This is the second post in a series of articles articles where the goal is to create the optimal workstation for us consultants. In the first post Why I ditched XenClient for Hyper-V Part I we highlighted the missing features and bugs in Citrix XenClient.

For my setup I purchased a OCZ Vertex 2 180GB SATA II 2,5″ Solid State Drive with TRIM Support based upon recommendations from @shawnbass and @easi123. This is the most affordable SSD which supports 250MB/s read and write performance and TRIM support that is important for good performance. The boot time is now down to less than 15 seconds.

The first thing I did was to flash my drive with the latest firmware and then installed all the necessary drivers and software. A great resource is a website called Convert your Windows Server 2008 R2 to a Workstation. You’ll find an automatic conversion tool and articles describing the different elements. They also have great information on how to find all the drivers for your system automatically.

After I installed all my software I noticed that the new Firefox 4 was crazy slow. There is a new option called FireFox Hardware Acceleration that needs to be disabled.

My Customization :

• Enable Wireless networking
• Create network bridge between WiFi and the Virtual Network to get internet access
• Enable the Desktop Experience feature
• Replace the logon background image
• Enable audio and tuned it to remove the stuttering sound
• Microsoft Update for Desktop Experience Decoder for Windows Server 2008 R2

My first impression after running this configuration for 2 weeks are very good. The boot time is awesome and it now longer matters that Hibernation doesn’t work. I also successfully deploy our corporate image inside a virtual machine. Happy go lucky.

I’ve been running Citrix XenClient for almost a year now and it was a great opportunity for me to get a brand new computer because of the limited HCL support. Overall I’m pretty satisfied with the XenClient, but it’s still missing some important features. My computer setup is a Lenovo T500 with 8GB of memory with a standard IDE disk.

The main reason I’m ditching XenClient for Hyper-V is the lack of support and the possibility to get our company image inside a VM. I’ve tested this successfully with MDT2010 in my home lab, but our company PXE service are controlled by CA and internal IT doesn’t support XenClient.

There’s also many other missing features and bugs listed below :

• Sometimes there’s a graphic bug on the hypervisor, only parts of the screen shows up and I need to shutdown the VM’s and restart my computer.
• Hibernation doesn’t work properly. My computer get’s really hot and burns a hole in the computer bag if I leave it on for more than 2 hours. This means its better to shut the system down.
• WI-FI is using 172.x addresses instead of the IP-address provided by DHCP which means you cannot run WI-FI scanners, setup WI-Fi printers, run AirVideo or PlexApp Server for Video Streaming.
• Battery life is worse
• Long boot time
• Wake up from Hibernation takes ages….
• Wake up from Hibernation connects to unprotected WI-FI instead of my preferred WI-FI network
• No GUI for hard disk resize
• No Snapshot function
• 3GB memory limit per VM

There’s probably a lot more things I’m forgetting, but in the next post I’ll take you through the process of bulding the optimal computer for consultants. The setup will be based upon Windows 2008 R2 SP1 with customization to make it look and feel like a normal Windows 7 machine.

What you should do next :

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The biggest announcement at Citrix Synergy 2010 was the release of XenClient Release Candidate. This new hypervisor will change the way we do and manage computing today. In 2014 72% of corporate clients will be laptops. A new energy consumption study by Brian Madden, Shawn Bass, Rick Dehlinger and Steve Greenberg shows that the easiest way to save energy is to migrate to laptops and create power consumption Group Policy.

General requirements :

• Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core i5, Intel Core i7
• Intel integrated graphics GMA 4500, Intel® HD Graphics
• 4GB RAM recommended
• 160GB recommended
• Intel WiFi Link 5100/5300, Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6200 / Ultimate-N 6300
• Intel vPro – Highly Recommended

Hardware compatibility list :

• HP EliteBook 6930p, 2530p, 8440p*
• Dell Latitude E4300, E6400, E6410*, E6500, E6510*
• Dell Optiplex 780
• Lenovo ThinkPad X200, T400, T500
• For a complete list check online here or Citrix XenClient 1.0 RC User Guide

Supported bios versions :

Supported operating systems :

• Microsoft Windows 7 32bit
• Microsoft Windows Vista 32bit SP2
• Microsoft Windows XP 32bit SP3

Warning :

• TXT & TPM are not supported. Ensure that they are disabled in the BIOS.
• XenClient does not support the use of non-symmetric RAM DIMMs

Installation :

Download Citrix XenClient Express, burn and install from CD

Resources :

• Install Citrix XenClient from USB – Download UNetBootin
• Citrix XenClient 1.0 RC User Guide
• Citrix XenClient Support Forum