Archive
AppSense MobileNow – BYOD, MAM
Ok, this is really interesting! What is AppSense up to when it comes to their new MobileNow and DataNow products? Are they simple understanding that they have to broaden their portfolio to find new market shares and are following the others like VMware with Horizon and Citrix with CloudGateway or are they trying to step up and try to take the lead and shortly add capabilities that the others have? Still I’m a bit puzzled and need to understand more…
But AppSense is not a huge corporation like Symantec so they could invest and try to speed up their capability development within this area… really interesting!
Here are some information about their MobileNow product:
BYOD Done Right
MobileNow is the first and only solution architected from day one to solve the complete Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) problem for both IT and employees. It delivers real-time security, control and compliance for IT and a seamless experience and freedom of choice – apps, data, and devices – for executives and employees. Unlike status quo MDM-only solutions, MobileNow doesn’t require you to take complete control over and manage employees’ personal devices, apps and data. And unlike proprietary “container” and SDK-based solutions, MobileNow doesn’t limit users to only a small number of proprietary apps.
Issue 23 – The XenDesktop Experience A Technical Publication for XenDesktop Customers
Ok, Citrix has again released the XenDesktop technical publication, have a look at it!
Example topics include;
- High Availability for Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp – Planning Guide
- How to Tighten the Security of Windows Desktops
- Tackling Windows Migration
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Wow, PVS creativity at its best – but still a workaround…
Ok, I must admit that the blog post below and the efforts put into it from a creativity point of view is great!
Martin Zugec blog post about Pimp your PVS 1 – auto patcher is really neat! I give you all the creeds Martin, great work!
But, is this a solution to the problem that the PVS product has regarding configuration and patch management? NO… U still have a lot of work to do here Citrix, I’m just glad that you have such innovative and creative people like Martin to deliver interim workarounds to a problem that according to my personal believe is a major mistake in the product design and build principles.
Still waiting for a XenDesktop suite-wide “Update Manager” that handles life-cycle management of all components of the stack. Citrix has a lot of great products and now just need to “wrap it all up” and ensure that they are ready from an ITIL/ITSM point of view.
Cheers!
//Richard
Enterprise mobility management options: MDM, MAM and MIM
The influx of mobile devices in the enterprise and the barrage of products to manage them has sparked debate over enterprise mobility management — specifically, whether IT admins focus on managing mobile devices, applications or information.
With more than 100 vendors in the enterprise mobility management market today, it’s a major challenge to cut through the noise and identify the best tools and techniques to enable viable, sustainable, cost-effective mobile IT strategies. Perhaps the biggest questions relate to the feature set required for successful mobile operations and how to deploy the right combination of products and services. But with so many new technologies and products appearing on the market, there’s a danger that functional overlap and complexity could quickly sink even the most well-intentioned and well-thought-out processes. Simplicity is the key to success, but as always, such simplicity is never realized on day one.
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Please contribute – What do we expect from Citrix? – Citrix community enhancement list
Ok, there are a lot of things that I think we all expect Citrix to deliver now in Barcelona when Synergy soon kicks off! But so far I’ve not seen someone that has been combining a community list yet…
And the most important part I feel is that I get more and more information from companies out there that have enhancement requests and issues that they have a hard time expressing and getting into Citrix. The larger enterprises can of course through their channels get more information and also make their voice heard, but the SMB’s have a hard time to do so!
So this is my attempt to start a dialogue with all of U out there on what we expect to see from Citrix in the future! I think it would be interesting to see if the items I’m waiting for a change on is aligned with the rest of the community!
So why don’t we all contribute to a list that we all can share and prioritise over time? I can for a start moderate this list if you comment or send me items that you think should be on the list and then I’ll try to make sure that people within Citrix get the items and I’ll try to follow up! Of course we need help from the CTP’s (just to be clear; I’m not a CTP so don’t get me wrong here) and others as well to put pressure and assist in the governance of this activity.
So this is my first list of items that I think that we can build upon… It’s a first draft and far from the total number of items are there so bear with me! 😉
Please comment below to have your item(s) added to the list and let’s make a change!
| ID | Product/Area | Enhancement request/Issue | Status |
| 1 | Licensing | Ensure that all products supports the license server (NetScaler etc.) | Not fullfilled |
| 2 | Monitoring & Reporting | Ensure that you can get historical concurrent user reports that spans across ALL products (NetScaler/AG, XenApp, XenDesktop etc.) | Not fullfilled |
| 3 | Monitoring & Reporting | Ensure that Citrix provides an end-2-end monitoring and reporting service for the whole Citrix stack. This to ensure that delivery organizations can deliver reports like “Service Availability in %” over time that includes all service components (NetScaler AGEE VIP, StoreFront/WI, PVS/MSC, XenServer, XenApp/VDA, Profile Server, etc. If Citrix isn’t going to do this; then please point on a product that does the job. | Not fullfilled |
| 4 | Monitoring & Reporting | Provide a monitoring solution to ensure health and best practise configurations of all products involved in a traditional “XenDesktop” stacked service. | Not fullfilled |
| 5 | Cross-product | Improve your testing!! There have been to many issues with updates to products in the “Citrix stack” that has caused issues in others, like update to XenServer that caused PVS issues, or updates to a specific NetScaler feature that caused others to fail. | Not fullfilled |
| 6 | Cross-product | Create an central update service for all products that can inform the admin about updates not applied or if components aren’t in synch in terms of SW versions etc. | Not fullfilled |
| 7 | Cross-product | Ensure that the end-user look & feel are the same across the products used in the stack (NetScaler AGEE login page, Web Interface/StoreFront, Receiver etc..). This should not require admins to do and should be a design principle. | Not fullfilled |
| 8 | Cross-product | Come on, simplify the administration of the products in the stack = reduce the number of consoles! | Not fullfilled |
| 9 | AppController | Multi-domain support | Not fullfilled |
| 10 | AppController | Support for multiple setups that can synch the DB. This to ensure that you can have an HA pair setup for instance in Europé and one in the North Americas and have the end-user be logged in against both and have their subscriptions etc follow them (as well as of course reporting, monitoring etc. etc.) | Not fullfilled |
| 11 | AppController | Support for really large AD domains with LARGE # of AD users and AD groups | Not fullfilled |
| 12 | AppController | Support for AD domain structure where the BASE DN is different to where AD users and the AD security groups you want to use for roles | Not fullfilled |
| 13 | EdgeSight | Ensure that EdgeSight or equivalent end-user monitoring and reporting is integrated and that works on both XenApp and XenDesktop VDA’s and that doesn’t increase the IOPS with rediciolous numbers… | Not fullfilled |
| 14 | NetScaler | Create SDX platform to run on all MPX appliances, for more info why see; NetScaler MPX vs. SDX dilemma; https://richardegenas.com/2012/10/03/netscaler-mpx-vs-sdx-dilemma/ | Not fullfilled |
| 15 | NetScaler | Provide out of the box integration with the Single Sign-On product (former CPM) so that Account Self-Service can be made directly from AGEE VIP login page. | Not fullfilled |
| 16 | NetScaler | Add support for AG session policies so that ICA proxy can be turned on for specific published apps and desktops and not per session. This for situations where you might have one app or desktop that sits behind an AGEE and others don’t. | Not fullfilled |
| 17 | NetScaler | The NetScaler/Access Gateway HTML/GUI pages used shall be able to be customized per AGEE/AAA Virtual Server. Today they are global pages so that specific modifications/customizations cannot be made and you have to buy an additional NetScaler unless major customizations are done and then life-cycle management becomes an issue. | Not fullfilled |
| 18 | NetScaler | Change so that you can specify different Authentication policies and requirements mapped to Session policies instead of to a Virtual Server, AAA group etc. This could then provide a way so that you could offer ICA proxy mode with single auth and two-factor if you launch/select to open an SSL VPN tunnel | Not fullfilled |
| 19 | NetScaler | It would be good if you on the Receiver could select what authentication you want to perform upon login and not just at setup of the Account. That would mean that you could pass that info the the NS VS and then in AGEE handle that to the authentcaiton policies and session policies. Then a user that has forgotten a hardtoken could still get access but only in ICA proxy mode and have all virtual channels disabled without having to have multiple accounts in the Receiver and admin doesn’t need multiple NS AGEE VS. | Not fullfilled |
| 20 | Merchandising Server | Ensure that it supports larger AD environments and multi-domain support | Not fullfilled |
| 21 | Merchandising Server | Create a central DB for config etc or ensure that MS is migrated into SF asap. | Not fullfilled |
| 22 | Provisioning Services | Improved/simplified support/update functionality for when you use KMS licensing | Not fullfilled |
| 23 | Provisioning Services | Create REAL update msp or msi files for updates, you can’t require admins to go in and replace DLL-files etc in 2012 | Not fullfilled |
| 24 | Provisioning Services | Implement replication of vDisk files (diff-files) etc so that it’s automated within the PVS solution so that you don’t have to rely on DFS-R etc. | Not fullfilled |
| 25 | ShareFile | Ensure that encryption on local devices are available for all device types and OS’s (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Win XP/7/8, Linux, OS X) | Not fullfilled |
| 26 | ShareFile | Design the product so that you could leverage public storage providers for your storage but encrypt it using your own PKI service and proxy traffic to it through the Storage Center server(s) without having to invest in in-house storage solutions and reduce CAPEX. | Not fullfilled |
| 27 | ShareFile | Design the solution so that you can configure the plygin/Receiver functionality when it comes to StoreFront on groups/roles instead of just for the whole account. | Not fullfilled |
| 28 | Storefront | Support for multiple setups that can synch the DB. This to ensure that you can have an HA pair setup for instance in Europé and one in the North Americas and have the end-user be logged in against both and have their subscriptions etc follow them (as well as of course reporting, monitoring etc. etc.) | Not fullfilled |
| 29 | Storefront | Simplify configuration and branding of the StoreFront for Web sites like most other providers have and they had in Web Interface | Not fullfilled |
| 30 | Storefront | Add all features that where available in Web Interface | Not fullfilled |
| 31 | StoreFront | Design the product to allow the user to select whether he/she can group apps and desktops into folders or tabs in StoreFront for Web | Not fullfilled |
| 32 | Receiver | Ensure that email-enrollment to StoreFront stores can somehow support multidomain support (like if you have multiple users having the same email-address; name@company.com can be linked to different AD domains | Not fullfilled |
| 33 | Receiver | Corporate branding for the Receiver, logo, text etc. | Not fullfilled |
| 34 | Receiver | Ensure that all Receivers have the same look & feel and functionality. Like the secondary and primary password field names should be the same on a Mac and a Windows client, as well as other features. | Not fullfilled |
| 35 | Receiver | Add so that Receiver passes DOMAINNAME to NetScaler/AG VS so that it can be used to determine which AD domain to authenticate with. In todays version you have to either make one VS per domain or cascade through multiple domains on the same VS. And cascading is available as a workaround but triggers failed logins against AD and is not that nice and security/AD teams are not that happy… | Not fullfilled |
| 36 | XenDesktop | Support for Linux VDA’s (Ubuntu for example) | Not fullfilled |
| 37 | XenApp | Support for Linux Terminal Servers (Ubuntu for example) | Not fullfilled |
I’ll post an excel-spreadsheet as well for download soon, and then let’s see if there is an interest or not! 😉
Cheers!
//Richard
HEADS UP – PVS and XenServer compatibility issues
UPDATE!!! SEE THIS POST FOR MORE INFORMATION AND PVS SUPPORT ON XENSERVER 6.1; http://richardegenas.com/2013/01/22/pvs-support-in-xenserver-6-1-via-_poppelgaard-xenserver-citrix-pvs/
Ok, this is something that many may be aware of but I’m sure not all of you out there! Thanks Per Liif for the inputs to this little blog post!!
So what’s the issue? Well you can summarize it by saying that XenServer 6.1 and PVS is not compliant out of the box!
The Citrix information about this issue can be found here and basically tells you that; The standard XenServer Tools do not include support for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) or Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS). For customers who wish to use VSS or PVS, the legacy XenServer Tools must be used.
What does this then mean in real life if you go ahead and use the standard XenServer tools and what errors might you be struggling with if you have this issue? Answer; you’ll see blue screens like this (xenvif.sys);
So what shall you do to prevent this, well use the steps in the support article from Citrix PRIOR to installing the legacy tools (xenlegacy.exe), otherwise you’ll end up with this blue screen (xenvbd.sys);
And of course you could argue whether Citrix could have provided a bit more heads up for everyone out there in the release notes and blog posts of XenServer 6.1. I hope that not many of you ran into this and spent to much time on it prior to finding the Citrix workaround article!
//Richard
Letting Go of the 12 Behaviors Holding You Back
This post was great, thanks Mattias Tronje for sending it!
Read it and think about how you can improve!
“12 Behaviors that always hold leaders back:
- Avoiding. Avoiding is the path to mediocrity.
- Copying others and losing you. Copying others is useful when it aligns with your strengths. When it doesn’t align, it creates stress, pressure, frustration, and failure.
- Over thinking and under acting; stressing preparation over execution. Most organizations plan well and execute poorly.
- Hiding from what you really think or feel. The need to please others causes you to lose yourself.
- Asking “why” too much.”
Continue reading here…
//Richard
Fire Your CIO
Ok, yet another interesting article!
“The following post is by Mike Abramsky, principal of Red Team Global , which facilitates technology innovation via collaborative workshops and consulting.
Do you stifle productivity – or shoot the CIO?
That’s the dilemma increasingly faced by CEOs. With the rise of tablets, smartphones, social media, apps and personal clouds, we are in the midst of a profound computing shift, perhaps the greatest technology revolution in the enterprise since the invention of the PC. But the IT department with its risk-averse, slow-moving, heavy-handed culture threatens to torpedo hoped-for productivity.
This revolution is more than just technology; some CEOs recognize it as early days of Retooling the Enterprise. The ease of adoption of these new tools means non-technical staff can pursue faster, more flexible”
Continue reading here…
//Richard
HTML5 or Native for Mobile Apps? Try hybrid
Another interesting blog post from The HTML5 Center with some statistics from developers around their plans to adopt HTML5 for mobile apps.
HTML5 or Native for Mobile Apps? Try hybrid
What is your strategy? I guess that it’s HTML5 all the way so that you don’t have to make X number of builds for the various Android devices out there etc, but will the app perform as expected and will you be able to access all the features needed on the device, or will you revert to an hybrid or native approach like Facebook did?
//Richard
OpenSource “Device Tracker” service – Prey
Thanks Dan Brinkmann for this interesting tip about an online open source service that is available in a free and a Pro version. If you like to keep a track of your devices etc this may be something to look at.
Have a look at their webpage (http://preyproject.com) or check out this intro video that also is on their startup page;
Not a fully fledged MDM service but an interesting project and let’s see where this is heading in the future!
//Richard
The IT Melting Pot! 