The Citrix Session: Unpacking XenServer 8 and New Subscription Models

XenServer has been a part of the Citrix family since the acquisition of XenSource in 2007.  It is a solid player in the virtualization market particularly for running Citrix workloads.  With purpose built features for improving the performance of virtual desktops such as Intellicache, Read Caching, PVS-Accelerator, and GPU virtualization many organizations leverage XenServer to host and deliver their Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and Citrix DaaS workloads.

Citrix recently announced that XenServer 8 is now included with their new subscription options:  Citrix for Private Cloud, Citrix Universal Hybrid Multi-Cloud, and Citrix Platform License.  In this episode we discuss XenServer generally as well as these new offerings and how they can be leveraged by customers. 

Host:  Bill Sutton
Co-host:  Andy Whiteside
Co-host:  Geremy Myers

Transcript

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Bill Sutton: Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 1, 64, the Citrix session. I'm Bill Sutton, your host for today, and with me also from Zentra is Andy White Side, Andy, you wanna say hello to the folks.

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Andy Whiteside: Hey, Bill? Yeah. Excited to be on here excited to talk about zen server, I mean. I truly truly am excited to talk about Zen server as part of the go to market with the Citrix platform, using a platform as the key key term, hey? While I've got the while I've got the mic. I'll just do it real quick.

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Andy Whiteside: Zintegra invest in the Citrix community. I had a conversation with Bill and and Jeff this morning about doing some some citrix user meet ups all across the country, you know, just very informal. Get people together kind of thing.

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Andy Whiteside: I think there's a missing void there. But you know, if you're listening to this, podcast. And you need help with a citrix project, you know, advisement on buying the product manage services. And this is where I get really serious on the on the support side. If you're a citrix customer and specifically as integrate customer, but not limited to, if you don't have one of our minimum support contracts so that you have someone 24 by 7 you could pick up the phone and call cause you need help. And

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Andy Whiteside: and you want somebody who's a subject matter expert. And people you get to know over time and really build a relationship with

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Andy Whiteside: shoot us a message. Call me call Bill, shoot us a Linkedin message.

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Andy Whiteside: That's that's what we do. And we want to make sure people know that that's available to them.

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Bill Sutton: Yeah, thanks, Andy, for sure. And and I would add to that, and you may have said this, and I just missed it. But you know, we we are very key on the community, and as part of that is us helping you as customers and prospects get to conferences. And if you're interested, just go to zenter.com slash events. Or is there there? Actually, there's another website for that in there. Andy.

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Andy Whiteside: Whoa is integral.com for its last conference. It's it's my sorry, good.

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Bill Sutton: No conferences. That's what the site is got.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, conference. I I am a huge proponent of getting people. Yeah, we now have the Iltic con, which is the legal it conference. We have hymns. We have Educo Conference, which we wrapped up with Citrix a few weeks ago. We've got service now. Conference which wrapped a few weeks ago. We've got

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Andy Whiteside: We've got a vmware which no longer includes in user compute. Right? So there's a lot of opportunity for Citrix and Zintegra and vmware to partner. We got dreamforce. There's 3 Microsoft ignite. I mean, if you're listening to this, podcast you're clearly a Microsoft a Microsoft shop because you got Citrix, and you can't be a Citrix shop without being a Microsoft shop, too.

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Andy Whiteside: Lots of opportunities for us to invest into you. Therefore we invest in our partnership with you and our partnership with Citrix and others. It's just something nobody else knows to do, or maybe they know to do that is not willing to do.

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Andy Whiteside: It's just an example where we

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Andy Whiteside: we think we can raise the bar.

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Bill Sutton: Absolutely. And it's zentagger.com slash conference. Is the website. Go to the site. And if you're interested in going to these conferences. Let us know. We'll talk to you and and hopefully get you to join us there.

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Bill Sutton: In addition to me and Andy this morning. We also have Jeremy Myers from Citrix. Jeremy, you want to say Hello, please.

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Geremy Meyers: Yeah. Good afternoon, guys, things are well, I'm glad you you did the the podcast. Number. But Bill, I was pretty sure it was 1, 1 62.

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Geremy Meyers: And you're a step ahead of me. There, that's usually something we

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Geremy Meyers: not argue. It's not the right word, but.

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Bill Sutton: No, we always have to go searching for it. But I I just happen to remember last week was 163, so I did the math, and came up with 164. So.

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Geremy Meyers: But but I mean, you know, I I guess one of the important things is, you know, are we gonna hit?

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Geremy Meyers: How many weeks are we in? Are we gonna hit 200 by the end of the year? We're coming up on a milestone.

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Geremy Meyers: So to your point, you know, we do these podcasts all the time. And they're very good. And we're, you know, we're getting up there.

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Andy Whiteside: Con, I call it content with context.

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Geremy Meyers: Perfect, that is perfect.

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Bill Sutton: Content with contacts. So in that regard today, we're gonna call talk about the following article. It's it's entitled, it's a blog article on Citrix's blog site, entitled announcing the Inclusion of Zen Server 8, and all New Citrix subscriptions. It's written by our friend Sridhar Mullipovi.

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Bill Sutton: Who is the G the GM. Of the Citrix business unit at at as part of the Cloud Software Group. I think I got that right, Jeremy. So obviously for those of you who may not know zen server. It's gone through a couple of iterations in terms of names. You know. It was acquired by Citrix a number of years ago. It then became Citrix Hypervisor. Now it's back to zen server and

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Bill Sutton: it's been. It was a separate business unit, and I think technically still, is a separate business unit under Si under cloud Software Group. And it's of it's still available. Still being still being enhanced and developed and now they're they're basically enabling it to be available for customers of the of the the Main Citrix offerings. Jeremy, Jeremy, you want to go on a little bit more detail, at least at a high level, before we get into the weeds. Here.

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Geremy Meyers: Yeah, I mean, so what's interesting about this blog post is historically Zen server, I should say, Hypervisor. So we have had a name change. It was zen server back in the day. Then it became rebranded to hypervisor. With this latest release. Maybe we should talk about this, too, Bill.

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Bill Sutton: Here we should.

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Geremy Meyers: With this latest release. We're actually going as insert rate. So there's been a name change here. But

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Geremy Meyers: I digress. The point is is historically, you know, hypervisors and servers been included with

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Geremy Meyers: C bad licenses, Dad license, Dad's licenses, universal licenses.

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Geremy Meyers: and with this switch to or this this next iteration. You know, zen server 8

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Geremy Meyers: I don't know why they pulled it out of the product and said, Hey, it's gonna be a separate offering that you can go by. Still focused 100 on citrix workloads.

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Geremy Meyers: But.

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Geremy Meyers: man, we got an overwhelming response around customers looking to migrate a lot of their citrix workloads from other hypervisors, specifically vmware to to Zen Server over the last 2 or 3 months, that it has made its way

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Geremy Meyers: back in as an included offering which

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Geremy Meyers: I'm thrilled about because I mean, listen, Bill Andy, I get this question at least once a day from a customer somewhere looking

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Geremy Meyers: to put workloads back on Zen server.

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Bill Sutton: Yeah, we've we've I've actually had conversations with customers. Not just about Citrix foreclos, but also about

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Bill Sutton: you know, migrating from vmware to Zen server for their data center oriented workloads. Now, obviously, this entitlement, I think, is probably relative to the Citrix bits, but customers can still use it right, Jeremy, for full data center. If they buy the right license.

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Geremy Meyers: Well, see, that's the that's the other thing, too. So we we did do an end of sale

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Geremy Meyers: of Zen server as a standalone offering as of with today's July the 10th or June the 10, th

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Geremy Meyers: as of a week ago. So you can no longer buy Zen server as a standalone product. If you.

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Bill Sutton: Okay.

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Geremy Meyers: I think if you own it, you might be able to renew. I'll need to go back and check on that. However. Yeah. Going forward, it will only come as a part of either Cpl.

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Geremy Meyers: The or the the Citrix Private cloud, the universal Hybrid Multi Cloud, or the Citrix platform license, and

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Geremy Meyers: you'll get essentially all you can eat with that license. But to answer your question, yeah, it's intended and only supported for Citrix workloads.

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Bill Sutton: Oh, okay.

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Bill Sutton: Which?

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Andy Whiteside: Which which makes sense right, cause citrix.

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Andy Whiteside: They're not in the business of being in them.

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Andy Whiteside: A hypervisor platform for all workloads, or specifically an Hci platform you got, you know, things like new tanics. Hv. That works works great for that. But if a customer is really looking for a supported, and I'll underscore underscore the word supported, supported, supported

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Andy Whiteside: cost effective way to run Citrix workloads. And you're gonna use things like Pvs to deliver the deliver the the the disk, the virtual desk. Anyway.

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Andy Whiteside: it's it's a phenomenal solution, and has been for years and years and years.

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Bill Sutton: Okay, so yes, absolutely. I I've I've used it. I remember when Citrix acquired it, I took took a couple of a month or so for me to get my hands on it, and I actually converted my my personal lab, my home lab, 2 little looks. Sitting next to me. I converted them over to Zen server 8 before this entitlement came through. And it's working. It's working swimmingly. So it's a a great platform for citrix workloads for sure. Really, really happy to see this

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Andy Whiteside: Bill, I would add that if you're going to do this.

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Andy Whiteside: make sure

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Andy Whiteside: you talk to a partner like us.

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Bill Sutton: Yes.

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Andy Whiteside: And that you have some type of Citrix support agreement with Citrix. Yes, but with a partner like us as well cause you will find limitations to supporting Zen server, not because it doesn't work, but because one of 2 things you've put in a position where it's hard to support it. You've attached it to storage that may not be willing to give you support statements or 2. There's just limited amount of knowledge out there to be able to help with Zen server scenarios.

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Bill Sutton: Absolutely so in the blog article I've got a section here. We've covered the 1st couple of sections that says how to get zoom server licenses, 3 scenarios. So the 1st one is customers who are on prior citrix offerings. Jeremy, you want to talk about that real quick.

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Geremy Meyers: Yep, yep, so you know what. Let me start with the middle column, so.

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Bill Sutton: And fine.

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Geremy Meyers: So as of June 3.rd if you buy Citrix private cloud, universal hybrid multi cloud, you know Citrix platform license, you will have an entitlement that shows up in your my citrix portal for present serve. In fact, you'll see a license file or a license entitlement to 10,000 sockets

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Geremy Meyers: like anything else in life, and, Citrix, you could carve that up. However, you need to so allocate it. However you want, but moving forward anything you do going forward you purchase. Now you purchase in the future it will show up in your licensing portal. I'll point that out, because prior to June 3, rd it wasn't necessarily included. You know, as a part of that license entitlement. So there's a process that you'll need to follow to reach out to your sales team. They can put in a request and actually get that license file created

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Geremy Meyers: and and and put into your licensing portal. The same thing goes for if you have not

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Geremy Meyers: renewed yet, or if you had not purchased new licenses yet? You know again you can reach out to your sales team, and and for a future order, or I guess, for a future renewal they'll put the request in. You'll get a license issued to you. It'll Co. Term with whenever your next renewal is but the point is.

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Geremy Meyers: there are a couple of different ways to get it depending if you've already purchased, or if you're about to

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Geremy Meyers: that being that being said, it is included as an entitlement. Just check with your sales team for the best way to get. In fact, best case scenario.

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Geremy Meyers: You've probably.

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Andy Whiteside: Jeremy, like.

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Geremy Meyers: Last week, and it just shows up. Yep.

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Andy Whiteside: You should, you should not reach out to your sales team.

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Andy Whiteside: you should reach out to your partner, who's advising you on how to do this, especially when you start thinking about adding stuff like Zen server to the mix.

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Geremy Meyers: And and that's a great point. So there! And there's 1 thing I should point out. So you hit on something earlier, Andy, that, I think, is pretty important. Whenever

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Geremy Meyers: you know, whenever you go to download this license file, it will ask you a quick survey, and it's 1 of the things that this, then server promotion asked as well, of course they wanna ensure you're using this for Citrix workloads. Listen, there's no one is. Citrix is gonna stop you for using it outside of Citrix workloads. But just.

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Geremy Meyers: you know, support ability is the big thing. So when you go to download your license file. There is a survey you fill out. It's like one or 2 questions that ask you, what are you using this for? And just to make sure you understand that if you're using this outside of the citrix footprint

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Geremy Meyers: you know you're probably not going to be supported from Citrix for those workloads which

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Geremy Meyers: to your point, Andy. It makes sense to really think through this this motion.

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Geremy Meyers: you know, with a trusted partner, you know someone you can talk through Zentegra. I mean it's in the name they've been doing, not only zen apps and desktop, but zen server

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Geremy Meyers: you know, ever since.

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Andy Whiteside: I run into very mature shops all the time running Citrix, Zen Server, and Jeremy, if well, the reason they're doing it. They've got one guy, one guy only that can support this thing.

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Andy Whiteside: My, my very course, you know.

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Andy Whiteside: curse curse way! To say this

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Andy Whiteside: is course, way to say this, do not run Zen server on your own. Have a partner that knows your environment, because if you lose that one guy that knows and loves in server. You're in a world of hurt. I I'll I'll say something. Let's see if Jeremy agrees. And Bill agrees.

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Andy Whiteside: If I had a choice, I'm gonna put you on new tanics. A Hv. With Aos running a hyper converge solution all day every day. But if it's just not in the budget for running Citrix on new tanics. Then let's talk about.

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Andy Whiteside: Let's talk about doing on zen server. But let's make sure we know what we're getting ourselves into.

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Geremy Meyers: And and I completely agree. I mean, so when we think through a data center strategy, you know, I think Zen Server can play an important part. But you're not going to replace your data center within server. And I think new tanics is where I see a lot of folks going right now. Not not only within the data center, but they're looking to extend out the cloud, but the point is.

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Geremy Meyers: yeah, you need someone to help manage and really sort of think through that data center platform that you you, you need to deploy. So that's an excellent point, Andy.

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Andy Whiteside: Which for me also includes talking to your storage vendor of choice to figure out where they're at with zen server. You may have to find. You may have search really hard to find them, to make a comp a comprehensive statement about supporting it, which might not be a big deal, especially if we can leverage provisioning server and intelligence and telecash, and some maybe some onboard. Ssds, as well as what what are the I can draw a blank here. The the high speed storage solution of the time.

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Bill Sutton: The emmys.

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Andy Whiteside: Mvme plus SSD, I mean, take those 2 things with some caching and maybe Pvs.

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Andy Whiteside: you've got a really capable high performance solution these days.

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Bill Sutton: Yeah. And and I would completely agree with what you said earlier, Andy, around putting things on Newtonics. A HP, I mean a again, it really comes back to what the customers data center strategy is. And and if they, if the budgets there and it, it makes sense to be on a a single holistic environment for both your your modern data center workloads as well as you know, your your Vdi workload running citrix on Zen server, obviously would would play into it if you had budget concerns, or

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Bill Sutton: you know, various other reasons. But again, to your point, hardware support is critical. One of the other things that that we run into is Zen server is a lot of customers. Use it for Citrix foreclos, and it works really well, but there's not that many vendors. There may be a couple of vendors out there that actually, do, you know, full backups like you see in other data center environments of the Zen server environments. So obviously components of your Vdi environment.

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Bill Sutton: Environment can be rebuilt pretty pretty quickly in many cases. But you don't want to end up there. So you want to be able to back up those workloads to be able to restore them easily. And there are some some products that will do that with Zen server. But there's certainly a lot more that will do it with something like Newtonics. If you can afford it.

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Andy Whiteside: It's it's a phenomenal solution that can be very much supported and simplified. If you allow reason and common sense to come into play.

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Bill Sutton: Yes, after that's real quick, succinct way of putting it absolutely.

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Geremy Meyers: And when you think about it, though, like a lot of those solutions that you might integrate into a hypervisor platform for like general purpose data center use. You don't necessarily need, for you know, end user compute

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Geremy Meyers: running on like a Zen server, you know. So, for instance, you know, Bill, you mentioned backups, you know, depending on how you've got your citrix deployment, you know, actually provision. You might not even need a backup like if you're using Pvs accelerator and you're using Mcs and then telecast. I mean a lot of times. This is leveraging local storage, and it's stateless. So I don't really care so much about backing these pieces up, because it's really easy to

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Geremy Meyers: to redeploy. So what am I really backing up? But you know, a lot of these things have become the standard within the data center. Obviously, there's things that you wanna leverage and tap into if you're running databases or domain controllers, or just any sort of application data center footprint, right? That you wouldn't necessarily need on the end user computer side. So it's important point to note, yeah.

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Bill Sutton: Exactly, so.

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Andy Whiteside: Hey? Something that hadn't come up yet is, what about things like that are needed to support the Citrix environment like

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Andy Whiteside: Active Directory, and all those things

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Andy Whiteside: get included as part of the entitlement here to run on zen server.

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Geremy Meyers: You know. I think the I'm not gonna say the limitation, but I think the scope is probably certainly your vdas. You know, net scalar, you know, delivery controllers, storefront. I mean those infrastructure pieces from Citrix as well. But don't think it necessarily includes things like domain controllers. Right? So you know that's not gonna be supported. Cause you're on it, sure, but supported. No, not officially.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: okay, same.

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Bill Sutton: Yeah. And it it indicates here I clicked over to another another article that the the No cost promotion is for 10,000 socket licenses. So I would imagine this would cover just about any customer that that had a citrix environment. They wanted to run on Zen server.

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Geremy Meyers: Yup, and that is socket, not core. So that's 1 1 thing to be aware of. Yup.

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Bill Sutton: That's a lot of sockets. So.

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Geremy Meyers: Lot of sockets.

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Bill Sutton: So this again the takeaway here is, if you purchase

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Bill Sutton: hybrid multi cloud, private cloud, or the platform license, or you have those and and purchase them after June on or after or after June 3.rd then you have the ability to get the entitlement to Zen server just by connecting with your the appropriate zentag salesperson who can help guide you through the process?

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Bill Sutton: so that's pretty much it. Any other closing thoughts, folks, before we adjourn, Andy.

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Andy Whiteside: man. I'd love to talk about

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Andy Whiteside: zen server and the storage

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Andy Whiteside: options. Jeremy, are there any 3rd party storage vendors?

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Andy Whiteside: 3 tier that

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Andy Whiteside: that you feel like

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Andy Whiteside: kind of come to the surface when you start talking about ability to support Zen service.

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Geremy Meyers: Man, you know, off the cuff I don't have anyone that I would particularly recommend

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Geremy Meyers: but I know we do have an Hl. In fact, Bill has got that pulled up now, just.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah.

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Bill Sutton: But kind of the Dale stuff, obviously the matrix. And so.

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Geremy Meyers: That 1st for sure.

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Bill Sutton: Yeah, the major players are in here for sure.

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Andy Whiteside: Bill is pure storage on there at all.

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Bill Sutton: I'm sure it is.

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Andy Whiteside: I mean to me, guys, that's the easiest one you might already have in your data center. It's super easy to manage. There you go handful of pure storage devices.

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Andy Whiteside: And when you talk about 3 tier that might be a really good fit for this. And yeah, the ability to call that vendor and tell them you're running Zen server, and then not to hang the phone up on you is extremely valuable.

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Bill Sutton: Where that was the case. Right, Andy, back in the early days. That it was the

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Bill Sutton: the hardware compatibility list, for Zen Server was pretty thin, and it's grown a lot since then. And but you know, it's not as popular in the market. So you you may find some newer technologies that may not be on here, but a lot of the existing ones who have developed their products like pure and dell and and Hitachi in that app, etc. They've they've continued to support Zen server because a lot of customers are running it, and many of them are doing citrix workloads for sure.

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Andy Whiteside: You know, Bill, I'm I'm gonna

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Andy Whiteside: I'm gonna challenge something. You just said a lot of customers know enough to make it significant. Yes. And, more importantly, maybe a few key customers.

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Bill Sutton: Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: Big customers that see the. And that's where I see a lot of times where you have big customers that you know. They they see massive cost savings running Zen server versus one of the other Hypervisor. Now, with the New world of vmware really going to market trying to get them value out of their customer base.

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Andy Whiteside: It just makes more sense than ever.

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Bill Sutton: Yeah, I mean, when I I go back to. When I joined Zentagra 5 and a half years ago, we we had some conversations about zen server, but but it really kind of tailed off shortly thereafter. Vmware was mostly where we were seeing a more something like new tanics with this broadcom thing. We're now seeing a lot more interest in Zen server, and I think Citrix is, too, which is why they're doing this. I've had several conversations in the past 6 months

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Bill Sutton: with customers that are considering zen server as an option for running citrix workloads. I would say half a dozen conversations in that regard in the past. Since the beginning of the year.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: he before we move away from storage, I wanna talk about the hyper converge technologies for zen server.

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Andy Whiteside: There, there really aren't any at this point. Are there any any Vsan solutions out there? I I.

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Bill Sutton: Not that I'm aware of, unless wasn't there one? Didn't you had do something with one, or did they do? Did they not do, Zen server. I forget the name of it now. There was one.

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Geremy Meyers: You know, I think for a time Newtanics actually supported it.

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Bill Sutton: I did.

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Geremy Meyers: And and but you know that was early on. I haven't seen it in quite some time.

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Geremy Meyers: And what was the there was another one.

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Andy Whiteside: So here's the story that the way I can say it is like Citrix went out and actually found a technology. That kind of made Zen server hyper converge, but that's about the time the partnership with Newtonics kicked off.

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Andy Whiteside: and citrus kind of backed off of that. And then was it. Store magic I used to work with. They were

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Andy Whiteside: built something for Zen Server, and the truth is, it never evolved but at the same time, that is because if you're using provisioning services and taking advantage of provisioning services appropriately, or if you're using machine creation services appropriately, you don't necessarily need it for just what I'm gonna call dumb old desktop workloads.

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Bill Sutton: Right.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah. These guys didn't have it because it was something store. Magic didn't eventually do it because it it wasn't supportable because of the way the the way the Zen Server Hypervisor started up. You couldn't guarantee that the the V. The Vsan Vms. Would be there on time.

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Geremy Meyers: I got you. That makes sense.

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Andy Whiteside: I was. I was super excited about trying to make that work back in the day, and then it just fell apart on me.

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Andy Whiteside: cool.

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Bill Sutton: Okay.

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Andy Whiteside: Hey, one more thing to talk about azure stack, Hci, Jeremy.

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Andy Whiteside: where is citrix at? And we can make this whole. Other. Podcast I'd love to see a blog on this. But where is Citrix at with the ability to support azure stack.

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Geremy Meyers: I think it is supported now, actually, so put me on the spot here. So let me let me look this up real quick. But

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Geremy Meyers: I do have customers that are exploring it now, and considering it

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Geremy Meyers: does require daz licensing, because again, it's tapping into the the azure Api as opposed to Hyperv Center. That sort of thing. But it's been supported for a bit. Here.

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Geremy Meyers: talk amongst yourselves while I'll pull this up.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, I was under the impression citrix wasn't supporting it yet, but as but Avd was supporting it. If Citrix is supporting, and that's a whole. Another conversation, Bill. We gotta add to those presentations we plan to do.

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Bill Sutton: Absolutely.

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Andy Whiteside: So for our listeners, azure stack Hci is an on-premise

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Andy Whiteside: connection that extends Microsoft azure their I as offering

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Andy Whiteside: into private locations, including partner data center like ours customer data center and it enables you to take azure and extend it. But get the benefits of running local workloads

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Andy Whiteside: wherever you need to. Not necessarily in the public cloud.

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Bill Sutton: To Andy, do you know? And I'm gonna put you on the spot here and see if you do, you probably do. Does that include multi-session today?

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Andy Whiteside: I believe that because it's azure it does. But we definitely need Microsoft to give us a true answer to that.

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Andy Whiteside: I've talked to some guys that are in the no big time over there, and they say it does. But to get official sports statement while you're looking at for right now. I don't know that I've ever heard that officially. Sit.

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Bill Sutton: Okay.

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Bill Sutton: well, we'll we'll look it up or talk to some folks and and get back on that. It does say, here supported deployment. When is it? 11 multi session.

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Andy Whiteside: Okay, there, you go.

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Bill Sutton: With Avd, so I would imagine if Citrix supports that ultimately, if they don't already, then

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Bill Sutton: it's gonna be able. It's gonna they're gonna be able to leverage after stack Hci. The question, though, would be, how I guess it would leverage it would like. Jeremy said it would leverage the

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Bill Sutton: the framework and the Apis that azure in the azure cloud in order to push the

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Bill Sutton: the images down to azure stack. Hci. I don't know

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, for sure.

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Geremy Meyers: So it looks like Citrix has supported this for

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Geremy Meyers: at least a year. Now.

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Bill Sutton: Really.

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Geremy Meyers: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: So, Bill, you know, we and maybe I should say this in our commercial logo, we're gonna be doing these you know events where we teach Avd abd plus citrix azure stack is already part of that conversation. Need to make sure it's covered as part of the Citrix discussion as well.

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Andy Whiteside: yeah, we love to have the opportunity to come on site with our customers or potential customers. Jeremy, you'd love to do this as partnership with your sales team and and present this overall concept around Microsoft private offerings as well as Avd. As well as Avd plus citrix. So people can really understand what it is. Citrix brings to that solution set.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, but.

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Geremy Meyers: Would completely agree. Yeah.

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Bill Sutton: Yeah. So it looks like like you like, Jeremy said, this has been supported since 2022. Looks like June, and I would imagine that we did a blog. We did a podcast on this. On this po, this, this blog rather back in the day. It's just been so long that we probably didn't remember, but less. It looks like it is supported.

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Geremy Meyers: And even back then Mcs was supported as well. So that's a super big deal.

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Bill Sutton: For sure.

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Andy Whiteside: Alright!

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Bill Sutton: Okay, good. So

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Bill Sutton: any other comments, Jeremy. Any other final thoughts here.

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Bill Sutton: Core article, or anything else, for that matter.

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Geremy Meyers: No, no, listen, so I mean let me let me double down on. You know something, Andy said. So you know, when I

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Geremy Meyers: you know, when customers come to me and ask me around, you know, running Citrix for their work, or running zencer for the Citrix workloads, you know the 1st question. One of the 1st questions I asked is, you know, who's gonna manage this right?

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Geremy Meyers: and if it is the Citrix team, you know, you probably have a better chance of success than you know, pushing that to a different team. Now I know that doesn't always work out just well. But the point is is, you know, a lot of folks are gonna want to stand this up simply because it's an it's an alternative that has been included with your license. You just wanna go do it. But

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Geremy Meyers: and I would take a pause and say, You know what reach out to reach out to Zentagrin and have them talk you through it. Now, I think one thing that's very clear here, based on this conversation. Is there a lot to consider outside of just the Hypervisor. You know there's storage. There's the integration points that

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Geremy Meyers: you know, just to make a thoughtful decision.

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Geremy Meyers: On how you architect this you know, maybe, how you're deploying your apps and desktops today. You know there's some pieces that you're not leveraging today with your current hypervisor. You might not that come natively with Zen server that you'll probably wanna turn on. I mean, you're gonna see some performance improvements simply because you can accelerate Mcs. We can accelerate Pbs do a lot in RAM

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Geremy Meyers: that used to require flash storage that maybe you need to consider how you can take advantage of. So you know again, before you fire this thing up and turn it on, you know. Have a conversation with Integrator here, and let them talk, talk you through the way to optimize it, and and honestly just make it make it hump.

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Andy Whiteside: Yup and and make sure you got a partner who knows the stack is able to support it before you get too deep into it. And to be honest, guys, there's only a handful of us out here that would even begin to have this conversation. Everybody else is gonna try to throw some big truck full of hardware at it to try to solve the problem. And if that's not your Mo, then we can have an open, honest conversation about how you could do it more cost effectively just long as we know what the re real re real reasons for doing that are.

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Bill Sutton: Yeah, for sure. Okay.

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Bill Sutton: thanks. Folks. Appreciate y'all joining today. We'll we'll do it again next week.

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Bill Sutton: Excellent.

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Geremy Meyers: Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Andy.