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I will list this post within the Tools and Links categories for the site. There have been a number of CTX articles released recently which may well offer value to your administrative efforts. Please see the links below, and tell me what you think. I have been reading up on latest product releases and will have more links and reading material to follow up as we move into the new year!
Citrix Consulting: Desktop Virtualization Best Practices Webinar Series
The Best XD 5.5 Technical Deck of ALL TIME!
Technical Guide for Updating to XenApp 6.5
How to Configure Application Pre-Launch in XenApp 6.5
Provisioning Services Live Site Database Migration
Installation of Access Management Console based on XenApp versions (.Net can getcha!)
CAG 5 Advanced Controller and iPad/iPhone Access
Citrix Quick Launch (longing for the days of PN, this will take you back!)
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This will be my first post to a new category on the site, Tools, Tips, Tricks, and Links.
This past week I was having a bit of trouble in my own lab. I was speaking to a colleague who asked, “do you have MedEvac?” I just stared blankly into my IP Phone. What was this person talking about?! Well, I set about finding what MedEvac was and found a few other items along the way. I have included these in a list below.
In a general sense these tools offer service for XA 4.5 and XD4 and above. Click through the tools to review any potential they may offer to assist you in your own Citrix environments. The Disclaimer is that you do everything at your our risk. Read everything carefully, proceed with caution, do not disrupt production, and enjoy!
CTX123005 Citrix UPM Log Parser
CTX124577 CDFMarker On Demand -For XenApp and XenDesktop
CTX124918 SsOnExpert -Single Sign-On XenApp Plug-in Troubleshooting Tool
CTX124949 Citrix Logoff Sessions 2.2
CTX122962 Citrix Printing Tool
CTX125471 XenApp 6 Migration Tool
CTX113472 Citrix ICA File Creator
CTX111344 Citrix License Path Utility
CTX122450 Citrix Port Check Utility
CTX120629 Citrix Profiler Template for SQL 2000
CTX120630 Citrix Profiler Template for SQL 2005
CTX116063 XenAppPrep Integration Utility for XenApp and Provisioning Services
CTX119347 Client IP Extraction Module -ISAPI -For NetScaler
CTX124811 CtxCPMDiag -For Password Manager Agent
CTX123935 CtxsLicChk -Citrix License Check Utility
CTX124406 DSCHECK -XenApp Data Store Checker Tool Commands
CTX124815 DSRepCheck -SQL Replication Test Tool -For XenApp 6
CTX122146 EdgeSight Database Size Estimation Tool
CTX122568 EdgeSight Load Testing XenApp Using Office 2007
CTX121355 Enabling Remote Installation for Citrix Receiver
CTX111343 Endpoint Analysis Antivirus Scan Package Autoupdate Scripts
CTX123058 HDX Experience Monitor for XenDesktop Video 1
CTX123197 Health Monitoring and Recovery Test Pack
CTX124446 LBDiag -XenApp 6 Load Balancing Diagnostic Tool
CTX125089 MFCOM to Powershell Script Searcher
CTX121569 NetScaler CPU tight-loop (LCT) monitor
CTX121568 NetScaler CPU Usage Conditional Profiler
CTX122317 Nsconmsg to Excel Tool
CTX110629 PDBFinder for 32-bit and 64-bit Platforms
CTX111656 SQL Replication Test Tool Version 4.2
CTX111072 SystemDump 3.1 for 32-bit and 64-bit platforms
CTX122318 Wireshark for Netscaler
CTX124805 XenApp Console Discovery Repair
CTX121339 XenApp Template for BGInfo
CTX124963 XenDesktop 4 Client Identity Pack
CTX124012 XenDesktop Session Parser
CTX124379 XenDesktop Virtual Desktop Agent Troubleshooting Utility
CTX121564 XenServer Database Tool
CTX109374 StressPrinters 1.3.2 for 32-bit and 64-bit Platforms
CTX111901 TestWER (Test Windows Error Reporting)
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To be clear I have borrowed all of the links below from Dustin Segura, who is a young fellow on the upswing in life, and is deserving of his hard work being recognized! Please enjoy these links in the same spirit. We are looking forward to seeing all of you at the next round of user groups, and to answer any questions you might have regarding these items below.
HDX is even better in XenDesktop 5.5
Where does Citrix RingCube fit?
New Receivers for Windows and Mac (OS X Lion) raise the bar along with Citrix XenDesktop 5.5!
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Have been taking a number of appointments regarding Citrix Provisioning Server for XenDesktop and XenApp. For those new to the product, PvS is virtualization of disk I/O for the network. Essentially PvS allows you to copy a tradition OS installation into a file, a vDisk or .vhd, which can then be rendered as a ReadOnly or Writable OS to a compute endpoint virtual or physical. When you do it right, the end result is a single file copy of the OS you are delivering into production, which can scale as a deliverable into the 100′s and 1000′s per disk image. Essentially all of your XenApp servers are now delivered without variance across the entirety of the farm context, and the same goes for client side OS delivery.
Years ago I was delivering a trading desk operation for a commodities trading firm delivering operations into Paris, London, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, and Singapore. Patch Tuesday rolled around and MS KB917422 was installed to my XenApp 4.5 servers (wasn’t called XenApp then, but I digress), this “patch” had the effect of killing Windows .ini file transactions for roaming profiles. So, the primary trading application that retained user preference in the form of an .ini file, was not retaining user preferences any longer. Not a good day for global trading operations. Phone lit up like a Christmas tree, and no one had the holiday spirit on the other end of the call let me tell you!
In the old way of doing things uninstalling the patch and testing the outputs takes time, and does not mitigate further risk to the degree we are now able to achieve with PvS. With PvS in situations such as the infamous MS KB917422, you simply open the PvS management console, and drag Monday’s vDisk for a drop over the folder containing all of your terminal service endpoints that should recieve the OS as configured, these machines reboot and pick yesterday’s last known good config. The phone stops ringing, and you get to do what you are paid to do, get the technology right. Fix it once, drag and drop for delivery to all. Pretty good stuff! For those who would like more info on this technology, I have provided links below.
PvS Documentation:
XenServer Documentation:
XenDesktop Documentation:
General OS Deployments:
And last but not least, Dell OEMs the Citrix Provisioning Server as a bundled package known as Dell On Demand Desktops. I think they a great job of documenting the technology and use case for the product. This link is below.
Enjoy your documentation!
RTE
This one is a bit of short notice but Citrix Development teams are looking for feedback on XenApp 6. Reference the item below, and the link for survey information to be collected. Should you care to contribute a few cents (sense if you follow) to the future develpment of the product, please take a moment to answer the seven question survey found via the link below.
Citrix released XenApp 6 for Windows Server 2008 R2 in March 2010. A year later, the XenApp Product Management team wants to hear from you on the XenApp 6 adoption plan in your organization. The Product team also wants to learn about drivers and challenges you are facing in adopting this new XenApp release. You can access this short, 7 questions survey at the URL below. We really appreciate your time!
We have been taking a number of questions from customers lately regarding monitoring of user session performance on the network. Typically these questions concern the monitoring of latency within the ICA protocol. These customers are looking to establish baseline/QoS standards for application performance within the network.
As an example a customer may establish a latency of 150-200ms for maximum latency accepted within the user session space. Should latency come to exceed these established thresholds on a consistent basis this kicks off the process of a root cause analysis, which becomes the work of assessing whether the problem can be solved by configuration, or there is a requirement for increased processing capacity within the Citrix Delivery Center environment.
For Citrix the answer is Edgesight. Edgesight is an entitlement under the Platinum versions of both XenApp and XenDesktop. Edgesight is a database driven technology that collects performance and steady state data for the Citrix Delivery Center. There are well over 100 canned reports within the product. The reports relevant to your own network environment can be run on a schedule with outputs delivered to a fileshare for collection, or distribution to users via email. Edgesight offers alerting for administrators to respond to issues that exceed thresholds established for the network. The database retains 12 months of data collection for long term analysis of network function. This offers the opportunity to know when peak processing is established for the network, requirements necessary to add 200 users to the network, asset management for physical/virtual server instances, and troubleshooting assist by way of Edgesight’s ability to capture system state at the moment applications fail (the dlls loaded to RAM, Registry state, applications open during the user session).
For further info regarding Edgesight I have included links below. You can also check Citrix TV, drop Edgesight into the search field to find video driven presentations for the product.
Edgesight Wiki main page: http://community.citrix.com/edgesight/
Here’s the list of reports: http://community.citrix.com/display/edgesight/EdgeSight+5.3+Report+List
Ones with hyperlinks are samples with explanations…here’s one of those: http://community.citrix.com/display/edgesight/ICA+Session+Latency
I take customer conversations everyday around the features available from differing versions of our products. Links below will take you to the feature by product landing pages from Citrix.com. Enjoy!
XenApp find here.
XenDesktop find here.
XenServer find here.
Netscaler fine here.
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So, things are not quite working as you expect them to, it happens. The Citrix Brief Troubleshooting Guidebook (at 100+ pages it is anything but brief!), can assist you with the process you should follow to adequately troubleshoot and resolve your issues. You can find a download of the current guid here.
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During the November 2010 LA Citrix User Groups we offered a presentation from Citrix Technical Support Specialist Rick Berry. Rick supports some of our very largest financial services accounts, and his presentation with regard to troubleshooting methodologies and tools was outstanding.
For those of us that cannot go back in time, there is Citrix TechEdge.
Citrix TechEdge is a free annual event hosted by top Citrix Technical Support engineers at Citrix Synergy San Francisco for you, our valued support customers. TechEdge is your opportunity to plunge straight into the latest troubleshooting tools, methodologies and fixes for your desktop virtualization, server virtualization and network optimization without hearing all the marketing fluff. Join us at TechEdge where no question is too technical.
What you’ll learn
You can find more information regarding TechEdge here.
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Hey! The network is down, it’s Sunday night, what do I do?
This sort of thing happens more often than any of us would like. You remove servers from the production environment and proceed to increment your change management procedures during the off hours when users will not be impacted. Just as you deliver that final reboot, an unexpected result occurs, and access to the XenApp delivery environment is impacted. Who do you call in the middle of the night to get the network working again? Call Citrix Support!
Citrix now offers 24×7 technical support for XenApp customers through our Software Maintenance Program. This program includes the items below.
Should you have further questions regarding the Citrix Software Maintenance Program please contact Andrew Mills or Nathaniel Chadbourne for follow up.
You can visit the Citrix website for further details here.