http://www.amroi.com/723/
What is Search Engine Optimization Explained
Presentation Virtualization Solutions White paper
22 MARCH 2012
Presentation Virtualization allows the creation of virtual sessions, each interacting with a remote desktop system. The applications executing within those sessions rely on presentation virtualization to project their user interfaces remotely. Each session may only run a single application, or it might present its user with a complete desktop offering multiple applications. In either case, several virtual sessions utilize the same installed copy of an application.
In Presentation Virtualisation Solutions – get a summary of benefits that Presentation Virtualization can bring to your enterprise, and assistance with selecting a PV solution. We also take an overview of a range of current products that can help you deliver a PV service, providing you with an Presentation Virtualization product comparison of functions and costs to help you determine which solution is best for your organisation. These products include:
- Citrix’s XenApp 5.0
- Ericom’s PowerTerm WebConnect RemoteView
- Geniut’s ThinWorx
- GraphOn’s Go-Global
- Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Services
- Propalms’ TSE
- Quest’s vWorkspace
- Systancia’s AppliDis Fusion
- 2x, ApplicationServer
To read more about this article for free, and sign up to download this white paper visit The Virtualization Practice
Presentation Virtualization Solutions Whitepaper | Whitepapers.
Unidesk Nice Presentation About Their VDI Product
Oak Hills Reduced IT Costs While Delivering Anytime, Anywhere Teaching by Cisco Systems
Oak Hills Local School District provided anytime, anywhere teaching and learning with Cisco Unified Computing System and Cisco Services for design and validation
“We’ve built a highly extensible infrastructure that will help us deliver the highest-quality education and achieve e-learning leadership-all while maximizing the value of taxpayer dollars.”
Oak Hills Reduced IT Costs While Delivering Anytime, Anywhere Teaching – Cisco Systems.
VDI and Business Continuity
Regardless of the virtual desktop solution you are using VMware VDI, Citrix VDI, or Ubuntu VDI, or even if you decided to just use a VDI in a box solution, helping your users update their business continuity plans (BCP) for VDI is an absolute must for every CIO.
Just to be clear, I am not talking about the IT department creating a VDI disaster recovery plan or adding VDI to an existing DR program. No, this post is aimed at ensuring the users depending on VDI have a contingency plan in place to continue their operations when VDI fails – and it will.
For many CIO’s this is probably the last thing you want to be reminded about on your VDI implementation. If your project was anything like others you have battled through the disk I/O issues and the unexpected storage demand for VDI with only a few scars and maybe a little budget left over. You may have even decided to add VDI Blaster to get a few more years out of those old PCs and hopefully deliver the ROI you promised.
And yet, you probably still have real fears VDI will get you fired if it doesn’t perform as advertised. So before you start celebrating the accomplishment with your team you need to ensure your institutional BCP is updated for VDI.
Desktop Virtualization Models
I am a firm believer every manager should have a solid understanding of what it takes to run their operation. Today that means having a solid understanding of the technology used by your department including the software and systems. Afterall, you are the “owner” of the systems that you CIO runs for you. So when it comes to the desktop virtualization and VDI used by your teams you need to have at least a kitchen table understanding.
Desktop virtualization is more than just VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure). The traditional form of desktop virtualization is based on an extension of server virtualization where a virtual machine managed by the IT department is hosted in the data center and served up to a remote user over the network.
This model is referred to a centralized model or connected model. But without network connectivity to the data center and the end-user does not have a functioning desktop.
Remote desktop is another form of virtualization which does support offline capabilities by installing a “hypervisor” on the end users machine that receives the virtual desktop image from the data center to be run locally.
There are two forms of this model. Type 1 which does not use a locally installed operating system and Type 2 where it does. Remote desktop allows the end-user to continue working offline with local applications even when connectivity is lost to the data center.
Because the remote desktop model relies on running the virtual desktop locally it requires more resources on the desktop than the centralized model with Type 2 being the more resource intensive of the two.
One last bit of background. Today there is a whole range of device options for running virtual desktops from zero clients and thin clients on up through hybrid “thintops” along with the traditional full desktops, laptops and tablets. Because many organizations are implementing VDI to avoid PC refresh you are likely to find older desktops with fewer resources mixed with newer PC’s laptops and tablets.
If you are a non-IT manager and you don’t know which model of desktop virtualization has been chosen for you or if you have Type 1 or Type 2 remote desktop or some combination, you might want to find out before circumstances force it upon you.
Business Continuity Overview
Business continuity planning (BCP) is a process of developing a plan to continue operations during abnormal circumstances or following a major disruption. Sometimes referred to a business contingency or continuance planning the goal is for each functional area of an organization to have a basic plan in place which can be executed in the event of a disruption to normal operations. That means the BCP provides for the minimum capability to keep the business going until normal operations can be restored or a longer term plan can be put in place.
If you are the director of admissions what would you need minimally to provide the essential services and would that be different depending on when in the year it happened? What about the bursar office or alumni relations?
Ordinarily a BCP is developed by first conducting a business impact analysis (BIA) which is an inventory of the core functions of each department and the systems, materials and people required to perform it. The BIA usually has connections to enterprise risk assessments to identify which functions and processes should be accounted for in the BIA based on criticality to the business or risk. Here is a simplified diagram to help see the relationships.
Risk assessments, BIA’s, and BCP’s are intended to be maintained documents which get updated as changes occur in any of the elements. Because of their importance regular reviews are also customary to ensure nothing has been overlooked and that staff are familiar with the plans.
The IT department is no exception. CIO’s should also conduct IT risk assessments (ITRA), BIA’s for their core functions and processes, and develop BCP’s. The most common mistake CIO’s make is to think their DR plan is enough – it’s not.
Ordinarily that is done beginning with a traditional BIA Questionnaire administered by IT or published using SharePoint or similar platform for self service and regular automated update reminders. You can download a free BIA questionnaire here for subscribers which you can edit to fit your own needs.
The DR plan relies on this data but is more about recovering the systems and restoring normal operations of the technology and service. The ITRA, BIA, and BCP are much more than that and often involve contemplating scenarios which do not include DR such as with pandemics.
Another common mistake CIO’s make is to not recognize that any DR mus be driven by the BIA’s and BCP developed by the other departments because any DR plan developed by IT in a vacuum is probably not worth the paper it is printed on.
VDI Business Continuity
The effect of having virtual desktops on business continuity is that it changes the underlying IT risk assessment of the departmental functions which depend on the desktop. But more simply, it likely means you may not be able to count on PC’s as you probably had before.
Ideally, within the VDI project plan there would have been specific tasks int he work breakdown structure to update the ITRA and any BIA’s and the BCP’s for all affected departments. The reason it needs to be done early in the project lifecycle is so changes can be made early to account for the continuity requirements.
In the event this crucial step was skipped in your project you can still circle back and do the assessments and planning. In fact, many organizations have a regulatory compliance requirement to do so. I realize this may seem like a massive undertaking since most organizations do not have a BIA or BCP in place and must start from scratch.
If that is the case, focus your efforts on considering how you will operate if your team losing connectivity tot he data center if you are using a central VDI model. This will probably involve paper or a few non-VDI devices pre-loaded with the essentials. If you are running a remote desktop configuration, consider what plans are needed when offline and how that might change for a prolonged period of offline operations
VDI Smackdown!
HTML5 is the future desktop replacement
And the new software revolution is coming (faster than you think)
Posted on May 25, 2012 by Gaël Duval
During the past week, I’ve read a number of small news related to HTML5/JS developments such as the “world’s first HTML5 SIP client“. I’ve also played with a few online HTML5/JS applications that I’ve found rather impressive. And I’ve learned that several software vendors, such as Adobe and Google, were abandonning Linux support for several desktop applications. Earlier, there’s been Google Chrome OS, and more recently a new project announcement: Boot to Gecko (in short: Linux kernel+a web browser as a desktop) has been started by the Mozilla Foundation. All these news may not sound very impressive if you consider them separately, but if you put them together, then you should see something like a big light bubble switching on to say “something is happening”.
And yes something is happening: HTML5/JS is becoming a real alternative to traditional desktop applications programming. Thanks to the recent and major improvements in the speed of JavaScript engines in web browsers (especially Chromium & Firefox), it’s opening the door to a new wave of applications that can, in my opinion, replace most existing legacy desktop applications, moving them to the web, adding the benefit of efficient online services, while offering the capability to be usable offline since most of the code will run client side. To top it all, HTML5/JS applications will naturally be cross-plateform so you get rid off the nightmare of MacOS/Linux/Windows/iOS/Android etc. development & maintenance.
Now, of course, my bet is that some desktop software developers will say that JavaScript is just crap, and that they’ll stick with the languages they have learned and learned to love all those years.
But, you’ll have a part of those developers who get the story and massively jump on the HTML5/JS bandwagon, moving the software world to tomorrow, and creating new software stars. Over the years, the small part will grow quickly, because the world is open, because access to IT resources is cheaper and cheaper, because there are 6 billions brains on this planet, and because the number of young people in the world has never been higher.
This is good news in my opinion for at least for two reasons:
regular software vendors are too big, too old, they are lacking flexibility, so they are going to miss the opportunity (which for them, is indeed more a nightmare than an opportunity). They will try to resist and/or try to port their existing software to HTML5/JS, but this takes time and is quite unlikely to happen massively. This will open the door to new software companies, that are going to start from scratch and write history
this can be the start of the end of all these iOS/Android applications as they exist today, which I see just like a remembrance of the past software world, that won’t last longer than a few years because it will be easier to write online applications that can run client side, while not maintaining it on too many plateforms, and not being forced to go through smartphone vendor’s facist processes such as the “AppStore nightmare”.
Finally, all the desktop part of operating system is going to move to a web/HTML5/JS component that can display and run applications. This component can run on any OS (that is very likely to be Linux because who wants to pay to maintain that part anymore?). Then you get rid of the traditionnal desktop environment as we know it: no more Windows, MacOS or Linux desktops, but a web-oriented desktop that rely on open standards.
Will HTML5/JS help the future of software to be better than what it used to be? Will it be Open Source?
LinuxLive USB Creator
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