Virtual Desktop Blog

Xen Desktop confirmed dead on arrival

wponder — Tue, 20 May 2008 16:08:00 GMT

I just stepped out of Mark Templeton's keynote speech where he talked about five key topics. The fifth was Xen Desktop and was trumped up as the most exciting thing since the launch of WinFrame. The message was Xen Desktop offers a "High Definition user experience" and on demand, new PC, every day. Mark was really excited to demonstrate the Xen Desktop solution and what they call Desktop 2.0.

Mark claimed Xen Desktop was built and designed for 400 million office workers @ Home, @ The Office @ The Virtual Office and Off Shore

They were using what they call a Xen Desktop Appliance. A purpose built device which is not a thin client, Ok sure.

Off to the demo of a Citrix Desktop 2.0 solution designed to support 400 million office workers.

Mark had the demo guy join him on stage, where a Xen Desktop login was being presented from the Xen Desktop Appliance. The demo guy Aaron logged in, an then demonstrated Power Point. After that, it was off to show the "High Definition user experience" and a demo of MultiMedia.

Doh! Not sure what the multimedia was there but all the audience got was a an error and they could not demo the multimedia

The demo guy said maybe if I log out and back in I can get it to work? The demo guy logged out, and tried to log back in. He was then presented with a spinning wheel and no desktop access. I figured it was dynamically building him a new one?

I guess that on-demand desktop is a one time thing?

After a short diversion discussion form Mark, the demo guy tried again as he seemed eager to redeem himself and get it to work, more so than getting off stage and reducing the damage that had already been done. Unfortunately, there was nothing but a spinning wheel again, resulting in a desktop dead on arrival.

Across a silent, stunned audience Mark closed with a statement along the lines of, I guess that is what happens when you fly without a net.

VMware VDI is here today, shipping today and has been deployed to 1000s and 1000s of desktop users across some of the largest enterprises. We are only at the beginning of delivering the next generation desktop delivery and management with a strong ecosystem of VDI alliance partners. Stick with the creators of VDI and do not get caught flying with out a net!!!!

VMware VDI - XenDesktop success and failure

wponder — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:25:00 GMT

Currently I am traveling across Germany meeting with customers and partners. This morning, just after I finalized preparation for a presentation. I decided to hop over to dabcc.com for a quick peak at what is going on in the SBC and virtualization community.

The first article that caught my eye was an article from a system provider in South Africa, OAS. The OAS was offering a test drive of a VMware VDI virtual desktop, connecting through VDM 2 and a XenDesktop based desktop.

To set the stage here. When I am traveling I use a MAC. If I need to access my VMware VDI desktop I can remotely connect with it using Safari. I also have a local Windows based virtual machine I can use with Fusion if needed. Using my MAC from the meeting room, here in Germany I fired up Safari and browsed over to the the OAS site for XenDesktop access.

At first it appears XenDesktop could not detect what client I needed.

When the client detection failed I decided to try the manual client detection.

The client detection failed so I decided to go ahead and download it. It took about five minutes to download the MACICA_OSX.DMG.zip file. Once it competed, I decided to install it. At this point I got a little confused as the installer said it was installing the ICA client for Presentation Server. Am I connecting to Presentation Server or XenDesktop? I figured I would find out once the client was installed an I get the chance to connect with a desktop. Unfortunately, that did not happen though. For some reason the ICA client could not be installed?

After this, I decided to compare the out of box experience for VDM 2 delivering a desktop. First I put the VDM 2 URL in Safari. I was asked to accept a certificate from OAS as I have never been to their site before. After accepting the certificate I was presented with a login.

After entering the login info and launching the tunnel I was presented with a list of desktops I was entitled to use.

After selecting my desktop and connecting my desktop session was successfully connected.

In all fairness, MAC support for VDM 2 is only experimental. I am unsure and have not checked if XenDestkop is planning to support MAC clients once its released. It may have been unfair of me to expect XenDesktop to work from my MAC?