Thin Client vendor 10ZiG have launched their V series, offering a variety of clients optimized for a VDI environment. The V series includes both Linux and XPe terminals, both of which include the Quest vWorkspace 6.x client.

Please refer to the ‘Quest vWorkspace Linux Client Guide’ that is located in the downloads section of www.vworkspace.com for full details on the Linux client, for the Windows client please refer to the Admin Guide that is packaged with the complete download of vWorkspace. For further information on 10ZiG please refer to their website.

One of the most exiting new features in Quest vWorkspace 6.2 is the tight integration with NetApp FlexClone. In addition to dramatic reductions in storage requirements, the tight integration between vWorkspace and NetApp storage enables organizations to quickly provision hundreds or thousands of virtual desktops in minutes instead of hours. This further reduces the cost and resources required to implement a VDI environment while simplifying deployment and management.  NetApp FlexClone technology instantly replicates data volumes and data sets as transparent, virtual copies to increase productivity and save storage space without compromising performance. By saving space with minimal overhead, FlexClone enables companies to cost effectively create all the clones they need to optimize the productivity of their vWorkspace Virtual Desktops.

Recently we recorded a demonstration of this cool integration of Quest vWorkspace 6.2 with NetApp.  The demo shows the creation of 100 Quest Virtual Desktops in 5 minutes using only 2 GB storage. That is extremely impressive. Check it out:

Quest vWorkspace NetApp integration

Techtarget is hosting a webcast that will be about Quest vWorkspace. It will be hosted by Brian Madden (no introduction needed) and Peter Ghostine, the Quest Desktop Virtualization Group CTO. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is generating huge interest from organizations seeking to lower the cost and complexity of managing their desktop infrastructure, but…VDI is NOT the end all be all! Come hear Brian Madden (BrianMadden.com) and Peter Ghostine (Quest Software) on July 30th, 12pm (EDT) as they discuss the future of desktop management being a flexible hybrid approach of physical and virtual to meet the ever-changing needs of diverse user populations. Quest vWorkspace is uniquely positioned to offer you the future of desktop infrastructure and simplified management today via a single product. The competition requires multiple products, if they even have an offering, which means increased costs, complexity, and manageability!

It starts in little over an hour but you can view the recording as well. Use this link.

I recently used the ‘task automation’ feature of vWorkspace to assist with a customer solution. This came in very useful and allowed us to remotely modify the virtual desktops registry; I thought it would be beneficial to share this.

It is possible to schedule a task for a group of desktops or an individual desktop. To access the task automation screen right click a group or desktop and select properties and then task automation. Select new to create a new task, under the task section select ‘Run Program/Script on Computer’ and then under task parameters you can specify the relevant settings. I used this feature to remotely execute regedit.exe and import a .REG file from a network file share. This is simple feature but saved us a lot of work as we had 200 virtual machines that required this registry change.

The screenshot below shows and example of the parameters page might look:

A task can be configured to execute once or can be made re-occurring.

Here’s an example of typical question we sometimes get from Quest Sales people:

“My customer just talked to a Citrix Reseller and they told the customer that they needed Citrix XenDesktop because it uses ICA, which is better than the Microsoft RDP Protocol that other VDI Connection Brokers use.  How do I respond to this?”

Here’s our answer:

“If we were talking about the ICA stack in XenApp (Presentation Server) I’d say that ICA is hands down better than RDP.

That being said, we don’t use the “out of the box” RDP protocol that ships with Windows and ICA that exists in XenDesktop is not feature equivalent to that of ICA on XenApp.

Quest Software, Provision Networks Divison licenses the RDP protocol from Microsoft. We add the following following features to the out of the box RDP protocol, regardless of RDP host, i.e. Physical Desktop, Virtual Desktop or Terminal Server:

• Seamless Windows
• Session Sharing
• Passthru, Kerberos, Smartcard and CAC Authentication
• Bi-directional Audio
• Local Text Echo
• USB Handheld Sync
• End-to-End Universal Printer Driver (for client and session printers, using PDF or EMF with configurable compression and a list of other features not in Citrix’ UPD)
• Multimedia Redirection
• Enhanced Multi-Monitor Support

Citrix ICA on XenDesktop is missing the following features that exist on XenApp:

• Smart card authentication
• Single sign-on using the Kerberos virtual channel
• TWAIN mapping
• USB PDA synchronization
• SmartAuditor
• SpeedScreen Multimedia Acceleration
• SpeedScreen Flash Acceleration
• SpeedScreen Latency Reduction Manager
• SSL Relay direct to the virtual desktop
• Session monitoring and control
• Shadowing / Remote Control of Sessions

 
They’ give customers GoToAssist (to address the missing shadowing feature) if they purchase XenDesktop Platinum at $395 USD per CCU, which is nearly 8 times what Quest’s VDI product costs.  XenDesktop has been reported to blue screen and reboot the OS if one tries to initiate a shadow session using remote assistance. If remote control is a requirement, this is a huge flaw.

As for futures, I anticipate that Citrix will add the ICA Features currently missing from XenDesktop in a service pack, feature pack or Platinum Edition. 

So what is Quest’s answer to this?

In June 2008 we demonstrated “prototype” Bitmap Acceleration Technology on Youtube and at Briforum.  This technology, which is analogous to Citrix Speedscreen, will erase the bandwidth usage and graphical performance differences between ICA and RDP (when it is released).

If the customer’s clients are all connected at LAN speed, then this ICA SpeedScreen advantage becomes a lot less. So ICA is a better protocol, but which ICA, at what price, over what connection, for what percentage of the user population, for how long and compared to what RDP?

In a few months will there be any difference between the performance between Citrix ICA and Quest’s Enhanced RDP?  We don’t think so, except that ours will continue to cost a fraction of what Citrix’ costs, and our product will continue to deliver IT Friendly features that don’t exist in Citrix”