtually anywhere without a VPN. Add SystemCenter and the Microsoft® Desktop Optimization Pack, and you get more automated PC management and increased controlRYHU�\RXU�HQYLURQPHQW��&RQWURO�IRU�\RX�DQG�ÁH[LELOLW\�IRU�\RXU�XVHUV��2SWLPL]HG�PD\�QRW�EH�D�VWURQJ�HQRXJK�ZRUG�

7R�OHDUQ�PRUH�DERXW�KRZ GHVNWRS�RSWLPL]DWLRQ�FDQ�GULYH�HIÀFLHQFLHV�JR�WR itseverybodysbusiness.com/optimize

Snap this tag to get the latest news on desktop optimizationRU�WH[W�237,0,=(�WR��

Get the free app for your phone athttp://gettag.mobi

TonyBranch Director


www.microsoft.com

Manage desktops centrally

Personalized desktops for each user

High-definition experience over any network

Best bandwidth on LAN or WAN

Delivers VDI, streamed and shared desktops

Works with any hypervisor

If you’re considering a VDI solution, you should know that Citrix XenDesktop with high-definition

HDX Technology delivers a host of benefits that other products simply can’t match — like superior

performance, proven scalability, and the lowest cost per desktop. It even makes migration to

Windows® 7 a snap. When it comes to these benefits, our competitors just can’t connect the dots.

Learn more about what makes Citrix XenDesktop the best VDI solution. Download the VDI Comparison Kit at www.citrix.com/XD4VRM.

Citrix XenDesktop with VMware View

(Hint: add up the dots)

© 2009 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. All names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


http://deliver.citrix.com/go/citrix/xdvrmvmwrsattackwp

Documents

Cashing in on the art of Xen. - Catbird