Citrix acquires Ringcube

Citrix has acquired RingCube, a software solution for personalising operating systems hosted within their VDI architecture. Citrix plans to couple RingCube's technology with its own VDI offering, XenDesktop.

RingCube allows users to choose wallpapers, define their printers, install department applications and create their own areas for storing data.

To gain economies of scale organisations look to deploy a single desktop image in their vdi deployments to multiple users which can deprive the user of personalisation of their desktop.

RingCube's technology saves all the customisation data in a separate file, which can be paired with the operating system when it is requested. This approach can greatly reduce the amount of storage needed, since duplicates of the OS are not required.

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VMware vSphere 5.0

Last month VMware announced the latest edition of VMware vSphere which is due to start shipping very soon, so for those of you who aren’t aware of the announcement we thought we would highlight some of the key features here.

• vSphere Storage DRS: storage resources can be grouped and balanced more effectively.
• Profile-Driven Storage: vSphere helps choosing and allocating storage resources based on the Service Level Agreement (SLA) of the target VM.
• Support for larger VMs: virtual machines can now have 32 virtual CPUs  and 1TB of memory.
• vSphere vMotion: virtual machines can now be moved across high latency networks.
• vSphere Autodeploy: vSphere provides a network boot based system for new installations, allowing to automate the deploy of new virtual machines ESXi hosts.
• New version of the virtual machine format (version 8): added support for USB 3.0 devices, Windows Aero 3D graphics and OS X Server 10.6.
  vCenter Appliance for Linux: a linux based management appliance is now available.
• vSphere Web Client: a browser based interface for vSphere.
• VMware announced an update in licensing models for vSphere, introducing vRAM boundaries, which is the amount of memory allocated for a virtual machine when it is powered on.  Which you can read more about here as there has been quite some noise about it.
• Improved SSD handling optimization
• vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA): The VSA creates shared storage out of local storage for use by a specific set of hosts.  This means that vSphere HA & vMotion can now be made available on low-end (SMB) configurations, without external SAN or NAS servers.  The vSphere Storage Appliance can be deployed in two configurations:
  2 x ESXi 5.0 servers configuration
  Deploys 2 vSphere Storage Appliances, one per ESXi server & a VSA  Cluster Service on the vCenter server.
  3 x ESXi 5.0 servers configuration

Desktop Virtualisation? We’re talking Converged Desktop…

For over a year now we have been talking about the merits of converged desktop (desktop virtualisation, application self subscription, SaaS and Unified Communications), the reason being is simple.  Desktop virtualisaiton is just a set of efficient tools to drive cost and complexity out of the business and deliver the user a desktop over any device.  But any device and a Windows desktop doesn’t equate to improved user productivity, to achieve that we need to be delivering business applications, data and increasingly voice and video to the desktop too.

Putting desktop virtualisation to the side, businesses have been seeking the converged desktop for many years some with success and some not so successful.

Equanet are seeing a new convergence taking place at the desktop.  One that transforms the enterprise worker’s traditional desktop into a completely virtualised collaborative workspace by combining virtual desktops with the communications applications workers depend on. 

We’re seeing the convergence of virtual desktop and media-rich communications as also being inevitable, given that a worker’s productivity is not solely defined by having ubiquitous access to apps, but also the media-rich collaborative tools they need to be productive, on the device they happen to be using at any given time.  From a Cisco perspective this is called VXI (Virtualisation Experience Infrastructure).  And from many conversations I have had with customers and partners it is also a well kept secret, yet massively simple to get your head around.  In simplistic terms; a set of SKUS that have ben endorsed by Cisco and either Citrix or VMware to guarantee performance and scalability for a known number of users and is built upon Cisco UCS.  If you need more horsepower you add an additional unit of power by selecting the right SKU.

VXI provides business with a roadmap to allow them to activate certain elements of the infrastructure as and when they need to, providing a simple roadmap and nearly commoditization of technology.

It is pretty clever technology and we think you should take a look at it. Interested to know more contact us.

Dell takes OpenStack to it's core

It seems that OpenStack is getting some serious attention and momentum with HP adopting OpenStack and also Dell. Dell has created a solution of hardware, software and services that businesses can purchase to deploy their own internal IaaS.

The company has also released into open source a software program, called Crowbar, that should help organizations deploy their own OpenStack configurations on Dell hardware.

The solution includes a full distribution of OpenStack running on Ubuntu 10.10 running across Dell PowerEdge C servers. Dell provide a reference architecture for businesses do design their own clouds.

Crowbar software, can automate the installation and configuration of OpenStack across multiple nodes. Crowbar can also be an OpenStack management tool

Dell has built Crowbar as a modular architecture allowing the software to manage non Dell servers.

OpenStack was launched by Rackspace and NASA and is an open source product deigned for setting up cloud environments.

Where are you on the road to cloud? I will be interested to hear contact me here

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VMware Listens to its Customers

VMware recently announced the release of VMware vSphere 5.0 along with a new licensing model that was based upon configured vRAM per virtual machine.  Your allocation of vRAM increased on each licensing model; the grander the license model (Enterprise+) the bigger the allowance of vRAM.

This has sparked quite a lot of criticism in the channel for those customers looking to migrate to vSphere 5.0.  So following all the noise VMware has increased the allowance on virtual RAM so that most customers will not be adversely affected.

VMware's new licensing model introduced on July 12 was an attempt to shift from pricing based on physical resources to pricing based on virtual resources. 

Many customers and partners have complained to VMware that the model would restrict their virtualisation (further exacerbating VM stall) efforts by requiring the purchase of more licenses to achieve the same level of consolidation they were accustomed to.

The new vRAM entitlements are as follows:

• vSphere Enterprise+ will get 96GB of vRAM
• vSphere Enterprise will get 64GB of vRAM
• vSphere Standard and Essentials will both get 32GB of vRAM.

The product will still continue to be licensed per CPU as in pervious editions, however VMware are removing the restrictive model of CPU cores and physical RAM per server and allowing the vRAM to be pooled across all VMware hosts in the farm.

VMware also increased the amount of vRAM that counted to each virtual machine to 96GB, meaning that no single application will require more than one vSphere Enterprise+ license.  VMware also implemented an average consumption model on vRAM across a 12 month window so that customers can burst for short periods of time without have to pay for the spikes in usage.

The new licensing model should make customers aware of VM sprawl (the increase of virtual machines due to the simplicity of creating them).  Equanet recommends that customers increase the density of their virtual machines on physical hosts and leverage DRS to migrate lower priority workloads when high priority applications need more server resources.  By implementing a strict policy on virtual machine lifecycle management Equanet also believe that this will ensure organisations leverage their investments in virtualisation; it is a good time to undertake some housekeeping.

Looking to implement vSphere 5.0 or migrate – talk to our solutions team to see how we can help - 08444 12 11 10.

Is your network ready for the cloud?

I have 20 minutes to spare before a session on open cloud begins so i thought i would post a thought around cloud and the network. One area that many businesses seem to overlook once they have looked at if the applications are suitable for cloud migration is, is my network suitable.

For many months now, we’ve talked about the Journey to Cloud Computing and how an evolution within your Data Center is needed to make that a reality.

As a partner to Cisco we are constantly asked what their stance is on cloud with reference to the network, and more recently the whole UCS and vblocks piece (but that is another blog).

Typical questions are:



What is Cisco’s perspective and strategy around the usage of multiple types of Cloud Computing (Private, Public, Hybrid, Community) and what is needed from the network to interconnect all these offerings?

How does my business manage the network transitions needed between today’s applications (often client-server), the virtualisation of those application, and next-generation web and big data applications?

What considerations do we need to make within my Data Centre as we try and maximise efficiency and scalability?

What considerations do we need to make at the edges of our networks when the proliferation of devices is almost out of control?

Are there ways to protect my network investments while still having the flexibility to deal with the business uncertainties that are around the next corner?

To help in those discussions, Cisco have put together a way to look at building Business-Ready Cloud Networks. By “Business-Ready”, we mean that your organisation can feel confident that it can run any mix of business applications within this framework and know that it can evolve as your business/application needs change over time.

The key points to take away from this are:

Cisco believes that IT services will be delivered (over time) through a variety of Cloud Computing services, both on-site and off-premise. The network requirements to deliver this in a secure, highly-available manner require a network that is robust, automated and capable of embedding network services to deal with any type of device or application.

The challenges in the Data Center and at the edges of the Borderless Network are unique, but they should be thought of in the context of architectures that deliver end-to-end service-levels to any user, any device or any application, regardless of where the IT service resides.

Data Center architectures must be able to evolve from today’s applications, through virtualisation and onto next-generation applications without the need to create entirely new architectures or silos with each step in the Journey.

Borderless architectures must allow maximum flexibility of devices and location, while delivering secure, robust user-experiences across all applications.

Want to see the slide deck from cisco, it's over here

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