Welcome to the Citrix Solutions Conference 2007 Brad Pedersen Citrix Chief Architect and Senior Fellow
Introduction • • • • • •
Joined Citrix in 1989 Wrote much of the early code at Citrix Created the ICA protocol Citrix Chief Architect since 1993 Citrix Senior Fellow since 2004 Lead a team of Architects within Citrix
The Beginning of Citrix Original Citrix Team (Feb 1990)
At the end of 1989 14 members of the IBM OS/2 team left IBM to form Citrix From Microsoft Citrix acquired the rights to MSDOS, OS/2 and Windows source code
MULTIUSER 1.0 In February 1991, Citrix released Multiuser 1.0 which included support for OS/2 text applications Serial RS232 connections to PC Scan code and ASCII text terminals
MULTIUSER 2.0 In March 1992, Citrix released Multiuser 2.0 which added support for MS-DOS text applications From Novell Citrix acquired the rights to the Netware requestor for OS/2 source code
ICA 1.0
Provided access to the Multiuser host via modems and serial connections
ICA 1.0
Provided access to the Multiuser host via IPX and NetBIOS connections
Color Text, Printing
MULTIUSER 2.0 Citrix Multiuser wins LAN Times "The Best of Times" award in 1992
ICA 2.0 In late 1992, Citrix released WINcredible that added support for Windows 3.1 applications Windows GDI Graphics
WinView for Networks In April 1993, Citrix released WinView for Networks which combined all the previous technologies and add-ons into a single integrated product
ICA 2.0 In early 1994 Citrix acquired the source code for a OS/2 TCP/IP stack from FTP Software Citrix acquired the source code rights to a light weight Netware file server Client Drive Mapping
Citrix won "Best of Show" in 1994 at Networld Interop for WinView for Networks 2.3 with TCP/IP
Windows NT License Citrix acquired the rights to the Windows NT source code About 5 Citrix engineers begin working on making Windows NT multi-user
WinFrame For Networks August 1995 Citrix released WinFrame, it's first product based on Window NT
Runner-up in PC Magazines "Technical Excellence for Networking Software" award (Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server won)
The User Experience • Graphics Performance • Device Integration – COM & LPT Ports, Printers, Disk Drives
• Application Integration – Clipboard
ICA 3.0 WinFrame For Networks
April 1996 Citrix won PC Week "Corporate IT Excellence Award" for ICA Thinwire 1, Printing, Client drive mapping, audio, Clipboard TCP/IP, IPX, SPX, NetBEUI, Serial, Modems
ICA Web Client August 1996 Citrix released the world's first web browser client for Window's applications
Microsoft 1997 Agreement February 1997 Microsoft announced that they would not renew Citrix's NT license and that they were creating their own multi-user NT
May 1997 Microsoft licenses base multi-user capabilities from Citrix for use in NT
MetaFrame 1.0 June 1998 Citrix released MetaFrame 1.0 for Windows NT Server 4.0 Terminal Server Edition
Seamless Windows SpeedScreen 1
First Citrix product based on Microsoft Terminal Server
MetaFrame 1.8 February 1999 Citrix released a breakthrough in the concept of application publishing with seamless desktop integration Program Neighborhood SpeedScreen 2 NFuse 1.0 (March 2000)
MetaFrame 1.8 FR1 August 2000 Citrix released a new version of the ICA Thinwire protocol that added support for high color depth and high resolution Thinwire 2 (high color depth and resolution) SpeedScreen Latency Reduction Multi-Monitor Support Panning and scaling Secure ICA
Evolution of the User Experience • Graphics (applications and desktops) • Streaming media (videos, animations, audio) • Real-time communications (VoIP & UC)
SpeedScreen Image Acceleration image
Server
Transmission
Client
Acceleration ON
lossy compression
compressed image
decompression
resulting window
Introduced in PS 3.0
SpeedScreen Multimedia Acceleration A/V media
Server
Acceleration OFF
PLAYER: read, decompress, and render
Transmission
receive images app with media transmitted
Introduced in PS 3.0
Client
resulting window
SpeedScreen Multimedia Acceleration Server
A/V media
Acceleration OFF
Transmission
resulting window
Client
PLAYER: read, decompress, and render
receive images app with media transmitted
Acceleration ON
media redirected and not decompressed
Introduced in PS 3.0
CODEC: read, decompress, and render
app and raw media sent separately
Bidirectional Audio
Medical
Introduced in PS 3.0
Dictation
e.g. Philips SpeechMike Legal
Transcription
SpeedScreen Progressive Display • Up to 15X faster graphics performance – Picture Archiving & Communication Systems (PACS) – Geographic Information Systems (GIS) – Business Intelligence (BI) – 2D image editing
• Reduces cost of delivering graphicintensive apps – Lowers bandwidth consumption by up to 93% – Supports any ICA client device
Introduced in PS 4.5
SpeedScreen Progressive Display • Frame-based drawing – Drawing is smooth, successive without waiting for output bandwidth
• Just-in-time frame capture – Next frame is captured when transmission of previous frame is about complete
• Deletion of redundant draw commands – Map of session screen is used to eliminate redundancy
• Progressive display – Configurable to initially display images with high compression – then sharpen up if not immediately changed or overwritten
Testing has shown that ICA outperforms RDP with ESRI Desktop applications
Citrix Multimedia Virtualization Initiative
VoIP Support • New Voice CODEC – improves voice quality & reduces bandwidth consumption, provides echo cancellation and silence detection
• Working with leading VoIP vendors to address application compatibility with softphones – Cisco, Avaya, Nortel
Enhancements to Multimedia Acceleration • Adobe Flash – SpeedScreen Flash Acceleration does not currently leverage client-side resources; scalability is limited by server CPU
• Continued enhancements for Windows media – New formats and multiple stream videos
• Linux client support • Support for Media Foundation (Windows 2008)
Windows Presentation Foundation • GDI is slowly being superseded by Windows Presentation Foundation • Citrix introduced support for WPF in PS 4.5 FP1 via software-based rendering • WPF applications assume the presence of a GPU – Server vendors are now making plans for GPU support
• Vista Aero is built on WPF – “Glass” effects, Windows Flip 3D animation, etc.
Approaches for Delivering WPF DirectX Command Remoting (Client Rendering)
DirectX Bitmap Remoting (Server Rendering)
Application
Application
Vista
Vista
Client Renders Commands
OEM Driver Graphics Hardware
Citrix Driver and Hooks
Image Protocol
ICA
DirectX Protocol
ICA
Citrix Driver and Hooks
Client Displays Images
Technology vision: SmartRendering Intelligent selection of client-side or server-side graphics rendering Bitmaps & window info Inspect bandwidth & latency
Inspect end-point capabilities
Graphics commands (GDI/DirectX/Milcore)
WEI (Windows Experience Index) 1
2
3
4
5
6
MS: >3 for Aero & 1028x1024 Dell (ca. 2006) 2.66-GHz Pentium D 1 GB RAM 256-MB Video card (a “Vista Ready” PC)
App streaming
MS: >4 for rich media 2 or 4 GB RAM + High perf. video cards
Graphics Performance • Thinwire – 1 Memory and Disk caching – 2 High color and Resolution – 3D WPF and DirectX Acceleration*
• SpeedScreen – – – – – – –
Inspect application characteristics
1 Compression, Queuing & Tossing 2 Compression, Supercache Latency Reduction Browser Acceleration Multimedia Acceleration Image Acceleration Flash Acceleration*
Optional h/w acceleration
Desktop Integration • Seamless Windows • Start Menu • Taskbar • Systray • Quick Launch • Themes* • Task Manager* • Live in Desktop*
Device Integration • COM & LPT ports • Printers • Disk Drives • Bi-directional Audio • PDAs • TWAIN devices • Smart Cards • USB devices*
Application Integration • Clipboard • File Type Association • Drag and Drop* • Folder Redirection* – My Documents – Desktop
• Send To*
Network Integration • Session Reliability • Auto-Reconnect • Network QOS • NetScaler • WANScaler*
From Wikipedia
Security • Access Gateway • Smart Access • Authentication Devices • TLS/SSL Encryption • Secure ICA • Client Proxy • Firewall • Kerberos Authentication • ADFS
Apps
Users
Application Delivery Infrastructure
EdgeSight
WANScaler
Access Gateway
Presentation Server
Users
Presentation Server
EdgeSight
WANScaler
Access Gateway
XenDesktop
NetScaler
Apps
Application Delivery Infrastructure
