| Citrix Presentation Server With Ardence OS Streaming |
| Tuesday, 04 September 2007 by Michel Roth | |||
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As you probably all know, Ardence's OS Streaming is about having a server installation on a virtual hard disk (kind of like a VMDK or a VHD). A server boots using the Ardence PE boot image and "mounts" the virtual disk as its own. So far nothing fancy right? I mean VMDK disk files can also be mounted over a network (NAS). The key however with Ardence is that Ardence also provides in streaming capabilities. I guess this is why they call it Ardence OS Streaming and not "Ardence mounting a virtual disk over the network" (which sounds pretty snappy also ;-) ). Streaming means that the server will boot using the "mounted" virtual disk but only download the bits that it needs to function (boot). Whenever it needs a bit that it hasn't used yet it downloads it. This of course is one of the drawbacks. The "on-demand" streaming of the right bits causes inevitable delays. These delays are not huge but they are noticeable nonetheless. By the way, don't think that Ardence is unique and new in providing OS Streaming. Wyse Streaming Manager and Neoware Image Manager provide the same core functionality. Ardence however is the most "mature" solution of the three. If you were to compare the OS Streaming landscape to the application streaming landscape, it would be like this: Ardence would be Softgrid, Wyse Streaming Manager would be Citrix Application Streaming and Neoware Image Manager would be Altiris SVS .... Anyway, read Wilco's article here. If you are not that much interested in the technical details but more in the associated architecture of an environment with "Ardenced" Citrix servers, you should this whitepaper by Brian Madden.
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