A day later I was given a briefing by Citrix on how it intends to implement desktop virtualization. As it turns out, Citrix has executed very well indeed - so much so, that it as leapfrogged VMware. I would now recommend IT users to look at the Citrix solution well ahead of looking at VMware’s desktop virtualization offer.
What Citrix has come up with is the highly flexible desktop solution, The Citrix Xen Desktop, that provides the capabilities that everyone ought to be looking for. With the Xen Desktop, Citrix isn’t simply putting a PC into a virtual machine and sending the screen image to a thin client,it is generating the virtual PC on the fly.
The way that the Xen Desktop works is illustrated in the diagram below:
The Xen Desktop sets up a virtual PC by building a PC image composed of; the OS, specific user settings including passwords, OS settings such as wallpaper, connectivity, etc. and then the user’s applications. To do this, it maintains a series of master images and combines them according to who the user is. It then boots the session in a virtual machine.
There are some significant advantages to building virtual PCs this way. The primary ones are:
- You can maintain the OS (or different versions of OSes) and PC applications as masters. In effect you only update a single version of each software component. The whole of desktop maintenance and upgrade is simplified - and hence less expensive.
- You also know exactly how many software licenses you need, because you know how many applications are deployed and used. This is likely to result in license savings unless you already have these under control.
- You will save significant amounts of disk space. This is particularly important because the cost of SAN storage for virtual PCs can be very high and this brings it down considerably.
Beyond this Citrix has chosen, wisely in my view, to implement a completely open architecture: any hypervisor (Microsoft, VMware or its own Xen), any server hardware (regular servers, blades or PC blades from any hardware vendor) and any thin client (WYSE, IGEL, HP, etc.) This means that even a company that is already involved in a roll-out of virtual PCs could switch to the Citrix Xen Desktop without needing to change hardware vendors or virtual machine strategy.
For those who want to trial Xen Desktop, Citrix offers a free download (the Express Edition), which could be used to carry out a simple proof of concept. Aside from this free download, Xen Desktop comes in 4 versions from the Standard edition (list price: $75 per seat) to the Platinum Edition (list price: $395 per seat).
Looking at the pricing, I suspect that the Citrix offering is less expensive than the VMware equivalent by a significant amount. However, I will have to wait until I’ve seen some proof of concept implementations before I’m sure of that.
No matter. What Citrix is launching here is clearly in advance of the competitive alternatives. It will have VMware rushing to try to catch up, but Citrix may not be so easy to catch. With Xen Desktop, Citrix has blended software from several of its acquisitions, including Ardence and Xen., and it is now clearly ahead of the field.
This is a posting in the Virtualization Focus Series. Click here to see an index of such postings.
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This blog post seems like a regurgitation of Citrix AR, and is not insightful at all. In fact it borders in irresponsible.
Citrix XenDesktop was released as a tech preview last November, and released as a final product two weeks ago. And yet your post from May 28th didn’t know that? Fine enough.. But now talk about how Citrix’s choice to implement an open architecture is wise in your view.. Why should we trust your view if you didn’t know about this product after it’s been in public for seven months?
The diagram in this article.. I assume that’s straight from Citrix marketing to? How do you quantify this as “delivered with best user experience?” You mean ICA? Sure, better than RDP, but hardly the best.
I would also point out the Provisioning Server component that enables these dynamic assembly of VMs is only available at the $195 per CCU level and higher.
This whole “you also know exactly how many software licenses are needed.” .. where’s that coming from? Is this assuming that you’re also using XenApp in addition to XenDesktop?
Finally, how do you figure that Citrix is less expensive than VMware? Do to the storage component? VMware VDI is $150 per user. If you base Citrix XenDesktop on the Xen or Hyper-V hypervisor, you won’t get nearly the user density you will with VMware (and ESX is included with the $150 VMware product).
Bottom line is that I agree Citrix has a better solution than VMware, but this article is not insightful at all and sounds like you just regurgitated whatever Citrix AR told you.
When VMware briefs you on OVDI and SVI, are you going to say that they’ve leapfrogged Citrix?
Hmmm. I’m not totally convinced that’s the real Brian Madden - in the same way that I’m not the real Albert Einstein. Brian usually has *much* better spelling and grammar than that.
I’ve experienced XenDesktop first-hand and I think it’s awesome.
[...] meet the challenge. This is what Citrix has done with its desktop virtualization technology. (see Citrix: Getting Desktop Virtualization Right. The challenge comes from VMware, which was threatening to eat Citrix for breakfast. Well not this [...]
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