Citrix Endpoint Management

Over the past couple of years, Citrix have specifically focused on improving employee experience by working directly with customers to develop a deep understanding of the challenges employees face. Forrester has validated these efforts by placing us in the “Leaders Category” of “The Forrester Wave: Unified Endpoint Management Q4 2019” report.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops

Machine Creation Services on Google Cloud Platform

With our commitment to enable organizations to run their virtual app and desktop workloads on any platform, Citrix announced in November the general availability of Machine Creation Services (MCS) for Google Cloud Platform. Provisioning on Google Cloud with MCS gives Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops customers the flexibility to move workloads to Google Cloud Platform and manage those workloads side by side with their existing on-premises workloads. Learn more about this capability and how you can take advantage of it.

Preparing for the Upcoming LTSR

Many of our Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops customers have long awaited the next Long Term Service Release (LTSR) to deploy in their environments. As you’re wrapping up your IT planning for 2020, be sure to get ready for LTSR 1912 by taking a look at this blog post.

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Goliath Technologies has announced a new release of its industry-leading technology with enhanced embedded intelligence and automation, raising the bar for end-user performance monitoring and troubleshooting for environments built on Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop or VMware Horizon platforms whether on-premises or in the cloud (e.g. AWS, Azure). With the new Goliath Performance Monitor 11.8, Goliath’s unified view of end-user experience data across any hybrid landscape, IT is positioned to proactively ensure a great end-user experience regardless of where end users or workloads are located.

IT Pros Become Proactive Problem Solvers Across Citrix and VMware Horizon Environments with Goliath Technologies

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop or the VMware Horizon IT delivery stack is complex consisting of a mix of virtual servers, hardware servers, network technologies, peripheral devices, and apps, along with a mix of on-premises and cloud technologies. End-user behaviors have changed, too, with workers now accessing technology remotely and from multiple devices. All this has increased the complexity and made it harder to diagnose productivity problems. Understanding where problems are stemming from and how to address them today requires tools that are purpose-built for essentially any hybrid landscape.

“Today, our most skilled IT professionals are in continuous reaction mode,” said Thomas Charlton, Chairman and CEO of Goliath Technologies. “They’re battling user productivity challenges impacted by the complex delivery infrastructure from Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop and VMware Horizon along with the unpredictable and changing user behaviors. We believe IT can and must break out of reaction mode, becoming a proactive and preventive enabler of end-user productivity. But doing so requires a purpose-built tool that leverages embedded intelligence and automation to deliver a single view of all performance data that monitors the myriad of IT infrastructure elements that impact the user experience.”

Goliath Technologies’ new release includes granular metrics that help IT quickly troubleshoot and resolve issues in hours, not days. It automates early warning alerts to provide IT with time to resolve issues before end users are disrupted. And, by leveraging objective evidence from reports and analytics, IT can readily diagnose root causes and collaborate with cross-departmental counterparts and vendors with confidence to create permanent solutions.

“Goliath Technologies is our must-have partner when it comes to quickly identifying issues and resolving them for our users,” said Dan Morrison, Director, IT I&O at Penn National Insurance. “With the new views, charts, and screens, we’ll have immediate access to the data we need to keep everyone productive. And the solid foundation Goliath provides in objective data reporting helps us prevent finger-pointing between our IT teams, external vendors as well as all internal stakeholders.”

Goliath Technologies’ new product release, Performance Monitor 11.8 provides and enhances these key capabilities:

Visibility and traceability into root causes of end-user experience performance problems.

• Intelligent search for individual session information, so IT can more quickly troubleshoot and react to support tickets or calls.
• Easily consumable charts for problem-related metrics, highlighting data point correlations, and enabling dynamic drill downs into data with contextual hovers.

Data correlation around in-session performance for a holistic view of session performance for each end user.

• At-a-glance summary of in-session performance for rapid pinpointing of productivity challenges stemming from logon duration, ICA/HDX or PCoIP/BLAST protocols application resources, and other critical touchpoints within the virtual workspace delivery infrastructure.
• Easy to understand logon duration analytics to quickly identify exactly when and where logon slowness occurs, as well as root causes.
• New alert and event log dashboard from the server hosting session, in context with all other session data, in a convenient, contextual tab.

In Goliath Performance Monitor there are Enhanced historical reports and analytics dashboards to quickly identify root causes and deliver permanent resolution.

• New reports enabling drill down into license usage, session logon duration, end-user activities, and more, with detailed historical reports that include trend insights.
• Easier troubleshooting via personalized dashboards and configurable sorting criteria, with column filtering and customization to better view analytics around end-user activity and performance.
• Quickly and easily configuring charts via simple drag and drop, to create personalized views.

The new Goliath Technologies release is available today, December 4^th, 2019, and can be downloaded by customers here.

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Nutanix, a leader in enterprise cloud computing, has announced it has been named a Leader by Gartner, Inc. in the November 2019 Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure. Nutanix has been recognized in all editions of this Magic Quadrant since Gartner started it.

“We continue to be recognized by Gartner as a Leader in hyperconverged infrastructure again and again, and we believe it is because of our relentless focus on pioneering innovative technology and customer success,” said Dheeraj Pandey, Chairman, Founder and CEO at Nutanix.

“Our goal is to make IT and cloud infrastructure so simple that it fuels innovation and business growth. Nutanix provides flexibility, not only via our products and solutions, but also from the freedom to choose the best HCI consumption model for the business, including software subscription licenses that are portable across hardware platforms and cloud environments.”

Nutanix was also designated as a March 2019 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice vendor for hyperconverged infrastructure. Based on detailed feedback from 264 customer ratings, Nutanix has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5. Additionally, 92% of respondents identified as willing to recommend Nutanix.

Nutanix customers said:

“In order to build for the future, you MUST implement the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform.” — Vice President Infrastructure Services in the Services Industry

“Great product, most importantly, great support.” — IT Manager in the Government Industry

Nutanix believes that enterprises continue to choose its products over competitors for its simplicity and flexibility, as well as the company’s exceptional customer service. Specifically:

• Simplicity: Nutanix’s products allow enterprises to deliver all applications, at any scale, with simple one-click deployment, upgrades, scaling, troubleshooting and more.
• Choice: By offering customers flexible licensing and consumption models, as well as the ability to choose among many hardware and virtualization vendors, Nutanix provides customers the flexibility needed to grow, scale and achieve their business goals.
• Customer Focus: Nutanix’s obsession on ensuring the success of its customers has resulted in the company achieving an average Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 90 for the past five years.

This news comes on the heels of impressive momentum Nutanix has seen over the last year, including surpassing 14,000 customers globally and $1.2 billion in revenue for its latest fiscal year. Additionally, the company announced deepened collaborations with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and ServiceNow that enable increased choice for customers seeking hybrid cloud solutions that fit their unique needs

More information on Nutanix and a complimentary copy of the report are available at: www.nutanix.com/gartner.

Source:
Gartner, Inc, Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure, Jeffrey Hewitt, Philip Dawson, Julia Palmer, John McArthur, November 25, 2019

Disclaimer:
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice constitute the subjective opinions of individual end-user reviews, ratings, and data applied against a documented methodology; they neither represent the views of, nor constitute an endorsement by, Gartner or its affiliates.

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HYCU, Inc., has announced the general availability for Nutanix Mine with HYCU. Introduced at .NEXT 2019 in Anaheim, the newest joint solution for Nutanix and HYCU customers is well suited to meet scale, performance and simplicity for secondary storage requirements. For customers, Nutanix Mine with HYCU provides a compelling and efficient secondary storage solution to complement primary storage within private clouds.

“The customer reaction to Nutanix Mine with HYCU has been outstanding. We knew that there was interest in having a secondary storage solution powered by HYCU, as customers had been asking us to support what they were already using HYCU and Nutanix for, but in a single solution,” said Simon Taylor, CEO at HYCU, Inc. “This newest secondary storage solution gives customers a powerful way to both simplify backup and recovery, but also make it truly invisible.”

Nutanix Mine with HYCU was designed from the ground up to support the latest innovation from both companies and integrates the easy-to-use and intuitive HYCU interface with the 1-click experience of Nutanix Prism management console. Additional benefits include:

• Rapid to Deploy and Easy to Manage – A turnkey backup solution that is easy to deploy and manage, alongside production infrastructure, from within Nutanix Prism.
• Easy to Scale Out – Customers have the option to start small and grow as they need.
• Fully Integrated and Simplified Multi-tenancy Use – Easy for service providers and large organizations to enable self-service offerings, simplifying management.
• End-to-end Data Lifecycle Management – From predictable backup and restore operations that helps meet SLAs, to archiving data on Nutanix Objects for meeting regulatory retention requirements.

“As part of our focus to build a cloud-like experience in the data center, Nutanix Mine extends the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform beyond primary infrastructure to integrate secondary data services like backup, archiving and disaster recovery into a single, easy-to-use solution,” Greg Smith, VP of Product Marketing, Nutanix. “The vast majority of an organization’s data is stored in backup and archives, making it challenging to manage effectively. Nutanix Mine brings the power of hyperconvergence to secondary data center operations, allowing Nutanix and HYCU customers to address their secondary storage challenges.”

“At University Healthcare, our goal has been to simplify our IT operations and infrastructure with the best solutions possible, especially with a focused team to support this,” said Jose Bellas, CIO, University Healthcare. “The key for us when we moved all in on Nutanix was to leverage the power of their platform, not just for primary storage but secondary as well. I’ve been using HYCU as my backup and recovery software solution as well as Nutanix as my backup target for a while now. With Nutanix Mine with HYCU, you get the best possible solution that is tightly integrated to simplify your secondary storage needs, with the benefit of streamlined management. In the end, whis will make things more efficient and help tie back to our overall business objectives.”

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Learn how to capture true end-to-end visibility into the health of your complete Citrix infrastructure showing automatically all the dependencies of the underlying elements that can impact end-user performance.

Goliath’s proactive and purpose-built IT performance monitoring and troubleshooting software gives you, in real-time, a detailed understanding of what end users are experiencing from the time they initiate a logon, through the logon process, and while working in their Citrix session. Goliath delivers true Citrix End User Experience monitoring and troubleshooting that enables IT admins to Be Proactive.

Goliath Performance Monitor is the only comprehensive Citrix End-User Performance monitoring and troubleshooting solution that brings together Citrix monitoring data, end user experience performance metrics and the supporting IT elements that can impact end users experience when using Citrix. Comprehensive Citrix monitoring requires full visibility into everything the user does from the initial logon to working within their Citrix session and the IT infrastructure that supports this activity.

You can use this integrated toolset to proactively monitor and manage the entire Citrix IT delivery infrastructure to easily identify the root cause of performance issues and resolve them before end-users complain.

Goliath will automatically integrate with your environment and build a dependency map of your Citrix infrastructure components – and ancillary database and Active Directory systems. Goliath’s intelligence engine assigns correlating monitoring for relevant failure points to each component, so you can monitor with a purpose. Since this is all automatic, you can just sit back and watch – tweakin and tuning is your only responsibility. Then, pre-configured Citrix Monitoring rules are automatically applied and look for over 250 common failure points in the Citrix, Infrastructure, and Role Servers. Because of this embedded intelligence, you don’t have to be a Citrix expert to proactively anticipate, troubleshoot, resolve, and prevent performance issues in the most complex Citrix environments. Goliath’s purpose-built Citrix monitoring and troubleshooting software has the Citrix expert included!

The post How to Anticipate Citrix End-User Performance Issues with Embedded Intelligence and Automation appeared first on Ervik.as - EUC, HCI, Cloud and Virtualization Blog.

Learn how you can quickly identify root cause of any logon slowness issue by leveraging granular metrics at each stage of the logon process.

Goliath Performance Monitor supports both VMware vSphere monitoring and troubleshooting and VMware Horizon monitoring and troubleshooting. Both technologies leverage Goliath’s embedded intelligence and automation to provide proactive VMware alerts on events, conditions, thresholds, and failures. This automatically alerts administrators to issues before end users are impacted, because advanced warning of issues is even better than real time.

Goliath Performance Monitor for VMware vSphere provides monitoring, analysis, reporting, and remediation for VMware vSphere. A server administrator now has the ability to monitor virtual machine performance and set threshold-based alerts to warn them if any key virtual server performance indicator like CPU, Memory and Disk is approaching a level where users can be impacted. This early warning system gives virtual server administrators the time to resolve issues before a ticket is created.

Goliath Performance Monitor for VMware is purpose-built to find common failure points that exist with complex VDI infrastructures whether the element is part of VMware or the supporting delivery infrastructure. Our proactive monitoring strategy also incorporates application availability monitoring for VMware which will logon to VMware and confirm the application is available for end users.

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Citrix has announced five new ways it is helping companies on their journey to microservices , including:

• Google Anthos integration extended to on-prem
• A holistic observability stack to tame the observability challenge
• mTLS support for securing Istio service mesh environments
• Improved ingress security for APIs
• A simpler way to manage TCP/UDP based applications in Kubernetes

Google Anthos integration extended to on-prem

Google Anthos is a Kubernetes-based platform that helps you organizations build microservices applications and run them anywhere. Citrix, as a Google technology partner, is excited to announce the validation of Citrix® ADC for Google Anthos on-prem. This means customers can integrate their existing on-prem Citrix ADCs like MPX, VPX and CPX into Google Anthos with confidence. And, because Citrix VPX and CPX were previously validated for Google Anthos cloud environment, they can maintain operational and policy consistency for their Citrix ADC between on-prem and cloud environments easing application migration.

Customers can also use Citrix ADM Service Graphs to visualise microservice maps, gain insights about microservice health and detect anomalies and potential problems. Further, pooled capacity licensing allows them to seamlessly shift Citrix ADC licenses when they migrate applications between on-prem and cloud.

A holistic stack to tame the observability challenge

Citrix views observability as a stack for microservices not as individual, disjointed components. To support this vision, the company is introducing a holistic observability stack for microservices with four pillars- logging, metrics, tracing and service graphs. Citrix ADC integrates with leading open source tools for logging (Elasticsearch, Kibana), metrics (Prometheus, Grafana) and tracing (OpenTracing with Zipkin) and extends the capabilities of these open source tools by delivering more telemetry for TCP, HTTP, security and SSL.

Using Citrix ADM Service Graphs, companies can dynamically and graphically represent microservices and their interdependencies and visualise their microservices maps at a glance to identify issues via simple color coding and composite health scores. In addition, a DVR-like function allows SREs to rewind the time line to a specific time period, speeding the time to diagnose issues, remediate and conduct post-mortems.

mTLS support for securing Istio service mesh environments

With the rise of cloud native deployments, companies are increasingly exploring service mesh architectures and considering Istio as an open source control plane. To secure the communication between microservices, Citrix ADC will now support mutual TLS (mTLS) authentication using Itsio control plane, providing a high-performance gateway device (MPX, VPX) and a lightweight, low-latency, sidecar proxy (CPX as sidecar) to deliver the functionality required to enforce security policies defined with Istio.

Enhanced ingress security for APIs

APIs are the cornerstone of microservices and they need to be protected. And to do this, Citrix ADC as an ingress proxy now supports IP address whitelisting and blacklisting, rate limiting and content routing to ensure that only trusted traffic is allowed into the Kubernetes cluster. This functionality is enabled via Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) for easier integration with Kubernetes environments.

Citrix is also introducing SSL Profiles for microservices environments on Citrix ADC. By defining acceptable SSL settings (e.g. ciphers, protocol, key strength) and binding them to different entities, developers can ensure consistent encryption policies that meet appropriate security requirements.

Simpler ingress management for TCP/UDP applications with Citrix Ingress Controller

While Kubernetes Ingress provides a standard way to control and route HTTP(s) traffic into the cluster, operators are left to use inconsistent mechanisms for non-HTTP traffic such as type LoadBalancer (only supported in the Cloud) or NodePort (not optimal for production). Citrix Ingress Controller now offers support for type LoadBalancer with a built-in IP address manager that is consistent across clouds and on-premises deployments. The support for standard Kubernetes concepts and the deep L4-L7 telemetry afforded by Citrix ADC provides a solid foundation for high-velocity team to operate across traditional apps, modernized microservices apps, and across hybrid cloud implementations.

To learn more about these innovations and how they can help companies accelerate their journey to microservices-based applications with confidence, agility and security, visit: www.citrix.com/products/citrix-adc

The post Citrix Supercharges Microservices based Application Delivery appeared first on Ervik.as - EUC, HCI, Cloud and Virtualization Blog.

Nutanix Xi Frame, are continuing to deliver on giving customers the most choice, with the general availability of Frame support for Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This means that our customers can choose to run their Frame desktops and applications on VMs in GCP regions worldwide.

Xi Frame has always embraced an open, multi-cloud approach to delivering Desktop-as-as-Service (DaaS). Nutanix started with a choice of AWS or Azure public clouds and in May of this year support was added for Nutanix private clouds to enable hybrid environments.

“Xi Frame’s support of Google Cloud Platform is a great addition to the multi-year partnership we’ve enjoyed with Nutanix around Frame,” said Manvinder Singh, Director, IaaS/PaaS Partnerships Google Cloud. “We look forward to continued collaboration to build out the cloud-based DaaS market together.”

This is not the first integration between Google and Frame. Frame has been a Google Cloud Technology Partner and Google Chrome Enterprise Technology Partner for several years due to easy-to-use integrations that our customers love, including:

• Running Windows apps on any device with a Google Chrome browser delivers the best possible Frame performance (no downloads or plug-ins required)
• Direct integration with Google Chromebooks and Chromeboxes let users launch Windows apps directly from the ChromeOS shelf
• Integrations with Google Drive and Google Drive File Stream let users work and collaborate seamlessly with their files in Frame sessions, even with non-persistent desktops
• Authentication integrations with Sign-in with Google (OAUTH) or SAML2 let users log in to Frame using Google as the identity provider

This addition of Frame support for GCP rounds out our DaaS offering so that customers who have embraced the Google ecosystem can leverage all of their investments from devices to identity to storage to infrastructure.

Why GCP?

As far as public cloud infrastructure goes, Google Cloud has made huge strides in their position as a major hyper-scale public cloud provider. They’ve focused on high reliability, best-in-class-security, and super fast VM and storage performance — all music to Nutanix customers’ ears. And perhaps most importantly, they have differentiated themselves on their network with their own high-bandwidth links between Google Cloud points of presence (PoPs) that cut down latency between users and the data center hosting their VMs – a very important feature for DaaS workloads.

Who uses Nutanix Frame with Google?

To date, Nutanix has seen customers across a variety of segments from enterprise to education embracing Google devices and services with Frame. Chromebooks are incredibly popular in schools as they disrupt the norm by changing the economics of computing and greatly simplifying management. White Bear Lake Schools in Minnesota is a great example, where 1:1 computing with Chromebooks completely changed the digital content creation curriculum.

“I looked into options and discovered that Nutanix Frame could stream Adobe applications from the cloud directly into a browser, making it a great fit for Chromebooks. Students were able to log in using the Frame account through their school Gmail account, and work directly through their Google Drive, with access to Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. Students were able to work on projects at school, home or anywhere they had Wi-Fi. By giving students access to the applications they needed from their own devices, Nutanix Frame and the 1:1 program enabled me to eliminate the networked computer lab in my classroom.”

In addition to Google’s traction in education, Nutanix is seeing an increasing number of enterprises (large and small) adopting Google ChromeOS devices and Google Cloud services. With the incredible amount of complexity in today’s enterprise IT environments, IT managers are telling us over and over again that they are looking for one-click simplicity and consumer-grade ease of use. Delivering solutions to meet these demands are goals that Nutanix and Google certainly share.

Want to try?

If you want to try out Frame with your GCP account, simply sign up for a free one-month trial by going to my.nutanix.com and clicking “Start Trial” on the Xi Frame tile. And for more on Frame with Google see: nutanix.com/products/frame/google

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In this video Nutanix shows the Nutanix AHV Sync Rep (AHV synchronous replication) feature, its configuration in Prism and how it enables cross-cluster live migration. This video is part of the Nutanix Bible Study video series (nutanixbible.com).

Credit to Steven Poitras and NutanixBible.com for the great AHV Sync Rep Demo.

The post Nutanix AHV Sync Rep Demo appeared first on Ervik.as - EUC, HCI, Cloud and Virtualization Blog.

IGEL has announced from Microsoft Ignite that its IGEL Linux-Based Edge OS will support Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop customers, enabling enterprises to centrally manage, control and secure thousands of endpoint devices. As a supporting vendor for Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop value-added partner program “early adopters,” IGEL is among the recommended Microsoft ecosystem partners for customers deploying Windows Virtual Desktop at scale.

IGEL’s support for Windows Virtual Desktop will help fuel its adoption while further reducing cost and risk. Purpose-built for enterprise access to virtual and cloud-powered environments of all types, IGEL OS is ideally suited to be the edge OS for environments accessing Windows through a centrally managed data center or cloud deployment. When used with Windows Virtual Desktop, IGEL OS and IGEL Universal Management Suite standardize endpoints and provide for adaptive configuration and granular control, while giving users a familiar, trouble-free workspace. IGEL OS is also hardware-agnostic, supporting any x86 machine so enterprises can extend the life of aging hardware while standardizing a heterogeneous device estate with simple to manage policy control and increased endpoint security.

IGEL OS has revolutionized end user computing.

Currently in its 7th generation, the time-tested IGEL OS operating system standardizes your endpoints and provides for adaptive configuration and granular control, while giving users a familiar, trouble free workspace. Supporting more remote display protocols and attached peripheral devices than any alternative solution, IGEL OS 11 is purpose-built for enterprise access to virtual environments of all types.

“As an active participant in the Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop value-added partner program, IGEL is directly aligned with Windows Virtual Desktop technology initiatives, making customer adoption easier, faster and lower cost,” said Jed Ayres, President and CEO of IGEL North America and Global CMO. “With the Linux-based IGEL OS, IGEL is further enabling the shift of Windows from the desktop to the cloud for improved manageability, security and agility. IGEL’s fully-managed beta program with active Windows Virtual Desktop customers is already underway and demonstrating impressive performance and ROI when IGEL OS is used with Windows Virtual Desktop.”

Scott Manchester, Group Program Manager, Windows Virtual Desktop and Remote Desktop Services at Microsoft Corp. said, “IGEL is a member of the Windows Virtual Desktop value-added partner program due to its ability to provide our mutual customers with a cost-effective and secure option to extend the life of desktops and laptops through its robust and secure edge OS for cloud workspaces. Customers will also benefit from the IGEL Universal Management Suite, which helps to simplify complex enterprise environments supporting the rapid adoption and scale of Windows Virtual Desktop deployments.”

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Nutanix Solutions for EUC enables productivity anytime, anywhere with well-executed EUC.

Nutanix offers solutions for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure for Citrix Virtual Apps and Virtual Desktops and VMware Horizon. As a compliment or standalone alternative, Nutanix also offer Desktop-as-a-Service powered by Citrix Cloud and Nutanix Xi Frame.

The Difference Nutanix Makes

Run virtual apps and desktops on a highly available, scalable, secure and performant platform with 1-Click simplicity, stability, and world-class support.

• Centralize Management
  • Install new apps, manage updates, and provision users from one dashboard.
• Enable BYOD
  • Give users access to their apps and data anywhere, from any device, on any browser.
• Secure End-User Data & Files
  • Enable access to company data without users storing anything on local devices.

Nutanix supports the following EUC solutions:

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops

VMware Horizon

Xi Frame

EUC(end-user computing) has transformed to deliver better application availability and better accessibility for employees. And innovation in the EUC space has done wonders, such as reducing operational costs, improving workforce mobility, and more.

Even so, why do so many EUC initiatives still fail? The answer lies in not fully understanding the work process in the beginning of an EUC project. But what else is responsible? And how can businesses ensure their EUC project succeed?

Click here to get the e-book

This quick guidebook will walk you through:

• 3 critical components to a successful EUC initiative
  
• How to plan ahead and keep end-user in mind, always
  
• Real-life scenarios of properly executed EUC projects
  
• And more!

Many enterprises struggle to reduce the overall costs and complexity of their data centers, and from these traditional implementations.
Download the Definitive Guide to VDI on Hyperconverged Infrastructure to see how Nutanix can manifest application virtualization with streamlined management and excellent user experience. Take it one step further and leverage Nutanix Files to host User Home Directories, User Profiles and file data. This combo, speeds up both the login process and takes the user experience to the next level. One customer, had 30+ seconds login time for their average user before Nutanix. Putting their Citrix Virtual Apps(XenApp) on their Nutanix platform, instantly brought them down to 18 seconds, then after leveraging Nutanix Files, their average login time for their users went down to 8 seconds! Now that is a tremendous change for the users! Be a hero again!

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A Reliable Solution for Anywhere, Anytime Access

Sheppard Mullin relies Nutanix to support its lawyers around the clock. With at rest data encryption, eight-click file cluster creation, and seamless backups, IT is now able for focus on innovation.

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IT spends millions of dollars and years of worker-time so their workforces can work anywhere, anytime, on any device, securely. And a huge chunk of that investment is in VDI from Citrix or VMware Horizon, both on-prem and in the cloud.

As a result, IT, you’ve delighted your end-users with a super high-performing, super reliable end-user experience, right?

Sadly, IT is often in the doghouse, reacting and responding to rising end-user gripes about glitches and bugs that can arise from so many sources it’s almost impossible to keep tabs on them. Instead of investing time and money in future enhancements to better stabilize, simplify, and speed the user experience, you’re burning those resources putting out endless fires.

Care and Feeding of VDI

You’ve invested in technology from great vendors – and wisely, too. The challenge is this: how do you invest in the proper care and maintenance of your tech stack from Citrix or VMware to ensure success for your projects and your end-user experience?

Implementing Citrix or VMware Horizon isn’t a “one and done.” You don’t just make it happen and move on. You’ve taken on a beast that needs to be fed with new apps, more integration, upgrades, and performance improvements to quiet those service tickets. And how often do your end-users wait patiently while you get this all sorted? And what about them, anyway? Maybe a careless action or bad habit or two or three will also impact performance. An audio file running in the background, multiple instances of the same app, hidden behind window after window.

And do you know what’s worse than end-user complaint tickets? No user complaint tickets. After a while, users become apathetic to performance issues and no longer bother filing a ticket. They take their complaints to the hallways – and then they burn you on the year-end survey.

Feeding the VDI beast is tough. It’s always hungry, and never satisfied.

The Answer: Proactive Monitoring and Troubleshooting 

Goliath Technologies provides software to help IT break out of reactive mode, into proactive mode.

Our customers running Citrix or VMware Horizon are getting faster, more reliable end-user experiences today. And they’re doing it because we’ve given them the visibility and intelligence to anticipate, troubleshoot, and prevent performance and availability problems across their hybrid IT environments. We give them visibility beyond the VDI stack which empowers them to find more answers. Take healthcare, for example, we can give visibility not only into Citrix and VMware Horizon but across all major EHR systems (Epic, Cerner, MEDITECH and Allscripts). 

Our embedded intelligence and automation enables them to dynamically discover and see a dependency map of the entire IT infrastructure delivery layer, so they anticipate performance issues before they impact their users. And Goliath provides an end-to-end view across Citrix or VMware Horizon with granular metrics that equip them to troubleshoot and resolve issues in hours, not days. By leveraging objective evidence in the form of reports and analytics, they’re diagnosing root causes and collaborating with management, cross-departmental counterparts, and vendors to fix what breaks and prevent future problems.

This can happen for you, too. Your latest Citrix or VMware Horizon project doesn’t need to be at risk. You can set yourself up for success with the right tools to put proper maintenance and care into your hands. To learn more, check out this video from Penn National Insurance and listen to what they have to say about how Goliath Technologies saved their virtual desktop initiative.

The post Goliath Technologies asks Why do most IT departments struggle to manage Citrix & VMware Horizon deployments effectively? appeared first on Ervik.as - EUC, HCI, Cloud and Virtualization Blog.

The gap between jobs and skilled workers continues to grow. And it’s killing productivity and growth at companies large and small. But there is a way to narrow it. According to a new study conducted by the Centre of Economics and Business Research (Cebr) with support from Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS), companies that leverage technology to enable flexible work models can not only attract talent, but increase employee engagement and productivity, potentially boosting the US economy by as much as $2.36 trillion a year.

“The battle for talent is fierce and it’s hindering business growth and innovation around the globe,” said Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer, Citrix. “This research supports the idea that, when harnessed correctly, technology that enables remote work models can empower companies to draw talent from new and untapped pools and leverage their skills to unlock innovation, engage customers and move their business forward.”

Tapping the Home Force

Through an online survey of more than 2,500 US knowledge workers conducted in July, the Cebr study sought to determine the potential value to the US economy of the adoption of a more widespread, flexible working culture. And it found that in offering virtual/remote work options and providing the tools to enable them, companies can better compete in the battle for talent by dipping into untapped pools of workers. These include unemployed and economically inactive individuals such as:

• Parents who put their careers on hold to tend to children, also known as the “home force.”
• People who gave up jobs to care for aging relatives.
• Baby Boomers who retired, but would consider working a few hours a week in non-traditional settings.

According to the survey, 69 percent of people who are currently unemployed or economically inactive indicated that they would be encouraged to start working if given the opportunity to work flexibly. And if they did, Cebr estimates it could drive upwards of $2 trillion in economic gains across the US economy and an increase in GDP of 10.2 percent.

In addition, companies offering flexible/remote working options can entice contract and part-time employees to take on more work. According to the survey, 65 percent of respondents working part-time said they would be inclined to work more hours if they could work remotely.

Killing the Commute

If provided with the opportunity, 95 percent of the knowledge workers polled who are currently employed say they would work from home 2.4 days per week, on average. And between 60 percent and 70 percent of respondents would do so from other locations, including local coffee shops and shared workspaces, at least one day per week. According to Cebr, this would:

• Reduce the time employees spend getting to and from work by 5.8 billion hours a year.
• Drive savings of $44.4 billion on commuting costs such as tickets and gas.
• Between cost and time savings, put more than $107 billion a year back into the pockets of US workers.

Respondents to the online survey say it would also make them more productive. Of those polled,

• 93 percent of all workers said virtual/remote working would enable them to manage their time more effectively and devote extra hours to work tasks.
• 68 percent of part-time workers indicated it would allow them to get more work done as they would spend less time commuting.

“Remote work has long been heralded as a key productivity hack, and now there’s proof that workers with flexible arrangements are likely to get more done,” Minahan said.

Striking a Balance

The Cebr study further found that flexible work models can help employees strike a better work-life balance by freeing up 11.9 billion hours a year – or 105 hours per person – that can be devoted to personal and leisure activities. And according to Donna Kimmel, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, Citrix, giving employees time to focus on activities other than work pays dividends too.
“Life happens. And people need to manage it – even during work hours,” she said. “In giving employees the flexibility and tools to work when, where and how they want, companies can help them to better integrate their work and lives and ultimately, improve their engagement and productivity.”
Reaping the Rewards

The benefits of remote work are clear. And to reap them, companies need to rethink what “workplace” means. “The future of work is dynamic and decentralized,” Kimmel said. “And businesses that create flexible digital environments in which employees can access the tools and information they need to perform at their best, from anywhere at any time, can deliver it today.”

To learn more about the role that technology can play in enabling remote work, click here. For a complimentary copy of the Cebr research, click here.

About the Research

The findings of The Potential Economic Impacts of Flexible Working research are based on a study commissioned by Citrix and carried out by Cebr, the Centre for Economics and Business Research in July 2019, which sought to determine the potential value of the adoption of more widespread and flexible working cultures to the US economy. The analysis was based on data from an online survey of 2,502 US knowledge workers, conducted by Opinium across five key demographics, including:

• retirees of any age or over 55
  
• individuals between 16 and 55 with dependent children
  
• workers between 16 and 55 without dependent children
• caregivers or those who are disabled/long term sick
• full-time homemakers

For more detailed information on the methodology, or to ready the full report, click here.

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Nutanix has announced that the UK’s Science Museum Group (SMG) has completed the first phase of its plans to build a hybrid cloud infrastructure, based on Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software. The solution is already delivering immediate benefits including enhanced business value, responsiveness, and innovation to museum staff and visitors alike.

A publicly funded organisation, the SMG includes the historic Science Museum in central London, the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, Yorkshire, the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, the National Railway Museum in York and Locomotion in Shildon, County Durham. The group recently identified digital transformation as key to a group-wide mission to ‘inspire futures’; a strategy focusing on the digital experiences of its audiences – both at the group’s museums and online – as well as building a sustainable and scalable technical infrastructure to deliver on current objectives and future endeavours.

Nutanix solutions are at the heart of these plans with the SMG, by adding its AOS software to a comprehensive programme of network and security upgrades to connect with public cloud services, with the aim of building a scalable, secure and highly available hybrid cloud infrastructure.

The solution was designed and implemented by Eurotech Computer Services, a Nutanix Master Partner. Its dedicated and expert Nutanix certified technical teams supported the SMG throughout the project and brought the solution to life.

In completing the first phase of this programme, the SMG has already achieved several key milestones, not least the virtualisation of all IT workloads, including key apps needed to manage buildings, visitors, volunteers, collections and school visits, all of which are operating successfully. Significantly, this goal was achieved with minimal disruption and without additional licensing costs through the use of the integrated Nutanix AHV hypervisor.

Centralised management of both physical and virtual resources is now possible with Nutanix Prism. “Our teams now benefit from Nutanix’s linear scalability to cope with future growth, in addition to much needed data backup and disaster recovery capabilities,” explains Amardeep Rai, Head of ICT Programmes for the Science Museum Group. “We’ve gone from having a hard to scale infrastructure with limited disaster recovery facilities, to a highly automated and available solution, enabling us to move forward with confidence and concentrate our efforts on harnessing the potential of digital.”

Mr. Rai is also pleased with how easy it was for staff to get to grips with the Nutanix software and by how seamlessly it fits with the group’s cloud-first digital aspirations: “We wanted a virtualisation platform that could take full advantage of other core infrastructure services, as well as one that didn’t require yet another management interface or specialised skill set to go with it,” he commented before continuing. “Nutanix has given us all that, and more.”

Having now completed the migration to a new consolidated data centre and the building of a second backup and disaster recovery facility, SMG is already using Nutanix to provide local services at remote satellite sites. It is also facilitating the next phase of its transformation plans which, thanks to Nutanix, are already at an advanced stage.

Commenting on the SMG deployment, Dom Poloniecki, General Manager of Western Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa region, Nutanix, said: “The Science Museum Group has secured its future and is set to inspire a growing international audience for a long time to come, thanks to its forward-thinking approach to digital transformation and the adoption of a hybrid approach to cloud computing. This migration of workloads to Nutanix means the Science Museum Group is ideally placed to harness the potential of digital technology, and we look forward to continuing to work with them on future developments.”

About the Science Museum Group
The Science Museum Group is the world’s leading alliance of science museums, welcoming over five million visitors each year to five sites: the Science Museum in London; the National Railway Museum in York; the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester; the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford; and Locomotion in Shildon.

We share the stories of innovations and people that shaped our world and are transforming our futures, constantly reinterpreting our astonishingly diverse collection of 7.3 million items spanning science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine. Standout objects include the record-breaking locomotive Flying Scotsman, Richard Arkwright’s textile machinery, Alan Turing’s Pilot ACE computer and the equipment used by John Logie Baird to transmit the first ever television pictures.

Our mission is to inspire futures – igniting curiosity among people of all ages and backgrounds. Each year, our museums attract more than 600,000 visits by education groups, while our touring exhibition programme and websites bring our creativity and scholarship to audiences across the globe.

About Eurotech Computer Services
For over 26 years Eurotech has been a trusted advisor in the IT industry, with a strategic approach to implementing solutions that deliver lasting business value. Today Eurotech has offices in the UK, Norway and South Africa, and has succeeded in striking the right balance between innovative technology and specialist solutions to deliver the performance, reduced cost and capacity that our customers demand.

Our core skills are in hyper-converged infrastructure, high-performance computing, high-throughput storage, NAS optimisation, cloud storage, virtualisation and all the networking, hardware, software, security components and professional services needed to bind all of these technologies together into an IT solution. We are leaders in next-generation software defined solutions, with unique specialist technical skills in hybrid-cloud, DevOps, API integration and automation. For more information, visit www.eurotech-computers.com.

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 Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Nutanix has announced the general availability of HPE’s integrated hybrid cloud as a service (aaS) offering, HPE GreenLake for Nutanix, and the HPE ProLiant DX solution.

Today’s news delivers on the partnership announced between the two companies in April, through which HPE and Nutanix are providing customers and partners greater freedom of choice for building their hybrid cloud strategy.

“Hybrid cloud today offers a strategic advantage for organizations by granting them the flexibility to store data where they want it, maintain the level of control they desire and scale workloads more efficiently, to provide the level of service their customers expect,” said Pradeep Kumar, Senior Vice President and General Manager of HPE Pointnext Services. “Through our combined offering with Nutanix, we’re helping customers deliver cloud capabilities with greater agility, flexibility, control and choice, so that they can focus on driving digital initiatives that allow them to innovate and move their business forward.”

“Companies around the world know that hybrid cloud is the ideal IT model and they need solutions that make it easier to deploy,” said Monica Kumar, Senior Vice President of Product and Solutions Marketing of Nutanix. “Our goal is to make the underlying cloud infrastructure invisible so leaders can focus on what matters most to their businesses: their applications. By partnering with HPE, we’re paving pathways for more enterprises to easily find the right hybrid cloud solution and focus on what moves the needle to scale.”

The HPE GreenLake solution leverages Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software, including its built-in AHV hypervisor, to deliver a fully HPE-managed private cloud that dramatically lowers total cost of ownership and accelerates time to value, while allowing customers to pay for the service based on actual consumption. With HPE GreenLake businesses can design IT solutions with their chosen technologies and consume them easily, reduce CapEx up to 30 percent due to reduced overprovisioning, increase IT resource utilization by 40 percent by lowering the support load on IT operations staff, and as a result speed time to value for their critical IT projects¹. The as a service solution is now available to order across the 50+ countries where HPE GreenLake is offered. The HPE GreenLake for Nutanix offering will be initially focused on simplifying customer deployments of End User Computing initiatives, databases and private clouds.

The HPE ProLiant DX solution is built on HPE ProLiant and Apollo servers with Nutanix software pre-installed and shipped from HPE factories. HPE ProLiant DX brings together industry-leading Nutanix software and server technology into a turnkey solution, enabling enterprises to accelerate the adoption of modernized datacenter architectures.

HPE and Nutanix will showcase their combined offerings at the Nutanix .NEXT Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark on October 8-10, 2019. As part of its platinum sponsorship at .NEXT, HPE will lead several presentations and other engagement activities with joint customers and partners at the conference.

For more information, please go to www.nutanix.com/hpe and www.hpe.com/greenlake.

Customer and Partner Quotes

“Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software running on HPE ProLiant systems has proven to be an easy-to-deploy, flexible and reliable solution for my IT team,” said Herman Brown, CIO for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. “Since putting it into production, my team has been able to focus more time bringing online new applications and services and much less time managing underlying infrastructure.”

“As a partner of both HPE and Nutanix, PQR has been waiting for the day that the Nutanix proposition and the HPE proposition would come together. Now that it has, we are especially pleased to see that the joint proposition is also available as a service through HPE GreenLake,” said Marco Lesmeister. Commercial Director of PQR. “PQR as a company is always looking for a simple and understandable offering to our customers. In taking the responsibility to manage all of the IT infrastructure for our customers and then bill them on a usage basis, the GreenLake proposition gives us the opportunity to do just that. We can scale up and down easily, without any financial risks for PQR or our customers.”

“We are very excited about the partnership between HPE and Nutanix. The combination of Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software and HPE hardware results in a highly scalable and easily upgradeable solution for our customers,” said Jon Lankert, Principal Partner with Summit Partners LLC. “The opportunity to sell Nutanix software with HPE technology as a service through HPE GreenLake has been very good for our business. With this partnership, our customers receive the benefits of HPE with Nutanix, while just paying for what they use each month with no payment upfront.”

¹ The Total Economic Impact of HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity, Forrester, May 2018

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A full end-to-end deployment of Nutanix Mine with Veeam, including the configuration of vSphere and AHV backup jobs, leveraging the Veeam Availability for Nutanix.

Mine with Veeam is a turnkey hyperconverged backup and recovery solution that delivers unified operations, cloud-like scalability, and one-click simplicity for all of your applications and data.

Mine with Veeam brings everything together in a single product that eliminates the need to align hardware, software, operating system and licensing for:

• Faster time to value with a better customer experience from proof of concept, to purchase, to productivity and unified support from Nutanix and Veeam for the entire solution built around Veeam Backup & Replication.
• Unified IT operations by integrating deployment and day-to-day management. Mine reduces complexity and simplifies administration.
• Drop in, scale up, and scale out that streamlines deployment and delivers cloud-like scaling for storage and data protection, without the proprietary-cloud storage add-on costs and rigid capacity limits of others in the market.

Mine with Veeam combines the best of both companies’
innovation – Nutanix in enterprise cloud computing and Veeam in Cloud
Data Management. The result is a full-stack solution enabling customers
to quickly go from project planning to protection without the cost and
overhead of standalone systems.

Sold by Nutanix, Nutanix Mine with Veeam can be deployed in minutes and simplifies the full lifecycle of data backup operations, including on-going management, scaling and troubleshooting. The offering combines highly-efficient storage working in concert with Veeam Backup and Replication, helping customers achieve comprehensive data protection for all their workloads — virtual, physical and private cloud —to meet increasing business demands for uptime and productivity.

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Nutanix has announced the speaker lineup for its .NEXT Europe 2019 Conference, the industry’s one-stop source of information, education, and inspiration on the latest IT technologies and trends in cloud, datacenter and DevOps. The event will take place from October 8-10, 2019 at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Industry Experts and Thought Leaders Will Gather to Share Latest in Datacenter Infrastructure and Hybrid Cloud Innovation, Plus Best Practices for Digital Transformation

Now in its fourth year in Europe, Nutanix .NEXT Europe 2019 will showcase how advancements in enterprise cloud and datacenter technologies are transforming the way businesses operate. The main stage presentations will feature speakers who are leaders and visionaries across a variety of disciplines, including:

• Dr. Katie Bouman
  Assistant Professor in Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech
• Caroline Wozniacki
  Professional Tennis Player
• Fran Scott
  Scientist, Engineer and Presenter
• Kit Harrington
  Actor and Producer
• Peter Kreiner
  noma CEO

The ..NEXT Europe 2019 experience will provide the opportunity for hands-on labs, education courses, certification opportunities, and expert sessions on a broad range of topics, such as:

• How to design, build and operate modern private cloud and hybrid architectures
• The use of APIs, AI and machine learning to automate everyday IT tasks
• Proven tips and tools to accelerate DevOps practices
• Technology tips for running business-critical applications like SAP and Oracle, plus VDI
• Expert advice on building new Database-as-a-Service models
• The ins and outs of end-user computing

Nutanix is also proud to announce an impressive list of .NEXT sponsors that are part of the company’s growing ecosystem, including platinum sponsors:

• Fujitsu
• HPE
• HYCU
• Intel
• Veeam

Additional Resources:

• To learn more about all of the speakers and sessions, visit https://www.nutanix.com/next/.
• This year’s conference will also feature the second annual .NEXT Awards celebration, which recognizes IT visionaries and leaders who are transforming their organizations with innovative enterprise cloud and infrastructure initiatives. Find out more here.

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Business today is more global and collaborative than ever. People work anywhere, anytime on any number of devices. And they access and share information and ideas across systems and borders. This promises new levels of productivity and innovation that can transform entire industries – and even create new ones. But it also introduces new risks via an expanded attack surface that companies must vigilantly guard against. And Citrix Systems, Inc.  is expanding its network protection capabilities to help them do this. The company has announced that it is collaborating with global cybersecurity leader Palo Alto Networks to enable easy deployment and management of next-generation firewalls within Citrix® SD-WAN, providing companies with added layers of security to protect their assets at branches and beyond.

“Applications and workloads are migrating to the cloud at a very aggressive rate and security needs to follow them,” said Chalan Aras, Vice President, SD-WAN and Intelligent Traffic Management, Citrix. “With Palo Alto Networks, we can deliver an advanced SD-WAN security solution that enables companies to protect users, data and applications across branches, data centers and public clouds in a simple, flexible way.”

WAN Edge Networking Simplified

Citrix SD-WAN is a next-generation WAN Edge solution that delivers the automated, secure connectivity required to optimize performance of applications and drive a superior user experience. With the integration of the Palo Alto Networks VM-Series virtual next-generation firewalls and Prisma Access with the Citrix SD-WAN solution, distributed enterprises can enhance their network and cloud protection in a straightforward, cost-effective manner.

Security Amplified

Leveraging Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator for unified management and control, IT organizations can:

• Build and enforce consistent access control policies based on applications and users across network and cloud
• Automate provisioning of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series next-generation firewall (NGFW) on the Citrix 1100 appliance, as a virtual network function (VNF)
• Automate connections to Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access cloud-based firewalls for consistent policy enforcement
• Streamline provisioning of multi-layer security services from Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator, available via Citrix Cloud
• Apply security zone segmentation to protect users, applications, and data

“In today’s hybrid, multi-cloud world, security needs to be as agile as your applications, data and users,” said Adam Geller, senior vice president, Products, Palo Alto Networks. “Together with Citrix, we can deliver an integrated set of products that provide a consistent level of protection to users across the network and both public and private clouds.”

To learn more about the benefits of deploying Palo Alto Networks Security with Citrix SD-WAN, visit: www.citrix.com/products/citrix-sd-wan.

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Nutanix, Inc. has announced that the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) has adopted Nutanix Xi Beam to gain visibility and control over its cloud usage and to improve compliance with government and academic regulations. The solution gives faculty and researchers the freedom to take advantage of the agility and flexibility of cloud while managing costs, minimizing risk and streamlining administrative tasks.

The classroom of today has undergone a digital transformation, and IT teams at educational institutions feel the pressure to support the latest educational-technology advancements. Often, individual groups within universities incorporate public cloud as a part of their hybrid cloud strategy. This leads to numerous, separate cloud accounts with minimal oversight. University IT teams then face challenges understanding, optimizing and managing these fast-growing services, and they require a solution that can help ensure consistency, security and efficient cost tracking for many different accounts.

UCSD faced this exact problem with over 1,100 AWS accounts and little insight into how and where these services were being used, costs and compliance capabilities. UCSD requires advanced IT capabilities supporting research at its 40,000 student institution, so it was imperative for the team to gain control over cloud operations. To respond to these challenges, the university deployed Xi Beam to achieve visibility and control over cloud usage and improve compliance.

Previously, the UCSD team had to examine invoices and rationalize all costs manually. After establishing a central clearinghouse for AWS costs, UCSD leveraged the detailed insight of Xi Beam to analyze the consumption of cloud services, as well as assign costs to the proper department, group or individual.
Xi Beam now gives the UCSD IT team the capabilities it needs to address its administrative overhead. It enables deep visibility and rich analytics detailing cloud consumption patterns, along with one-click cost optimization across cloud environments. Single-dashboard visibility also allows UCSD to save a substantial amount of effort in managing cloud expenditures.

Another benefit of Xi Beam is its security compliance capabilities. As a public university, UCSD collaborates with institutions around the globe, making compliance with government regulations like FERPA and HIPAA essential. Xi Beam’s pre-built security and compliance checks help identify and remediate cloud vulnerabilities. With Xi Beam, operators can both better ensure university data is kept secure as well as eliminate the need for manual compliance checks.

“When I came to UCSD, public cloud usage was essentially the Wild West,” said Gabriel Edwards, Product Manager and Cloud Services Manager, Workplace Technology Services at UCSD. “Everybody had their own AWS accounts, some of which were tied to their personal accounts and credit cards and expensed to their department, and there was minimal oversight. Xi Beam has paid for itself by providing the insight we need to control cloud expenditures while enabling deeper security and rich compliance capabilities. It has performed well beyond our expectations, and we now feel equipped to find other places in our IT environment where we can drive more efficiencies.”

“Increasingly, large organizations such as UCSD require a simple, central platform to manage cloud services,” said John Pellettiere, Senior Director of SLED Sales in the U.S. for Nutanix. “Public cloud leaves much to be desired when it comes to sharing insights into how and where these cloud services are used, their costs and their level of security and compliance. By providing universities like UCSD — and other organizations operating within the education, government, or public sector — with complete visibility into usage costs and streamlining administrative tasks, we open up time for the IT teams to spend on projects that move the needle.”

Additional Resources
For more information about UCSD, read the case study here.

About Nutanix
Nutanix is a global leader in cloud software and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, making infrastructure invisible so that IT can focus on the applications and services that power their business. Companies around the world use Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software to bring one-click application management and mobility across public, private and distributed edge clouds so they can run any application at any scale with a dramatically lower total cost of ownership. The result is organizations that can rapidly deliver a high-performance IT environment on demand, giving application owners a true cloud-like experience.

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Nutanix, a leader in enterprise cloud computing, has announced it has been named one of the best places for millennials to work in the San Francisco Bay Area by Comparably.

With millennials named the generation most likely to switch jobs, creating a workplace that fits the changing needs of today’s workers is more critical than ever for employee retention. Comparably’s list of eighteen top organizations honors those providing offerings millennials say they find most important in a job, including flexibility, benefits that match their values, social impact and an opportunity to feel like valued contributors rather than just a number at work. This recognition is driven entirely by feedback from a Comparably survey taken by millennial employees from Nutanix.

“In today’s increasingly competitive hiring market, attracting and retaining stellar talent is more important than ever,” said Rukmini Sivaraman, VP, Business & People Operations at Nutanix. “Culture is what makes us stand out amongst the crowd, especially to a millennial generation that values a team-driven environment, generous benefits and work-life balance. Our Nutanix team has grown 33 percent over the last fiscal year, and we are proud of our employees who bring our values to life every day, and our leaders who make contributing to our positive culture a top priority.”

This recognition comes on the heels of a number of workplace achievements Nutanix has received recently, including earning the designation as a Great Place to Work-Certified company — another award entirely driven by employee feedback. Other recent workplace achievements include:

• Being named to the Forbes 2019 Just 100 list, which honors America’s best corporate citizens among the Russell 1000 based on positive employee treatment, customer treatment and job creation.
• Ranking second in ‘India’s Great Mid-Size Workplaces 2018’ list, serving as proof of the positive impact Nutanix is having on its expanding workforce globally.
• Receiving recognition on lists including Glassdoor’s 25 Highest-Rated Public Companies to Work For and Computerworld’s Best Places to Work in IT.

“Throughout my career at Nutanix, I have experienced both a challenging and rewarding work environment and have been able to collaborate with smart, driven teammates,” said Courtney Cheung, Marketing Program Teams Lead at Nutanix. “The team here pushes me to be the best I can be — staying hungry, humble and honest in each project we take on and celebrating both our failures and vulnerabilities along the way. I can’t imagine a better place to be able to build my career.”

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Nutanix Calm 2.7 has a lot of new features a important new feature is custom variables! You can now create complex lists, validate input via regular expressions, and more!

Nutanix Calm 2.7 .allows you to deploy and manage applications on Public and Private clouds with the click of a button. In this video, Michael Haigh walks you through configuring custom variables to provide regex validation, multi-select lists, date-time. Nutanix Calm allows you to seamlessly select, provision, and manage your business applications across all your infrastructure for both the private and public clouds. Nutanix Calm provides application life cycle, monitoring, and remediation to manage your heterogeneous infrastructure, for example, VMs or bare-metal servers. Nutanix Calm supports multiple platforms so that you can use the single self-service and automation interface to manage all your infrastructure.

Nutanix Calm 2.7 allows you to seamlessly select, provision, and manage your business applications across all your infrastructure for both the private and public clouds. Nutanix Calm provides application life cycle, monitoring, and remediation to manage your heterogeneous infrastructure, for example, VMs or bare-metal servers. Nutanix Calm 2.7 supports multiple platforms so that you can use the single self-service and automation interface to manage all your infrastructure.

New and Updated Features

This release includes the following new and updated features.

• Multi-Cluster Deployment in Calm

• Support for Single VM Blueprint on Public Cloud Providers

• Pre-Create and Post-Delete Task

• New Variable Types

• Application Edit

• Post Launch VM Action

The following advance VM actions support AHV workloads:

• Manage snapshots – create, delete, and restoreNote: Prism Element version should be at least 5.10 or above.
• Launch console
• Clone application
• NGT operations – install and uninstall
• Application edit

Marketplace Enhancements

The following sections describe the marketplace enhancements done in this release.

Support for vCenter

Support for the following marketplace items is added for vCenter.

• Hadoop
• Jenkins
• Kubernetes
• Chef
• Cassandra
• Redis
• Mysql-Single Node
• MySQL Cluster
• PostgreSQL Single Node
• Mongo Single Node
• PostgreSQL Cluster
• Mongo Cluster
• Kafka
• Puppet Open Source
• LAMP
• Docker Swarm
• ElasticSearch
• CouchDB Cluster
• Docker Register

Support for Single VM

The following single VMs are supported on AHV.

• Ganglia
• Icinga
• MariaDB Single Node
• MariaDB Master Slave
• Nagios
• RabbitMQ
• Snort
• Saltstack
• Solr
• Solr Cloud
• Gitlab
• NetBox
• OpenLDAP
• Single VM
• X-Ray
• WordPress
• GrayLog

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These Nutanix Acropolis Family release notes describe features and updates for Nutanix Core software: AOS 5.11, Prism Central 5.11, and AHV-2017083-301.

New and Updated Features in AOS 5.11

Added ESXi Support for Nutanix Guest Tools. This release provides ESXi support to install and upgrade NGT on multiple VMs simultaneously in the Prism Central.Storage Quality of Service (QoS) to Set Throttle Limits on a VM.

Storage QoS provides administrators granular control to manage the performance of virtual machines and ensure that the system delivers consistent performance for all workloads. You can use a controllable knob to limit the IOPS that the storage layer would serve for individual virtual machines. IOPS is the number of requests the storage layer can serve in a second. You can set throttle limits on a VM to prevent noisy VMs from over-utilizing the system resources. Support for Up to 120 TiB Per Node.

AOS 5.11 with Foundation 4.4 and later now supports up to 120 Tebibytes (TiB) of storage per node.

• For these larger capacity nodes, each Controller VM requires a minimum 36 GB of memory.
• Foundation software provisions the default memory and number of vCPUs allocated to each Controller VM according to your platform model or storage capacity.

• SRM Support for NearSync – You can now create a NearSync schedule on a protection domain for SRA replication. The NearSync schedule can coexist with an asynchronous schedule.

• Network Segmentation for Services – You can now secure traffic associated with a service by confining its traffic to a separate vNIC on the Controller VM and using a dedicated virtual network that has its own physical NICs. This type of segmentation offers true physical separation for service-specific traffic.

AOS 5.11 now supports network segmentation for Nutanix Volumes.

New and Updated Features | Prism Central 5.11

New and Updated Features

Storage Quality of Service (QoS) to Set Throttle Limits on a VM

Storage QoS provides administrators granular control to manage the performance of virtual machines and ensure that the system delivers consistent performance for all workloads. You can use a controllable knob to limit the IOPS that the storage layer would serve for individual virtual machines. IOPS is the number of requests the storage layer can serve in a second. You can set throttle limits on a VM to prevent noisy VMs from over-utilizing the system resources.

Codeless Task Automation (X-Play)

You can automate routine administrative tasks through Prism Central by using the X-Play feature. X-Play is an easy to use automation tool that helps you to automate routine administrative tasks, and auto-remediate issues that occur in your system. You can achieve this automation by creating Playbooks.

• X-Play requires a Prism Pro license.
• X-Play requires only Prism Central to be on 5.11, Prism Element upgrade to 5.11 is not required.

For details, see Codeless Task Automation (X-Play) in the Prism Central Guide.

Syslog Monitoring

You can configure syslog monitoring to forward system logs (API Audit, Audit, and Flow logs) of the registered clusters to an external syslog server.

Export and Import Security Policy

Prism Central allows you to export and import security policies, see Exporting and Importing Security Policies in the Prism Central Guide.

Image Placement Policies

In Prism Central, you can configure policies that govern which clusters receive the images that you upload. These policies, called image placement policies, map images to target clusters through the use of categories associated with both those entities.

With image placement policies, you can also specify how strictly you want the policy to be enforced.

Added ESXi Support for Nutanix Guest Tools

This release provides ESXi support to install and upgrade NGT on multiple VMs simultaneously in the Prism Central.

Flow Logging Support for Policy Hit

The Policy Hit Logs option that is available at the time of creating security policies allows you to log traffic flow hits on the policy rules.

Nutanix Networking Service (Xi Cloud Services)

Nutanix Networking Service allows you to set up a VPN solution between your on-prem datacenter and Xi Cloud Services. If you select this option, you do not need to use your own VPN solution to connect to Xi Cloud Services.

Nutanix Networking Service creates a VPN gateway VM that runs on your on-prem cluster, connects to your network, and establishes an IPSec tunnel with the VPN gateway VM that is running in the Xi Cloud.

See the VPN Configuration topic in the Leap Administration Guide for more information.

• Support for Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) in Xi Cloud Services

You can mount NGT, manage NGT applications, and upgrade NGT on multiple VMs running on Xi Cloud Services.Note: You can mount NGT on multiple VMs at the same time. However, you must manually install NGT on each VM.

See the Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) Management chapter in the Xi Infrastructure Service Administration Guide for more information.

Category Support for ESXi

Support for categories has been extended to ESXi (in addition to AHV).

Enhanced Monitoring of Entity Metrics

The metric charts in an entity details page have been enhanced to include viewing options that more clearly show the observed patterns, behavior band, and anomalies.

Category-based RBAC for VM Management

You can now manage VMs in an AHV cluster with role-based access control (RBAC) specified using categories.

Multi-cardinality Support for Categories

Categories now support multi-cardinality, which means you can assign multiple category values to the same entity.

New and Updated Features | AHV

AHV-2017083-301

Support to Update the br0 Uplink Configuration

The default NIC-teaming policy of the bond br0-up of the default bridge br0 in your AHV cluster is Active-Backup. You can now change the NIC-teaming policy of br0-up to Active-Active, Active-Active with MAC pinning, or retain the default Active-Backuppolicy. If you select the Active-Active policy, you must manually enable Link Aggregation (LAG) and LACP on the corresponding top of the rack (TOR) switch for each node in the cluster.

By default, br0-up aggregates all the physical interfaces available on the node. You can now modify this default NIC configuration by selecting the interfaces that must belong to br0-up. You can either choose to have only 10G interfaces, only 1G interfaces, or retain the default setting, that is all the available interfaces aggregated into br0-up.

See the Uplink Configuration topic in the Prism Web Console Guide for more information.

Support for Compute-Only Nodes on AHV Clusters

A compute-only (CO) node allows you to seamlessly and efficiently expand the computing capacity (CPU and memory) of your AHV cluster. The Nutanix cluster uses the resources (CPUs and memory) of a CO node exclusively for computing purposes.

CO nodes enable you to achieve more control and value from restrictive licenses such as Oracle. A CO node is part of a Nutanix hyperconverged (HC) cluster, and there is no CVM running on the CO node (VMs use CVMs running on the HC nodes to access disks). As a result, licensed cores on the CO node are used only for the application VMs.

Applications or databases that are licensed on a per CPU core basis require the entire node to be licensed and that also includes the cores on which the CVM runs. With CO nodes, you get a much higher ROI on the purchase of your database licenses (such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server) since the CVM does not consume any compute resources.

You can use a supported server or an existing HC node as a CO node. To use a node as CO, you must first image the node as CO by using Foundation and then add that node to the cluster by using the Prism Element web console.

See the Compute-Only Node Configuration (AHV Only) topic in the Prism Web Console Guide for more information.

UEFI Support for VMs on AHV and Hyper-V clusters

Nutanix fully supports the booting of VMs with UEFI firmware in an AHV cluster. Nutanix also provides limited support for VMs migrated from Hyper-V cluster. You can create or update VMs with UEFI firmware by using the aCLI commands, the Prism web console, or the Prism Central UI.

See the UEFI Support for VM topic in the AHV Admin Guide for more information.

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In April 2019, Nutanix and HPE announced a new global partnership to bring to market an integrated hybrid cloud-as-a-Service (aaS) solution based on HPE Proliant DX. The agreement enables Nutanix channel partners to directly sell HPE-based appliances combined with Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud software.

Nutanix now proudly takes the next step in this journey launching the HPE ProLiant DX, a range of Nutanix-integrated appliances based upon foundational HPE server technologies existing in the ProLiant and Apollo platforms providing the most secure industry standard servers.

“HPE is excited about providing greater choice to customers with the HPE and Nutanix partnership,” said Justin Hotard, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Volume Global Business Unit, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. “With the new HPE ProLiant DX appliance, based on the world’s most secure industry-standard server, integrated with and optimized for Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software, IT customers seeking a hybrid cloud alternative that promises greater agility will be able to take advantage of fully-qualified HPE hardware within their Nutanix environments.”

HPE ProLiant DX: Designed Specifically for Nutanix Customers

The Nutanix and HPE partnership provides customers with increased hardware vendor choice for use with Nutanix software, and the appliance packaging creates a simpler solution with enhanced benefits, including:

• A range of qualified platforms and configurations validated by HPE and Nutanix
• Tuned optimized hardware settings for Nutanix environments via HPE workload matching
• Seamless lifecycle management (LCM) and support processes with 3 year next business day hardware support and iLO advanced licensing included. An optional 5 year next business hardware support offering is also available

Seven new HPE ProLiant DX Gen10 appliances are available at launch, in 1U and 2U form factors and with 1, 2 and 4-node models. Numerous configure-to-order options of Intel® Cascade Lake processors, memory, storage types, small and large disk form factors and capacities are available, providing customers with access to thousands of different platform combinations to suit their requirements.

Hybrid and all-flash storage configurations are available at launch, with additional configurations being considered for future qualification. VMware® ESXi® is also a supported hypervisor configuration for customers if required.

Nutanix and HPE’s Product Management and Engineering teams have intentionally qualified a mix of platform configurations to suit all common use cases, including private cloud, end-user computing and database modernization. From high density to high performance, ProLiant DX configurations are available to suit the requirements.

Seamless Experience – From Procurement to Upgrades

To simplify procurement and deployment phases, the HPE ProLiant DX solution is sold by Nutanix sellers, with capacity-based software licensing and a single SKU that covers both the HPE appliance hardware and support. Installations are simpler with appliance shipments from HPE pre-installed with Nutanix AOS and the AHV hypervisor, providing the fastest time-to-value with a simple installation process.

Beyond appliance deployments, on-going infrastructure management is more straightforward as customers benefit from one-click, non-disruptive upgrades of ProLiant DX clusters, including software (Nutanix AOS, hypervisor, etc.) and node firmware. ProLiant DX firmware (BMC and BIOS) is upgraded automatically via standard SPP bundles hosted in-cloud or on-site. Read more about the Nutanix one-click experience in the Evolution of 1-Click blog.

DX appliance integration with HPE OneView and HPE Insight provides customers with a familiar experience for their platforms management, health and performance monitoring.

Nutanix and HPE Have Your Back

DX appliances ship with 3 year next business day hardware support included. Nutanix continues to provide its world-class technical support for the software portion and customers engage HPE directly for all hardware related issues. Nutanix and HPE coordinate on Technical Support and provide a warm handoff of support cases where required, helping to ensure customers receive a seamless experience.

“Nutanix has absolutely exceeded our wildest expectations of what customer support should look like.” said Kana Butkovic, Divisional Product Director, Capita Software, who has been a Nutanix and HPE customer for several years. “Our engineers, when we are engaging with a new vendor- they are effectively benchmarking it against Nutanix.”

HPE ProLiant DX solutions will be quotable by Nutanix sales and select distributors in the next couple of weeks, and generally available later in August.

Simplify your IT operations – learn more about running your mission critical and line-of-business applications on Nutanix with HPE ProLiant DX.

SOURCE

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Veeam^® Software, the leader in backup solutions that enable Cloud Data Management, announced today that Sydney Living Museums (SLM) has overhauled its IT solutions as part of the organization’s digital transformation journey to ensure that data remains available. As a result of choosing Veeam, SLM has saved at least 30 hours a week and radically reduced the risk of data loss with rapid, reliable backup capability and restoration.

Reduces risk of data loss while delivering automatic data restoration in under 30 minutes and enriches visitors’ experience

SLM is responsible for a group of 12 of the most historic houses, gardens and museums in New South Wales, with all of it’s sites held ‘in trust’ for future generations. The company is responsible for sharing an extensive collection of online resources and historical material, ranging from catalogues of printed material to images and AV material, and all with associated metadata.

Protection of these digital assets and business systems is critical. With such an enormous task at hand, SLM began to struggle due to outdated systems that slowed everything down; most significantly, the backup and recovery processes. Everything from back office functions to online collections and even daily visitor transactions were being impacted by ill-fitting processes. This not only made the business vulnerable, but impaired its ability to provide the quality digital user experience it needed.

The solution to this was Veeam Availability Suite, due to its ability to provide reliable backups of the businesses critical data with minimal performance impact.This led to a reduction in business disruption and relieved the stress on production servers. After implementing Veeam, SLM freed up IT resources for improving business effectiveness and enhancing the visitor experience.

“Our legacy system was on its knees and we needed a true Cloud Data Management Solution to help drive business transformation. The automation and ease with which we are now able to backup and test [thanks to Veeam] has meant we have saved roughly one full-time equivalent on the team. We can now use this time, equivalent of 30 hours a week, to improve the business and other elements of SLM’s visitor experience and innovate our back office processes as our organization grows,” said Lisa Brady, Head of ICT at Sydney Living Museums. “Our digital transformation journey means we are now able to allow recovery or access to a full working server in a short space of time. We are also able to update our test systems and copy servers for testing easily.”

“At Veeam, we pride ourselves in providing businesses like the Sydney Living Museum with an easy-to-use Cloud Data Management solution that saves time and improves backup and replication results,” said Gary Mitchell, Vice President, ANZ at Veeam Software. “Sydney Living Museums’ need for Availability is a testament to the growing demand for data to be managed efficiently.”

For more information visit https://www.veeam.com/

The post Veeam Helps Sydney Living Museums Bring History Back to Life with Cloud Data Management Solutions appeared first on Ervik.as - EUC, HCI, Cloud and Virtualization Blog.