Citrix VDI-in-a-Box

[neilault]

We have downloaded and installed the Citrx VDI-in-a-Box trial and installed onto a ESXi 5.0 server. Must say we are pretty impressed so far with the provisioning of Windows 7 virtual machines to users. We have just ordered some trial Android tablets to test and see how useable a VDI solution will be on a tablet via the Citrix Receiver app.

Does anyone down in the South West area currently have a Citrix VDI-in-a-Box solution in production? We are interested in taking a look at one in action with more users than we can currently get on our trial. To know of any problems etc...

[CyberNerd]

slightly off topic, but how do you plan on licensing win7 on android devices? one copy per device?

[jamesfed]

May be a little way away for you but we have a setup in Abingdon, Oxfordshire that we would be happy to demo - PM if you want more details.

[neilault]

CyberNerd:

As we are on the Microsoft ESS licensing agreement (which includes the Microsoft VDA license) the Windows 7 licensing is done on the number of full time staff rather than the number of actual devices. From what we have been told it will therefore be all covered.

[jamesfed]

CyberNerd:

As we are on the Microsoft ESS licensing agreement (which includes the Microsoft VDA license) the Windows 7 licensing is done on the number of full time staff rather than the number of actual devices. From what we have been told it will therefore be all covered.

+1 for that - same as we have been told as well.

[CyberNerd]

ok. I was under the impression there was some restriction on running windows 7 in virtual deployments.

[clarky2k3]

I am hearing nothing but good things about Citrix VDI-In-A-Box, does anyone have a ballpark figure of how much it costs, per user, per device etc...?

[CyberNerd]

I am hearing nothing but good things about Citrix VDI-In-A-Box, does anyone have a ballpark figure of how much it costs, per user, per device etc...?

We currently use citrix xenapp and the licensing is per concurrent user (around £125 IIRC)
For comparison I'm now looking at KVM running on RHEV (essentially ovirt). THis is licensed per server socket processor. So far the RHEV VDI solution looks impressive: cheaper than Citrix and uses the SPICE protocol rather than ICA - SPICE can use the graphics card on the local PC and supposedly renders VDI applications much better with less server load. Citrix/ICA would probably be better for remote connections as the spice bandwidth is higher. I know @glennda has been running KVM with some success using entirely opensource backend. I'm visiting a company that provides commercial support on Tuesday and will report back.

[jamesfed]

I am hearing nothing but good things about Citrix VDI-In-A-Box, does anyone have a ballpark figure of how much it costs, per user, per device etc...?

If you use a Linux thin client you can be looking at £180/seat
We have a price of £100 over 3 years with Citrix HDX for the VDI-in-a-box lics
Server is based upon your requirements...we are going to be using SSDs in our next expansion project and I will be posting up details about it when it all happens (within 1 month I belive).

[jamesfed]

I do also hope to hold a open day here at some stage (mainly for Oxfordshire Schools but happy for others to attend) where we would be looking at showing off various things (Site Wide Wi-Fi, Remote Access, Server/Desktop/Application Virtulisation - mainly around how the SSDs are going and other things).

If it happens it'll be sometime in late April/May.

[neilault]

I am hearing nothing but good things about Citrix VDI-In-A-Box, does anyone have a ballpark figure of how much it costs, per user, per device etc...?

We have only been given one initial quote but what we have so far is:

10 to 100 Users - £66.21 + £18.10 support (per user)
101 to 250 Users - £62.07 + £17.01 support (per user)
251+ Users - £57.93 + £16.03 support (per user)

And they are concurrent perpetual user licenses.

Hope this helps?

[jamesfed]

We have only been given one initial quote but what we have so far is:

10 to 100 Users - £66.21 + £18.10 support (per user)
101 to 250 Users - £62.07 + £17.01 support (per user)
251+ Users - £57.93 + £16.03 support (per user)

And they are concurrent perpetual user licenses.

Hope this helps?

About what we have seen as well for one years support - I would go all out and go for 3 years support right from the word go - that way you save a little in the long run and also your software upgrades last as long as the thin clients warranty (if you use 10zigs) and the server warranty.

[neilault]

About what we have seen as well for one years support - I would go all out and go for 3 years support right from the word go - that way you save a little in the long run and also your software upgrades last as long as the thin clients warranty (if you use 10zigs) and the server warranty.

Sounds like a good plan. I am guessing it will be mainly used for now on Android tablets and old PC's turned into "thin clients", possibly with Microsoft Thin PC as that is now included in our ESS Agreement, though that will depend on the Citrix Receiver. It's a shame they have no bootable version of the Citrix Receiver! Then when it comes to room replacements to look into new style thin or zero clients.

Defo need to see it working in production first though.

[glennda]

Yup I use KVM running on Ubuntu Servers for probably 2 years now - havn't had any major problems with KVM itself.

We run a 3 node cluster using HP DL380's and an HP MSA2000FC san. We run an OCFS2 cluster so that all three hosts can talk to the san at the same time.

We use the command line (Virsh) and Virtual Machine Manager to manage our VM's but currently we are looking at other interfaces to manage (Ovirt, Cloudstack, convirture).

Having used ESXI in a production enviroment before KVM beats it hands down.

[CyberNerd]

I'm visiting a company that provides commercial support on Tuesday and will report back.

Just an update on this:

The pricing on RHEV supported by redhat is around £350 per socket per year + £255 per 25 desktops per year + RHEL annual subscription (£50) + windows license.
I was told to expect between 4 and 6 virtual desktops per core depending upon workload. So a modern 6 core duel processor should manage 48 desktops for circa £1250 per year, clearly this would scale well for more ITSuites. Compare this to the nearly £9000 that you would pay for Citrix VDI + the citrix license subscription.

For features; RHEV does look pretty impressive; spice - offload video processing to the client, 512mb disk space per windows client, reimage on reboot as well as the usual stuff like high availability and failover that you'd expect from KVM.