The infrastructure of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly known as XenDesktop and/or XenApp) exists of several components. Also Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops need to communicate with other components within the total IT infrastructure. In this article I will go through the several components and their communication ports with other components.
In the earlier article How to combine multiple Citrix environments within different domains I discussed the possibilities to combine multiple Citrix environments available within different domains. With one of the solutions was based on SAML authentication, which has the disadvantage that you still have two access points. In this article I will go into more details which options you have to combine such a solution into a single portal.
Read more: Different NetScaler Gateways within a single portal solution
Logically the number of sites is part of each Citrix Design. This topic is also addressed in the Citrix Virtual Desktop Handbook. There are three reasons specified in the handbook which validate the use of multiple sites: network, risk tolerance and security. The guideline however is to keep the number of XenDesktop sites (should we now call those Virtual Apps and Desktop sites?) should be kept to a minimum to reduce architectural complexity and administrative effort. I totally agree on this topic, but next to design environment other factors are there causing that multiple Citrix sites are in the picture which are not designed with multi-sites in mind. Reasons could be the acquisitions/mergers of companies or out-sourcing a business application to an Application Service Provider (ASP). In this article I will focus on this kind of multisite scenarios and what the options are to combine those from an end-user perspective.
For one of my customers I needed to set-up a Citrix FAS environment for using SAML authentication to achieve a single username and password (and providing this information once). To verify that the goals would be reached I first set-up Citrix FAS into my own (demo)environment, followed by a production environment on the customer infrastructure. I did this based on instructions created by fellows in the Citrix community and logically the Citrix documentation. In this article I’m not going to create another configuration article as those are already available. I will point you to these articles and share in this article tips and tricks of occasions I encountered. Most are already available somewhere on the Internet, but it is scattered and not always issue to found.
Read more: Citrix Federated Authentication Service (FAS) Tips and Tricks
In the second part we discussed the steps under the hood for each MCS deployment type when creation the machine catalog, when VDAs are added and what happens when the user session is ended. In this part we will continue with the steps when updates are required on the base disk and more detailed information about the configuration settings during the Machine Catalog wizard.
Read more: Citrix Machine Creation Services Demystified Part III
In the first part article we discussed the first steps for creating and maintaining Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS). We talked quickly about creating the master image, followed by the available MCS deployment type with their characteristics. In this article we will discuss what happens under the hood when creating a MCS machine catalog per deployment type.
Read more: Citrix Machine Creation Services Demystified Part II
Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS) is already available for a pretty long time. Developed as an alternative for Citrix Provisioning Services (and a reaction to VMware Linked Clones). A topic for discussion between the MCS proponents and the PVS proponents. Loved by the easiness to use it, however also not much documentation available about it (because of the easiness??). In this article I would try to demystify Machine Creation Service, based on practical experiences with (troubleshooting) MCS at a customer.
Read more: Citrix Machine Creation Services Demystified Part I
Probably most people would say this is no brainer and actually it is. Of course the type of disks used for your VDI infrastructure matter for the user experience and performance of VDIs. In this article I will do a walk-through of a PoC where we have been required to investigate the impact of the disk performance on a VDI infrastructure.
In the earlier article series Failover (im)possibilities I wrote about the failover/load balancing possibilities in XenDesktop 7.x, where part 5 was about Desktop 7.12. In this article I will discuss the XenDesktop 7.13 and 7.14 release and will also go into a bit more detail what is expected in future releases (where possible).
Read more: Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 7 After the XenDesktop 7.13/14 release
At one of my projects we were discussing the high level design decisions and one of the discussion topics were setting-up the Delivery Controllers high available and redundant. During the talk we discussed the necessity of using Load Balancer appliances in front of the Delivery Controller. Based on that talk I thought it was a good idea to write an article about this topic including my opinion.
Logically we need to start which communication streams are being used to the Delivery Controllers which should be taken into account. Communicating to the delivery controller has three communication streams.
Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) communication
StoreFront communication Application enumeration/ICA file creation (XML broker)
NetScaler (and StoreFront) STA communication
Let’s dig deeper in each communication stream.
Read more: Load Balancing Citrix Delivery Controllers via a Load Balancer necessity?
In the earlier article series Failover (im)possibilities I wrote about the failover/load balancing possibilities in XenDesktop 7.x, where part 5 was about Desktop 7.11. In this article I will discuss the XenDesktop 7.12 release and will also go into a bit more detail what is expected in future releases (where possible).
Read more: Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 6 After the XenDesktop 7.12 release
In the earlier article series Failover (im)possibilities <<LINK to part 4>> I wrote about the failover/load balancing possibilities in XenDesktop 7.x, where 4 was about Desktop 7.9. In this article I will discuss the XenDesktop 7.11 release and will also go into a bit more detail what is expected in future releases (where possible).
Read more: Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 5: After the XenDesktop 7.11 release
On 14 September Citrix released XenApp/XenDesktop 7.11. Each release Citrix adds several enhancements to the product. One of those enhancements is the new functionalities to the Zones component (which became available in version 7.9). The enhancement is a re-inventing of the Zone Preferences in Presentation Server 4.5/5 or Worker Groups in XenApp 6.5. In this article I will show the functionality, the configuration possibilities, how it works (in cooperation with the Application Priority) and if the functionality is fully comparable with the Zone Preferences and/or Worker Groups functionality.
In the earlier article series Failover (im)possibilities I wrote about the failover/load balancing possibilities in XenDesktop 7.x, where part 3 was about what is available in XenDesktop 7.7. In this article I will discuss the XenDesktop 7.9 release (and corresponding the 7.8 release when this applies) and will also go into a bit more detail what is expected in future releases (where possible).
Read more: Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 4: After the XenDesktop 7.9 release
In the earlier article series Failover (im)possibilities I wrote down how fail-over could be done in the past (aka as the XenXApp 6.5 era), how it’s currently can be done (and what’s missing in comparison with the past) in XenDesktop 7.5/7.6, the near future based on current available Technology Previews (XenDesktop 7.7) and enhancements that Citrix could make in our vision. On 28 December 2015 Citrix released the XenDesktop/XenApp release. In this article I’m taking a look if the features available in the used Technology Preview are available/implemented as expected. Secondly I’m describing the (im)possibilities of the Zones feature that was mentioned about a month ago, which was not available in the (public) Technology Previews.
Read more: Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 3 After the XenDesktop 7.7 release
In this article series I’m describing the Failover possibilities within the XenDesktop product based on the server components. In part 1 <<LINK>> I started explaining shortly the differences between Load Balance and Fault Tolerance, followed to mention that one is none for the components. For each component at least two machines should hold the functionality. As the article is about (disaster) failover in the case of two or more datacenters the article continued quickly describing the component, where the past, the current situation, the near future and wishes per component are described. In part 1 the database and the access portal were discussed. In this article I will continue with the Published App/Desktops (aka VDAs) and the PVS infrastructure.
Read more: Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 2
In the first part article I started describing the steps to select a monitor solution for a SBC/VDI infrastructure. In that first part I described the first two steps. The first step is determine the actual information needs, which leads to a wish list. This wishes are categorized on importance based on the MoSCoW principle. After all wishes are known step 2 can be done, checking if there is already a product and/or functionality is available within the organization that can fulfill the wishes. If a product is available you can stop the selection process and focus on implementing/improving the product or functionality already available. If the outcome is that additional tooling is required we can continue with step 3, which is actually the start of this second part.
Read more: Selecting a Monitor solution for SBC/VDI infrastructures Part 2
At one of my customers there were needs for additional insights in their Citrix XenApp infrastructures. I was assigned the task to do a research of products that could fulfill the gap they currently have. When I just got this assignment I was wondering how I should start with this task. After I came up with the plan I thought it would be nice to write it down in an article series. The article series will exist of two components. The first article(s) will describe the process and the used techniques/methods and my experiences of selecting a monitor solution for SBC/VDI infrastructures (personally I think this can be used for almost any product selection, but that’s up to you). The second component will exists of providing more information of three products, which I have looked at more in-depth during this assignment. In this part 1 I will start with describing the first components about the process, methods and experiences, which I have divided in five steps.
Read more: Selecting a Monitor solution for SBC/VDI infrastructures Part 1
In this article (series) I will describe and discuss the PVS components you should consider when creating a PVS design. In part 1 I discussed a PVS Farm, Site, Device Collection, View, Store, Database and Load Balancing. In the second part I will continue describe design consideration for PVS components.
Every product has his oddities, which can be time consuming if you are not familiar with those characteristics of the product. Also XenApp 6.5 has some of those characteristics which are not well-known or not documented well in the Citrix documentation or specific situations I have encountered at customers environment. In this article I will write down situations encountered at XenApp implementations at customers including a solution, work around or the way you should work with it.
Read more: XenApp 6.5 (Troubleshooting) Tips and Tricks Part 1
Just as almost every product and solution PVs can be set-up and configured so the PVS infrastructure is high available. Within the PVS infrastructure there are several components related to the High Availability of PVS. Some of these components like PXE and TFTP are well described in several good articles for creating a High Available solution. However within the PVS infrastructure there are also some components/configurations settings that are not much mentioned around the HA topic, but can have a big impact on the High Availability of your PVS infrastructure. In this article I’m going to describe which components should be taken into account, why and how you could/should use them in a High Available PVS infrastructure.
Read more: The two not much mentioned components in a PVS High Available infrastructure
When configuring Citrix Provisioning Services you will find the Advanced button within the properties of each PVS servers. There are pretty some settings available within this advanced part and when you are going to search for documentation you will find out that not much information is available about those settings, nor about what the setting is about or which value should be configured on which circumstances. When I was writing a detailed design I talked to several people and even those who changes the default values could not really explain why did choose the specific setting. I dived into this advanced settings and what I could find about these settings are written down in this article (as promised in the presentation PVS Design Decisions and Real Life Experiences).
At one of my customers we were designing a XenApp 6.5 farm where XenApp server will be located in several data centers with firewall in between and where we will also use the IMA Worker Mode. It’s clear which ports are used for the communication between the client and server. Although Citrix provides the communication ports for server communications used for their products in a sheet, it’s not fully explained when those ports are used/required for which communication moment. So answering the question for the customer ended in setting-up a small environment and actually checking the port required for the communication (based on using the Windows Firewall). In this article I will share my experiences.
Read more: Communication ports used by XenApp 6.5 (with the IMA Worker Mode enabled)
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.
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.
One of the new features within RDS (both Session Host as Virtual Machine) is called User Profile Disk. User Profile Disk is according Microsoft the successor of Roaming Profiles and Folder Redirection. In this article I’m will show you how to enable the User Profile Disk, how to configure the settings of the User Profile Disk, How it’s works and what the differences are with Roaming Profiles, Folder Redirection and User Experience Virtualization (EU-V).
Most of my SBC implementations are including a Citrix XenApp version and you are getting used to settings and behavior of certain features. At one of my latest projects I was implementing a Windows 2008 R2 RD Session Host infrastructure (without Citrix XenApp). This was not the first time I was implementing a Microsoft Terminal Server , but nowadays Microsoft is offering a nice universal printer driver solution and it was the first time for me that I was using the Microsoft universal printer solution called Microsoft Easy Print.
Read more: Where Microsoft Easy Printer configuration differs with Citrix Univeral Printing
Now Citrix XenApp 6 is on het market for a while and slowly but steadily Windows 2008 R2 64bit Terminal Servers are adopted more and more people are really starting and installing Citrix XenApp 6. Citrix finally accomplished the promise they made many years ago to create a single XenApp console. However this accomplished has caused that some features are moved to another location into the console or even moved out of the console in total. In this article I'm describing where the feature can be found or implemented based on my personal experiences.
Within Server Based Computing environments using Roaming Profiles are a real challenge (see for more information about these challenges in this previous article written by me). However we would like to store/save the user settings for our end users to get a good user experience. For many years the solution was to create a mandatory profile combined with a hybrid/flex solution product like Flex Profiles, AppSense Management Suite, RES PowerFuse Workspace Management, Citrix Profile Management and several others.
During all these implementations nobody doubted on the flex/hybrid profile solutions, but using the mandatory profile has some disadvantages founded out during those years. Think of security issues, using certificates and creating the perfect mandatory profile. Helge Klein wrote several good articles and presentations about this topic like this article about the security risk and this article describing the downsides of mandatory profiles. Personally I also struggled with mandatory profiles in some implementations, so I searched for another solution without falling back to a Roaming Default.
Introduction
When deploying App-V infrastructures in many cases it is useful to preload a set or all applications so the users can directly start working.
Some scenarios where you would like to preload an application
Introduction
In this first article I started with describing application virtualization guidelines and best practices. This second part article continues with those guidelines.
Application Virtualization solves a lot of issues in comparison with the traditional MSI packaging technologies known as application conflicts, DLL hell and many other names. These advantages of application virtualization make it easier to create good functioning application packages compared with the MSI packages. However the process for creation a virtualizated application has several guidelines for problem free functioning applications. In this article I will describe those guidelines and best practices based on Microsoft App-V en Citrix Streaming Server (Profiler).
I will start with general guidelines, which are suitable for all application virtualization products, followed by specific guidelines for the Microsoft App-V product.
This article is final part of an article series about Citrix XenApp design decisions. The starting article can be found here.
Read more: Basic Principles of designing Citrix XenApp Environments Part 6
With the release of Windows 2003 R2 now new functionality was added to the platform. Fortunately Windows 2008 offered a lot of new features related to the Terminal Server platform. At this moment Windows 2008 R2 is in the finalizing phase and in contrast to Windows 2003 R2 Windows 2008 R2 offers a lot of new functionality on the Terminal Server part. In this article I will describe the new features available in Windows 2008 R2 for Terminal Servers.
This article is part five of an article series about Citrix XenApp design decisions. The starting article can be found here.
Read more: Basic Principles of designing Citrix XenApp Environments Part 5
This article is part four of an article series about Citrix XenApp design decisions. The starting article can be found here.
Read more: Basic Principles of designing Citrix XenApp Environments Part 4
This article is part two of an article series about Citrix XenApp design decisions. The starting article can be found here.
Read more: Basic Principles of designing Citrix XenApp Environments Part 2
This article is part three of an article series about Citrix XenApp design decisions. The starting article can be found here.
Read more: Basic Principles of designing Citrix XenApp Environments Part 3
During several project I'm written Technical Design for Citrix Presentation Server / XenApp infrastructures. In this article series I want to explain which parts need to described within a technical design, which considerations should be made and some best practices. Before I start I need to emphasize that there is no default design. Every design is different, because decisions are made based on wishes, needs and request of the customer. So this article series will introduce you to the design parts and things which should be discussed before and/or during writing a design.
Read more: Basic Principles of designing Citrix XenApp Environments Part 1
As already described in the often referred article Terminal Server Basic Concepts article arranging 100% identical servers is the main target of a Terminal Server administrator. At presentation and discussions about this goal I often got the question if this also counts to the installation of Citrix Presentation Server / XenApp. After the logically answer (Yes, of course) most times the question is fired how this should be done. In this article I will explain which methods are available to deploy Citrix Presentation Server / XenApp.
One of most heard jokes of Microsoft Windows is rebooting is the solution for setting configuration changes or solving errors/issues. Linux/Unix and Novell followers still use this story to explain why they don't like Windows. Comparing with those operating systems they are right that Windows needs more reboots, however Microsoft is working hard on this and within every new release less reboots are needed. However it is a best practice to reboot your Terminal Server on a periodical. Almost every time I propose to schedule periodical reboots at my customers even from the Windows engineers I the question why I would like to this. In this article I will explain why it is a good thing to regularly reboot your Terminal Servers.
Because a SBC project has a pretty big impact on the organization and infrastructure I personally think it is was on the difficult projects to carry out. After (endless) discussions about the design and technical obstacles during the build phase probably the most important and difficult process needs to be started. How do we do migrate users smoothly to the new Citrix Infrastructure. In this article several scenarios and varieties will be described how the migration can be carried out.
Read more: Best practices for migration with SBC Infrastructures
Introduction
This is the last article in the series about Citrix Alternatives. First the last two product Thinworx and Virtual Access Suite will be described, followed by the final conclusion and recommendations for more detailed information.
Read more: The alternatives for Citrix Presentation Server Part Three
Introduction
In the first article we went back to the start of SBC technology and why Citrix is the biggest player in this market and described the first alternatives. In this second part of the article we will continue with the alternatives 2X Application Server, Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect and Jetro COCKPIT.
Read more: The alternatives for Citrix Presentation Server Part Two
Virtualization is very hot at this moment. Many companies are considering to virtualization of some infrastructure components. Which possibilities are there concerning the SBC infrastructures, how far developed are these options and what are the experiences with virtualization. In this article we will go through a journey of virtualization with the SBC infrastructure in mind.
Citrix Presentation Server is for many people still synonym with the Server Based Computing technique. Citrix is still market leader in this segment, with a very good product with lot of good features. However nowadays there are several competitors, which also have nice products that can be considered. In this article we will take a look into the SBC market and which products are out there competing with Citrix.
Read more: The alternatives for Citrix Presentation Server Part One
As long as Terminal Servers exists printing is still one of the biggest challenges in administrating a Server Based Computing environment. To solve these problems several manufacturers developed printing products. The basis of these products is a so called Universal Printer Driver. But what's universal in this driver? In this article I will explain that the differences between the Universal Printer Drivers available and some of the key features in the several universal printing products.
Managing Printer Drivers
Still one of the greatest challenges in Terminal Server environments are the printer drivers. In this article I will describe how you can manage your pinter drivers in such a way you can beat the challenge.
Introduction
In the bigger companies IT tasks are often divided between several departments or persons. For example you have a helpdesk department, department for workstations/front-end and a department for the back-end infrastructure. Often there is also a segmentation based on the specialty. For example a group for UNIX based platform, Windows based platform, Network infrastructure (routers, switches), legacy systems and etcetera.
The Citrix Presentation server environment is often difficult to place into this deviation of IT tasks. Strictly seen the Citrix servers can be seen as a front end environment, because users are directly working on these servers. But as I also called them servers, they could also be counted as back-end infrastructure. Additional the maintenance and management tasks for the Citrix servers are pretty complex in comparison with a normal fat client. On the other hand there are also couples of tasks which are to easy to carried out by the back-end department.
The most important part of IT is providing your customer/users with a IT infrastructure were they can do their work without any disturbances. In some other words pleased and happy users (of your customer). In this article I will describe how you can use Flex Profile Kit to migrate user settings in such a way the implementation of a new system will be carried out smoothly out of the user eyes.
This article was originally posted on LoginConsultants.com
In Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 the most impressive feature is the Citrix Streaming Server (formerly known as Project Tarpon). Citrix Streaming Server introduces Application Streaming to the Citrix portfolio. A Citrix Presentation can be both the Streaming Server (so workstations can stream applications from the Presentation Server) as the streaming client (application will be streamed to the Citrix Presentation Server). With the Streaming Server there is a possibility to use application in offline mode (the application is streamed to the workstation and can be used without any network connection).
In bigger Terminal Server environment Citrix is almost equivalent to the words Terminal Server and Server Based Computing. Logically because Citrix is the founder of Server Based Computing techniques based on OS2 and later on the Windows platform.
Nowadays Citrix is not the only supplier offering Server Based Computing products anymore. Actually more and more manufactures are entering this market, so the choice of a SBC product is getting more and more complicated.
Claudio already wrote a nice article called To Citrix or Not to Citrix.
In this article we will be going one step further by discussing which components should be considered if you are would like to build a SBC infrastructure for your environment.
Introduction
On a Terminal Server lots of applications are installed on one single server. Probably there are more applications available on the server then a single user needs to have access to. Because of license issues and confidential data companies would like to guarantee that users only use the applications they need for their daily work. In this article I'm going to describe how access to your applications can be secured within a Terminal Server infrastructure.
Introduction
This article is the sequence of the already published article Best Freeware Tools for your TS Infrastructure Part 1.
In part 1 the best freeware tools are described for Published Applications, Web Interface and CPU and Memory Management. Also tools Provided by Citrix and Microsoft themselves are mentioned. In Part this article I continue with the best freeware tools for the subjects Security, Troubleshooting, Policies, Profiles, Softgrid and more.
Read more: The best Freeware Tools for your Terminal Server Infrastructure. Part 2
Introduction
In Citrix Metaframe XP Feature Release 2 Citrix has introduced content redirection. Content redirection can be divided in two parts.
This article will describe in detail the second part of the content redirection named Client to Server content redirection. First I will describe the requirements, followed by the standard configuration of Client to Server Redirection. Also this article will contain a paragraph about troubleshooting and last but not least I will describe a solution that will allow you to tweak Client to Server redirection.
Introduction
Almost everyone is using freeware tools, just to make the configuration, administration or management of his infrastructure easier.
First let me mention that Microsoft and Citrix supply you with lot of tools in their product to help you troubleshoot your environment.
Read more: The best Freeware Tools for your Terminal Server Infrastructure. Part 1
Profile problems??
Profile problems?? No, we never have problems with our profiles. This is almost the standard answer I got when asking “Do you problems with your profiles?” to customers or some system administrator at an event, when they are telling me about some strange problems.
So why writing an article about profile challenges if there are no profile problems?
Because when discussing on and asking more questions….the answers are coming:
Sometime users get an error when launching Outlook,
Some users can not start application X anymore,
User Y can not print from one Printer since a week
When user X logs in it takes almost two minute….. and those problems are not solved easy!
Sounds familiar? How do you solve this kind of problems?
Probably at last you delete the users profile and every runs fine again.
The same question again: Are there some profile problems?
Yes, it is clear there are absolutely some profile challenges.
One of the main challenges in the Terminal Server environment is the high usage of resources like the CPU. In this article we are going to take a look which causes this high usage and what you can do about it to control the resource usage.
One of the biggest challenges in Terminal Server environments are printer related topics, where the drivers challenge is the main part of it. A lot of third party manufactures developed products to beat these challenges. Are these third party products useful to use for the printer challenge?
Read more: Can third party software solve your Terminal Server printing problems?
The main part of the IT professionals thinks Terminal Servers are complex and difficult to administrator. This feeling will be fanned by stories where users are complaining about the performance, strange behavior and so on. This article will describe the basic concepts op Terminal Server Environments. When adopting these concepts in your environment will result in an easy manageable terminal server farm.
Introduction to Windows 2003 Group Policy Objects
Within Windows 2003 Server Microsoft has added several new Group Policy Objects (GPO) settings to their product. The Terminal Server object is one of the subjects which got a lot of new settings. Before Windows 2003 Server you needed to configure your specific RDP settings via the Terminal Services Configuration on each server individually, but now Microsoft added these settings to the GPO’s. In this way you need to configure these setting only one time and all servers in the OU of that GPO gets those settings.
Read more: What RDP GPO settings can do with your Citrix Server
