by Rick Dehlinger, Citrix
Hello my community friends!
It seems like forever ago when I introduced the first round of Silverton projects. In reality, only 6 weeks has passed, but it certainly feels like much longer. Why, you might ask? Because during those 6 weeks a lot of pretty amazing work has gone down, and now I look up and realize we’ve learned so much that we haven’t yet found the time to share!
Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh on myself. After all, we have shared quite a bit. In case you missed it, Joel Piper (@ctxpipes) cranked out 3 “Hands on with HyperFlex” articles, sharing some insight into the experiences we’ve shared while building the on-premises infrastructure behind many of our first phase projects. Dave Brett (@dbretty, one of our newly awarded Citrix Technology Professionals – congrats!) published a 7(!!) part article series called “Citrix NetScaler, Federated Authentication, and Google“. This how-to series chronicles the tricky configuration bits behind the “Citrix on Chromebook” lab which over 100 Citrix savvy technologists experienced at our Summit event in January. He’s even created some videos of the resulting user experience we created, and it’s pretty sweet!
Side note: this lab will be back for Synergy in May, but with a whole new twist. Sign up once the catalog’s published and come join us!
In the intervening weeks, we’ve also made a lot of progress building the foundation on which many of the remaining projects will be executed. We’ve now got the automation framework from Citrix CTP Eric Haavarstein (@xenappblog) in place, giving us the ability to create reproducible workloads and spin up new infrastructure VM’s with ease. In addition, he built us some automation around LoginVSI that makes it simple for us to initiate performance/scale tests and clean up afterwards (see “Login VSI Automation – Completely Hands Off”).
As the team and I got down to business measuring our baseline workload (spoiler alert – we settled on WS2012/R2 and Office 2016 via MCS) we got the chance to learn a LOT about load testing at scale, LoginVSI, and Cisco’s approach to load testing for white papers and CVD’s (Cisco Validated Designs). I know I run the risk of sounding like a fan boy here, but I have to give the team at Cisco some pretty major props – this stuff isn’t easy, and the team at Cisco handle it with a level of professionalism you don’t find often in this industry. I can say on behalf of the Silverton team that we’ve really enjoyed sharing notes and lessons with these guys – we’ve learned a ton!
Now that I look at our progress ‘on paper’ I admittedly feel a bit better, though there’s still so much more to share. Next up on the list is the “NetScaler VPX on HyperFlex” project that Esther Barthel (@virtuES_IT) and I have been working on. The first tidbits of this will be revealed as we approach Cisco Live Berlin later this month, so stay tuned!
Respectfully,
/@RickD4Real
