Archive for October, 2009
Citrix HDX 3D for Professional Graphics – a quick'n'dirty review
A few days ago Citrix released a long awaited product, it is called HDX 3D for Professional Graphics. HDX 3D is a technology to delivery professional graphic applications (CAD/CAM) like AutoCAD through or with the ICA protocol in LAN (100 Mbps) and even in WAN (2 Mbps, with up to 200ms latency) scenarios.
This technology has a very long history with dozens of code names like boing, pictor, visual design studio, apollo, prism and finally the 1.0 release is called HDX 3D for Professional Graphics (ProGfx). HDX 3D is an add-on to XenDesktop 3.0 and it works with OpenGL and DirectX-based graphic applications which need graphics hardware (GPU) acceleration.
Even if this is a XenDesktop add-on version 1.0 of HDX 3D ProGfx doesn’t work with virtual machines. It only works with physical hardware like blade pcs or rack workstations . As ProGfx can leverage NVIDIA’s CUDA technology it is recommended that your hardware contains a graphic card with a NVIDIA GPU. More…
Citrix Merchandising Server 1.1 – the next cool puzzle piece
One of the greatest thing which Citrix has done – after doing Provisioning server and the HDX stuff – for me is Citrix Merchandising Server (CMS). I have to say I love this new little handy management tool because it makes managing the Citrix client sprawl really easy. Also it’s another piece which really fits into the whole “Citrix end to end delivery center”-puzzle thing.
So what’s behind this new Citrix product with the strange name. In simple terms the Citrix Merchandising Server is nothing more than software delivery solution dedicated to all kinds of Citrix clients plug-ins:
- Citrix Online plug-in (XenApp/XenDesktop ica client)
- Citrix Offline plug-in (XenApp application streaming client)
- Citrix Secure access plug-in (Access Gateway Enterprise client)
- Citrix Communications plug-in (Citrix Easy Call client)
- Citrix Acceleration plug-in (Citrix WanScaler client)
- Citrix Performance monitoring plug-in (Citrix Edge Sight agent)
- Citrix User Profile Manager (Profile management service)
- Citrix Dazzle (Citrix’s iTunes for applications)
and last but not least the Citrix Receiver (CR).
