MPLS alternative
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but then this will beg the obvious question... what's the function of the XenApp farm? Most companies only do this to deal with LANbased assets. So that becomes more of the onion - one LANbased requirement on top of another.
We do it to provide a standard working environment with a standard IP address for all staff when needed, but it's a specialty thing, not where they work all the time. Ours remains LANless and there are good reasons to do that. But if you are LANless, you'd likely not want to use XenApp to do it.
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
going to AWS/Azure would require the gift of a firstborn child, but technically both work.
Yeah whenever i've looked at "Cloud" for VM's we run i've always just closed the browser tab.
Well, I'd assume that that is for two reasons. One because you don't have elastic workloads, which is the sole intended purpose of cloud computing. And the second is because you seem to have a very legacy environment that would feel natural around 2001 (literally, all this stuff feels about twenty years old.). Lift and shift to cloud is a really bad idea, cloud isn't meant for that and those workloads aren't meant for cloud.
Going to cloud in any sensible way requires "starting over" and rethinking your infrastructure from the ground up. Every decision. Every app.
And even then, most smaller companies have no reason to be looking at cloud because even if they design absolutely everything around it, it still doesn't make sense for their workload patterns.
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@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
but then this will beg the obvious question... what's the function of the XenApp farm? Most companies only do this to deal with LANbased assets. So that becomes more of the onion - one LANbased requirement on top of another.
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
We use MS Dynamics GP. So instead of installing this on 300+ computers (then having to update 300+ computers when updated keys and modules come out) we have 15 Citrix Xen Desktop servers that these computers access to get onto the GP stuff.
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@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
going to AWS/Azure would require the gift of a firstborn child, but technically both work.
Yeah whenever i've looked at "Cloud" for VM's we run i've always just closed the browser tab.
Well, I'd assume that that is for two reasons. One because you don't have elastic workloads, which is the sole intended purpose of cloud computing. And the second is because you seem to have a very legacy environment that would feel natural around 2001 (literally, all this stuff feels about twenty years old.). Lift and shift to cloud is a really bad idea, cloud isn't meant for that and those workloads aren't meant for cloud.
Going to cloud in any sensible way requires "starting over" and rethinking your infrastructure from the ground up. Every decision. Every app.
And even then, most smaller companies have no reason to be looking at cloud because even if they design absolutely everything around it, it still doesn't make sense for their workload patterns.
I.e. this isn't for Azure or AWS, but more for something like Vultr, or as already mentioned Colo
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@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
... what's the function of the XenApp farm? Most companies only do this to deal with LANbased assets. So that becomes more of the onion - one LANbased requirement on top of another.
It hosts dynamics GP
We run it over Citrix as installing the "Fat" client on all the machines and then updating them when module updates/license updates come in. It's simpler to do this on 15 servers not 300 devices. also means only 15 machines are accessing SQL -
@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
but then this will beg the obvious question... what's the function of the XenApp farm? Most companies only do this to deal with LANbased assets. So that becomes more of the onion - one LANbased requirement on top of another.
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
We use MS Dynamics GP. So instead of installing this on 300+ computers (then having to update 300+ computers when updated keys and modules come out) we have 15 Citrix Xen Desktop servers that these computers access to get onto the GP stuff.
MS Dynamics GP is such utter garbage. I'd rather support Quickbooks, and you all know how much I love Quickbooks.
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@travisdh1 said in MPLS alternative:
@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
but then this will beg the obvious question... what's the function of the XenApp farm? Most companies only do this to deal with LANbased assets. So that becomes more of the onion - one LANbased requirement on top of another.
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
We use MS Dynamics GP. So instead of installing this on 300+ computers (then having to update 300+ computers when updated keys and modules come out) we have 15 Citrix Xen Desktop servers that these computers access to get onto the GP stuff.
MS Dynamics GP is such utter garbage. I'd rather support Quickbooks, and you all know how much I love Quickbooks.
wow
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@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
but then this will beg the obvious question... what's the function of the XenApp farm? Most companies only do this to deal with LANbased assets. So that becomes more of the onion - one LANbased requirement on top of another.
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
We use MS Dynamics GP. So instead of installing this on 300+ computers (then having to update 300+ computers when updated keys and modules come out) we have 15 Citrix Xen Desktop servers that these computers access to get onto the GP stuff.
Ah, legacy client/server crap.
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@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
going to AWS/Azure would require the gift of a firstborn child, but technically both work.
Yeah whenever i've looked at "Cloud" for VM's we run i've always just closed the browser tab.
Well, I'd assume that that is for two reasons. One because you don't have elastic workloads, which is the sole intended purpose of cloud computing. And the second is because you seem to have a very legacy environment that would feel natural around 2001 (literally, all this stuff feels about twenty years old.). Lift and shift to cloud is a really bad idea, cloud isn't meant for that and those workloads aren't meant for cloud.
Going to cloud in any sensible way requires "starting over" and rethinking your infrastructure from the ground up. Every decision. Every app.
And even then, most smaller companies have no reason to be looking at cloud because even if they design absolutely everything around it, it still doesn't make sense for their workload patterns.
I.e. this isn't for Azure or AWS, but more for something like Vultr, or as already mentioned Colo
I like Vultr a lot, but does nothing to improve the situation in this kind of case. It's still cloud.
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
... what's the function of the XenApp farm? Most companies only do this to deal with LANbased assets. So that becomes more of the onion - one LANbased requirement on top of another.
It hosts dynamics GP
We run it over Citrix as installing the "Fat" client on all the machines and then updating them when module updates/license updates come in. It's simpler to do this on 15 servers not 300 devices. also means only 15 machines are accessing SQLYeah, that's the standard use case. To work around a non-business class legacy application that's not being maintained.
There is a Dynamics 365 current product that is cloud based, though. Should not need any of this if the app was updated. So this should be a temporary situation till it gets updated.
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When you say your file less. Is using OD4B and the desktop apps of word/excel still classed as this? As I'm still using One Drive.
Or am I only truly getting to "file" less if everything is online? Like zoho or Google docs -
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
When you say your file less. Is using OD4B and the desktop apps of word/excel still classed as this? As I'm still using One Drive.
Or am I only truly getting to "file" less if everything is online? Like zoho or Google docsUsing OD or OD4B means you're using files.
Correct that Zoho/Google Docs or Microsoft Docs online are all fileless because they are stored in their vendors DB's, not as individual files.
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@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
Basically if Hobbit is going to do this - he needs to get management to buy into a completely new paradigm of the design. which would be great, but a hard sell.
^^This 100%
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
When you say your file less. Is using OD4B and the desktop apps of word/excel still classed as this? As I'm still using One Drive.
That's "handling files in a more modern way", but it's still files. You are literally still accessing a file and dealing with file storage.
With what we do, there are literally no files anywhere in the process (till we send them to file-based organizations.) But even dealing with our partners, we are often able to remain fileless because of sharing mechanisms that we can leverage.
We have nothing like OneDrive because we don't have files to put in it (as mentioned we do HAVE NextCloud, but only a couple users use it at all and it's for special case large file items, mostly for marketing with big image files that we haven't gotten fileless yet.)
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@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
Basically if Hobbit is going to do this - he needs to get management to buy into a completely new paradigm of the design. which would be great, but a hard sell.
One of my already filmed, but not yet published videos, is specifically for IT to show to their management about why it is wrong to refuse to do what is good for the company unless IT can "sell" them on doing the right thing. Taking the default position of screwing the company unless IT can convince them not to, it's absolutely insane and has no place in a business.
Management should never act against IT unless they have a reason to do so.
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@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
Basically if Hobbit is going to do this - he needs to get management to buy into a completely new paradigm of the design. which would be great, but a hard sell.
One of my already filmed, but not yet published videos, is specifically for IT to show to their management about why it is wrong to refuse to do what is good for the company unless IT can "sell" them on doing the right thing. Taking the default position of screwing the company unless IT can convince them not to, it's absolutely insane and has no place in a business.
Management should never act against IT unless they have a reason to do so.
I can't wait to see this video. I'm not sure I would intentionally show any of your videos to my management for fear of them feeling stupid and retaliating on me.
I am lucky, I do have one person, perhaps two that help run other companies that I have little/no risk in showing them and getting their feedback on your yet to be released video to see what their reaction will be.
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@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
With what we do, there are literally no files anywhere in the process (till we send them to file-based organizations.) But even dealing with our partners, we are often able to remain fileless because of sharing mechanisms that we can leverage.
We have nothing like OneDrive because we don't have files to put in it (as mentioned we do HAVE NextCloud, but only a couple users use it at all and it's for special case large file items, mostly for marketing with big image files that we haven't gotten fileless yet.)
Are you using purely Zoho/Google Docs/O365 online type services and everything is just on their systems.
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
With what we do, there are literally no files anywhere in the process (till we send them to file-based organizations.) But even dealing with our partners, we are often able to remain fileless because of sharing mechanisms that we can leverage.
We have nothing like OneDrive because we don't have files to put in it (as mentioned we do HAVE NextCloud, but only a couple users use it at all and it's for special case large file items, mostly for marketing with big image files that we haven't gotten fileless yet.)
Are you using purely Zoho/Google Docs/O365 online type services and everything is just on their systems.
NTG is pushing as much as they can into Zoho... at least that's what he told me yesterday. I think they are already there for the most part.
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@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
MPLS is the alternative here. MPLS acts identically to a VPN aggregator in a mesh edge VPN gateway design. So on the very, very rare case that you want to replicate MPLS, you simple use the VPN design that MPLS is modeled on.
So there is one "difference". MPLS as a private line WILL honor your DSCP (QoS Tagging at layer 3) tags over the WAN. Historically for latency-sensitive apps (Voice) you could do stuff like Tag SIP control traffic to EF (Expedited Forwarding) and tag AF31 (priority) to RTP (the voice payload) and the CoS to DSCP mappings at your MPLS router would make sure that that if anything was going to drop or have issues with buffering the Voice traffic would "ride through" with priority. When your alternative was a T1 for 500, paying 800 for a MPLS T1 was "worth it" because to get the equivalent experience you'd probably need a 10Mbps Fiber handoff that back in 200x was going to cost you 8K a month or something insane.
Now a TON of people who buy MPLS doesn't realize.
- You gotta tag your traffic.
- you need to CALL YOUR PROVIDER and find out what the priority queues and tags they support and profile look like (or apply one). By default they often just ignore tags.
- In most of the world these days it's cheaper to just buy more bandwidth, and aggregate links from multiple providers, and do dynamic traffic shaping with VPN meshes across them. You can also do stuff like inject parity into streams that have packet loss on bulk traffic, and for skinny flows that you need 100% delivery on (Voice) do things like double deliver the packets (If I've got a 64Kbps voice call, sending that down both the Cable Modem and the 5G connection isn't really a big deal).
What does all these magical things? SD-WAN. SD-WAN is a marketing term for next-generation magic bandwidth massaging router/mesh systems that generally have a really nice central control. Could you do similar things with ISRs and Performance-based routing and DMVPN meshes? (ehhhh, maybe 1/2 of it, but it would cost a fortune and require a damn CCIE to manage)
My employer is a player in this space (NSX SD-WAN, formerly VeloCloud). There's also Cisco Viptela and a ton of other players (RiverBed, F5 networks, HPE bought someone I'm forgetting).
A thing to note on SD-WAN is you can "buy it" yourself, but also a lot of Telcos and bandwidth aggregators will sell it to you (Then you just get a CPE box, and they handle the billing and sourcing of backup providers). There are pro-cons to how much ownership you want of this (PacketPushers has had some strong opinions on why you want to own, but given the savings vs. MPLS if you need to get out of a contract now even a MSP managed one is going to be 1000x better than renewing a MPLS line).
The general trend I'm seeing is people get Fiber if they can, COAX if they can't and then they bolt 2-3 different wireless dongles onto the box and they prioritize the circuits they don't pay per packet on, but have options if things go sideways. 5G having 4 major network operators is going to make wireless be an even player against Fiber and Coax soon enough (AT&T/T-Mobile/Verizon/Dish/cable company in a 5 way bidding war will get fun).
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@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
Exactly. And once LANless, there is no need for XenApp to sit on your LAN at all. You can move it to colo or cloud whenever you want. Ours is in colo and uses zero LAN resources.
Xenapp can be thirsty on bandwidth to the home site with certain apps. I've seen someone hit their data transfer allowance with Comcast entirely using Xenapp (Geologist looking at 3D models all day though).
