Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions
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The two server are for Citrix XenDesktop. Each server will have 4 VM's giving 250 users Desktop Sessions (not VDI more RDS). The idea for VSAN/Replication between the two is if one host goes down the remaining host can spin the 4 VM's up so we always have 8 VMs running until the host is fixed.
Is was just going to use XenServer as the Hypervisor as it's FREE and does a lot as @Scott and others keep mentioning
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Oh, @Dashrender is right then, why use shared storage for a XenDesktop farm? Or, more importantly why HA?
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@scottalanmiller said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
Oh, @Dashrender is right then, why use shared storage for a XenDesktop farm? Or, more importantly why HA?
Exactly, why are you using HA? That's supposedly the whole purpose of a Citrix farm, the farm is the HA. Just like multiple ADDS servers are the HA, you don't protect it at the hardware level, you protect it by putting it one 2+ hosts.
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Because no desktop means no sales and one sale could be £100K so we need all 8 VM's running during office hours.
Yes 4 VM's could I guess run all 250 users for a day but if there is a FREE method of ensuring the VM's are there ready to run in their latest state i'll take it
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@hobbit666 said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
Because no desktop means no sales and one sale could be £100K so we need all 8 VM's running during office hours.
But we aren't suggesting that you not have a desktop. We are just saying that HA doesn't add to the ability to have one. It just makes the ones that you have slower.
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@hobbit666 said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
Yes 4 VM's could I guess run all 250 users for a day but if there is a FREE method of ensuring the VM's are there ready to run in their latest state i'll take it
There is, and the platform layer isn't it. You are making things less available, rather than more available. You are fighting the platform. Remember, platform level HA exists for the exclusive times when application HA is not available. XenDesktop already provides a better mechanism. It should be the only one that you are using.
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@scottalanmiller said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@hobbit666 said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
Yes 4 VM's could I guess run all 250 users for a day but if there is a FREE method of ensuring the VM's are there ready to run in their latest state i'll take it
There is, and the platform layer isn't it. You are making things less available, rather than more available. You are fighting the platform. Remember, platform level HA exists for the exclusive times when application HA is not available. XenDesktop already provides a better mechanism. It should be the only one that you are using.
OK understood
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See this is why I prefer this site to others:-
I posted a plan that seemed logical to me and instead of plain "that's wrong" or "or no IT man go home" it has been explained to me my my thoughts are flawed so to speak and sent on the correct line of thought(p.s. another reason for replicating was just to see how it worked
but I'll leave that for the lab)Thx people. Should get back on track on this thread now lol
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Woot!
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@hobbit666 It's what we do
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Things like HA-Lizard, with full platform replication and HA, are great for things that don't do HA on their own. It's super generic and powerful. But I think that most people are shocked to find that nearly all work loads that we use can do pretty insane levels of HA without anything fancy. Active Directory, for example, does HA out of the box by default (if you have two DCs or more.)
Good candidates for HA at the platform level are often simple web apps, but even there there are typically other options if you want ot get the ultimate up time.
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I see another concern about either plan for @hobbit666
Windows Licensing.With a non HA setup, you can assign two Windows Server licenses to each hosts (each license gets two VMs). But in DRDB setup, you'd have to license each host for 8 VMs (i.e. 4 licenses for each) because of the possibility of running all VMs in one location.
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@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
I see another concern about either plan for @hobbit666
Windows Licensing.With a non HA setup, you can assign two Windows Server licenses to each hosts (each license gets two VMs). But in DRDB setup, you'd have to license each host for 8 VMs (i.e. 4 licenses for each) because of the possibility of running all VMs in one location.
Good point (assuming Windows is used, XD doesn't require that as it can do Linux desktops.)
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@scottalanmiller said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
I see another concern about either plan for @hobbit666
Windows Licensing.With a non HA setup, you can assign two Windows Server licenses to each hosts (each license gets two VMs). But in DRDB setup, you'd have to license each host for 8 VMs (i.e. 4 licenses for each) because of the possibility of running all VMs in one location.
Good point (assuming Windows is used, XD doesn't require that as it can do Linux desktops.)
I suppose, but do aren't there free solutions for the citrix farm stuff ?
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@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@scottalanmiller said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
I see another concern about either plan for @hobbit666
Windows Licensing.With a non HA setup, you can assign two Windows Server licenses to each hosts (each license gets two VMs). But in DRDB setup, you'd have to license each host for 8 VMs (i.e. 4 licenses for each) because of the possibility of running all VMs in one location.
Good point (assuming Windows is used, XD doesn't require that as it can do Linux desktops.)
I suppose, but do aren't there free solutions for the citrix farm stuff ?
Sure, X2Go, for example. But if you want ICA and full VDI management and stuff, XD is about the best.
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@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@scottalanmiller said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
I see another concern about either plan for @hobbit666
Windows Licensing.With a non HA setup, you can assign two Windows Server licenses to each hosts (each license gets two VMs). But in DRDB setup, you'd have to license each host for 8 VMs (i.e. 4 licenses for each) because of the possibility of running all VMs in one location.
Good point (assuming Windows is used, XD doesn't require that as it can do Linux desktops.)
I suppose, but do aren't there free solutions for the citrix farm stuff ?
Not really, there are some inexpensive competitors, Parallels 2X is what I used in the past. But XenDesktop is the best in the VDI and remote desktop realms. The management interface is pretty fantastic.
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@coliver said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@scottalanmiller said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
I see another concern about either plan for @hobbit666
Windows Licensing.With a non HA setup, you can assign two Windows Server licenses to each hosts (each license gets two VMs). But in DRDB setup, you'd have to license each host for 8 VMs (i.e. 4 licenses for each) because of the possibility of running all VMs in one location.
Good point (assuming Windows is used, XD doesn't require that as it can do Linux desktops.)
I suppose, but do aren't there free solutions for the citrix farm stuff ?
Not really, there are some inexpensive competitors, Parallels 2X is what I used in the past. But XenDesktop is the best in the VDI and remote desktop realms. The management interface is pretty fantastic.
Ya we have it here. The new gold image in every session is awesome (or whatever it's actually called, I don't manage it).
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@johnhooks said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@coliver said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@scottalanmiller said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
I see another concern about either plan for @hobbit666
Windows Licensing.With a non HA setup, you can assign two Windows Server licenses to each hosts (each license gets two VMs). But in DRDB setup, you'd have to license each host for 8 VMs (i.e. 4 licenses for each) because of the possibility of running all VMs in one location.
Good point (assuming Windows is used, XD doesn't require that as it can do Linux desktops.)
I suppose, but do aren't there free solutions for the citrix farm stuff ?
Not really, there are some inexpensive competitors, Parallels 2X is what I used in the past. But XenDesktop is the best in the VDI and remote desktop realms. The management interface is pretty fantastic.
Ya we have it here. The new gold image in every session is awesome (or whatever it's actually called, I don't manage it).
We use VMware Horizon View here, it is pretty good as well very similar to XenDesktop. Version 7 is catching up and has the feature you are talking about.
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@coliver said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@johnhooks said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@coliver said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@scottalanmiller said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
I see another concern about either plan for @hobbit666
Windows Licensing.With a non HA setup, you can assign two Windows Server licenses to each hosts (each license gets two VMs). But in DRDB setup, you'd have to license each host for 8 VMs (i.e. 4 licenses for each) because of the possibility of running all VMs in one location.
Good point (assuming Windows is used, XD doesn't require that as it can do Linux desktops.)
I suppose, but do aren't there free solutions for the citrix farm stuff ?
Not really, there are some inexpensive competitors, Parallels 2X is what I used in the past. But XenDesktop is the best in the VDI and remote desktop realms. The management interface is pretty fantastic.
Ya we have it here. The new gold image in every session is awesome (or whatever it's actually called, I don't manage it).
We use VMware Horizon View here, it is pretty good as well very similar to XenDesktop. Version 7 is catching up and has the feature you are talking about.
Is XenDesktop a full Windows machine (or Linux) for each user? based off a shared image?
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@Dashrender said in Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 15.10 - Complete installation instructions:
Is XenDesktop a full Windows machine (or Linux) for each user? based off a shared image?
Yes, it is Citrix' VDI solution.
