Citrix Virtualization Solutions Meet Internationally Recognized Security Standards and Government Requirements

Bethesda, MD » 9/2/2010 » Citrix Systems, Inc. today announced that Citrix® XenServer™ and Citrix XenDesktop™ have been certified to meet Common Criteria EAL 2. With XenApp™, which was previously certified, Citrix now has the only end-to-end virtualization solution certified to meet the strict security requirements of many Global 1000 corporations and government agencies, including the Department of Defense.

Common Criteria is an internationally recognized set of guidelines (ISO 15408) which define a common framework for evaluating security features and capabilities of Information Technology (IT) security products.

The certification ensures unparalleled flexibility, security and simplicity making will make it more attractive than ever for government agencies and secure-minded companies to adopt desktop, server and application virtualization.

Quotes

• Tom Simmons, area vice president – US Public Sector at Citrix - “The certification of XenDesktop and XenServer further demonstrates our commitment to delivering the kinds of secure virtual computing solutions that our customers demand,” said Tom Simmons, area vice president for Citrix Public Sector. “With these certifications, Citrix is now the first and only company to have a complete, end-to-end virtualization solution certified to meet the security and interoperability requirements of our federal customers, especially the Department of Defense.”

   

• Donnie Downs, president and CEO – Plan B Technologies - “Our customers are looking for flexible and secure virtualization solutions. With Common Criteria certified solutions from Citrix we’re able to deliver just what each civilian and military agency needs without sacrificing security or functionality.”

Press Release

Quick overview of the new features of XenClient RC2:

Windows 7 x64

Citrix has added support in XenClient RC2 for Windows 7 64bit.

Improved USB

Another top request was improvements to USB device support. So we spent a lot of time making major improvements to the USB support in XenClient. This includes support for integrated USB devices such as webcams and fingerprint readers. Also we built a new user interface for routing USB devices between VMs and setting up persistent connections between VMs and USB devices. At this point most USB devices should work with the platform. If not let us know. I've listed some of the top requests below.

Added support for the following devices:

Apple iPod, iPhone, iPad
Microsoft Windows Phones
Android Phones
Headsets
Fingerprint Readers
Webcams
Smart Card Readers
3G data modems

Bluetooth

Improved USB support comes support for a variety of Bluetooth devices. On most systems in the Citrix HCL the Bluetooth system is actually a USB device that can be assigned to a virtual machine. This allows that virtual machine to talk to your Bluetooth devices.

Usability Enhancements

Simplified VM upload and download process

Improved display of upload/download progress

Along with enhancements to the actual upload and download process we enhanced the display of upload and download progress information and now include this information on the main Receiver for XenClient UI.

Enhanced client authentication experience

In VM alerting system

Citrix has a brand new VM alerting system that will make sure users are aware of critical issues affecting the system such as low disk space, policy actions, or impending lease time expiries.

Mouse pointer trails support

Citrix has extended XenClient to be more accessible to all users and the first area of focus was on the mouse and trackpad. In this release Citrix has added pointer trails support

Automatic slipstream of Intel Graphics drivers

XenClient has some amazing 3D graphics support that lets a virtual machine have direct access to the Intel graphics system for a native graphics experience. In this release Citrix automatically slipstream the Intel graphics drivers into most versions of Windows. So you can flip on the 3D graphics feature and be ready to go without having to download any drivers.

Intel AMT KVM Remote Control

The latest version of Intel vPro technology includes a great new feature called AMT KVM Remote Control. This allows you to remotely view and control a laptop using a VNC viewer. This works on systems shipped this year with Intel vPro on Core i5 and i7 systems.  We did some nice integration work that allows you to remote control not only the XenClient UI but also switch between all of your VMs. It's useful for remote troubleshooting and training with users. I also find it helpful for doing demos of XenClient over Go2Meeting. You need a second PC running Go2Meeting and then you can connect via a VNC viewer to the XenClient system. This lets everyone on the Go2Meeting see everything on the XenClient system.

Intel Extended Page Tables support

In this release we added support for hardware acceleration of virtual memory operations for increased memory performance. In the past the Xen hypervisor we use in XenClient did an admirable job of page table virtualization but nothing beats hardware assist and this will give us an extra boost in overall performance for memory operations.

In place upgrade for XenClient

Local authentication enhancements

Secure Application Sharing

There are a large number of enhancements to the secure application sharing feature to make it easier to use and provide helpful guidance if a publishing VM is not active.  Below are a list of some of the enhancements that have been made:

Automatic resolution changes when attaching a projector or external monitor

Notifications if the publishing VM is alseep or powered off

Ability to adjust thickness and color of secure shared application windows

Blacklisting of non-essential Windows utilities and built-in apps

Expanded hardware compatibility

This was also a big area of feedback from RC1 and over the next few releases you will see a big increase in the number of systems and peripherals we support. You will even see some new additions by the time we get to XenClient 1.0 GA.

Added support for the following laptops:

HP EliteBook 2540p

Dell Latitude E4310

Dell Latitude E4200

Added support for the following desktop:

HP Compaq 8000 Elite

Added support for the following wireless adapters:

Support for Dell Wireless™ 1501 adapters

Support for Dell Wireless™ 1520 adapters

Support for Intel 5150 Wireless adapters (WiFi Only)

Support for Intel 6250 Wireless adapters (WiFi Only)

Support for Broadcom 4312G Wireless adapters

Support for Broadcom 4322AGN Wireless adapters

There are also enhancements to the Syncronizer!

Here is a quick overview:

Dynamic Image Mode (Experimental)

Simplified disk space expansion for image and backup storage

Simplified and Expanded Synchronizer Setup

Scalability enhancements

Usability Enhancements

Revamped web console

It's also possible to do an in-place upgrade of the Syncronizer.

Also check out XenClient HCL List here

Citrix Expands Leadership in Open Cloud Computing

8/30/2010 » San Francisco, CA » Citrix Systems today announced several key additions to its Citrix OpenCloud™infrastructure platform for cloud providers. The new enhancements raise the bar in cloud interoperability, scalability and self-service – further extending the company’s leadership position as the most widely deployed provider of virtualization and networking solutions for the open cloud.  To further accelerate its OpenCloud strategy, Citrix also announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire VMLogix, a leading provider of virtualization management for private and public clouds.

The acquisition of VMLogix is expected to close in the third quarter of 2010, subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions.  It will add key lifecycle management capabilities to the Citrix OpenCloud platform, making it easy for cloud providers to offer infrastructure services that extend from pre-production and quality assurance, to staging, deployment and business continuity.  The acquisition will also allow Citrix to add an intuitive, self-service interface to its popular XenServer® virtualization platform – a key component of the OpenCloud framework – enabling end users to access and manage their own virtual computing resources in on-premise private cloud environments, much like they set up virtual services in large public clouds like Amazon or Rackspace today.

Citrix also announced plans to expand its OpenCloud platform to include enhanced networking and interoperability capabilities. These new additions will include the ability for customers to seamlessly manage a mix of public and private cloud workloads from a single management console, even if they span across a variety of different cloud providers.  All of these enhancements will be available to the more than 600 service providers worldwide who are now certified to deliver services based on the Citrix OpenCloud platform.

Facts and Highlights:
New additions to the Citrix OpenCloud infrastructure platform include:

• Open Lifecycle Management – The VMLogix acquisition will add open virtual lifecycle automation and self-service capabilities that support all leading virtualization platforms.  These capabilities will make it easier for IT teams to build, share and deploy production-like environments on-demand in both private and public clouds, and migrate virtual workloads between production stages with a single mouse click – even across different hypervisors.  By giving users self-service access to a single pool of computing resources, cloud providers can help customers reduce capital expenses and improve flexibility, even across diverse  virtualization and cloud environments.
• Open Cloud Interoperability – To accelerate cloud interoperability, Citrix will also be integrating the Citrix OpenCloud infrastructure platform with OpenStack, the open-source orchestration and management technology it is co-developing with Rackspace, NASA, Dell, and more than 20 other leading technology and cloud service providers.  The OpenStack orchestration capabilities perfectly complement the Citrix OpenCloud platform by adding key cloud management functions and enabling cloud providers to give customers open integration as well as a more consistent view of both private and public cloud workloads.  In booth #1219 at this week’s VMworld conference, Citrix will be demonstrating the ability to manage workloads across XenServer virtual machines running in an on-premise private cloud, and VMs running in a public-cloud environment using OpenStack – all from a single management console.
• Open Cloud Networking – The Citrix OpenCloud platform will also be adding powerful new virtual switching capabilities that leverage the Open vSwitch project, and support the OpenFlow protocol, an emerging industry standard that pools the resources of per-host virtual switches to create a dynamic, distributed, policy-controlled cloud fabric.  These new capabilities will make it easier for cloud providers using the Citrix OpenCloud platform to create isolated, multi-tenant cloud environments, while offering dynamic, per-flow control, and per virtual-interface policies.  They will also enable rich packet processing capabilities at the network edge, including the ability to leverage advanced application networking capabilities in Citrix® NetScaler®, another key component of the OpenCloud platform.

Availability
The new Citrix OpenCloud capabilities will be demonstrated at the Citrix booth (#1219) at this week’s VMworld conference.  Several of the new OpenCloud capabilities, including the new self-service and virtual switching technology, will also be included in the next release of the free Citrix XenServer virtualization platform at no charge to enterprise or cloud customers.

Quotes
Klaus Oestermann, Group VP and GM, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix
“At Citrix, we believe in providing choice as a fundamental driver for enterprises and cloud providers to truly drive cloud economics.  This isn’t about giving customers the ability to buy the same offering from multiple sources – it’s about providing them the opportunity to choose from a wide variety of cloud services designed around an open framework that encourages both innovation and interoperability while optimizing cost. With the expanded capabilities of the OpenCloud platform for lifecycle management, cloud interoperability and cloud networking, we are further delivering on our core belief to provide true choice for our customers.”

Jim Curry, General Manager, OpenStack
“By embracing OpenStack cloud software, Citrix is demonstrating a great testament to the power of the open model.  Citrix has shown tremendous support for that model by contributing development resources to ensure XenServer compatibility with OpenStack.  We are excited to see an OpenStack-powered solution for enterprises integrated with the XenCenter management console.  We think this is just the start of many advances that will be built on OpenStack and we welcome Citrix and the rest of the tech world to use this powerful model to advance the world of cloud computing.”

Related Links and Announcements

• Blog, August 30 – The Open vSwitch - Key Ingredient of Enterprise Ready Clouds, Simon Crosby, CTO, Datacenter and Cloud Division, Citrix
• Blog, August 30 – Serendipity and the Art of Customer Centricity, John Humphreys, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Citrix
• Blog, August 30 – The Cloud is Open - See How It Stacks Up, Roger Klorese, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Citrix
• Blog, August 30 – Open Cloud – a Platform for Innovation, Steve Shah, Sr. Director, Product Management, Citrix
• Press Release, July 19 – Rackspace Open Sources Cloud Platform; Announces Plans to Collaborate with NASA and Other Industry Leaders on OpenStack Project
• Blog, July 19 – VMware Project Redwood = Dead Wood?, Simon Crosby, CTO, Datacenter and Cloud Division, Citrix

Philadelphia, PA, August 30, 2010 — RES Software, the proven leader in user workspace management, today announced that it has been granted Patent No. US 7,725,527 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for its Virtual Desktop Extender (VDX) technology. VDX serves as a key technology in the successful deployment of virtual desktops because it enhances the remote desktop experience by enabling local applications. This industry-first solution, which also has approval from the European Patent Office, will be demonstrated from August 30 through September 2 at VMworld 2010 in San Francisco in booth #431.

VDX reverse seamless technology is part of the RES Software user workspace management solution. RES Software separates the user experience and settings from the underlying desktop infrastructure and dynamically composes a personalized, secure and consistent user workspace regardless of the underlying desktop infrastructure – traditional desktops, a notebook, a thin client or a virtual desktop.

With VDX technology, user workspace management solutions by RES Software incorporate the unique ability to enhance a virtual desktop with applications that run locally. This means that the local applications that end users rely on can be merged with a remote desktop into a single user workspace, eliminating the need to switch between two sessions and thereby increasing end user productivity, without compromising the manageability benefits of VDI.  RES Software VDX technology extends the user workspace through independent computing architecture (ICA) and remote desktop protocol (RDP) virtual channels and increases the ease of adoption of any VDI or terminal server environment.

These benefits become extremely useful in providing end users working on a remote desktops access to applications that typically do not run smoothly, or at all, in a virtual environment. Some of these include heavy applications like AutoCAD and Photoshop, applications in healthcare requiring diagnostic imaging, certain custom applications, multimedia (AVI) files and media intensive applications including CD/DVD applications, VoIP and video applications.

The RES Software VDX solution also provides the ability to write a CD-ROM on your local computer from the virtual desktop. This capability is not currently available within today’s other virtual desktop technologies. The resulting advantage is increased end-user productivity and acceptance of the new desktop technology because there is no interruption to the end-user.

“We believe this breakthrough technology is critical to the future success of virtual desktop deployments,” said Bob Janssen, Chief Technology Officer of RES Software. “By securing the US patent for VDX, our solution is now officially recognized for its unique value to customers and as a key differentiator for RES Software.”

The user workspace management market is generating increasing attention as IT professionals and analysts recognize that desktop configuration of the future will be a mix of traditional workstations, thin clients, remote terminals, and virtual desktops. These mixed environments increase the complexity for IT.

“The 451 Group sees desktop virtualization continuing to gain ground. The most complete desktop virtualization offerings will combine terminal services, dynamic assembly, user management, server-, client- and cloud-hosted desktops. RES Software is well positioned to centrally manage the complexities of these desktop transformations,” commented Rachel Chalmers, Research Director, Infrastructure, The 451 Group.

RES Software is a Gold Sponsor at VMworld 2010, and will be demonstrating its user workspace management solution and its patented Virtual Desktop Extender technology at booth 431.

For more information on RES Software and its user workspace management solutions, please visit:

• RES Software Solutions On the Web
• RES Software On a Blog
• RES Software On Twitter

About RES Software
RES Software, the proven leader in user workspace management, is driving a transformation in the way organizations manage and reduce the cost of their PC populations. The company empowers customers, from SMBs to global enterprises, to manage an increasingly complex desktop ecosystem and meet the essential needs of a dynamic workforce that requires on-demand access to their personalized workspaces. Designed for physical or virtual desktop platforms, the award-winning, patented technology enables IT professionals to address this shift by managing, automating and delivering secure, personalized and more productive desktop experiences to any user. For more information, follow updates on Twitter @RESSoftware and visit www.ressoftware.com.

I have received a lot of requests to make a new set of GPOs for Citrix XenApp 6.0 and Remote Desktop Services running on Windows Server 2008 R2, as a follow up to the very popular Citrix XenApp and Terminal Server Tuning Tips Group Policy v1.0

There is a lot of tuning in this GPO, I will update it when new tunings are found and post updates to the download section of Ervik.as.

I've made the GPO in admx format (not backup sets!!!), so that it can work 100% with Windows Server 2008 R2 and the Group Policy Manager. It also integrates perfectly with AppSense and RES, so if you use these User Environment Tools, you can simply import the ADMX file and deploy. Also since the admx file format is in XML it's also quicker to load than regular adm files.

How to install:
Download -> Ervik.as - Citrix XenApp 6 and RDS Tuning Policy.zip , from the link on this page. (This GPO is in admx file format!)
Extract the zip file down to the c:\windows\PolicyDefinitions - catalog

UPHClean is natively embedded into Windows Server 2008 (User Profile Service), so that is why you won't find it available for download anywhere.

Also, another Best Practice, is that I recommend that you Disable Data Execution Prevention on Windows Server 2008 R2.

Here is how you can do that:

Warning! you have to use the following command line to disable it

• bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff

If you can't see the Download Image above click here to DOWNLOAD

If you got any good XenApp 6 or Remote Desktop Services/Terminal Server tuning tips that you want to include in the GPO, please post them in the comments field below, thanks!

Desktop virtualization is rapidly growing in popularity as a more secure, flexible way to deliver Windows desktops to business users in any location. With this new release, companies of all sizes can now deploy a single desktop virtualization solution that seamlessly supports both desk-based and laptop users in just about any scenario. With laptop users representing half of the workforce in many companies, today’s announcement represents a major milestone that significantly expands the reach of desktop virtualization to millions of new users.

Most mobile employees today do the majority of their work on company-owned laptops. For these workers, the best solution is a virtual desktop that runs directly on their laptop. This approach gives IT all the central management and security benefits of server hosted virtual desktops (VDI), combined with all the flexibility and ability to be disconnected from the network that come with traditional, locally installed desktops. And because the desktops runs in a local VM at all times, users never have to go through the cumbersome time consuming process “checking-out” their virtual desktop by downloading it from a central server each time they leave the office. These new capabilities are all enabled by the new XenClient technology, a groundbreaking client-side hypervisor developed in close collaboration with Intel, and optimized for the Intel® Core™ vPro™ technology.

In many companies, there is also a growing trend toward user-owned laptops that are not controlled by IT. This trend frequently involves contractors who bring their own device to a project, as well as employees who bring their own laptop to work as part of a BYOC program. In these scenarios, users do not want IT installing software on their personal laptops, nor does IT want to take on the cost and hassle of managing personal devices. IT’s primary goal in these scenarios is to ensure these workers are productive, and that any corporate data on their personal laptops is secure at all times. For user-owned devices, the simplest solution is to deliver the corporate applications these users need as an on-demand service, while ensuring that any data created by those corporate apps is automatically encrypted. This capability is enabled through the new XenVault technology.

With the addition of the new XenClient and XenVault features, XenDesktop extends its lead as the most comprehensive and flexible desktop virtualization solution on the market.

Key Facts and Highlights (XenClient):

• Enables Virtual Desktops “To Go” – XenClient is a client-side hypervisor that enables virtual desktops to run directly on client devices. It provides all the security and central management of VDI, while allowing users to seamlessly work online or disconnected without any cumbersome check-in or check-out requirements, just as they would with a traditional locally installed desktop. While XenClient can be run on any supported PC hardware, it is ideally suited to corporate-owned laptops.
• Control for IT, Flexibility for Users – XenClient makes it easy for IT to deliver a secure, centrally managed corporate desktop environment to laptop users without compromising user experience. They can even set up a second personal virtual desktop on the same laptop, giving users full freedom, without compromising corporate security.
• Centralized Backup and Recovery – When disconnected from the network, XenClient operates just like a traditional installed desktop. As soon as users connect to the network, it automatically synchronizes any changes with the datacenter, ensuring full centralized backup of all corporate laptops. If a laptop is ever lost or stolen, users can easily restore their full desktop environment exactly like it was to a new laptop, while data on the original laptop can be wiped remotely.
• Portable and Persistent Desktop Images – By separating the operating system from the underlying hardware, desktop images can now be created, secured, deployed and moved across any supported hardware, greatly reducing the maintenance burden on IT and simplifying disaster recovery for laptop users.
• Expanded Hardware and Device Support – XenClient now also includes several new capabilities that were not supported in the initial beta release. These include multiple usability and security enhancements, new synchronization features, and expanded support for hardware platforms, wireless adapters and USB-based devices such as webcams, iPads, iPhones, Androids, BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile devices.
• Optimized for Intel® vPro™ – The XenClient hypervisor was designed jointly with Intel to work seamlessly with the underlying hardware. Intel Core vPro processors are designed to provide the best experience for end-users and IT through use of Intel hardware-assisted virtualization, management and security technologies.

Key Facts and Highlights (XenVault):

• Protects and Isolates User Data – The new XenVault technology automatically and transparently saves any user data created by corporate apps into an encrypted folder, ensuring that it is protected at all times from unauthorized users.
• Ideal for Contractors and BYOC – Because XenVault supports both virtual and physical desktops, it is an ideal solution for contractors and employee-owned laptops where users don’t want IT installing software on their personal laptops. When a contract is over, an employee terminates, or the laptop is lost or stolen, corporate data remains secure, and can even be wiped remotely.
• Supports XenApp and App-V – XenVault automatically encrypts data created by any corporate app that is delivered by Citrix XenApp™ (or the XenApp feature of XenDesktop) or Microsoft App-V.

Supporting Quotes:
Gordon Payne, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Desktop Division, Citrix
“This new release of XenDesktop represents an important next step to realizing the benefits that desktop virtualization can deliver across all users in the enterprise, including the growing number of mobile workers using laptops as their primary device. The new XenClient and XenVault technologies extend IT’s ability to manage each desktop component separately, making desktop management far more secure, scalable and cost effective.”

Rick Echevarria, Vice President, Intel Architecture Group
and General Manager, Business Client Platform Division
“As desktop virtualization continues to grow as an option for investing IT resources in strategic projects, rather than supporting desk-side maintenance visits, Citrix and Intel teamed on an innovative solution that unites the benefits of XenClient and Intel Core vPro processors. Our collaboration has produced an intelligent approach to desktop virtualization that delivers uncompromised performance, security and manageability to workers and IT.”

Al Gillen, Program Vice President, System Software, IDC
“For desktop virtualization to be adopted in a mainstream way across the entire enterprise, mobile users are a critical use case that has so far not been fully addressed. Technologies like Citrix XenClient that can deliver the control, security and centralized management for IT while providing the personalization and flexibility that users want, should help propel desktop virtualization into a strategic initiative in enterprises large and small.”

Michael Barnas, Director, Application Services, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP
“Our attorneys work extremely long hours and pride themselves on delivering the highest levels of client responsiveness. Providing a single laptop where users have secure access to all their corporate applications and also to their personal environment really helps with work-life balance. We see XenClient being a significant addition to our desktop virtualization strategy as we feel this can fulfill a critical need for our attorneys, while allowing us to continue to maintain the highest levels of security and control.”

Steve Lalla, Vice president and General Manager, Client Product Group, Dell
“We see tremendous benefits to our customers from the security and flexibility that XenClient brings to both IT and end users. By integrating their client hypervisor, XenClient, with their desktop virtualization architecture, XenDesktop, Citrix takes a major step forward in giving enterprises the ability to deliver centrally managed virtual desktops to all users. And by enabling support for selected Latitude laptops and OptiPlex desktops, Dell is creating the foundation for future enterprise-class deployments of this emerging client virtualization technology.”

Pricing and Availability:

• The new XenClient and XenVault technologies will both ship in the new XenDesktop 4, Feature Pack 2 release, available at the end of September.
• XenClient is available at no additional charge for XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum editions customers with current Subscription Advantage agreements.
• XenVault is enabled through a plug-in to the Citrix Receiver™ software client, which is available at no additional charge to all XenDesktop and XenApp customers.
• Citrix XenDesktop, including the new XenClient and XenVault technologies, will be demonstrated in the Citrix booth #1219 at VMworld San Francisco, Aug. 30 – Sept. 2.

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You can find out more about MEDV at http://www.microsoft.com/medv

The term "virtualization" was coined in the 1960s, to refer to a virtual machine (sometimes called pseudo machine), a term which itself dates from the experimental IBM M44/44X system. The creation and management of virtual machines has been called platform virtualization, or server virtualization, more recently.

Platform virtualization is performed on a given hardware platform by host software (a control program), which creates a simulated computer environment, a virtual machine, for its guest software. The guest software is not limited to user applications; many hosts allow the execution of complete operating systems. The guest software executes as if it were running directly on the physical hardware, with several notable caveats. Access to physical system resources (such as the network access, display, keyboard, and disk storage) is generally managed at a more restrictive level than the host processor and system-memory. Guests are often restricted from accessing specific peripheral devices, or may be limited to a subset of the device's native capabilities, depending on the hardware access policy implemented by the virtualization host.

Virtualization refers to technologies designed to provide a layer of abstraction between computer hardware systems and the software running on them. By providing a logical view of computing resources, rather than a physical view, virtualization solutions make it possible to do a couple of very useful things: They can allow you, essentially, to trick your operating systems into thinking that a group of servers is a single pool of computing resources. And they can allow you to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single machine.

In the 1990s, virtualization was used primarily to re-create end-user environments on a single piece of mainframe hardware. If you were an IT administrator and you wanted to roll out new software, but you wanted see how it would work on a Windows NT or a Linux machine, you used virtualization technologies to create the various user environments.

But with the advent of the x86 architecture and inexpensive PCs, virtualization faded and seemed to be little more than a fad of the mainframe era. It's fair to credit the recent rebirth of virtualization on x86 to the founders of the current market leader, VMware. VMware developed the first hypervisor for the x86 architecture in the 1990s, planting the seeds for the current virtualization boom.

Why should you care about virtualization?

The industry buzz around virtualization is just short of deafening. This need-have-it capability has fast become going-to-get-it technology, as new vendors enter the market, and enterprise software providers weave it into the latest versions of their product lines. The reason: Virtualization continues to demonstrate additional tangible benefits the more it's used, broadening its value to the enterprise at each step.

Server consolidation is definitely the sweet spot in this market. Virtualization has become the cornerstone of every enterprise's favorite money-saving initiative. Industry analysts report that between 60 percent and 80 percent of IT departments are pursuing server consolidation projects. It's easy to see why: By reducing the numbers and types of servers that support their business applications, companies are looking at significant cost savings.

Less power consumption, both from the servers themselves and the facilities' cooling systems, and fuller use of existing, underutilized computing resources translate into a longer life for the data center and a fatter bottom line. And a smaller server footprint is simpler to manage.

However, industry watchers report that most companies begin their exploration of virtualization through application testing and development. Virtualization has quickly evolved from a neat trick for running extra operating systems into a mainstream tool for software developers. Rarely are applications created today for a single operating system; virtualization allows developers working on a single workstation to write code that runs in many different environments, and perhaps more importantly, to test that code. This is a noncritical environment, generally speaking, and so it's an ideal place to kick the tires.

Once application development is happy, and the server farm is turned into a seamless pool of computing resources, storage and network consolidation start to move up the to-do list. Other virtualization-enabled features and capabilities worth considering: high availability, disaster recovery and workload balancing.

What are the different types of virtualization?

There are 5 basic categories of virtualization:

• Application virtualization is an umbrella term that describes software technologies that improve portability, manageability and compatibility of applications by encapsulating them from the underlying operating system on which they are executed
• Storage virtualization melds physical storage from multiple network storage devices so that they appear to be a single storage device
• Network virtualization combines computing resources in a network by splitting the available bandwidth into independent channels that can be assigned to a particular server or device in real-time
• Server virtualization hides the physical nature of server resources, including the number and identity of individual servers, processors and operating systems, from the software running on them.
• Desktop virtualization also sometimes called client virtualization , as a concept, separates a personal computer desktop environment from a physical machine using a client–server model of computing.

What is a hypervisor?
In today’s term, a hypervisor, also called virtual machine monitor (VMM), allows multiple operating systems to run concurrently on a host computer— a feature called hardware virtualization. The hypervisor presents the guest operating systems with a virtual platform and monitors the execution of the guest operating systems. In that way, multiple operating systems, including multiple instances of the same operating system, can share hardware resources. These concepts have become an important part of the technique known as virtualization. The hypervisor is also the most basic form of a virtualization component. It's the software that seperates the operating system and applications from their physical resources. The hypervisor has its own kernel and it's installed directly on the hardware, or "bare metal" which is a frequently used term within Virtualization. The hypervisor is inserted between the hardware and the OS, and interacts fully with the HW of the target that it has been installed on.

Which types of Hypervisors is there?
There are two types of hypervisor’s, these 2 are somewhat alike but here is the difference:

• Type 1 (or native, bare metal) hypervisors run directly on the host's hardware to control the hardware and to monitor guest operating systems. A guest operating system thus runs on another level above the hypervisor.
  This model represents the classic implementation of virtual machine architectures.

• Type 2 (or hosted) hypervisors run within a conventional operating system environment. With the hypervisor layer as a distinct second software level, guest operating systems run at the third level above the hardware.

Note: Microsoft Hyper-V (released in June 2008) exemplifies a type 1 product that is often mistaken for a type 2. Both the free stand-alone version and the version that is part of the commercial Windows Server 2008 product use a virtualized Windows Server 2008 parent partition to manage the Type 1 Hyper-V hypervisor. In both cases the Hyper-V hypervisor loads prior to the management operating system, and any virtual environments created run directly on the hypervisor, not via the management operating system.

What is a virtual machine?
A virtual machine was originally defined by Popek and Goldberg as "an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real machine". Current use includes virtual machines which have no direct correspondence to any real hardware.

Virtual machines are separated into two major categories, based on their use and degree of correspondence to any real machine. A system virtual machine provides a complete system platform which supports the execution of a complete operating system (OS). In contrast, a process virtual machine is designed to run a single program, which means that it supports a single process. An essential characteristic of a virtual machine is that the software running inside is limited to the resources and abstractions provided by the virtual machine—it cannot break out of its virtual world.

A virtual machine (VM) is a self-contained operating environment—software that works with, but is independent of, a host operating system. Virtualization technologies are sometimes called dynamic virtual machine software.

What is paravirtualization?

Paravirtualization is a type of virtualization technique that presents a software interface to virtual machines that is similar but not identical to that of the underlying hardware. The entire OS runs on top of the hypervisor and communicates with it directly, typically resulting in better performance. The kernels of both the OS and the hypervisor must be modified, however, to accommodate this close interaction.

The intent of the modified interface is to reduce the portion of the guest's execution time spent performing operations which are substantially more difficult to run in a virtual environment compared to a non-virtualized environment. The paravirtualization provides specially defined 'hooks' to allow the guest(s) and host to request and acknowledge these tasks, which would otherwise be executed in the virtual domain (where execution performance is worse.) Hence, a successful paravirtualized platform may allow the virtual machine monitor (VMM) to be simpler (by relocating execution of critical tasks from the virtual domain to the host domain), and/or reduce the overall performance degradation of machine-execution inside the virtual-guest.

Paravirtualization requires the guest operating system to be explicitly ported for the para-API -- a conventional O/S distribution which is not paravirtualization-aware cannot be run on top of a paravirtualized VMM. However, even in cases where the operating system cannot be modified, components may be available which confer many of the significant performance advantages of paravirtualization; for example, the XenWindowsGplPv project provides a kit of paravirtualization-aware device drivers, licensed under GPL, that are intended to be installed into a Microsoft Windows virtual-guest running on the Xen hypervisor.

Paravirtualization relies on a virtualized subset of the x86 architecture. Intel and AMD have developed chipsets that are designed to allow simpler virtualization code, and the potential for better performance of fully virtualized environments.

What is “bare metal” hypervisor?

VMware states that the ESX product runs on "bare metal". In contrast to other VMware products, it does not run atop a third-party operating system, but instead includes its own kernel. Up through the current ESX version 4.1, a Linux kernel is started first, and is used to load a variety of specialized virtualization components, including VMware's 'vmkernel' component. This previously-booted Linux kernel then becomes the first running virtual machine and is called the service console. Thus, at normal run-time, the vmkernel is running on the bare computer and the Linux-based service console runs as the first virtual machine. The vmkernel itself, which VMware says is a microkernel, has three interfaces to the outside world: hardware,guest systems and service console (Console OS)

On the other hand you now also with the introduction of Citrix XenClient have a “bare metal” hypervisor that runs on desktop PC Hardware. XenClient is a bare metal hypervisor intended for use on a client computing device, that is desktop PC hardware, rather than server hardware. XenClient is being created by Citrix in partnership with hardware vendors such as HP. With XenClient users can run their company desktop alongside their own Windows or Linux OS on a single desktop or laptop PC.

What is Xen?
The Xen Project has developed and continues to evolve a free, open-source hypervisor for x86. Available since 2003 under the GNU General Public License, Xen runs on a host operating system, and so is considered paravirtualization technology.

It allows several guest operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently. The University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory developed the first versions of Xen. As of 2010^[update] the Xen community develops and maintains Xen as free software.

Xen systems have a structure with the Xen hypervisor as the lowest and most privileged layer. Above this layer come one or more guest operating systems, which the hypervisor schedules across the physical CPUs. The first guest operating system, called in Xen terminology "domain 0" (dom0), boots automatically when the hypervisor boots and receives special management privileges and direct access to all physical hardware by default. The system administrator can log into dom0 in order to manage any further guest operating systems, called "domain U" (domU) in Xen terminology.

The project originated as a research project at the University of Cambridge led by Ian Pratt, who later left the school to found XenSource, the first company to implement a commercial version of the Xen hypervisor. A number of large enterprise companies now support Xen, including Microsoft, Novell and IBM. XenSource (not surprisingly) and SAP-based startup Virtual Iron offer Xen-based virtualization solutions.

What is application virtualization?

Application virtualization is an umbrella term that describes software technologies that improve portability, manageability and compatibility of applications by encapsulating them from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. A fully virtualized application is not installed in the traditional sense, although it is still executed as if it is. The application is fooled at runtime into believing that it is directly interfacing with the original operating system and all the resources managed by it, when in reality it is not. In this context, the term "virtualization" refers to the artifact being encapsulated (application), which is quite different to its meaning in hardware virtualization, where it refers to the artifact being abstracted (physical hardware).

Virtualization in the application layer isolates software programs from the hardware and the OS, essentially encapsulating them as independent, moveable objects that can be relocated without disturbing other systems. Application virtualization technologies minimize app-related alterations to the OS, and mitigate compatibility challenges with other programs.

Full application virtualization requires a virtualization layer. Application virtualization layers replace part of the runtime environment normally provided by the operating system. The layer intercepts all file and Registry operations of virtualized applications and transparently redirects them to a virtualized location, often a single file. The application never knows that it's accessing a virtual resource instead of a physical one. Since the application is now working with one file instead of many files and registry entries spread throughout the system, it becomes easy to run the application on a different computer and previously incompatible applications can be run side-by-side. Examples of this technology for the Windows platform are Ceedo, InstallFree, Citrix XenApp, Novell ZENworks Application Virtualization, Endeavors Technologies Application Jukebox, Microsoft Application Virtualization, Software Virtualization Solution, and VMware ThinApp.

Also, somewhat included into Application Virtualization, is application Streaming, a teqnic that virtualizes and streams the application to an end user, without messing up the users operating system.

What is a virtual appliance?
A virtual appliance (VA) is not, as its name suggests, a piece of hardware. It is, rather, a prebuilt, preconfigured application bundled with an operating system inside a virtual machine. The VA is a software distribution vehicle, touted by VMware and others, as a better way of installing and configuring software. The VA targets the virtualization layer, so it needs a destination with a hypervisor. VMware and others are offering the VA as a better way to package software demonstrations, proof-of-concept projects and evaluations.

Citrix on their hand has started to offer a broad range of their own products as a VPX, their Virtual Appliance term. Citrix as of 11.08.2010 offers Citrix Access Gateway VPX, NetScaler VPX, Branch Repeater VPX, Merchandising Server, Citrix Licensing Server and XenDesktop Syncronizer(currently in Tech Preview for synchronization with the XenClient).

What is Desktop Virtualization?

The model stores the resulting "virtualized" desktop on a remote central server, instead of on the local storage of a remote client; thus, when users work from their remote desktop client, all of the programs, applications, processes, and data used are kept and run centrally. This scenario allows users to access their desktops on any capable device, such as a traditional personal computer, notebook computer, smartphone, or thin client. Virtual desktop infrastructure, sometimes referred to as virtual desktop interface(VDI) is the server computing model enabling desktop virtualization, encompassing the hardware and software systems required to support the virtualized environment.

Desktop virtualization involves encapsulating and delivering either access to an entire information system environment or the environment itself to a remote client device. The client device may use an entirely different hardware architecture than that used by the projected desktop environment, and may also be based upon an entirely different operating system.

The desktop virtualization model allows the use of virtual machines to let multiple network subscribers maintain individualized desktops on a single, centrally located computer or server. The central machine may operate at a residence, business, or data center. Users may be geographically scattered, but all may be connected to the central machine by a local area network, a wide area network, or the public Internet.

The main competing vendors in the Desktop Virtualization space at the moment is Citrix and VMware. But, there is also smaller vendors on the horizon and they have products that can compete in some sense.

Here is a list of current Virtual Desktop Vendors:

• Cendio ThinLinc
• Citrix XenDesktop
• Ericom WebConnect
• Leostream
• Microsoft Remote Desktop Services
• MokaFive Suite
• NComputing
• NX technology
• Pano Logic
• Parallels Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
• Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops
• RingCube vDesk
• Sun/Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
• Systancia AppliDis Fusion
• ThinDesk
• Userful
• VMware View
• Wyse

Got something to add? Please post in the Comment field below!

This SMS PASSCODE® application enable you to securely login with the Citrix Receiver for iPad application using SMS Authentication from SMS PASSCODE (www.smspasscode.com). Note that you will have to read the information file to configure the Citrix Receiver for iPad application to function with the SMS PASSCODE for iPad application.

SMS PASSCODE is the only two factor authentication to Ipad, where you can secure access your Citrix applications/desktop’s. Its very user friendly and easy to configure. Go Ahead. Its Free

This SMS PASSCODE® application enable you to securely login with the Citrix Receiver for iPad application using SMS Authentication from SMS PASSCODE (www.smspasscode.com).

Note that you will have to read the information file to configure the Citrix Receiver for iPad application to function with the SMS PASSCODE for iPad application

Requirements:
SMS PASSCODE Server & Citrix Access Gateway
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.

Click here to Download from Apple App Store.

Click here to download the PDF

These simple, end-of-the-work day steps were echoed and encouraged in the February 2010 GreenGov Final Report, which includes more than 5,000 ideas from more than 14,000 federal employees. The report, which resulted from President Obama’s GreenGov Challenge last fall, lists “powering down all desktop computers, locally connected printers, and other non-net- worked peripherals” as one of the top three ways to conserve energy.

Like the GreenGov Challenge, Power IT Down Day is intended to harness the power of the individual in helping government become more energy efficient. The first two Power IT Down Day events are good examples of what can be accomplished by the individual. Just last year, about 5,600 individuals pledged to power down their IT equipment on August 27, which led to more than 73,000 kilowatt hours saved and enough energy savings to power 77 American homes for a month.

Individuals can sign up for the event at the new Power IT Down website, which also provides green IT resources and information. Registrants have the option to invite friends to participate in this year’s Power IT Down Day activities.

The Power IT Down Day sponsors will again make a donation to the Wounded Warrior Project to show what can be accomplished with the money saved from Power IT Down Day activities. In 2009, the Wounded Warrior Project, whose mission is to honor and empower wounded warriors, received $45,000 from Power IT Down Day sponsors.

Quotes

• Tom Simmons, area vice president – US Public Sector at Citrix - “Participation doubled during last year’s Power IT Down Day, and we hope to reach even more individuals in 2010. Because Power IT Down Day falls on a Friday this year, government and industry have the chance to save even more energy – not only on one night, but for the entire weekend. That’s a potential savings of 55 kilowatt hours per person, which can quickly add up to a significant impact on responsible energy consumption.”
• Nigel Ballard, director of federal marketing, Intel - “Each year, Intel helps drive federal energy efficiency awareness through Power IT Down Day, and each year the response from people wanting to get involved becomes more enthusiastic. Individuals clearly want to do their bit to be part of the solution as opposed to part of the problem. We’re clearly onto something good here!”
• Tom Hempfield, vice president, US Federal, HP - “HP encourages our employees to exercise healthy energy savings habits, and Power IT Down Day is one way we can help our customers do the same. Every individual makes a difference.”
• Denise L. Harrison, chief information officer and vice president, GTSI - “The simple, individual act of powering down at the end of the day can help us gain control of our energy consumption and generate meaningful budget savings along the way. At GTSI, we have targeted about 20% server consolidation through virtualization and server upgrades by the end of this calendar year. Some of the newer servers can have power efficiency improvements as much as 61% over older servers. Evaluating true needs and powering down is good business and good for the environment. We get new technology, better management tools and more power efficiency. Hard to dispute the benefits.”

Facts and Highlights

• The goal for Power IT Down Day 2010 is 6,100 registered participants.
• Power IT Down Day 2009 doubled government and industry registrations compared to the 2008 event (from 2,800 to 5,600) and saved more than 73,000 kilowatt hours in a single night.
• The federal government is the nation’s single largest energy consumer, with federal buildings accounting for about 35 percent of the government’s total energy use in fiscal year 2009. (Source: Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency, U.S. Environmental Protection, August 2007.)
• Power IT Down Day estimates that one person can save 13 kilowatt hours overnight by powering down at the end of the workday. The savings for a full weekend comes to 55 kilowatt hours per person. Reaching our Power IT Down Day 2010 goal of 6,100 participants could save more than 335,000 kilowatt hours – a potential energy savings of more than $45,000.

• Pooled Desktops, also known as hosted VM-based desktops, are defined as a group of virtual desktops that utilize a single virtual desktop image delivered by the Provisioning Services feature of XenDesktop. Guidance for updating the VDA in this environment is provided in the Pooled Desktops section.
• Assigned Desktops are defined as a group of virtual desktops that utilize a dedicated virtual machine for each desktop. Assigned desktops do not utilize Provisioning Services. Guidance for updating the VDA in this environment is provided in the Assigned Desktops section.

Click here to download the Best Practices for Upgrading Citrix XenDesktop 4 Virtual Desktop Agent

Rackspace® Hosting announced yesterday the launch of OpenStack™, an open-source cloud platform designed to foster the emergence of technology standards and cloud interoperability. Rackspace, the leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers public-cloud offerings to the OpenStack project.  The project will also incorporate technology that powers the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform.  Rackspace and NASA plan to actively collaborate on joint technology development and leverage the efforts of open-source software developers worldwide.
“Modern scientific computation requires ever increasing storage and processing power delivered on-demand,” said Chris C. Kemp, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer for IT.  “To serve this demand, we built Nebula, an infrastructure cloud platform designed to meet the needs of our scientific and engineering community. NASA and Rackspace are uniquely positioned to drive this initiative based on our experience in building large scale cloud platforms and our desire to embrace open source.”

OpenStack will feature several cloud infrastructure components including a fully distributed object store based on Rackspace Cloud Files, available today at OpenStack.org.  The next component planned for release is a scalable compute-provisioning engine based on the NASA Nebula cloud technology and Rackspace Cloud Servers technology. It is expected to be available later this year.  Using these components, organizations would be able to turn physical hardware into scalable and extensible cloud environments using the same code currently in production serving tens of thousands of customers and large government projects.

“We are founding the OpenStack initiative to help drive industry standards, prevent vendor lock-in and generally increase the velocity of innovation in cloud technologies,” said Lew Moorman, President, Cloud and CSO at Rackspace. “We are proud to have NASA’s support in this effort.  Its Nebula Cloud Platform is a tremendous boost to the OpenStack community. We expect ongoing collaboration with NASA and the rest of the community to drive more-rapid cloud adoption and innovation, in the private and public spheres.”

Rackspace and NASA have committed to use OpenStack to power their cloud platforms, and Rackspace will dedicate open-source developers and resources to support adoption of OpenStack among enterprises and service providers. An OpenStack Design Summit hosted by Rackspace was held July 13-16 in Austin, where more than 100 technical advisors, developers and founding members joined to validate the code and ratify the project roadmap.  More than 25 companies were represented at the Design Summit including AMD, Autonomic Resources, Citrix, Cloud.com, Cloudkick, Cloudscaling, CloudSwitch, Dell, enStratus, FathomDB, Intel, iomart Group, Limelight, Nicira, NTT DATA, Opscode, PEER 1, Puppet Labs, RightScale, Riptano, Scalr, SoftLayer, Sonian, Spiceworks, Zenoss and Zuora.

“OpenStack provides a solid foundation for promoting the emergence of cloud standards and interoperability,” said Peter Levine, SVP and GM, Datacenter and Cloud Division, Citrix Systems.  “As a longtime technology partner with Rackspace, Citrix will collaborate closely with the community to provide full support for the XenServer platform and our other cloud-enabling products.”

"We believe in offering customers choice in cloud computing that helps them improve efficiency," says Forrest Norrod, Vice President and General Manager of Server Platforms, Dell. "OpenStack on Dell is a great option to create open source enterprise cloud solutions."

To download or contribute code and get involved, visit OpenStack.org.  Follow OpenStack on Twitter @OpenStack.

About Rackspace Hosting
Rackspace Hosting is the world's leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support® to its customers, across a portfolio of IT services, including Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced it has joined the Citrix Ready® program and is now making the Citrix® NetScaler® VPX™ virtual appliance available to its growing base of enterprise customers. Skytap users can now choose to deploy NetScaler VPX from Skytap's library of virtual appliance configurations, enabling them to increase control over their network infrastructure and accelerate application delivery.

NetScaler VPX is the industry's leading application delivery and load balancing solution that is available as a virtual appliance with the richness of a best-in-class application delivery network. IT organizations of any size can deploy NetScaler VPX on-demand, anywhere in the datacenter, using industry standard servers. The simplicity and flexibility of NetScaler VPX make it easy and cost effective to fully optimize every web application and more effectively integrate networking services with application delivery.

Skytap provides cloud automation solutions for enterprises and software vendors to develop, test, migrate, evaluate, demo, and train on new and existing applications in the cloud. Skytap empowers users to run existing applications unchanged in the cloud, gain visibility and control over cloud initiatives, and reduce costs by 70% or more. Skytap customers can now easily incorporate NetScaler VPX into their development and test environments to cut the time and budget required to set-up and share virtual environments. The solution enables the cloud-based quality assurance process to emulate in-house environments that use Citrix NetScaler® MPX™ hardware appliances in production.

"The introduction of NetScaler VPX into Skytap builds upon our industry leadership in network automation and represents yet another milestone in Skytap's effort to make the cloud mirror customers' in-house IT environments," said John Janakiraman, chief technology officer and chief architect at Skytap. "By integrating NetScaler VPX into Skytap, our customers will benefit from the industry's leading advanced application delivery and load balancing solution."

"Skytap and Citrix are both recognized for helping companies deal with the high cost and complexity of deploying web applications, making this combined solution a powerful choice for companies moving to the cloud," said Sunil Potti, vice president, networking and cloud product group, Citrix Systems. "Skytap's enterprise-ready cloud offering combined with Citrix network virtualization products will improve responsiveness, significantly lower costs and accelerate the delivery of mission-critical application for today's enterprises."

About Skytap, Inc.
Skytap is the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions for dynamic workloads. Skytap enables users to run enterprise applications unchanged in the cloud, collaborate securely with global teams, and gain unparalleled business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations can gain visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand, and reduce costs by 70% or more. Enterprises can securely connect Skytap to their data centers and create virtual private clouds. Skytap is ideal for any dynamic workload including application development, testing, virtual training, ERP migration and sales demonstration projects. To buy or learn more, visit www.skytap.com.

So, what's next? Solutions...

In order for a technology and product sets to go mainstream faster, customers need the products to be turned into solutions. This is true especially for something like desktop virtualization, which has inherent complexity due to multiple moving parts and challenges the norms of traditional desktop computing. In my assessment, for every customer who prefers to pick the best of breed products and integrate it for their own infrastructure; there are 10 (yes, I made it up - but pick you double digit number here) that prefer integrated solutions with ideally plug-n-play experience.

We are not quite there in terms of the availability of plug-n-play solutions; however, we have now entered the phase where the customers will drive the creation of these solutions - with a goal of having a simpler experience in adopting and scaling virtual desktops. And, all these solutions will continue to drive desktop virtualization to mainstream reality.

HP joins Citrix & Microsoft to offer 2 solutions and a reference architecture

Earlier this week, HP joined Citrix-Microsoft and added their own special sauce to offer customers solutions to get started with virtual desktops. Customers who are looking for easy path to virtual desktops can now leverage two offers from HP - VDI Ignite and VDI Activate.

VDI Ignite: Get your virtual desktop strategy and pilot for as little as $10K

VDI Ignite combines the Citrix and Microsoft Kick Start offer (250 seats for only $28 per user) with HP's Client Transformation Workshop for only $10,000. Customers can get their strategic vision defined for transforming their desktop computing environment in addition to getting the software infrastructure for the first 250 users. It is a great solution for customers who are looking to define their strategy and are unsure about when and how to start.

VDI Activate: Get your virtual desktop strategy provides along with a 250 user implementation for only $26K

For only $26000, customers can not just determine the right virtual desktop strategy, but also get 250 users up and running with HP client services. VDI Activate includes the VDI Ignite offer, the 250 licenses and HP's Client Transformation Workshop, plus it adds implementation services from HP to rapidly bring a virtual desktop solution to life in a customer's environment. This is a perfect solution for customers who are ready to start and can now get their first 250 users implemented as a pre-packaged solution.

Click here to read the full Citrix blog post