Outlook and iCloud Headaches | Outlook Daily Tips
I’m hearing from a lot of people who are having issues with Outlook and iCloud integration. Some of the problems are to be expected: rather than syncing your existing data files as iTunes did, iCloud creates a new data file in Outlook and moves your appointments and contacts to it. This seems to create a lot of confusion when the to-do bar is suddenly bare and calendar and contacts folders are empty. The iCloud database does not sync with the default calendar or contacts, so newly created items aren’t synced with iCloud. Users will need to create the new appointments and contacts in the iCloud folders. While many consider this a “major fail” it’s not hard to save items in other folders as long as you use the Move to folder command instead of Save and Close. Meeting requests are the exception: there isn’t a really good method, short of copying the appointment after adding it to your calendar. Because Exchange (including Office365), Gmail, and Hotmail mailboxes are already in the cloud and sync well with iPhone and iPad, it makes no sense to move them into iCloud. Our Outlook and iCloud coverage is at iCloud and Outlook Problems. We [...]
Open-E, Inc. is one of the pioneering leaders and developers of IP-based storage management software. The Open-E® DSS V6™ and Open-E DSS V6 Lite™ line of products enjoy a reputation for best-in-class performance, flexibility, reliability, scalability and return-on-investment and are known for their robust architecture, ease-of-use and affordability. Open-E Data Storage Software (DSS) V6 has been verified for Citrix®XenServerTM (Version 5.6) and is now designated Citrix Ready, providing confidence in joint solution compatibility.
As a part of a special promotional offer from Open-E, two free of cost NFR (Not For Resale) versions of Open-E DSS V6 with unlimited TB of storage are now available for all Citrix professionals. This offer is valid until March 31, 2011. Citrix experts will have the opportunity to work with the powerful iSCSI SAN software and will be able to build shared storage for training and performing demos with Citrix XenServer Version 5.6. Open-E DSS V6 works effectively and offers secure access to storage and straightforward interface to iSCSI SAN.
For more information about Open-E DSS V6 please visit Open-E Data Storage Software V6 on the Open-E website.
How you can qualify for this promotional offer:
The accepted certificates for two free Open-E DSS V6 licenses are:
- CCA Citrix Certified Administrator
- CCAA Citrix Certified Advanced Administrator
- CCIA Citrix Certified Integration Architect
Certified professionals can receive the licenses by sending an e-mail with a copy of one of the above mentioned certificates to certification@open-e.com.
Learn more about Open-E DSS V6 verified for Citrix XenServer Version 5.6 through the resources listed below:
- Citrix Ready Catalog – Product page and Profile page.
- Video – Open-E DSS V6 iSCSI-Failover with Xen-Server (video of a recent Webinar about the use of Open-E DSS V6 iSCSI Failover with a XenServer, available in English and German)
- How-to Ressource – “Open-E DSS V6: How to setup iSCSI Failover with XenServer“
- Press Release – “Open-E DSS V6 is verified as Citrix Ready” (available in English and German)
Write to us at CitrixReady@citrix.com should you have any questions. And catch more partner updates from Open-E and others on Twitter. Leave your comments and feedback for Open-E DSS V6 here, have you tried this solution yet?
Great news for all you planners out there. The session catalog for Citrix Synergy in San Francisco May 25-27 is now available! Why the excitement? This means that you can peruse the session line up and determine which sessions about virtualization, networking and cloud technologies you MUST attend this year to maximize your learning opportunities. There are lots of great sessions to choose from – with more technical sessions, best practices and hands-on learning labs than ever before. And if you don’t see what you need, be sure to let us know and we’ll see if we can still add it to the agenda.
I encourage you to sign up early for the event. I’m not trying to be alarmist, but remember that Synergy in San Francisco last year was standing room only and the Berlin event last Fall was literally sold out. That said, we’ve learned from past experience, as well as from your feedback, and we have enhanced the event structure and content in several ways.
First, we’ve enlarged the keynote room, such that every Synergy attendee will have unfettered access to Citrix CEO Mark Templeton’s opening session and all of the other main-stage activities. We’ve also doubled the number of Geek Speak Live! sessions, since these unscripted discussions and rapid-fire debates among technical experts, analysts and influencers are always incredibly popular with Synergy attendees. And we’re investing more time and energy in the Citrix CTO session, which has grown into one of the most buzz-generating activities of the entire event.
But wait there’s more! Based on your feedback, we are putting special emphasis on hands-on learning and technical best practices at Synergy San Francisco. This year we’ll offer more “how to” and “how we did it” sessions featuring customers, tech alliance partners, Citrix Technology Professionals (CTPs) and industry analysts. They will share their experiences implementing desktop virtualization and cloud solutions in order to help you be successful with your strategic deployments.
We’ve dramatically increased the number of breakout sessions, and you can search for categories to build the best agenda for you, including: What’s New, Best Practices, Hot Topics and Key Technologies. Just to give you a taste of your options, specific titles include:
- XenDesktop.next: the future of on-demand desktops and apps
- Scaling XenDesktop for the enterprise
- Best practices for using FlexCast to drive desktop transformation
- Building multi-hypervisor, multi-workload enterprise clouds with Citrix OpenCloud
- What’s new in NetScaler MPX and VPX
- Say “yes” to BYO and employee-owned tablets, computers and smartphones in the workplace
There truly is something for everyone at Citrix Synergy, regardless of where you are on the technology learning or adoption curve. Whether you’re setting a virtualization strategy and vision for your company, gathering technical content, or looking to rub elbows with the industry’s best and brightest, now’s the time to make your plans for Citrix Synergy in San Francisco.
So what are you waiting for? Check out the Synergy catalog and start building your plan to attend the sessions that will give you exactly what you need to reap the benefits of virtual computing.
Together in San Francisco, we will be inspired, learn and network!
On a flight to San Francisco, of course!
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working with our product teams to pull together the most compelling Summit content yet. Over 60 breakout sessions to complement our Keynote presentations will help you transform the way your customers value virtual computing, which means more sales for you!
From technical sessions like design principles for large-scale hosting and cloud infrastructure to sales sessions on how to drive greater account penetration through the explosion in mobile devices, we’ve got sessions to give you something new and valuable to talk about with your customers.
If you want to learn how to position and sell Citrix OpenCloud to enterprises, accelerate PoC testing and unseat the competition, or get the most from our alliances with Microsoft and Cisco, this is the best investment you can make to be ready to sell new deals when you get home. And, of course, we’ll show you all of the latest enhancements to desktop, application, and server virtualization.
The registration site is open now! Take a minute to sign up and secure your spot. The session catalog will go live soon so you can pick and choose the most valuable sales and technical sessions for your business. Remember the Hands-On Labs and TechEdge sessions too!
I look forward to seeing you in San Francisco. I’ll be at our Partner Transformation Center – next to registration, so stop by and say hi. We’ll show you how to get the most out of your Citrix Partner Network membership.
Attention New York City area users and administrators…
Just a reminder that the next New York Citrix User Group Meeting will be held at the Microsoft New York Metro District tomorrow, February 17th!
Date: Feb. 17, 2011 (Thursday)
Time: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM EST
Register Now
The goal of a User Group is simple: To foster dialogue and an exchange of ideas within the Citrix community, allowing users and administrators to share information and best practices, hear from the experts, and grow their body of knowledge and expertise.
Agenda:
During this meeting, you will:
- Find out about the architecture and design of XenDesktop
- Hear customer stories
- Hear from a technology partner, WYSE
- Collaborate with top Citrix consultants and peers
You are the key to a successful Citrix User Group community! So come out for some technology collaboration and fun with the Citrix experts.
Attend and you’ll have the chance to win some great prizes!
Location:
Microsoft
1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10104
(212) 245-2100
If you’ll be in or around NYC tomorrow, I hope you can attend! Stay tuned to the Citrix User Group Community site for news and information about upcoming Citrix User Group meetings and activities.
Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Follow me on Twitter
Attention Boston area users and administrators…
Just a reminder that the next Boston Citrix User Group Meeting will be held at the Citrix offices in Bedford tomorrow, February 16th!
Date: Feb. 16, 2011 (Wednesday)
Time: 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM EST
Register Now
The goal of a User Group is simple: To foster dialogue and an exchange of ideas within the Citrix community, allowing users and administrators to share information and best practices, hear from the experts, and grow their body of knowledge and expertise.
Agenda:
During this meeting, you will:
- Find out about the architecture and design of XenDesktop
- Hear customer stories
- Hear from a technology partner, WYSE
- Collaborate with top Citrix consultants and peers
You are the key to a successful Citrix User Group community! So come out for some technology collaboration and fun with the Citrix experts.
Attend and you’ll have the chance to win some great prizes!
Location:
Citrix Offices
14 Crosby Drive
Bedford, MA 01730
(781) 301-8000
If you’ll be in or around Bedford tomorrow, I hope you can attend! Stay tuned to the Citrix User Group Community site for news and information about upcoming Citrix User Group meetings and activities.
Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Follow me on Twitter
Attention Pittsburgh area users and administrators…
Just a reminder that the next Pittsburgh Citrix User Group Meeting will be held tomorrow, February 15th!
Date: Feb. 15, 2011 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM ET
The goal of a User Group is simple: To foster dialogue and an exchange of ideas within the Citrix community, allowing users and administrators to share information and best practices, hear from the experts, and grow their body of knowledge and expertise.
Agenda:
During this meeting, you will:
- Find out about the architecture and design of XenDesktop
- Hear customer stories
- Hear from a technology partner, WYSE
- Collaborate with top Citrix consultants and peers
You are the key to a successful Citrix User Group community! So come out for some technology collaboration and fun with the Citrix experts.
Attend and you’ll have the chance to win some great prizes!
Location:
Rivers Casino
777 Casino Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
(412) 231-7777
If you’ll be in or around Pittsburgh tomorrow, I hope you can attend! Stay tuned to the Citrix User Group Community site for news and information about upcoming Citrix User Group meetings and activities.
Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Follow me on Twitter
At Citrix, we have been advocating virtual computing as a simple and easy, and effective and efficient way to enable “workshifting” – moving work to the most optimal place, time and device.
There was a time when most of us were anchored to the office (place), tethered to the physical workstation or PC (device) and bound to the 9-5 office hours (time). The boundaries were clearly – but rigidly – drawn around where we work, when we work and what devices we use to perform our work. Fast forward to 2011: A recent Citrix survey underscores that working anywhere and everywhere is the new normal:
- 87% of organizations allow working outside of your office
- 79% of you work outside the office one or more days a week
- 98% are “much more” or “just as” productive working outside of the office
- 64% use three or more devices on a daily basis.
As we choose to perform our jobs at the time and location and on a device of our choice, we are becoming the “Everywhere Employee”. Working remotely is no longer something just a few of us do… it’s become part of everyday life for MOST employees. An insurance agent will work at his optimal place – closer to her customer. An executive may respond to his CEO’s request using her Android or iPhone without leaving her kids’ soccer game. A consultancy firm will setup a temporary office closer to client’s location, enabling consultants to access their apps, desktop and data at the new location faster than they put up the tents and cubes! A mining company or an offshore drilling firm will allow their employees access their apps, desktops and data in hostile, unfriendly locations… certainly not your typical IT cubicle. A multinational corporation will set up branch offices closer to where resources and skills are available, markets are growing faster and cost structures are friendlier.
With over 60% of employees working outside the traditional headquarters, these everywhere employees are no longer chained to a place, device or time. They want to feel right at home whatever place they work from, on any network they connect to, on whatever device at a time of their choice. This certainly drives increased productivity, employee work-life balance and customer experience.
To make the everywhere employee “feel” right at home everywhere, she needs a virtual desktop that looks, feels, acts and performs like her physical PC, even over a wide-area network (WAN). Desktop, app and network performance all become critical to deliver a delightful experience for such employees.
Virtual computing makes all of this possible. It encompasses a broad gamut of computing paradigms: virtual meetings, virtual desktops and apps, virtual servers, virtual networks, virtual storage and the uber virtual infrastructure… the cloud.
Today, Citrix is taking another major step toward making these “everywhere employees” feel right at home… even when they are working miles from headquarters over a wide area network. To make this a reality, Citrix today announced an updated XenDesktop Platinum Edition that now includes HDX WAN optimization, powered by the breakthrough Citrix Branch Repeater VPX technologies. For millions of employees who increasingly depend on the WAN to get things done, this is very good news indeed.
Sai
Related blogs:
With XenDesktop 5 Express, you can create a virtual desktop (VDI) production environment for up to 10 users or an evaluation environment as a POC …for free! The XenDesktop Express download includes everything you need plus a tutorial video that walks you through the installation process. (You could also use XenDesktop with Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere as the virtualization layer, but we recommend the included XenServer 5.6).
Then when you’re comfortable with your XenDesktop environment on a LAN, you can try it out on a WAN for free with Citrix Access Gateway VPX 5.0.1 Express.
Here’s what you need…
Product Download
Download XenDesktop 5 Express edition from: http://www.citrix.com/tryxendesktop
This download (filename: XD5_Express.zip) includes:
- XenDesktop5.iso - XenDesktop Controller & Virtual Desktop Agent
- XenServer 5.6.0-install-cd.iso - XenServer 5.6 virtualization infrastructure
- XenCenter.ja.msi - Install for XenCenter Japanese language version
- XenDesktop_Express_Edition_License.lic - 10 user XenDesktop license
- XenDesktop5_Express_Edition_Tutorial.wmv - Step-by-step guidance for a XenDesktop setup
Licenses
Included in the XenDesktop Express download zip:
(Note: Product offers a 30 day grace period until license is applied.)
- XenDesktop 5 Express License file - Covers Controller, Virtual Desktops, and XenServer
- XenServer License - License using XenDesktop Controller’s licensing feature (refer to tutorial video)
Sample Configuration
One or more servers capable of supporting the following:
- Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 servers
-- Desktop controller, 2 GB quad core
-- Optional server for other pieces (IIS SQL, Web Interface*, Active Directory, etc.)
*Note: Web Interface could be included on the Desktop Controller instead.
- Windows 7 virtual desktops (VDAs), at least 1GB and 1 core each VM
Documentation
- XenDesktop Evaluation Guide - Get step-by-step guidance throughout the installation process.
- XenDesktop 5 Eval Scenarios - Review once you complete the installation.
- Key differences in XenDesktop 5 - Find out what’s new in XenDesktop 5.
- XenDesktop Experience Newsletter - Get technical best practices & other info. Subscribe here
More documentation can be found here.
General Info
Phase 2: Access Gateway
Once you’re comfortable with your XenDesktop environment on a LAN, it’s time to try it out on a WAN …for free. Citrix Access Gateway VPX is a virtual machine based solution for remote access to your XenDesktop environment. Access Gateway VPX configured in “Express mode,” will allow a max of 5 users for 1 year. Here are links to the resources:
- Download Access Gateway VPX 5.0.1 Express and the license file (via MyCitrix)
- Review a guide for integrating Access Gateway VPX with XenDesktop
- View Access Gateway VPX Hardware Requirements
- Configure Access Gateway 5.0 for Citrix Receiver for mobile devices
Hope you find this information helpful. If you’ve tried this yourself or there are other resources that you’ve found useful, please share!
Laura Whalen
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Follow me on Twitter
Can you believe it’s the end of January already? It feels like only yesterday that we were wishing each other “Happy New Year,” and now here we are charging full steam ahead into 2011. Here at Citrix, the last year ended with a bang … and the new year is off to a roaring good start. Earlier this week in our Q4 and year-end 2010 earnings announcement, Citrix CEO Mark Templeton said, “Our customers are telling us they want to simplify enterprise computing, they want to embrace IT consumerization, and they are ready to adopt more cloud services – all to transform IT to an on-demand service.” I love this quote because it highlights the megatrends that are driving our business today.
Industry analysts are also pointing to these trends, with some amazing predictions about the impact that personal devices and cloud services will have on the way we work. For example, Gartner says that in just two years 80 percent of businesses will support a workforce using tablets, and in three years – by 2014 – 90 percent will support corporate applications on personal devices.
The good news is that all you iPad fans can look forward to a day in the not-too-distant future when using these devices is just a normal part of your work experience. It will be expected, not an exception. That’s profound.
So, tell me…what are YOUR predictions for 2011? Will you be workshifting from a remote location (remember when this was called telecommuting?)? Will you be using a tablet issued by your IT department? Will you be downloading your own apps and desktops from your company’s app store?
Do tell! Participate in our survey and share your expectations for the workplace in the year ahead. In case you need a little incentive, each participant qualifies for a chance to win an iPad. Yes! Don’t walk, run to our survey and be sure to take part before it closes on Feb. 2.
While you’re in the “sign-up spirit,” you should also register now for Citrix Synergy in San Francisco May 25-27. Join the experts and network with others to learn how your business can benefit from the virtual computing revolution.
Thanks in advance for teaming up with Citrix on the survey and planning to join us at Synergy. I’m excited to hear and learn from you!
