Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way.
Copyright © 2009 Bernhard Tritsch
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way.
Copyright © 2009 Bernhard Tritsch
At the beginning of this year I got into touch with some folks from SearchDatacenter.de, a website provided by TechTarget. They asked me if I wanted to deliver a vendor-independent one-day seminar diving into the technical details of virtual desktops. After thinking a second or two I said “Yes, sure”. The reason for such an immediate positive response was that I had the pleasure to get my hands dirty with different VDI solutions during the previous weeks and months. Now this seminar gives me the opportunity to share my experience with other experts. If you want to sign up for the seminar, here is the link: http://de.amiando.com/seminar-virtualisierung-von-windows-desktops.html (in German).
I don’t have any VDI vendor preference as long as the underlying product is about providing Windows desktops – as a side note I have to admit that the times when I had some first-hand expertise with UNIX or Linux are long gone. The products and services that I’m currently working on for making a living are designed to be compatible to any Windows desktop delivery mechanism. This makes me an unbiased Windows desktop guy, but with a long history in the remote desktop market. And let’s face it, in many aspects a virtual Windows desktop is only a new flavor of the good old remote desktop Kool-Aid. So with the knowledge of the latest VDI products and a solid background in what used to be server-based computing I would regard myself as a “seasoned” VDI expert – LOL. I love VDI from a technology perspective even though I’m not sure yet if it will rock the world at a commercial level.
The outline of my VDI seminar is straight forward. Here is what I will do – but remember, the initial seminar series will be in German language:
The seminar is scheduled for September at four different locations in Germany. SearchDatacenter.de started promoting the event and since then I’m hearing a constant rattle and hum in some German social networks. Seriously, I didn’t expect so much noise. Typically Germans are, um, a little bit conservative when dealing with new IT concepts. And I know what I’m talking about; I was born, raised and educated in Germany even though I’m working for a Dutch company now.
German IT managers tend to ask questions like “Is it mature enough?”, “Is it secure?”, “Does it save money?”, “Does it give me full control?”, “Does it really fit into our company structure?”, “Does it add or does it remove complexity?” when a new IT concept is involved. Don’t get me wrong, these are valid questions and the answers will most certainly help making solid decisions. It’s against German IT habits to introduce a new technology just because it’s cool – which makes German IT well organized and predictable but boring sometimes. And now I’m learning that many German organizations already started their VDI projects or that they are seriously planning to get started in the near future. That’s awesome! I mean, this tells me that either German IT habits changed overnight or that VDI is on a good way to become a commonly accepted standard.
However, there is one important question that I’m not able to answer yet: Will virtual desktops replace the majority of traditional physical desktops? When talking to VMware or thin client vendors the answer is clear. But when talking to Microsoft the message is somewhat different. Microsoft says that even though virtual desktops are potentially good for all organization this concept may not work for all user groups. In other words: The future is still wide open. But does this mean that VDI may just turn out to become a tactical solution selected by IT professionals when trying to solve a particular problem? Maybe or maybe not.
But there’s one thing that is for sure: When introducing a virtual desktop infrastructure it’s all about making the right technical decisions, because it’s first the users and then the IT administrators that matter. And this is exactly the perspective from which I will be looking at VDI in my seminar.
At BriForum in Chicago two weeks ago, Shawn Bass and I presented a session comparing today’s most popular remoting protocols Microsoft RDP, Citrix ICA/HDX, Quest EOP and VMware/Teradici PCoIP. We figured that it doesn’t help attendees if we introduce an artificial performance index representing each protocol’s quality. Instead we created a large number of 30-second video clips recorded from the VGA output of a client device while using different graphics and multimedia formats in combination with each of the four remoting protocols. In our session we showed the four videos associated with each particular format side-by-side, giving the audience the opportunity to judge the visible results by themselves.
Even though we created a collection of roughly 100 videos, all four vendors and some attendees came to us after the session, saying that we missed some important scenarios. It became more than obvious that trying to cover all relevant scenarios is a multi-dimensional challenge:
Only the combination of ALL options would provide the full picture. Isn’t it funny? A session that originally was intended to provide some background information about graphics and multimedia formats turns out to become the quest for the holy grail of remoting protocols. Now Shawn and I are working on how to create new raw videos without too much installation and configuration overhead and on how to present the results in an way that is easy to digest.
I found out for myself that I cannot deal with comparing more than four video streams running side-by-side. My brain capacity seems to be limited to four simultaneous graphical input signals - probably I only have a brain with four bio CPU cores (or would that be a brain GPU?). Maybe we need to find some smart kids that were born with more brain cores and grew up with watching six or eight videos at the same time, helping us to identify the best remoting protocol 
It’s a typical spring with many conferences both in the US and in Europe. In about a week I will be on my way to Citrix Synergy in San Francisco where Shawn Bass and I are invited to deliver two technical sessions. For details check out my blog article from January. But there is more. In May there is Citrix Geek Speak Live! in Zurich (Switzerland), CUGTech in Olso (Norway) and a joined expert training class with Shawn Bass in Malmo (Sweden) on my list. Only recently I was accepted to be speaking at Microsoft TechEd in New Orleans (June 7 - 10) and at BriForum in Chicago (June 15 - 17). Lots of great events and I feel honored to get the opportunity to contribute.
Here are the abstracts of my TechEd and BriForum sessions:
TechEd Session VIR316, Wednesday, June 9, 3:15 PM - 4:30 PM - Remote Desktop Session Host versus Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Smackdown: With Windows Server 2008 R2 the traditional session virtualization scenario delivered through Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services) is expanding its role to provide an extensible platform for a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). VDI enables Windows 7 desktop environments to run within centralized Hyper-V servers. But which of the two is the solution of choice? In this session, Benny Tritsch, Remote Desktop Services MVP, introduces you to the two options, highlighting pros and cons in an unbiased manner. With real-world examples and demonstrations he gives you expert guidance on when to use what.
BriForum Session (with Shawn Bass) - Remoting Protocols Turned Inside Out: RDP, ICA, HDX, PCoIP and EOP represent a selection of popular remoting protocols. But how are they different from each other and what does this mean for the users? What are the best methods when remoting standard graphics and multimedia output formats? Join presentation virtualization geek Shawn Bass and computer graphics expert Benny Tritsch in an in-depth look at how graphics and media remoting really works.
BriForum Session (with Kevin Goodman and Shawn Bass) - Profile Streaming versus Profile Segmentation: Kevin Goodman will represent profile streaming and Benny Tritsch will represent profile segmentation. Both will passionately debate the pros and cons of the two profile management concepts. Shawn Bass is the brave neutral moderator, preventing the two others attacking each other from a profile brawl.
Citrix has finalized the program agenda for Synergy San Francisco on May 12 – 14, 2010. Yesterday they confirmed that they have scheduled Shawn Bass and me for the breakout session “Mastering User Profiles in Virtual Desktop Environments”. Session date-time/location is Thursday, May 13, 11:30 a.m. – 12:20 p.m. in Moscone West Convention Center - Moscone 2016-2018.
Here is the session description: When looking at user profiles, it’s about each user’s individual digital personality. As an IT professional, you better try not to reduce workspace flexibility, or your users will make your working life harder every day. When you only needed to deal with one desktop and one profile per user, things were relatively simple. But now, with remote desktops and applications delivered through a range of virtualization technologies, we are facing a very different situation. CTPs Benny Tritsch and Shawn Bass present an all-up view of the different user profile scenarios in multiple virtualization setups.
In addition to our breakout session, Shawn and I will also be speaking at Citrix Synergy Geek Speak Live! Our session will be about “How Graphics and Media Remoting Really Works”. Here is the description: It’s an urban legend that Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) shipped with Terminal Services has design shortcomings and scalability limits. Many IT professionals heard more than once that the Citrix ICA protocol is superior. Is that true? Are there ways to improve graphics remoting performance for common user scenarios? And what are Microsoft and Citrix doing to improve graphics remoting with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2? How good are RDP and ICA in dealing with GDI, GDI+, DirectX, OpenGL, Windows Presentation Foundation, Flash, Silverlight, videos and animations? Join virtualization experts Benny Tritsch and Shawn Bass in an in-depth look at how desktop, application and media remoting works. After attending his session, you will have no excuse for not knowing what RDP and ICA are good for.
Hope to see many of you in San Francisco.
I’m planning to attend the upcoming annual Microsoft MVP Summit next February. Like every year since I was announced a Terminal Server MVP in 2003, I’m really looking forward to meet with members of the Microsoft product groups and directly learn from those people who are responsible for the individual product features. When talking to the Remote Desktop Services product group – formerly known as the Terminal Services product group – I would like to cover the following topics with them:
But wait a minute. When I was thinking about all these topics, I also started asking myself a critical question: Will Remote Desktop Services and Remote Desktop Virtualization Hosts still be relevant in three or five year from now? I mean, if Windows applications as we know them today (Windows Forms based on managed and unmanaged code) will be replaced by other application types, there may be no need for RDS and RDV. Applications based on Adobe Flash/Air or Microsoft Silverlight may just not require that sort of remoting mechanisms as provided with RDS.
Over the last weeks, I’ve been talking to several infrastructure and development experts about this topic, asking them for their opinions. It was interesting to find out that none of them – except for those primarily dealing with cloud datacenter infrastructure – believe that conventional Windows applications will disappear during the next five years. After all these conversations my personal prediction is that in five years we will see less than 50% new style applications (using Flash/Air, Silverlight or something similar), while more than half of all applications installed on corporate IT platforms will still be conventional Windows Forms applications. I strongly believe that changes in the application landscape will not be happening too fast if there is such a huge base of established applications that were developed in the conventional way. In addition to that, there are still many developers out there who stick to “old school” programming when developing new Windows applications. This clearly leaves enough room for remoting technologies over the next years.
That being said, I still believe that Remote Desktop Services and the RDP protocol have a great future – even more than ever before, now that desktop and presentation virtualization has become a commonly accepted mainstream. In such a scenario Windows Server 2008 R2 RDS and Windows 7 running as virtual desktop on Hyper-V are major milestones, strongly influencing corporate desktop strategies over the next years. As a result, at the upcoming MVP Summit I’m clearly interested in finding out as much as I can about existing RDS/RDV details and new/updated components planned to be released in the near future. To me this has way more relevance than talking about the long-term future of the Windows operating system.
Over the last years I had the opportunity to visit many corporate customers and have deep technical conversations with them, mostly around their existing or future terminal server, Citrix and virtualization infrastructures. This allowed me to see many corporate IT environments from the inside and speak to the people responsible for planning and design – those mystic IT architects. A good number of these IT architects were among the most brilliant and motivated individuals I ever got to know in my professional life. But still, some of them were responsible for IT environments that – with all respect – just sucked. At the beginning this was a big surprise to me as some of these corporate customers have great reputations for being well organized. But after a while I figured that great businesses relying on not so good IT infrastructures are more the rule and not the exception.
Now the question is why there is such a big discrepancy between the relevant heads and the results when it comes to IT architecture. After talking to other peers and expert in that matter I came to a simple conclusion: The issue is a combination of inadequate tools and management mindset. This conclusion may simplify things a little bit too much, but for now see it as the starting point for a bigger discussion. Why do I believe that tools and management mindset are the major reason that so many corporate IT architectures suck?
First let me start with the tools. Are you aware what the most popular expert tools used by IT architects are? It’s Powerpoint, Visio and flipcharts. Seriously, would you let a traditional architect re-model or build your private apartment or your house if all he or she has is a Powerpoint slide deck and a couple of simple Visio drawings? Most probably, you wouldn’t even trust a craftsman you asked to plan the installation of a new bathroom or kitchen if all he has is a hand-painted, rough plan on a piece of paper right before he wants to start working. And this is a very wise decision as there are better planning tools for that, just go to any kitchen studio and you find out what I’m talking about.
Now compare the planning of many corporate IT environments with the planning in conventional architecture, in the automotive industry or in the aircraft industry. What would such engineers and designers be without Autocad, Catia and the like? Only IT design and planning seems to be done with the absence of IT when going beyond simple drawings. Isn’t that weird? There are no commonly established component libraries, there are no plausibility checks, there is no mandatory basic simulation method and there are no common criteria to approve a new IT infrastructure. It all relies on the experience and the “common sense” of the IT architects in charge. If you were to plan a bridge in the same way it wouldn’t be a big surprise if after your first bridge was built only half of the people or cars were able to make it to the other side. And don’t tell me that IT infrastructures are too complex for computer-aided design and planning – just compare it to building new airplanes or cars where design and simulation tools are taken for granted.
Don’t get me wrong, most IT architects do the best they can – but quite often they are left alone with the planning. This is a common situation even if so many enterprises have powerful products and tools to operate and constantly analyze all aspects of their existing IT infrastructure. But most IT architects don’t have tools accepting the collected data as an input channel for their planning work. Despite the lack of adequate tools, the expectation on the executive management side is that IT architects are able to provide necessary changes and updates in the IT infrastructure fast, reliable and cost effective – but without any substantial investment into their qualification and available resources.
This leads directly to the second issue; management mindset. When sitting in meetings with customers, it is always interesting to note how long it takes some executives to make IT-related decisions and how fast they expect results from the IT staff, including IT architects. In addition to that, there is a clear tendency that CIOs rather follow vendors’ marketing statements, hype topics and market waves instead of identifying and prioritizing the company’s real IT requirements. Sometimes this is leading to an unhealthy influence of the executive management on an IT architect’s daily job. Or – even worse – CTOs and CIOs don’t care at all about IT infrastructure planning processes even if it is of vital importance for running their core business. Not to forget those executive who assign positions in IT architecture rather randomly, not always picking the right person for the job. Another group of executives seems to believe that being an IT architect is only a part-time job, so they add this role to the job description of an IT administrator. The same executive would never consider driving a company car that was designed by a motivated part-time car engineer having a day job at a gas station. (Well, on the other side, looking at today’s car industry, it may have been wise to let such down-to-earth part-time engineers make some design decisions regarding future cars – but that’s a different story.)
In a nutshell, many IT architects have neither the right tools nor the necessary management support. All this comes down to the fact that great (part-time) IT architects don’t necessarily create good IT architectures, and nobody should blame them for that. If companies started treating IT architecture in the same way as they are treating the management of their sales forces, offices buildings and company cars, many IT infrastructures would be in a much better shape – for the sake of an organization’s core business. I’m dreaming of an “Autocad” for IT infrastructures and some mandatory approval regulations requiring reviews by independent external experts, just like for buildings, vehicles, roads, railroad tracks or power plants. It’s all about risk management!
That being said, finding great IT architectures in some corporate environments is clear evidence that there are some brilliant IT architects out there. I see them as outstanding individuals who are able to make things possible, against all odds and without adequate tools. In most cases, such IT architects are backed up and fully empowered by their executive management. But it’s so sad that this is the exception and not the rule.
A couple of weeks ago I was speaking at a German cloud and virtualization conference, dominated by attendees working at Internet Service Providers and physical datacenters. There were many sessions about cloud computing, but speakers were also covering topics like datacenter climate control and energy efficiency improvements. It is interesting to note, that there were speakers from Amazon, Google, IBM, and Dell, but not from Microsoft, VMware or Citrix. As a consequence, desktop virtualization and application remoting enjoyed only very limited attention at this event.
But still, there were some interesting statements a majority of speakers and attendees agreed to.
This all culminated in the generally accepted statement that conventional Windows applications will disappear during the next five years. A majority of speakers and attendees shared the opinion that ALL Windows apps will be replaced by web apps, Google apps, Adobe Flash and Silverlight by the end of this 5-year period. During a panel discussion, I was the only person on stage that didn’t believe this – which was an interesting situation for me. This was a sharp contrast to so many Terminal Server, Citrix and Virtual Desktop events I attended during the last months.
I can tell you quite frankly, this bold statement made by a group of datacenter experts made me think about my own future. Will Microsoft Windows and all UNIX/Linux-based desktop operating systems disappear because they are not required anymore as a common application runtime environment? If all applications are rich web apps (AJAX), Google apps, Flash apps or Silverlight apps, there is no need for remoting conventional Windows applications.
After thinking about this issue for a couple of weeks now, I came to the conclusion that I still don’t believe in this scenario. Now you may say “Sure, he doesn’t believe it, he’s a Microsoft RDS and Citrix XenApp guy. What’d you expect?” But here’s why I’m not a believer in such a drastic move when it comes to apps:
The thing is, if there are local Windows apps, there’s a market for remoting such Windows apps. At this stage I wonder if Microsoft plans to combine Remote Desktop Services and their Azure platform; I mean beyond remote access to your home PC through Live Mesh. Wouldn’t it be cool if we had the opportunity to just install the Windows apps we happen to have valid licenses for in the cloud? Being able to install a hosted Microsoft Office on Azure would be a perfect completion of Microsoft Online Services including Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communicator and Live Meeting. This is what I would call “Instant Cloud” as all components are available today.
Last week I have been speaking at BASTA!, a major developer conference in Germany with 700 attendees and speakers. I attended several dev sessions and talked to a couple of community leaders. My own session was about optimizing code for virtual desktops.
There were some real surprises for me. First of all, the worlds of IT professionals and developers seem to reside in two different galaxies. There were sessions where the speakers made the clear statement that Win32 and .NET WinForms applications are outdated and that applications based on Windows Presentation Foundation are the new standard. When looking at my customer base, the world I live in is very different. Another speaker complained that he developed a beautiful Web-based application and his customer decided to run it through a Citrix XenApp environment and a published browser. He said that the performance was brilliant in his local development environment, but in his customer’s production environment it really sucks. Big surprise for him, but not for me. In another session Windows Azure was looked at as if it was the new standard infrastructure platform even if there is neither a final API nor an established price model, yet. It looks like these developers asume that if an app can be accessed on their laptops it is ready for large corporate environemnts.
My session was the only one during a three-day conference with up to ten parallel tracks that covered different aspects of virtualization. Some of the questions attendees asked me before and during my session almost knocked my socks off: “Is terminal services and application virtualization the same?”, “Is it true that desktop virtualization requires a remoting protocol?”, “What is a published application?”, “Can you confirm that Citrix ICA and Microsoft RDP don’t support WPF applications?” or “Why would anybody be so stupid to use a web browser in a virtual desktop instead of using the local browser?”. Don’t get me wrong, these questions came from smart people who do great jobs in their knowledge domain. There was a statement of another presenter that made me really think. He said that he tried to find about how presentation virtualization works so that he understands the impact it has on his daily work, but he was not able to find an adequate article in the Internet. It makes clear that IT pros and developers speak different languages, have different priorities, don’t share the same objectives - and don’t read or understand the same articles.
So what are the concequences? I truely believe that thought leaders in the IT pro world should educate developers about infrastructure topics and experts in Windows development should eductate IT infrastructure architects about how new applications are produced. The two groups should work more closely together as customers and users don’t care why applications do or don’t perform as expected. In most cases, users are result-oriented - and when things don’t work as expected they are disappointed of the IT guys in general. So it’s on us IT guys to adapt to this new world of user-oriented IT requirements.
I’m proud to announce that I’ll be presenting four sessions at the Fall Citrix User Group Norway event at the Dr. Holms Hotel in Geilo, Norway from October 7 through October 9. There will be great speakers coming including Simon Crosby, Rich Crusco, Shawn Bass, Rick Dehlinger, Rene Vester and Alex Yushchenko. I’m looking forward to attending and thanks to the Citrix User Group Norway for inviting me to speak there.
These are my sessions:
Tomorrow my summer vacation is over - and the weather is still beautiful over here in Central Europe. Tomorrow afternoon, I will be heading to Lingen in the northern part of Germany. On Saturday I will be speaking at a cool community event organized by Nikki Wruck. He brings together some of Germany’s best technology experts speaking about stuff that is interesting for IT professionals and developers. My session is titled “Windows, applications and multimedia through thin wires - remoting protocols in detail”. If you want to know more, see http://www.ice-lingen.de (in German).
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