Using a webcam within a Citrix session

Details: Published: Tuesday, 30 June 2020

With the COVID-19 crisis the use of video meeting “products” became even more important than it already was in 2020. Logically the higher demand also caused that such functionality also needed to be started within a Citrix session. Beside the big ones like Zoom and Teams, there are also lot of other platforms. Although the use of webcam in Citrix is not rocket science, I noticed several questions/issues at customers. In this article I will dive into the requirements and configuration required to use a webcam within a Citrix session.

DuCUG 2019-02

Details: Published: Wednesday, 16 October 2019

Our second 2019 event (DuCUG 2019-02, now also known as event #17) held at the Sta@rt near the Apenheul. Traditionally Niek Boevink opened the event with a nice, interesting and funny presentation. Of course again a big thanks to the platinum sponsors.

E2EVC Berlin 2019 Day 3

Details: Published: Sunday, 09 June 2019

Last day of E2EVC Berlin 2019 Already. My experiences are written in the blog.

E2EVC Berlin 2019 Day 2

Details: Published: Sunday, 09 June 2019

Second day of E2EVC started at a really decent time 10:30. Where are the days that at 9:00 we should be there. In this blog my day 2 experiences of E2EVC Berlin 2019.

E2EVC Berlin 2019 Day 1

Details: Published: Saturday, 08 June 2019

The alarm clock rung at 3:30am to drive to the airport heading to Berlin for the E2EVC Berlin. Wonderful weather in Berlin and a wonderful event location. My experiences of the first day of the E2EVC Berlin are written down in this blog.

DuCUG 2019-1

Details: Published: Thursday, 21 March 2019

On 15 March 2019 the first DuCUG event took place again at the Oude Duikenburg in Echteld. A location where we were already several times. It’s almost the home of the DuCUG. In this blog you read my experiences of the day.

Citrix VAD Communication Ports

Details: Published: Tuesday, 26 February 2019

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.

Different NetScaler Gateways within a single portal solution

Details: Published: Wednesday, 16 January 2019

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.

Combining Citrix Sites within different domains

Details: Published: Thursday, 13 December 2018

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.

DuCUG 2018-2

Details: Published: Tuesday, 20 November 2018

On the 16th of November the second DuCUG of 2018: 2018-2 was held. In this blog my experiences of the DuCUG 2018-2.

Citrix Federated Authentication Service (FAS) Tips and Tricks

Details: Published: Monday, 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.

First Look at the Citrix Workspace Hub using Citrix Casting

Details: Published: Wednesday, 10 October 2018

During Citrix Synergy 2018 Citrix announced the Citrix Workspace Hub. The Citrix Workspace Hub is the successor of the HDX Ready Pi announced at Citrix Synergy 2016. However the Citrix Workspace Hub is offering more functionalities than the HDX Ready Pi. Where the HDX Ready Pi is just offering Thin Client functionalities, the Workspace Hub can also leverage the possibility of Citrix Casting. In a previous article I already looked at the Thin Client functionality. In this article I will share my experiences with Citrix Workspace Hub using the Citrix Casting possibilities. The article will be based on the nComputing Citrix Workspace Heb as this one is provided to me as being a Citrix CTP.

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

Details: Published: Wednesday, 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).

First Look at the Citrix Workspace Hub as a Thin Client

Details: Published: Tuesday, 28 August 2018

One of the advantages being a CTP was that we all got a Citrix Workspace Hub for our labs to test drive the device. In this article I’m going to provide my experiences of the Citrix Workspace Hub as a Thin Client as a continuation of first look on the HDX Ready Pi. In upcoming article I’m going into more detail of the Citrix Casting feature.

Unattended Installation scripts XenDesktop 7.x Part 7

Details: Published: Wednesday, 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).

E2EVC Amsterdam 2018

Details: Published: Monday, 11 June 2018

From the 8^th till the 10^th of June 2018 the E2EVC Amsterdam 2018 took place again. Already the 38^th event and as this event in the Netherlands it was a kind of home match for me (just one hour fifteen minutes ride without traffic jams from my home). Although it was in the Netherlands again a lot of Dutch people were there again. Unfortunate I only could attend the first day, family priorities made it impossible to join on the weekend days. Nevertheless I blogged my experiences of the first day.

Citrix Synergy 2018 Day 3

Details: Published: Friday, 11 May 2018

Already the last day of Citrix Synergy 2018. Just as the other days day three is started with a general session called supersession. This one is provided by Michael Lewis. After the supersession a whole day of breakout sessions. In this last day blog my experiences.

Citrix Synergy 2018 Day 2

Details: Published: Thursday, 10 May 2018

Already day 2 of Citrix Synergy 2018. Time flies. Today the day started with a general keynote by Dr. Condoleezza Rice, followed by a lot of breakout session. In this blog my experiences of day two.

Citrix Synergy 2018 Day 1

Details: Published: Wednesday, 09 May 2018

After arriving on Sunday in Anaheim and Monday a day of of Citrix CTP meetings Citrix Synergy 2018 is really starting. Logically the day started with a general keynote. As a Citrix CTP we have the privilege to have nice blogging seating. In this blog I will both blog the keynote as the breakout session on this first day.

DuCUG 2018-01

Details: Published: Tuesday, 24 April 2018

On the 19th of April we as the DuCUG organized our first day event of 2018. In this blog I'm writing down my experience of the day.

Citrix Machine Creation Services Demystified Part III

Details: Published: Thursday, 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.

Citrix Machine Creation Services Demystified Part II

Details: Published: Tuesday, 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.

Citrix Machine Creation Services Demystified Part I

Details: Published: Tuesday, 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.

Does a disk type matter for VDI infrastructures?

Details: Published: Tuesday, 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.

E2EVC Barcelona 2017

Details: Published: Monday, 20 November 2017

On Friday the 17^th of November E2EVC Barcelona 2017 started. The unique event by and for the community. I really enjoyed attending this conference for many times in the past and again it was a wonderful experience this time. Traditionally I have blogged my experiences in this blog of all three days.

DuCUG 2017-2

Details: Published: Friday, 10 November 2017

On the 3rd of November the DuCUG 2017-2 event took place with around 160 attendees and sponsors. In this blogpost you will find my experiences and my notes from the presentations.

Unattended Installation XenServer 7.x

Details: Published: Tuesday, 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).

Citrix Solution Day 2017

Details: Published: Friday, 06 October 2017

One the events Citrix Benelux is organizing is Citrix Solution Day. The 2017 edition took place on the 5^th of October 2017 in Barneveld. In this blog I wrote down my experiences of this day.

Unattended Installation scripts XenDesktop 7.x Part 6

Details: Published: Wednesday, 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.

ControlUp NetScaler Monitor

Details: Published: Wednesday, 23 August 2017

Again the team of ControlUp created an nice and cool freeware utility called NetScaler Monitor. As this Citrix product is becoming more and more important in many organizations it’s nice to see that there is something available which keeps an eye on your infrastructure. In this Glance at Free article I’m going to provide you more insights about this new freeware utility.

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

Details: Published: Tuesday, 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).

Controlup Logon Simulator

Details: Published: Thursday, 29 June 2017

Controlup Logon Simulator

One the companies that really get the strength of the community are the guys of Controlup. Beside they sponsor lots of community event, shares data gathered with the community they also have several free tools in their portfolio. In this Glance at Free I’m going to take a look at the free Controlup Logon Simulator.

Determine the amount of users for XenDesktop/XenApp

Details: Published: Wednesday, 14 June 2017

At almost every project start one of the first questions how many users the environment can handle or how many hardware should be ordered so all users have a good user experience. It is probably the most difficult to answer at the start of a project. Probably if you give the right answer, which is it depends, you will get the question you have experiences in other organizations and aren’t there benchmarks or best practices available. In this article I will try to explain my vision that you cannot determine this at the start of the project, based on my practical experiences at several projects.

Citrix Synergy 2017 Day 3

Details: Published: Thursday, 25 May 2017

Already last day of Citrix Synergy 2017. Day three started with a keynote by Gen. Colin Powell, followed by a lot of breakout sessions. In the blog my day 3 experiences of Citrix Synergy.

Citrix Synergy 2017 Day 2

Details: Published: Thursday, 25 May 2017

Day 2 of Citrix Synergy 2017 started pretty early with the first break-out sessions at 8:30u. They planned really good session at the early morning time so the rooms were filled, at least the session I attended. My experiences of this second day are in this blog.

Citrix Synergy 2017 Day 1

Details: Published: Wednesday, 24 May 2017

After two days of CTP Meetings where the second was in the unconference format (which was a good think although I was a bit skeptical). Now it’s time for the official conference starting with the vision keynote. As usual I’m blogging my experiences.

Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp 7.x LTSR or CR, which one to choose?

Details: Published: Tuesday, 02 May 2017

With the release of Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp (I will use XenDesktop for the further article) 7.6 FP3 Citrix introduced the Long Term Service Release (LTSR) and the Current Release (CR) lifecycles. Now we are sometime further it is good to take a look how this introduction involved and what should be considered for choosing one of the release cycles. In this article I will start describing what both releases actually means and provides the point that you should consider for choosing which release cycle for you organization.

DuCUG 2017-1

Details: Published: Tuesday, 18 April 2017

On the 7th of April our first full day DuCUG 2017-1 event took place at De Oude Duikenburg in Echteld. Personally I found it a wonderful location with good facilities. As usual I blogged my experiences of the day.

Unattended Installation scripts XenDesktop 7.x Part 5

Details: Published: Thursday, 16 March 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 7.11 (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 7.12 and XenDesktop/XenApp 7.13.

Load Balancing Citrix Delivery Controllers via a Load Balancer necessity?

Details: Published: Thursday, 16 February 2017

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.

Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 6 After the XenDesktop 7.12 release

Details: Published: Tuesday, 31 January 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 7.11. 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).

Installing and configuring Citrix XenDesktop Linux VDA

Details: Published: Thursday, 12 January 2017

Citrix released the Linux VDA back together with the XenDesktop 7.6. At the moment of writing the article Citrix released version 1.4 of the Linux VDA. For previous version Citrix released a PDF with the installation and configuration steps, for 1.4 this is currently only available in the edocs. Unfortunate both available options are not fully complete, are missing some steps (for some environments) and/or are using not the best commands or steps. Luckily I was at a customer with lots of Linux knowledge and we got is sorted pretty quickly. In this article I will write down the steps we configured the Linux VDA.

Systancia AppliDis

Details: Published: Tuesday, 13 December 2016

Several years ago there were numerous products on the market offering a Server Based Computing (SBC) solution. VDI was introduced and even more products became available. However, in the last years many of these products are not here anymore. In the current landscape the big three dominating this market are: Microsoft RDS, VMware Horizon View and Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop. However, now another player is coming to the stage; Systancia. They have already been in the market for years, but were working in a kind of stealth mode in their home country France.

Systancia, an application and desktop virtualization software vendor, is a French corporation recognized for its AppliDis solution. AppliDis has grown rapidly over the past few years and was elected Best VDI Solution by experts in the field in 2014 among the industry's historical players. Now also including France's leading offer in terms of security of access following its acquisition of IPdiva, Systancia expertise has gained international presence since the French Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC) - now BPI (Banque publique d'investissement) - alongside A plus Finance, became a shareholder of the company.

In this review I’m going to be taking a look at their flagship product, AppliDis. Let’s start with a quick infrastructure overview of the product, before we are going to start the installation.

Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 5: After the XenDesktop 7.11 release

Details: Published: Tuesday, 06 December 2016

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).

E2EVC 2016 Rome Day 2

Details: Published: Sunday, 20 November 2016

Already day two of E2EVC after a nice night out. Most of the people are still recovering, but many were available in the first sessions. I blogged my two day experiences in this blog.

E2EVC 2016 Rome Day 1

Details: Published: Saturday, 19 November 2016

On the 18th of November E2EVC Rome started. I arrived right on time to jump into the actual start of the conference. As usual I’m blogging my experiences.

DuCUG 2016-2

Details: Published: Friday, 04 November 2016

On the 14th of October we held our 10^th DuCUG event already. With two events a year, it was also our fifth anniversary. Therefore we booked a very special location within the themepark “De Efteling”. In a fairytale environment we had (in our opinion) the best speakers on this event and with the sponsoring we also had a spectacular closing of this event. As usual I blogged my experiences of this event.

Zones in Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop 7.11

Details: Published: Wednesday, 05 October 2016

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.

Unattended Installation scripts XenDesktop 7.x Part 4

Details: Published: Thursday, 22 September 2016

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 7.8 (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 7.9 and XenDesktop/XenApp 7.11.

Configure Single Sign On (SSON) for Citrix Receiver

Details: Published: Wednesday, 07 September 2016

Citrix Single Sign-On or Pass-through is already for a really long time. The configuration is not changed a lot in this years, however when I was configuring this at a customer it took me again some time before it was running. The configuration with the latest Receivers is changed a bit and there is not (I could not find it) total step by step guide for setting-up the Single Sign On (SSON). In this article I will write down the steps to set-up SSON including a granular way within an Enterprise organization using Citrix Receiver 4.x and XenApp/XenDesktop 7.x.

Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 4: After the XenDesktop 7.9 release

Details: Published: Thursday, 14 July 2016

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).

First look at the HDX Ready Pi: Enterprise Ready?

Details: Published: Wednesday, 22 June 2016

At Citrix Synergy 2016 Citrix announced that ViewSonic and Micro Center have manufactured a HDX Ready Pi. This is a Raspberry Pi in a nice case including ThinLinx configured, so the Pi is ready to be used as a Thin Client without any software installation. With ThinLinx you can also the Thinlinx Managent Server to configure the Pi remotely. Citrix thinks the Pi is a nice alternative for a regular Thin Client for low costs (around $ 99). As a Citrix CTP we all got one HDX Ready Pi (thanks Chris Fleck). So after Synergy I was pretty enthusiastic about the Pi as a Thin Client and I would definitely to test the Pi and see if the device can already be used as a Thin Client within (Enterprise) companies.

Acceleratio SysKit

Details: Published: Wednesday, 08 June 2016

Introduction

In an earlier article series (“Selecting a Monitor Solution for SBC/VDI Infrastructures”), I discussed the monitor solutions market for SBC/VDI environments. One of the main takeaways was that monitoring is becoming more and more important within organizations. This was already recognized for back-end infrastructures, but now also front-end infrastructure (which is key to accessing the back-end) monitoring is higher on the list at many organizations. Within the monitoring market, a large number of vendors are active, all with their own perspective on monitoring. Monitoring goes from showing real-time information to giving insight in historical reports about the environment. A product that both offers real-time and reports is Acceleratio SysKit (formerly known as Terminal Services Log), which focuses on SBC infrastructure. In this review, I’m going to take a look at this product.

Citrix Synergy 2016 Day 3

Details: Published: Friday, 27 May 2016

The last day of Citrix Synergy already arrived. This third day is based on breakout sessions only. My experience of this day are again blogged in this article.

Citrix Synergy 2016 Day 2

Details: Published: Thursday, 26 May 2016

Already day 2 of Citrix Synergy 2016 in Las Vegas. Day starts with a general keynote, followed by a set of breakout session. My experience of day 2 are in this article.

Citrix Synergy 2016 Day 1

Details: Published: Wednesday, 25 May 2016

After two days of unbelievable but also exhausting CTP meeting days Citrix Synergy is really starting. The day starts logically with a general keynote. Just as the last years I will blogging my experiences of Citrix Synergy on a daily basis.

Unattended Installation scripts XenDesktop 7.x Part 3

Details: Published: Thursday, 12 May 2016

In the second part I shared the scripts and RES One Automation Building Blocks to install unattended a PVS based XenDesktop 7.6 Server VDA. In part 1 the scripts for the Delivery Controller were shared. In this part three article I will show/share the unattended scripts for StoreFront and Director.

Unattended Installation scripts XenDesktop 7.x Part 2 (including RES One Automation Building Blocks)

Details: Published: Thursday, 21 April 2016

In part 1 I shared my unattended script for installing the Citrix XenDesktop Delivery Controller component including a small script to join an existing XenDesktop site. In this article I will share my scripts for the Virtual Desktop Agent (VDA) including the PVS Target Device software, VDA Optimization and Default User Profile Optimization. Those scripts are also available as a RES One Automation Building Block.

DuCUG 2016-1

Details: Published: Wednesday, 06 April 2016

On Friday 18 March we organized already our ninth event. This time the event was hosted by Global Knowledge Utrecht. Traditionally our chairman Jon opened the event. He started thanking the sponsors, followed by explaining the agenda.

VMware View 6.x (from a Citrix XenApp administrator perspective) Part 3

Details: Published: Wednesday, 24 February 2016

In this article series I’m installing and configuring VMware View 6.2 (with a XenApp administrator perspective). In the earlier two articles I discussed the global view infrastructure, followed by the installation of the basic components: Connection Server, Agent and Client and the basic configuration of the RDS environment. In this third part article series I’m going into more detail in the View Composer for RDS which is new functionality in View 6.2.

Unattended Installation scripts XenDesktop 7.x Part 1

Details: Published: Tuesday, 09 February 2016

As many people already stated it’s important that you automate repeating tasks as much as possible. Therefore I already published articles in which I shared scripts to install unattended Citrix products like Citrix XenApp 6.5 and Citrix Provisioning Services 6.1. With the release of XenDesktop 7.x I see a shift that only the VDA component is installed unattended and most times the Delivery Controller, StoreFront are installed manually. Also several people already published blogs about the (basic) silent parameters of the XenDesktop installation. So you can wonder why I’m also publishing the scripts. Mainly because I also added additional installation checks including additional hotfixes and updates. I also have RES One Automation blocks available for the installation part of the VDA (including PVS Target Device software) and that part is not yet (much) available in other posts.

Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 3 After the XenDesktop 7.7 release

Details: Published: Tuesday, 26 January 2016

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.

SMS PASSCODE 8: Enhanced Dispatcher functionality and support for RD Web Access Windows Server 2012R2

Details: Published: Thursday, 14 January 2016

In November 2015 SMS PASSCODE released version 8 of their multi-factor authentication product. The new version includes several enhancements and improvements, which are more than worth taking a look at the product again. In this article I will start mentioning the improved and/or new features, followed by a more in-depth part of the integration of the functionality I described in the article Multi Factor authentication with SMS PASSCODE without sending an (actual) SMS, followed by the new functionality of support for multi-factor authentication for the Windows Server 2012R2 RD Web Access.

Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 2

Details: Published: Tuesday, 15 December 2015

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.

Failover (im)possibilities of XenDesktop 7.x Part 1

Details: Published: Thursday, 03 December 2015

On E2EVC 2015 Lisbon I presented together with Bas van Kaam the session Failover (im)possibilities of the XenDesktop product. Personally I thought the content deserves to be written down in an article series as well based on the same principles as the presentation. Per component I will describe the past (XenApp 6.x), the current situation (XenDesktop 7.6), the near future (XenDesktop 7.7) and ideas we have about functionalities that should be added (also based on the feedback from the audience of our session). Logically I need to thank Bas for his input and knowledge during the creation of the presentation, which lead to this article series (written based on my opinions).

Changes to the RSS feed

Details: Published: Wednesday, 02 December 2015

Because of the upgrade of the underlying CMS system of the VanBragt.Net Virtualization website, it is unfortunate not possible anymore to show both the new articles as the news items in one RSS feed. The currently RSS feed will only display new articles published on the website. If you would like to be informed about the news items, you need to add the URL http://virtualization.vanbragt.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=22&Itemid=398&format=feed&type=rss to your feed reader. If you have added my RSS feed to your website I would be really thankful if you update these as well. My apologies for the inconvenience, but unfortunate there is no solution available currently.

E2EVC 2015 Lisbon Day 2

Details: Published: Sunday, 15 November 2015

On the 14th November 2015 the second day of E2EVC Lisbon took place. It’s bit like the show must go on after the tragedy in Paris last night. My day 2 experiences can be found in this blog.

E2EVC 2015 Lisbon Day 1

Details: Published: Saturday, 14 November 2015

On the 13th of November the 27^th E2EVC started in Lisbon this time. In a nice atmosphere, wonderful weather, a nice city and probably an overloaded internet connection. As usual I’m blogging my experiences of this session I attended during this event. Day 1 can be found in this blog.

Ensuring a operational Citrix infrastructure with Goliath Logon Simulator

Details: Published: Tuesday, 03 November 2015

Any system administrator has encountered this situation at least once–arriving to the office in the morning and at the entrance you are already told that users cannot logon to Citrix.

When you are at your desk you quickly identify the issue and solve it as well. However, not everyone is happy about the fact that this was not noticed and solved proactively before users were actually starting with work.

Since you cannot simulate the whole user logon process at the moment, it is difficult to be proactive in this kind of situations. In this article, I will show you how the Goliath Logon Simulator for Citrix can proactively solve this situation.

Goliath’s Logon Simulator is integrated within the Goliath Performance Monitor (GPM) suite, but is also available as a separate product. Using it in combination with GPM offers the biggest added value, as you also have lots of insights about the sessions and the health of the Citrix infrastructure.

Selecting a Monitor Solution for SBC/VDI environments Part 5: Goliath Monitor IT

Details: Published: Wednesday, 21 October 2015

In earlier articles of this series we discusses how to select a monitor solution for Server Based Computing (SBC) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI). In that article series I described getting to a shortlist of products. The products on that shortlist should be investigated in more detail and check if and how the products meet the wishes created earlier.

The article series is based on a real life scenario I did at one of my customers. For that real life case we created a shortlist of four product, from which I tested three completely in a test environment. In this part I’m describing my experiences with one of the products: Goliath Monitor IT.

Keep in mind that this is not a full review of a product, but I will touch the parts that are interesting for SBC/VDI infrastructures. Most information will be based on Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop as that was the software running at this customer, but I will also mention other SBC/VDI products possibilities if applicable..

DuCUG 2015-2

Details: Published: Tuesday, 06 October 2015

On 25th of September we hold our second DuCUG event in 2015. This time the event was hosted by Cisco in Amsterdam. We had thre foreign speakers and our Bring/Choose Your Own Sessions providing the technical content. As usual I blogged my experiences of the sessions of this event in this blogpost.

VMware View 6.x (from a Citrix XenApp administrator perspective) Part 2

Details: Published: Wednesday, 23 September 2015

In this article series I’m installing and configuring VMware View 6.2 (with a XenApp administrator perspective). In Part 1 I discussed the global view infrastructure, followed by the installation of the basic components: Connection Server, Agent and Client. In this second part I will continue with describing the basic configuration of the RDS hosts.

VMware View 6.x (from a Citrix XenApp administrator perspective) Part 1

Details: Published: Thursday, 10 September 2015

As most of you know I work primarily as a Citrix architect implementing XenApp/XenDesktop infrastructures. However I also like to work with other similar product, so in the past I also deployed RDS only infrastructures. Besides it is always good to know how similar products work, to advice your customers between the differences and unique points of the product. Therefore it was time to install VMware View in my lab environment. In this article I will go through the infrastructure, installation, and configuration and user experience of the product. Logically I will compare it the current version of XenDesktop 7.x to show the differences and similarities.

Selecting a Monitor Solution for SBC/VDI environments Part 4: EG Innovations

Details: Published: Wednesday, 26 August 2015

Selecting a Monitor Solution for SBC/VDI environments Part 3: uberAgent

Details: Published: Thursday, 13 August 2015

In earlier articles of this series we discussed how to select a monitor solution for Server Based Computing (SBC) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI). In that article series I described getting to a shortlist of products. The products on that shortlist should be investigated in more detail and check if and how the products meet the wishes created earlier.

Selecting a Monitor solution for SBC/VDI infrastructures Part 2

Details: Published: Wednesday, 22 July 2015

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.

Multi Factor authentication with SMS Passcode without sending an (actual) SMS

Details: Published: Wednesday, 08 July 2015

Multi faction authentication (nowadays multifactor authentication) is becoming majority in the upcoming years. One of my favorite product is SMS Passcode, which is on the market for years. SMS Passcode offers multi factor authentication for a big range of available products/solutions in the market. Besides it is really easy to implement, within a few hours the environment is up and running. The default delivering method is sending a SMS via your own GSM modems. However within several datacenters the connection of GSM modem is difficult. Therefore SMS Passcode has the possibility to use an external SMS provider an alternative. However when you the companies offering a Desktop/Application as a Service the cost of the SMS (both with GSM model as SMS service provider) can be a bottleneck as the users don’t belong to the same organization (and cannot have a company subscription). However for this challenge SMS Passcode has a solution together with Acision (formerly named as MindMatics). In this article I will describe the solution and how to configure it.

VUEM 3.5 Preview

Details: Published: Friday, 19 June 2015

It is already been a long time I wrote about Norskale VUEM. During Citrix Synergy I had the pleasure to see some of the upcoming enhancements in version 3.5 and thought that it was time to take a look again at the product. The people behind Norskale provided me with the 3.5 beta software. In this preview I will do a walk-trough the product and highlight the key features of the product.

E2EVC 2015 Berlin Day 3

Details: Published: Monday, 15 June 2015

E2EVC Berlin 2015 is taken place from 12 to 14 June. After a nice citytour and an excellent diner arranged by Geert, it is already the last day of the event. My day 3 experiences are in this blog article.

E2EVC 2015 Berlin Day 2

Details: Published: Saturday, 13 June 2015

From 12 of 14 June 2015 E2EVC Berlin is taking place. Already day two of the event. My experiences of day two can be found in this blog.

E2EVC 2015 Berlin Day 1

Details: Published: Friday, 12 June 2015

From 12 to 14 June E2EVC Berlin was held. In flew in right on time from the nice airport Rotterdam. As usual I’m blogging my experiences of this event. Let’s start with my experiences day one of E2EVC Berlin.

Selecting a Monitor solution for SBC/VDI infrastructures Part 1

Details: Published: Tuesday, 26 May 2015

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.

Citrix Synergy 2015 Day 3

Details: Published: Friday, 15 May 2015

From 12 to 14 May Cirix Synergy is being held. It’s already the last day of the conference. In this blog I wrote down my experiences of the sessions that I attended during this day.

Citrix Synergy 2015 Day 2

Details: Published: Thursday, 14 May 2015

During 12 to 14 May Citrix Synergy 2015 is held in sunny and warm Orlando. In this blog I wrote down my experiences of day two which started with a general keynote.

Citrix Synergy 2015 Day 1

Details: Published: Wednesday, 13 May 2015

From 12 to 14 May Citrix Synergy 2015 was held in Orlando. In this blog I will describe my experiences of the sessions that I attended. On this first day I attended four sessions.

PVS Resource Usage Part 4

Details: Published: Wednesday, 22 April 2015

Introduction

In part 3 of the article series we started looking at boot(storm) scenarios. I described the four scenarios and the environment. Also the results of the first two scenario were discussed. In this last part I will continue with the remaining boot(storm) scenarios and will compare the results of the boot scenarios with the Citrix theory.

PVS Resource Usage Part 3

Details: Published: Wednesday, 01 April 2015

In this article series I will go into detail about resource usage of PVS servers. In the first part I described the theory values Citrix is using/advising for the components CPU, Memory, Disk and Network. The article series continued with taking a look at the real life resource usage of PVS servers. In this part we will take a look at resource usage of the PVS servers during boot(storm) scenarios.

DuCUG 2015-1

Details: Published: Monday, 23 March 2015

On 6 March 2015 we organized our first DuCUG event for 2015. Already our 7^th event. Again the event was well visited again and had again several great speakers. Also we had several people who spoke for the first time as such an event, one of our target as the DuCUG to get new speakers on stage. In this blog I wrote down my experiences of the day.

Citrix Provisioning Services Design Part 2

Details: Published: Thursday, 26 February 2015

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.

PVS Resource Usage Part 2

Details: Published: Wednesday, 11 February 2015

In this article series I will go into detail about resource usage of PVS servers. In the first part I described the theory values Citrix is using/advising for the components CPU, Memory, Disk and Network. Also physical versus virtual is touched briefly. The article series will continue with taking a look at the real life resource usage of PVS servers. In this part we will take a look at the resource usage during daily operations.

Accessing the old environment from XenApp/XenDesktop 7.x

Details: Published: Wednesday, 21 January 2015

In almost every current XenDesktop/XenApp project for a specific period some applications are not available on the new platform, which are required by a group of users. A decision could be to let those workers do their work on the current/old platform. However most organizations don’t want that because the users don’t have access to new technologies of versions of other applications. In most cased the customer is looking for a way to offer access to those applications within the new platform. In this article I described the possible access methods to those applications running on a legacy environment, followed by the technical options to provide the access (including the advantages and disadvantages).

XenApp 6.x Maintenance Shutdown and Start-up Scripts

Details: Published: Wednesday, 07 January 2015

At one of my customers we build a XenApp 6.5 environment, where the XenApp Session Hosts were running on local storage of the Hypervisor (VMware ESX 5.5). At this customer the hypervisor and Citrix XenApp were maintained by separate teams. The hypervisor team was used to use shared storage and the vMotion capabilities of ESX for their maintenance tasks on the ESX host during daily operations. However now the virtual machines were running local storage this technique could not be used anymore and the hypervisor team found it difficult to fulfill their maintenance tasks.

After some discussion we agreed that the process should be as easy as possible (without less inference of the XenApp team) and that it should be possible to do the maintenance during daily operations. The first step was adding additional capacity, so maintenance during the business hours was possible. Secondly I wrote a set of small simple scripts that the maintenance can be done without less interaction between the teams and user impact is minimal. In this article I would like to share those scripts with you including explaining what they are doing.

Reboot Script for XenApp/XenDesktop 7.x (for 24x7 environments)

Details: Published: Wednesday, 17 December 2014

Updated on 22 December 2015 with some small adjustments (removing old files and wait timeout to check if the server is online again)

Some years ago I already published a reboot script for XenApp 6.5. Also Citrix did a good job to make the reboot possibilities within the Citrix policies more flexible and robust. The only real disadvantage is the possibility to disable the logon possibilities 60 minutes before the real actual reboot take place. However this can be overwritten using a specific registry key, which is not well known or documented (HKLM\Software\Policies\Citrix\IMA\Restart Options\Disable Logons\RebootDisableLogonMinutes. When migrating from XenApp 6.5 to XenApp/ XenDesktop 7.x you will probably be a bit disappointed. In this article I will starting describe the reboot possibilities in XenApp/XenDesktop 7.x out of the box, followed by explaining a script that I have written to satisfy more requirements.

Thinkiosk 4

Details: Published: Thursday, 04 December 2014

Re-using PCs with Thin Client functionality is still used a lot. In the past I wrote the article How to: Build a ThinBased-PC with Windows 7/XP where I describe how you can turn a Fat Client into Thin Client functionality using scripts and policies. Although it’s working, it’s time consuming and difficult to maintain. Also when using Thin Clients it can be difficult to configure those fully to the needs and requirements of the organization, especially when there is no management environment available (because the Thin Client does not have that or the company did not buy it). Andrew Morgan encountered the same issues and developed ThinKiosk to solve both issues. ThinKiosk is developed as the first Windows based software only product to convert Fat Client into a Thin Client, but it’s also often used to manage Thin Clients based on a Windows based operating system. ThinKiosk integrates with the big three suppliers in SBC and VDI: Citrix, VMware and Microsoft.

In this Glance at Free I will show and describe the free community edition; however at the end I will mention the additional features which are available in the Enterprise edition briefly.

PVS Resource Usage Part 1

Details: Published: Wednesday, 26 November 2014

Some people are saying that PVS is complex. I personally don’t think that PVS is complex looking from an infrastructure endpoint, but it can be complex to understand the concept of PVS and the new way of working. When people get that part, the complexity is not a bottleneck anymore. But when people understand the way of working understand new questions are often raised. How many bandwidth does this solution requires, which hardware resources requires these PVS server to serve their role. In this article series I’m diving into this topic. First I will discuss the theory of the resource usage by Citrix, followed by real life figures. The real life figures are divided in two parts: daily usage and boot (storm) usage. As just mentioned we are starting with the theory.

Citrix Provisioning Services Design Part 1

Details: Published: Thursday, 13 November 2014

Nowadays installing much software products is not that difficult anymore, however designing the whole environment with software products is still not that easy. Logically a design should be adjusted to the current infrastructure, the requirements and wishes of the organization. So in my opinion a design would never be 100% identical for two different infrastructures. A design is never wrong; however you should always provide arguments why a decision has been made. In this article (series) I will describe and discuss the PVS components you should consider when creating a PVS design.

MVP Summit 2014

Details: Published: Friday, 07 November 2014

Although I’m already a MVP since 2007 it was actual the first time I could attend the MVP summit. As the MVP summit is a NDA event I cannot mention much detail are discussed during the sessions. Nevertheless I wrote down my experiences which I can share in this blog item.

RDPSoft Admin Toolkit

Details: Published: Tuesday, 21 October 2014

RDPSoft is a company that develops Remote Desktop Tools; they call their selves the Remote Desktop Tools company. Besides their commercial software like Remote Desktop Reporter, they also have a freeware Admin Toolkit available. This toolkit can be downloaded (after registration) from their website. Which tools are available in this toolkit and what do they offer.

DuCUG 2014-2

Details: Published: Wednesday, 08 October 2014

On the 26th September we hold our sixth event at Cisco Amsterdam. With around 130 attendees we again accomplished to get a nice group of attendees. Traditionally I blogged my experiences of the day.

XenApp 6.5 (Troubleshooting) Tips and Tricks Part 1

Details: Published: Thursday, 11 September 2014

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.