Saturday, May 31, 2014

E2EVC 2014 Session: Microsoft Server 2012 R2 RDS vs Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop …a comparison

imageOn the 30th of may 2014 I presented a session, together with fellow RDS MVP Wilco van Bragt, at E2EVC (Experts-2-Experts Virtualization Conference) 2014 held in Brussels. At the end of this blog post you’ll find a download of our complete slide deck!
At this edition, the event welcomed 130 attendees from 19 different countries! Wilco and I presented a session with the title “Microsoft Server 2012 R2 RDS vs Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop…a comparison”. The intention of the session was to perform an unbiased presentation and demo to compare both products en both solutions. Wilco covered the Citrix part and I covered the Microsoft part.

We got a full house in the main breakout room.image
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Obviously we would not be able to do a full feature comparison during the session so we introduced the concept Agenda as a Service to the audience. Which basically mend they had the opportunity to choose the topics they would like to see covered during the session. Below is a screenshot of the agenda taken from our PowerPoint deck
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The audience chose the following topics:
- Non-Windows Clients vs Citrix Receivers
- User Profile Disks vs Personal vDisk
- load balancing
- Azure Remote Apps vs Citrix Workspaces
- Shadowing (Remote Control)
We had a great time presenting this session! Thanks to everyone who attended this session and thanks for all the positive feedback we received!
Here is a link to the full presentation
If you have any additional feedback or further questions, feel free to contact us both!
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What is E2EVC?
E2EVC Virtualization Conference is a non-commercial, virtualisation community Event.
Our main goal is to bring the best virtualisation experts together to exchange knowledge and to establish new connections. E2EVC is a weekend crammed with presentations, Master Classes and discussions delivered by both virtualisation vendors product teams and independent experts.
Started in 2003 with just 4 people and after 21 very successful events grown to awell-recognized event with over 120 attendees. Our conference has taken place in cities such as Munich, London, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Frankfurt,
Dublin, Paris, Los Angeles, Munich, Nice, Lisbon, Rome, Hamburg and Vienna.
More info: http://www.e2evc.com/home/

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Microsoft Azure RemoteApp: feature set

The table below shows the feature set of Microsoft Azure RemoteApp as presented in the Tech Ed NA 2014 session “Azure RemoteApp Deep Dive”.

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Source:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2014/PCIT-B342#fbid=

Monday, May 12, 2014

Microsoft Azure RemoteApp preview announced!

Today, Microsoft Azure RemoteApp was announced in the Keynote at Tech Ed NA 2014 in Houston! It is now available as preview in Microsoft Azure, and of course I have already signed up for it!

Microsoft Azure RemoteApp is based on Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) running Windows Server 2012 R2 and (for now) allows you to publish and run the full Office 2013 suite based on Remote Apps running seamlessly on your Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, or Android end point devices! Future plans are to support a Bing Your Own Application scenario where you can “upload” your application to Azure and make them available as Remote Apps. It’s a subscription based model, currently free in preview. The price per user per month has not been announced yet.

I have been able to run some really quick tests, after your request to use the preview has been completed, a RDSH server incl. a complete Office Suite (incl. Visio & Project) are ready!

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To allow an end-user to work with the Remote Apps a separate client needs to be installed. After that the end-user is presented with his set of Azure Remote Apps

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You can expect more technical details on this feature once I’ve done some test-driving!

“…Azure RemoteApp helps employees stay productive anywhere, and on a variety of devices - Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, or Android. Your company’s applications run on Windows Server in the Azure cloud, where they’re easier to scale and update. Users can access their applications remotely from their Internet-connected laptop, tablet, or phone. While appearing to run on the users' local device, the applications are centralized on Azure’s protected, reliable platform.

Azure RemoteApp combines Windows application experiences with the powerful capabilities of Remote Desktop Services on Microsoft Azure – the cloud for modern business…”

More info:

https://www.remoteapp.windowsazure.com/
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/RemoteApp/