MGR IT

Citrix have released XenClient, a bare-metal hypervisor for PCs that allows users to run multiple virtual operating systems on a PC in isolated environments.  For example, a XenClient user may run two installations of Windows on the one laptop – one for business applications and another for installing personal applications, games, music, photos, etc.  The two operating systems are kept isolated from each other and the user can avoid having to travel with two laptops.  It can also be used to run two different operating systems simultaneously, such as running Windows 7 and Linux together.

A bare-metal hypervisor can be installed directly on the physical machine that will host virtual machines, rather than needing to be installed on top of an existing operating system.  It offers benefits in terms of performance, convenience and licensing costs.  This type of virtualisation has been available for some time on servers through products such as VMware’s vSphere, Microsoft’s Hyper-V and Citrix’s own XenServer.  Citrix are not the first to offer a bare-metal hypervisor for PCs, with Virtual Computer’s NxTop product having been around for more than a year, but they are the first of the major players in virtualisation to have released such a product. 

The other aspect to XenClient is the distribution and centralised management of virtual desktops.  Virtual desktop machines can be created on a server, called the Synchronizer, and then distributed securely to the client laptops over the corporate network or the Internet.  Virtual desktop machines can also be created directly on the laptop, giving the best of both worlds, e.g. a corporate desktop image deployed from the Synchronizer running alongside a personal virtual desktop created on the client laptop.

At this stage the hardware requirements are fairly restrictive.  The main requirement is that the processor has VT technology enabled and not just VTx, but VTd as well, which is not available on some processors that are VT-enabled.  I installed the XenClient hypervisor on a two-year-old Dell Vostro 1500 laptop that has a VT-enabled Intel Core 2 Duo processor.  The installation displayed a number of warnings, due to the lack of VTd on the processor (and one about the graphics adapter), but the installation completed.  However, XenClient would then hang when starting up, so clearly hardware compatibility was a problem.

XenClient is a product that I would personally find very useful (as soon as I can get my hands on a laptop that will run it!) and I can see big advantages for organisations that have significant number of mobile users.  The ability to deploy and update virtual desktops to machines that are not always connected to the corporate network and to run multiple isolated environments on the one laptop makes XenClient a very appealing proposition.  Given the maturing state of server virtualisation technologies, it is really about time a product such as XenClient was available at the PC end.

In keeping with Microsoft’s Support Lifecycle Policy, some versions of Windows will soon go “out of support”.  This means that Microsoft will no longer provide free security updates and problem resolution for those products, leaving anyone still using them potentially exposed.

The products that will go out of support on 13th July are Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

In the case of Windows 2000, this product is now ten years old and the only option for those wanting to have access to continued support from Microsoft is to upgrade any Windows 2000 systems, to at least Windows Server 2003 in the case of servers or at least Windows XP with Service Pack 3 for PCs.

With respect to Windows XP, it is important to note that Windows XP itself will be supported for a few more years; it is specifically Windows XP with Service Pack 2 that will go out of support this month.  To maintain support from Microsoft Windows XP users need only install the free Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

In addition, Windows Vista with no service packs (known as the Release to Manufacture, or RTM, version) went out of support in April.  If you are running Windows Vista, you need to make sure you have installed at least Service Pack 1 (and preferably Service Pack 2) to maintain support.

The Apple iPhone 4 has now been released in the US and will be available in Australia soon.  The new version of this popular smartphone has a raft of new features. including multitasking, a 960 x 640 resolution display, high definition video recording and a gyroscope.  FaceTime is Apple’s implementation of video calling, though it is only available via WiFi connections.

iPhone 3G or 3GS users can get some of the benefits of the new iPhone by installing iOS 4, which is now available for download through iTunes.  You will need to install iTunes 9.2 in order to be able to download and install iOS 4.  New features in this release include multitasking, iBooks (Apple’s book reader and book store first introduced with the iPad), improved e-mail features and the ability to oragnise apps into folders.

As announced on the Windows Essential Business Server blog and confirmed on the EBS web site, Microsoft is discontinuing further development of Essential Business Server and will stop selling it from the end of June.  The announcement talks about the changing market landscape behind the decision, which sounds like a roundabout way of saying the thing didn’t sell.  That’s a pity, because it is actually quite an impressive product.

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Various versions of Microsoft Windows have support end dates coming up that may impact on you if you use these versions.

Support for Windows Vista with no service packs will end on 13th April, 2010 and support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 will end on 13th July, 2010.  This means that to receive security updates, hotfixes and assisted support from Microsoft, you will need to upgrade these versions to a supported service pack.  The current service pack for Windows Vista is SP2 and the current service pack for Windows XP is SP3.

Also coming to the end of its supported life is Windows 2000, in all of its versions.  In this case, the Windows 200 product will end its Extended Support phase on 13th July, 2010.  This is pretty much the end of the support line for Windows 2000; Microsoft will no longer offer free or paid support for the product after this date and will provide no further security updates or hotfixes.  The only support remaining after this date will be self-help support such as online Knowledge Base articles and FAQs, which are guaranteed to remain available for at least twelve months after the end of Extended Support.  If you are running Windows 2000 on servers or PCs, then I strongly recommend that you upgrade to a more recent version of Windows.

You can find more information on the end of support for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista with no service packs here.  You can find more information on the end of support for Windows 2000 and some information about Windows Server 2003 support changes here.

While many people will first experience Windows 7 through buying a new computer with the operating system pre-installed, it will also make sense for many to upgrade existing computers to the new version, for some of the reasons I have touched on in a previous post.  For users of Windows Vista, there are potentially two ways of going about the upgrade.

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Windows 7 has been officially out for almost a month now and the reviews have been almost uniformly glowing.  Certainly, my own experience, starting from the beta several months ago, through the release candidate and now the final release version, has been very positive.

The benefits of Windows 7 have been discussed widely, though some of them are fairly intangible and not terribly compelling.  What I want to look at here are some cold, hard, real world reasons why businesses would upgrade from Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7.

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Windows 7 has now reached the “Release to Manufacture” (RTM) stage and will be publicly available from October 22.  Should you upgrade?  Or are you better off sticking with Windows XP or Vista?

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One feature of Windows 7 that has been generating a lot of interest is Windows XP Mode. This feature, allows a Windows 7 Professional (or higher) user to run applications that are not compatible with Windows Vista. Application compatibility was one of the major factors in negative reviews of Vista, so this feature will certainly be very welcome.

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Ubuntu 9.04 has been released in the last couple of weeks and I have been playing around with it to see how it compares to previous releases.

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