Citrix buried VDI-in-a-Box and the Sanbolic acquisition… My thoughts.

Citrix killed VDI-in-a-Box! I got the news from Techtarget.com this morning, although I believe VIAB was already dead and buried over a year ago, so no real surprises there. It has been stated that some of the Citrix products, including VIAB, will be eliminated as part of the recently announced reorganisation. Unfortunately at the same time 700 full time employees and around 200 contractors will loose their jobs as well, of course one hasn’t got anything to do with the other. Citrix also says that some of the products will re-enter their portfolio build-in or as part of an existing or upcoming stack. Some think that the newly introduced WorkspacePod solution will play a role in this. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what they come up with next.

Let me start by saying that I feel for those who are about to loose their jobs, a horrible experience, and I truly hope that everything will work out in the end one way or another!

Updated: 01-03-2015.

It seems that there is another twist to the story, again I got this from Techtarget.com, you can read the full article here.

According to the article, and I quote: There is no timeline for the end of VDI-in-a-Box and the product will continue to be fully supported as part of its normal lifecycle, a Citrix spokesperson said. Citrix will have alternative options available for customers when VDI-in-a-Box ends, the spokesperson said.

Some interesting quotes… 

I’m not a big VIAB user, never was and we all know by now I never will be. However, I did really like the idea behind the concept; it’s simplicity, whatever technical drawbacks it may have had. It’s a fact that, at least for now, they don’t have anything in their portfolio close to replacing it (will probably become part of XD somehow). It was easy to setup, relatively cheap and straightforward to manage, if all you needed was a basic VDI infrastructure that is.

Citrix’s recent purchase of storage virtualization vendor Sanbolic and plans to introduce the WorkspacePod converged infrastructure offering could have played a role in its decision to axe VDI-in-a-Box, said Robert Young, client virtualization software research manager with IDC in Framingham, Mass.

No replacement yet

While these statements might be true, it’s a fact that a lot (smaller) companies are still on the lookout for a simple, easy and relatively cheap way to spin up and manage a VDI. Although VIAB might not have been their big cash cow, it still provided a lot of companies and users exactly what they were looking for without to much hassle. Never mind if the technology used was flawless or not. Have a closer look at WorkspacePod and you’ll know exactly what I mean, it’s far from easy and simple, at least in its current configuration, assuming of course it will somehow be a replacement for VIAB. Here I’m referring to both setups, Moonshot and DataOn, as shown at Summit and the recently released white paper about two weeks ago. If WorkspacePod is going to play a role in the replacement of a product like VIAB some changes will be needed, for now the DataOn solution will probably come closest.

And maybe that’s it, the fact that they killed of VIAB doesn’t really bother me that much, since it was only a matter of time before they would officially announce it, it was already dead, just not buried. But the comparison, or replacement of VIAB with WorkspacePod, is just off in my honest opinion, but I know, I need to patient and stop focussing on what’s out there today. More ‘Pods’ are on there way.

Products that have small revenue or aren’t necessary to the company’s strategic goals will either be discontinued or transitioned from being “products” to “features,”. Citrix will stop selling VDI-in-a-Box and it will be replaced by “a simpler and more price-competitive version of VDI,” said Mark Templeton, Citrix CEO and president.

With a statement like this I’m really anxious to find out what they are up to. It could mean an extra addition to the Flexcast model as we know it today, another form of XenDesktop licensing perhaps, a simplified edition of the WorkspacePod maybe, all of the above? I just hope Mr. Young is wrong on this one. Yes, I had to take that one back, let’s wait and see what they come up with first.

Yes, WorkspacePod… about that

WorkspacePod, integrating the HP Moonshot platform (which is one of the two configurations they showed us), is also aimed at smaller companies. Since, as far as I understood, you are able to setup and manage a maximum of three HP Moonshot chassis, which accounts for 3 x 180 nodes meaning 540 in total. Also don’t forget about the three SL4540 Proliant Storage Servers with the Sanbolic software on top needed to host all core infrastructural services, Moonshot is somewhat limited in that way, depending on your point of view of course. Note that I’m only referring to the m700 Moonshot cartridge here since we’re talking VDI. In Moonshot terms VDI is referred to as HDI (Hosted Desktop Infrastructure) by the way, since all resources are physical and there’s no hypervisor layer in between. But that’s where the comparison ends. They both offer our users a desktop and they both are aimed at smaller organizations, at least for now with regards to the WorkspacePod platform. Moonshot on it’s own, without the Sanbolic addition, can scale way beyond. I think it’s pretty safe to say that this setup won’t play a role in replacing a product like VIAB.

The DataOn solution is different and probably comes closer to being a VIAB replacement, it’s also known as the economy version between the two and referred to as a Cluster-in-a-Box (they already got the names aligned :-) solution as stated on their website. Both solutions, Moonshot \ Sanbolic and DataOn are pre-configured (server) boxes built from Citrix-certified infrastructure and running the Citrix virtualization stack and compatible, in most cases, with additional (external) storage array’s.

Don’t you just love Twitter?

After a short Twitter debate it became clear that there is still more to come with regards to WorkspacePod and relating technologies, we ain’t seen nothing yet. And yes, I had to slightly adjust the article here and there after having this discussion. Although I still don’t feel like I did anything wrong, let me be clear on that, but they also had a good point. Today I based my comments on what I’ve seen and what I know about WorkspacePod and it’s components combined with the announced retirement of VIAB, that’s all. I realise that there might be some surprises up ahead, and when we (I) have all details I’ll be the first to restate my opinion if and when necessary, no problem. It’s just that with all the information out there today (and there is more then you might think) regarding, Sanbolic, Moonshot and some of the other related components and technologies it isn’t that hard to see that in it’s current form it won’t be an honest replacement of VIAB. But maybe I’m not playing fair, I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Mr. @JarianGibson also brought to my attention a company which was queried last year by Citrix, named Solid Instance, you might want to give them a visit as well, interesting. They seem to focus on cloud solutions and DaaS in general but who knows how these technologies will eventually be combined and what they come up with next?

My thoughts (in a very small nutshell)

The way both platforms are initially set up, configured and managed and the amount of flexibility that both platforms offer differs immensely. With both platforms I mean HP Moonshot, being physical, and VIAB, or XenDesktop for that matter, running on some sort of (hyper) converged solution, being virtualized obviously. I won’t go into listing all pros and cons comparing the two, if that is at all possible (would be interesting though) I just feel that virtualization in general has multiple advantages over a platform like HP Moonshot, at least the way it is set up, configured and managed today. They released a white paper (Moonshot) not that long ago explaining how WorkspacePod is build, configured and which (physical) components, like Moonshot for example, are involved. Although I must note that it lacked detailed information regarding the Sanbolic warp drive software.

DataOn on the other hand is different, it’s more geared towards a, all in one, hyper converged solution depending on the product of choice. I’ve seen it in action as it is today but there’s no telling how it might look and operate once officially released under the WorkspacePod umbrella in a few months from now. They offer various solutions today, the Density Storage server and the so called Cluster-in-a-Box, as shown on the dataonstorage.com website, being two of them. They also have a Server 2012 Storage Spaces designed architecture solution available, backed by some impressive numbers. Perhaps not a direct replacement for VIAB per se, but again, it does come close, at least in the way I would prefer. Of course this is what they offer, or offered, as DataOn Storage (the company), now with Citrix in the mix things will most likely change, or at least somewhat.

I’m positive that we’ll see and hear a lot more with regards to the Sanbolic software stack in all this. Supplementing Moonshot is one option, as we’ve seen, but there are without a doubt a whole lot more that they have already thought of, I’m sure.

More Moonshot specific

To be clear, I like the Moonshot technology, I just feel that compared to some of the other options we have out there it’s use case is still fairly limited, especially if we look at smaller organizations with lightweight to medium workload users (again, referring to VDI). I don’t necessarily need a (physical) GPU for example, there has been a lot of discussion on this particular item, let’s just say I agree with Andre on this one. And although all the hardware being physical and on a one to one basis (and that’s probably the most important part) does provide us with an awesome user experience, it doesn’t automatically mean that I also can’t get a better then average user experience on a virtualized platform as well, including all the extra’s that come with it. With Moonshot same rules apply, I’m sure that in one of their future releases, it being combined with WorkspacePod or HP Moonshot on its own, the initial setup process and overall management features will improve making it a lot more smoother to work with and handle.

Wrap up

But I’m drifting here. I just hope that we will see something more simplistic in return now that VIAB is leaving us for good, that’s all basically. Again, referring back to Marks statement of “it will be replaced by a simpler and more price-competitive version of VDI” doesn’t sound like WorkspacePod in it’s current form to me. Or maybe I missed something not being at Summit this year?!

Bas van Kaam

Field CTO EMEA by day, author by night @ Nerdio

Father of three, EMEA Field CTO @ Nerdio, Author of the book Van de Basis tot aan Meester in de Cloud, Co-author of the book Project Byte-Sized and Yuthor of the book: Inside Citrix – The FlexCast Management Architecture, over 500 blog posts and multiple (ultimate) cheat sheets/e-books. Public speaker, sport enthusiast­­­­­­­­: above-average runner, 3 x burpee-mile finisher and a former semiprofessional snooker player. IT community participant and initiator of the AVD User group Community world wide.