As I could not attend Synergy in the US I viewed the live stream of Citrix Watch Live (Citrix TV) in the HQ of Citrix Benelux together with a group of invited people out of the government sector in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, I blogged my experiences and highlight of the keynote.

Read more: Citrix Synergy US 2013 Keynote

In the first part article I explained the current infrastructure and the requirements the organization had for the new environment, while I started describing the project using the biggest discussion points in the second article. In this third article I will continue describing the project using the discussion points Global Load Balancer and Server Installation/Configuration.

Read more: Customer Case: Everything on Top Discussions Part 3

One of the remarks the RDS Team got out was the difficulties IT departments had was the installation of the RDS components. It was unclear which components were needed/required and where they should be installed. Because Microsoft is aiming with RDS is created on the low complexity environments, it will become more important to provide clear guidance of the installation steps. The RDS team reacted on this remark by adding a complete new feature within the installation part for creating RDS Deployment Scenarios. In this article I will describe those scenarios and how they can be implemented.

Read more: RDS Deployment Possibilities

In the first part article I explained the current infrastructure and the requirements the organization had for the new environment. Instead of telling a you a perfect story and successful the project was I will describe where we went through by describing our biggest discussion points and the effect on the project.

Read more: Customer Case: Everything on Top Discussions Part 2

On the 15th of March our third DUCUG event was held. As I was both part of the organization team and also presentated a session I was really looking forward to this event. As usual I blogged my experiences of this third DUCUG event.

Read more: DUCUG 2013-1

Although User Environment Management (UEM) becomes more and more important in almost every company it is getting easier to convince the IT people and management of purchasing the UEM. However there are still people who just see such a product as a logon script replacement, which can also be done using scripting or Group Policy Preferences. I’m not writing this article to discuss or argue about that statement as you can do actually a lot of the same configuration with scripts or Group Policy Preferences for the basic set-up like printer assignment, network mappings and so on. However UEM products offer much more other functionalities like Profile Management, E-mail management, Trouble Shooting tools, Performance Management and additional Security Management. This last one can be a real important added value for lot of companies, but is often not taken into account by the decision to use/purchase a UEM product. In this article I will focus on the security part showing/describing the features available in RES Workspace Manager 2012 (most of those features are also available in other UEM products as well) and provide you with use cases where those features were implemented and created an added value for that company.

Read more: Using RES Workspace Manager to secure your environment

On the 8th of February 2013 the second European APPVUG event (2012 edition) was held again at the Microsoft NL Head Quarters in Amsterdam (Schiphol). This time I was only attending and as usual I wrote down my experiences of that day.

Read more: APPVUG 2013

One of the new features within Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2012 is Fair Share of Resources. Actually Fair Share was already introduced in Windows Server 2008R2 but the feature is extended in Windows Server 2012. In this article I will describe how Fair Share of Resources is functioning, what can be configured and how it works in practice.

Read more: FairShare of Resources in RD Session Host

At a start-up of a project often the requirements and wishes of the organization are sky-high. Everything should be possible and included. Sometimes it just looks like they are ordering a dish at restaurant and ask to add all ingredients that are possible (Everything on Top). Logically when the project is actually starting and/or evolving those requirements and wishes are reflected to the available budget and the current infrastructure/environment, so the goals and targets are adjusted. However sometime everything should actually on top and I participated in such a project. In this article series I will describe the experiences during this project. Instead of using the standard approach I will discuss the biggest discussion points during the project and how those discussions ended. But first I will start with a short description of the current infrastructures and the requirements of the project.

Read more: Customer Case: Everything on Top Discussions Part 1

Although Citrix Resource Manager was not perfect, many Citrix administrators are missing the functionality when they upgrade to XenApp 6.x. EdgeSight is after too complicated and requires more back-end components, while in large companies the central monitoring system is too complex, provide too much information and/or does not satisfy the specific needs of Citrix administrators. Happily this gap is (partly) filled my some freeware tools, where in this article XenApp Farm Health Report and Farm Nanny.

Read more: XenApp Monitoring: XenApp Farm Health Report and Farm Nanny