Last year, Citrix revealed that the latest version of its VDI solution, XenDesktop, will be licensed on a per-user / per-device basis rather than the concurrent licensing model Citrix customers have been accustomed to.

To help ease the transition from concurrent licensing, Citrix introduced a Trade-Up promotion that included a 2-for-1 deal for customers that traded up ALL of their existing licensing.

The original Trade-Up program ended on June 30th, 2010. However, Citrix has recently announced an extension to its popular program until Dec 31, 2010.

Learn more about Citrix XenDesktop and calculate your savings

Trade-up to Citrix XenDesktop Now

Video Transcript:
When you look at many SAN solutions today, many of our competitors have a frame-based SAN.

With EqualLogic, we have a frameless or virtualized architecture.

When you start looking at a frame-based architecture, what you basically start off with is a frame.  You have to sit down and decide, for the next 3-5 years, how much data growth and performance, the types of features, functionality, etc. that you need, and with a frame-based SAN, that usually comes as a specific model number, and a specific model number of a SAN that you purchase can grow to a specific amount of drives.

When you look at many SAN solutions today, many of our competitors have a frame-based SAN.  With EqualLogic, we have a frameless or virtualized architecture.  When you start looking at a frame-based architecture, what you basically start off with is a frame.  You have to sit down and decide, for the next 3-5 years, how much data growth and performance, the types of features, functionality, etc. that you need, and with a frame-based SAN, that usually comes as a specific model number, and a specific model number of a SAN that you purchase can grow to a specific amount of drives.

As an example, you start off with dual controllers for redundancy and performance, and a number of disks.  With EqualLogic, we also do this same thing.  We also start off with dual controllers and a certain number of drives and this is your basic SAN.  Right now the frame vs. frameless, or the competitive architecture vs. EqualLogic, doesn’t look that different.  Let’s grow that frame-based SAN.

As months go by, you need to add more capacity for disks or performance, so we go ahead and we add more drives.  With the EqualLogic array, when you’re ready to add more drives for capacity and performance, you not only add disks, but you also add two more controllers for cache throughput and performance with your disks.  As you add more and more EqualLogic arrays, your performance and your capacity, will scale more linear than by just adding disks or spindles to your SAN.  Then if you’ve planned out your performance or capacity requirements  for 3-5 years, you’ve just purchased your SAN, what happens if you’re acquired by another company, you acquire another company, or a new application comes online, compliance, video surveillance, etc, now what happens with your frame-based SAN, is you’ve now added all the disks and all the spindles that you can to your frame-based SAN.  What this means is there is no way to continue to grow with this frame-based SAN.  If you’re frame-based SAN in this example grows to 60 drives, you’ve filled those drives up, now you need that 61^st drive, you need to buy another frame-based SAN and that’s a forklift upgrade.

However with EqualLogic, what you’re going to see here is that you can have up to 16 physical EqualLogic arrays, and you can manage those as a single storage system.  So whether you have one, single EqualLogic array, or 16 EqualLogic arrays, you manage that EqualLogic environment the same way.  Ease of use and scaling are still going to be the same from day one, or day 365.  Also, what you’re able to do, is these 16 physical EqualLogic arrays can be solid state drives, SAS drives, beta drives, it doesn’t matter.  Every single, physical EqualLogic array is called a member.  Multiple EqualLogic arrays or multiple members fit into an EqualLogic group.

Also, you don’t have to worry about provisioning and rate types.   Once you select the rate type per EqualLogic array, the array or member will take care of the provisioning, the hot spares, the movement of date, etc.  So as you see you have one physical array or 16 array or members, you basically are working with a single pool of storage.  From that single pool of storage, what you’re going to do is create volumes, so these volumes 1, 2 and 3; you would map these as physical drives, or drive letters to a Windows server.  These volumes 1, 2 and 3 could be drive E, F and G to your local Windows server.  Also if we talk about virtualization as an example with VMware, volumes 1, 2 and 3 could be mapped or connected as data stores to your ESX servers.

With your frameless architecture, or virtualized architecture for SANs, whether you have one or 16 EqualLogic arrays you manage that the same way.  The same thing is not just for management, but also when we look at the pool of storage.  With our automatic load balancing and tiering, what you’re able to do is these volumes can move from one physical array to another, and because of our virtualized architecture, the physical server or virtual server doesn’t care what physical array these volumes are on.

During production you can have these volumes on high performance, low capacity, 15K SAS arrays and solid state SAS arrays and then later on as you look at compliance with archive and keeping data around longer, it might not necessarily need that production type of performance, but we still need to have it readily available so these volumes can actually automatically tier themselves, and they can move from solid state and 15K SAS drives to 10K SAS drives and SATA drives.  You can have EqualLogic take care of the movement of data or you as the network administrator can simply click on these volumes and say move it from one rate type to another rate type that’s on separate or distinct drives and different EqualLogic arrays.

Read EqualLogic Frameless Architecture: Part 2

See a live EqualLogic product demo

Learn about Dell storage

See a live Dell EqualLogic Product Demo

Of course, we’re talking about Dell EquaLogic virtual ISCSI storage here. Let’s face it, storage is the foundation of our datacenters. Servers and equipment only exist in order to give us access to our data, and for many administrators storage is an after thought rather than a foundation.

“How much storage does this server need?” is the common question and understandably so, since SAN solutions have historically been relatively expensive and complex… until EqualLogic, that is..

1. Centralized storage is an enabler

Whether your primary goal is to simplify your network, get virtualized, add storage capacity, shorten your backup and recovery windows, or improve your business continuity / disaster recovery plan, you’ll get ALL of this with your first EqualLogic array.

2. EqualLogic’s virtual storage is FAST and EASY

You don’t need a PHD in storage to manage provision or manage EqualLogic storage.  In fact, if you can manage a Windows server you can master Dell EqualLogic in an afternoon. There’s no need to understand LUNs, RAID Groups, IOPs, or fiber channel.

3. Don’t waste a penny on unused storage

We all have that admin that says his new server needs 2TB of storage, even though we know there’s no chance he’s going to need all of that.

• The old way: order a new server and a DAS just for him, and when he only uses 200GB, the rest goes to waste and sucks up power and cooling.

• The EqualLogic way: Thin provision him 2TB of storage, assign it to his server, and you’ll only see the 200GB he’s using. Once his project is done, delete the volume and it goes right back into the pool for use elsewhere.

4. Everything is faster on a SAN

It’s no secret that the longest standing bottleneck for servers (and workstations, for that matter) is the disk sub-system. Processors and memory have received ground-breaking performance increases, yet hard drive speeds have improved modestly. A disk array is pretty much mandatory if you want to even come close to full utilization of your new servers.

5. Buy fewer servers

How many times have you bought a new server because you needed more storage or faster disks? We’re all guilty of that at one time or another. There’s no wasting server resources when you purchase and manage your storage independently.

6. Get the most out of server virtualization

Fast, reliable, flexible storage is a critical component to virtualization. In the past, the vast majority of my design discussions revolved around how many hard drives should go in each virtual host.

Of course this meant we had to plan ahead of time which VM would go to on which host because the Exchange VM definitely needs more disk throughput than the Active Directory VM. With centralized virtual storage you are truly virtual- just type in the size you need and the EqualLogic does the rest!

7. Shorten your back up and recovery windows

No more backups at night!  With the click of a mouse or a simple schedule, your production volume is snapshoted, and your backup server can backup the snapshot in the middle of the day having ZERO affect on your production network.

8. Do you have a viable DR plan?

I’ve reviewed a lot of DR plans in my day and it’s staggering how many of them include a drive to Iron Mountain to pickup tapes. This reminds me of the old Windows days when I manually loaded 30+ floppy disks to install the OS.

Site-to-site replication with EqualLogic couldn’t be easier. With a few clicks, the array will take a snapshot of your volume and start a bit-level replication to it’s partner.

When you need to recover the offsite data, you can either choose to replicate it back to site A or physically transport the replication target array back to the primary data center and you’re back in business!

Read more EqualLogic articles

See a live Dell EqualLogic product demo

So Citrix changes names and terminology every so often, right?  OK, that’s the understatement of the century!

From MetaFrame to MetaFrame Presentation Server, to Presentation Server, to XenApp + XenDesktop, to XenDesktop with FlexCast.. whew!  I may have even missed a few

Citrix FlexCast is.. well.. watch the video!

Citrix FlexCast: Overview

Different types of workers across the enterprise need different types of desktops. Some require simplicity and standardization, while others require high performance and personalization.

XenDesktop can meet these requirements in a single solution with its unique FlexCast™ delivery technology.

With FlexCast™, IT can deliver every type of virtual desktop – each specifically tailored to meet the performance, security and flexibility requirements of each individual user. There are five delivery options:

FlexCast for Apps: Hosted Shared, Hosted VM, and Streamed

Allows any Windows® application to be centralized and managed in the datacenter, hosted either on multi-user terminal servers or virtual machines, and instantly delivered as a service to physical and virtual desktops. Optimized for each user device, network and location, applications are delivered via a high speed protocol for use while connected or streamed via Citrix application virtualization or Microsoft App-V directly to the endpoint for use when offline.

Local VM

Local VM desktops extend the benefits of centralized, single-instance management to mobile workers that need to use their laptops offline. When they are able to connect to a suitable network, changes to the OS, apps and user data are automatically synchronized with the datacenter.

Streamed VHD

Streamed VHDs leverage the local processing power of rich clients, while providing centralized single-image management of the desktop. This approach offers an easy, low-cost way for customers to get started with desktop virtualization by leveraging existing PC resources and keeping datacenter overhead to a minimum. It can also be ideal for government and university labs that use diskless PCs for maximum data security.

Hosted VDI

Hosted VDI desktops offer a personalized Windows® desktop experience, typically needed by office workers, which can be securely delivered over any network to any device. This option combines the benefits of central management with full user personalization, and can generally support up to 150 desktops per server.

Hosted Shared

Hosted Shared desktops provide a locked down, streamlined and standardized environment with a core set of applications, ideally suited for task workers where personalization is not needed – or allowed. Supporting up to 500 users on a single server, this model offers a significant cost savings over any other virtual desktop technology.

Citrix extended its 2-for-1 trade up promotion until the end of 2010

Learn how end-to-end virtualization with Dell EqualLogic and VMware vSphere, View, and SRM provides inherent disaster recovery and business continuance.

Coming soon:

-Indianapolis      -Toledo
-Columbus          -South Bend
-Cincinnati          -Detroit

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Understanding Data Replication Between Dell EqualLogic PS Series Groups

Replication is a powerful tool to help you manage and implement a disaster recovery strategy for your business applications and data. By replicating business-critical volumes, you ensure that your business operations can resume quickly on a partner group in the event of a disaster on the primary group. You also have the ability to restore the configuration to its original state if the problem on the original group can be corrected.

Click here to download

VDI can be a big pill to swallow. There are many components to it, so we put this together to give you a concise, but full view of VDI in a nutshell. Enjoy!

Learn more about Trading-up to Citrix XenDesktop