VanBragt.Net Virtualization

Details: Published: 05 November 2018

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.

Details: Published: 12 September 2018

As a consultant I’m mostly engaged at the larger companies (large for the Dutch market) the Citrix Cloud was not come along my path a lot. Logically I followed the progress and enhancements made to the services. Recently I got involved at a smaller customer with currently did not have a Citrix environment yet (the party they acquired are using Citrix, so that’s why Citrix came into play). A perfect fit for Citrix Cloud as the environment is pretty small and the IT organization is not really familiar with Citrix. As size does not matter, the organization had to comply with specific regulations that are similar as Enterprise organizations. However during the design phase and Proof of Concept phase we found out that there are still gaps between the on-premises and the cloud offering, that could cause that the Citrix Cloud solution is not ready yet for all/your organization(s).

Details: Published: 04 July 2018

In the earlier articles I wrote down how to install unattended the XenDesktop components. The article was based on the versions of XenDesktop 7.6 till XenDesktop 7.15 (dependent of the article).

It has been a while that I updated this article series. In this (small) article I will describe the uninstallation options for the most current version out there 7.15 CU2 and 7.18 (CR).

Details: Published: 05 April 2018

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.

Details: Published: 06 March 2018

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.

Details: Published: 06 February 2018

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.

Details: Published: 12 December 2017

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.

Details: Published: 31 October 2017

XenServer is primarily being used as a hypervisor platform for XenDesktop VDIs. Although the installation of XenServer 7 is not really difficult it would be nice when installing multiple XenServer hosts that you can automate the installation part. In this article I will describe the possibilities of creating an (almost) unattended installation of XenServer 7.x I will both touch XenServer 7.0 (which we made of a customer. Long story about certification processes of software being used) and the latest version 7.2 (which also applies to 7.1).

Details: Published: 20 September 2017

In the earlier articles I wrote down how to install unattended the XenDesktop components. The article was based on the versions of XenDesktop 7.6 till XenDesktop 7.13 (dependent of the article). Currently Citrix is releasing every quarter a new version, so it’s time to update the articles with the new installation information of later release(s) based on XenDesktop/XenApp 7.14 and XenDesktop/XenApp 7.15.

Details: Published: 25 July 2017

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).

Citrix Federated Authentication Service (FAS) Tips and Tricks

Why the Citrix Cloud is not ready for all (Enterprises) yet

Unattended Installation scripts XenDesktop 7.x Part 7

Citrix Machine Creation Services Demystified Part III

Citrix Machine Creation Services Demystified Part II

Citrix Machine Creation Services Demystified Part I

Does a disk type matter for VDI infrastructures?

Unattended Installation XenServer 7.x

Unattended Installation scripts XenDesktop 7.x Part 6

Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 7 After the XenDesktop 7.13/14 release