Good morning!
You just woke up after finishing up a tough application migration. To make matters worse, you have a terrible headache. Life as an IT admin is hard; you had a change management window from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., and it was barely enough time. It seems like everything went fine, though, so you can enjoy a quiet day working from home.
Or so you thought.
Things would have been just fine if only you hadn’t opened your email. Turns out that things are not okay. There was an email from your boss informing you that a new project will kick off tomorrow, and they expect a proposal from you on how to approach it. At least you get to do something exciting — prepare a design for a brand new help desk department. And you’ll finally be able to get your hands on the new Citrix environment that you built week before.
You’re still half asleep, so it’s probably a good idea to start your day with a piping hot cup of your favorite morning beverage. Which one is it: coffee or tea?
Tea.
Ahh, a nice, hot cup of tea. Just the thing to help your stress level. Because you did such a great job on your project the day before, you thought about treating yourself to the champagne of tea — Darjeeling. But then you decided that you deserve even better, so you are celebrating with Tieguanyin, the legendary oolong tea from China. Now you’re calm and ready to start your day. Or maybe you should have another cup?
Do you make another cup of tea or start reading your email?
Coffee.
Ah, a nice, hot cup of coffee – the signature drink of IT admins. Everybody has their favorite, but you like all kinds of coffee (just not bad coffee). Maybe you should take your time waking up – follow your daily routine, make a fancy French press coffee with your grandma’s old-time grinder. Or maybe you should start your day with a quick, fresh shot of espresso; you don’t have a time for a French press today.
Which do you choose – French press or espresso?
Espresso.
No time to waste! You have a lot of work to do today, so you decide to down a quick espresso. You pick up your favorite Jamaican Blue Mountain light roast. You need a kick, and contrary to popular belief, light roast coffee contains more caffeine than dark roasts (you learn something every day, don’t you!)
Do you make another cup of coffee or start reading your email?
French Press.
Maybe you’ve gotten up, but you’re still half asleep. You need your morning routine to get your day started right: prepare all the parts, fill the coffee grinder, boil the water, and then wait anxiously for four whole minutes (it’s excruciating, really) until you have the perfect cup.
Do you have another cup of coffee or start reading your email?
Read your email.
Your manager wants you to prepare for a discussion about the design of your new Citrix environment. You are new to Citrix, but everyone you’ve talked to recommends that you look at the Citrix Tech Zone, so you start with a little self-study. Watching short, technical videos and short tech briefs in the Learn section really helped at first. But soon you found meatier technical content in the Design section (you’re especially excited about the reference architectures, which are useful for your planning).
One of the most intriguing concepts that you’ve found is around single image management and the concept of “one image to rule them all.” This is an absolute dream for anyone who has done standard PC management for as long as you have. But Citrix gives you lots of options — and they all look great! You’re ready to dive in. All you need to do is talk to a few colleagues who have experience with Citrix implementations.
Who are you going to talk to? Paul or Michael?
Paul.
Paul is super excited about Citrix Provisioning (PVS). His experience with it has been great, and he’s used PVS to fix some storage limitations (both in terms of capacity and performance). Everyone on his team loves the built-in versioning capabilities, and they found a lot of enthusiasts who were more than happy to share best practices.
You also asked about MCS, but Paul hasn’t used it before. He told you that Michael has a lot of experience with it, and you might want to talk to him. He also mentioned that Martin has worked with both PVS and MCS and might have some ideas.
Who are you going to talk to next? Michael or Martin?
Michael.
Michael is thrilled with Machine Creation Services (MCS). His experience with it has been terrific; his team was able to get MCS up and running in just few minutes, it was really easy to use, and performance has been awesome.
You asked him about PVS, but Michael hasn’t used it before. He told you that Paul has a lot of experience with it and suggested you talk to him. He also mentioned that Martin has worked with both PVS and MCS and have some ideas.
Who are you going to talk to next? Paul or Martin?
Martin.
You finally approach Martin and ask him which technology is better for your deployment, PVS or MCS?
Martin says that he has successfully used both in large-scale (10K+ VDAs) deployments, but that PVS and MCS are quite different. PVS is an active component of deployment: It supports storage offloading and is great for dynamic environments. MCS is a passive orchestrator that mostly depends on the capabilities of your storage and hypervisor. Both are great and can scale to high numbers. All you need to understand are different decision factors involved to choose the right tool for your deployment. He recommends that you look at the Image Management reference architecture, which explains how each method works.
But what if you want an “it depends” type of answer? You ask Martin if there is anything more he can tell you that might help you prepare for your meeting tomorrow. He points you to Citrix Tech Zone!
And surprisingly, yes, it is actually very easy to choose the right provisioning solution. It turns out that Citrix Tech Zone also has a document to help you with this very thing: Choosing the Provisioning Model for Image Management. This article is broken down into three parts: explaining the difference between PVS and MCS, explaining the explicit decision factors, and describing variable decision factors.
It turns out that both PVS and MCS are enterprise-ready solutions that offer great performance and flexibility. And thanks to Citrix Tech Zone, you’re now prepared for your meeting tomorrow! Life is great again. Maybe you should have another cup of coffee. 😊
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