Archive
Jan. Edition of XenDesktop Technical Newsletter Now Available – #XenDesktop, #Citrix
It’s out again with more exciting topics! Check it out!!!
Using XenDesktop? Then you need to get the XenDesktop Technical Newsletter! The newsletter is comprised of the best technical resources from across Citrix Services: Consulting, Technical Support, Education, and Technical Readiness. In its third year the newsletter is designed to help customers run their XenDesktop optimally and get more out of their investment in Citrix desktop virtualization. And its FREE!
I am pleased to announce that the January 2013 edition of the newsletter is now available.
Check out the archive page, where you can access both the current and past issues, as well as subscribe to the FREE monthly newsletter.
The January edition of the newsletter is packed with great content, including:
- Optimal XenApp 6.5 VM Configuration (Blog)
- Introduction to the new Project Accelerator (Blog)
- Deploying XenApp 6.5 using PVS (Blog)
- Insider Troubleshooting tips for Administrators (eBook)
- Whats new with Excalibur (Blog)
- Top Knowledge Center content for December 2012 (Articles, hotfixes, whitepapers, etc…)
- How to configure Access Gateway 5 standalone for use with XD5 (tech note)
- XenDesktop Tools & Hotfixes
- And much more.
If you have any..
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Microsoft and Others Fail Antivirus Test – #ForeFront, #FEP, #AV
Microsoft is still behind the competition…
How many of you out there are using ForeFront Endpoint Protection (FEP) to secure your clients/servers?
Below is a good article from Neil J. Rubenking about the latest (Nov/DEc 2012) report from AV-Test:
Based in Magdeburg, Germany, independent lab AV-Test evaluates and rates antivirus products on a variety of different criteria. Every couple of months the researchers summarize their testing and report on which products achieved certification. In the latest such report, several vendors failed to make the grade.
One of the many individual tests involved in AV-Test certification measures how well products stand up to zero-day attacks—viruses or other threats so new that no antivirus signature exists. AV-Test CEO Andreas Marx noted that the 25 consumer products in the current test averaged 92 percent detection of zero-day attacks. “This means,” said Marx “that one out of ten malware attacks succeeded.” He also pointed out that while the products averaged 91 percent cleanup of existing infections, many didn’t remove all traces. “Only 60% could be put back in a condition similar to the pre-infection state,” Marx observed.
Certification Failed
Products can earn six points each for repair of existing malware infestations, protection against new attacks, and overall usability. Here usability means the product doesn’t slow system performance and doesn’t falsely report valid programs or activities as malicious. In order to receive certification, a product must earn a total of 11 points.
Just as in the previous test, Microsoft didn’t make the cut, though with ten points it came close. PC Tools also failed with ten points.
The big loser this time around was AhnLab. In the previous test AhnLab squeaked by with 11 points. The latest test saw that score drop to 8.5 points, well below the certification cutof…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Why Windows RT will die – #Windows, #RT
I have to agree with this blog post a lot! I don’t see a future for RT, sorry Microsoft!
It should be no surprise that Microsoft’s Windows RT Surface tablet sold only a million units in the fourth quarter, about a half of what analysts expected. Windows RT is an operating system without a future. Here’s why it will die.
UBS analyst Brent Thil said that a million Surface tablets sold That’s about half of what he expected. Computerworld says that in a note to investors, he said that people were buying the iPad rather than the Surface.
Plenty of other reports have found that the Surface is selling poorly. Even Steve Ballmer admits that Surface sales have been modest.
You can attribute sluggish sales to plenty of factors, such as poor distribution. But there’s a deeper reason: Windows RT has no future. It’s an operating system so rife with problems, it’s hard to imagine it succeeding.
One big issue is confusion about exactly what it is. It looks like a Windows 8 tablet, but it isn’t. It can’t run Windows 8 apps unless they’ve been specifically modified to run on Windows RT. It won’t run the Desktop or Desktop apps.
Despite that, it sells for $500, as much as an iPad. Because of all this,Samsung has cancelled plans for selling an RT tablet in the U.S. Mike Abary, Samsung senior vice president in charge of the PC and tablet businesses in the United States, explained the decision this way to CNet:
“There wasn’t really a very clear positioning of what Windows RT meant in the marketplace, what it…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Webinar – #Citrix Mobile Device Management – #CloudGateway – @RobSanders
How to secure native iOS and Android email as well as other apps for business use
Thursday, 24th January 2013, 3:00pm GMT (4:00pm CET)
Citrix provides two new mobile apps to support mobile workers with secure email and web browsing on their BYO and corporate mobile devices – @WorkMail and @WorkWeb.Come to this technical webinar to learn more about how these and other native iOS and Android applications can be securely distributed and managed for your business.
Topics include:
- Managing, securing and controlling web and native mobile applications and data
- Secure mobile containers
- Seamless app integration
- Policy-based access controls
- Application-specific Micro VPN
This live webinar presented by Rob Sanders and will be followed by a live Q&A session.
Space is limited.
Register here!
//Richard
Good News: Office 365 ProPlus can be activated on RDS – #RDS, #XenApp, #Citrix
This is interesting and good news!
Thanks for sharing Jesper_Osgaard!!!
In case you missed it – the latest Product Use Rights (january 2013) now includes a note under Additional Terms #3, page 82
“3. Each user may also use one of the five activations on a network server with the Remote Desktop Services (RDS) role enabled”
Note: Office 365 ProPlus is the upcoming version of Office 365
Source: Good News: Office 365 ProPlus can be activated on network server with RDS role enabled
//Richard
AT&T boldly enters home security market with digital life – via @EricssonLabs, @ATT
This is cool! Great thinking and I like the aggressiveness in finding new business models and ideas!
One of the more ambitious and promising initiatives announced at CES was AT&T’s Digital Life. As the flagship announcement at AT&T Developer Summit, Digital LIfe is an application and services platform that will offer a broad range of services to consumer households including media management, home security services, home energy monitoring and a broad variety of sensor-based services such as water leak detection and water main control.
When launched in March 2013 in eight metropolitan markets in the US, the platform will be the first of its kind sold by mobile operators in the US in partnership with several firms including Cisco Systems, which will provide a control panel for the service. The service platform has been in development for well over a year, with a mansion full of demonstration prototypes given at CTIA in New Orleans in 2Q2012, and represents a significant strategic direction for AT&T which is aggressively pushing the traditional business model boundaries of a mobile operator. While pricing and service details won’t be available until later in the quarter, the new platform is designed to leverage AT&T’s ever expanding portfolio of connected devices and shared data plans launched in 2012.
While home media management and device connectivity are not new to AT&T, the platform’s home security service is a strong indication of AT&T’s ambitious plans to expand its business model and revenue base.
According to AT&T, the home security market is a highly fragmented industry that is ripe for disruption and under penetrated. With less than of 20 per cent of US households currently subscribing home security services and served by thousands of service providers, AT&T is convinced that its wireless IP-based services will offer both the scale and efficiency to carve out a leadership position in the space, challenging current market leader ADT.
AT&T’s new security business will offer two 24/7 call centers to respond to real-time…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Tablets are crushing PC sales, Gartner finds
Don’t blame Windows 8 or the economy for poor PC sales, analyst says
People are buying tablets to replace old PCs, which explains why PC sales were so dismal over the holidays, according to Gartner.
Small, portable, capable, inexpensive, touchscreen tablets grab sales from low-end PCs and mean that old PCs will not be replaced with new ones, says Mikako Kitagawa, a Gartner principal analyst, and that is a significant change in how PC sales work.
“Whereas as once we imagined a world in which individual users would have both a PC and a tablet as personal devices, we increasingly suspect that most individuals will shift consumption activity to a personal tablet, and perform creative and administrative tasks on a shared PC,” Kitagawa says.
“This transformation was triggered by the availability of compelling low-cost tablets in 2012, and will continue until the installed base of PCs declines to accommodate tablets as the primary consumption device.”
That is the battle Windows 8 is fighting, Gartner says, although the scarcity of Windows 8 touch devices may so far have hampered sales. With new touch machines being promised for later this year, that may help Windows 8 grab a larger share of PC sales but not help the overall number of PCs sold, Gartner says.
Sales were down 4.9% in Q4 2012 compared to Q4 2011, Gartner says, which goes along with IDC numbers from last week, although IDC’s number, 6.4%, is larger. “During the holiday season, consumers no longer viewed PCs as the number one gift item,” Gartner said…
Continue to read here!
//Richard
#Citrix #XenApp 6.5 Hosted Shared Desktop Sizing Example
Great Citrix blog post series from Andy Baker!
In this blog series I’m taking a look at scalability considerations for XenApp 6.5 Hosted Shared Desktops, specifically:
- How to estimate XenApp 6.5 Hosted Shared Desktop scalability
- What’s the optimal XenApp 6.5 VM specification?
- XenApp 6.5 Hosted Shared Desktop sizing example
My last post provided guidance on the optimal XenApp virtual machine specification. Now in the last post of the series, I’m going to walk through an example sizing exercise.
Scenario
Company ABC recently completed a user segmentation exercise. The following table includes 8 user groups that have been identified as good candidates for a Hosted Shared Desktop. None of these user groups requires the ability to install applications or the ability to customize their desktop beyond profile based changes. Three separate Provisioning Services images will be created due to application compatibility conflicts identified by Citrix AppDNA.
With Hosted Shared Desktops, it is important to consider the ‘Maximum Number of Concurrent Users’ column rather than the ‘Total Number of Users’ column. Sizing the environment for concurrency rather than the total number of users will help to reduce infrastructure costs without affecting performance or availability.
Sufficient redundancy should be incorporated into the sizing estimate so that a single XenApp server or virtualization host failure does not affect the total number of concurrent users that can be supported (n+1).
Company ABC wishes to use their standard hardware specification…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Citrix Knowledge Center Top 10 – December 2012
Citrix Support is focused on ensuring Customer and Partner satisfaction with our products.
One of our initiatives is to increase the ability of our Partners and Customers to leverage self-service avenues via our Knowledge Center.
Find below the Citrix Knowledge Center Top 10 for December 2012.
Top 10 Technical Articles
| Article Number | Article Title |
|---|---|
| CTX129229 | Recommended Hotfixes for XenApp 6.0 and Later on Windows Server 2008 R2 |
| CTX129082 | Application Launch Fails with Web Interface using Internet Explorer 9 |
| CTX132875 | Citrix Receiver Error 2320 |
| CTX804493 | Users Prompted to Download ICA File, Launch.ica, Instead of Launching the Connection |
| CTX105793 | Error: Cannot connect to the Citrix server. Protocol Driver Error |
| CTX133997 | Citrix Receiver 3.x – Issues Fixed in This Release |
| CTX127030 | Citrix Guidelines for Antivirus Software Configuration |
| CTX101644 | Seamless Configuration Settings |
| CTX676151 | How to Install the Citrix ICA Web Clien |
| CTX325140 | Manually and Safely Removing Files that might remain on a System |
Top 10 Whitepapers
| Article Number | Article Title |
|---|---|
| CTX131577 | XenApp 6.x (Windows 2008 R2) – Optimization Guide |
| CTX132799 | XenDesktop and XenApp Best Practices |
| CTX101997 | Citrix Secure Gateway Secure Ticket Authority Frequently Asked Questions |
| CTX133185 | Citrix CloudGateway Express 2.0 – Implementation Guide |
| CTX129761 | XenApp Planning Guide – Virtualization Best Practices |
| CTX134943 | XenDesktop and XenApp Printing – Planning Guide |
| CTX122978 | XenServer: Understanding Snapshots |
| CTX134081 | Planning Guide – Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop Policies |
| CTX128277 | Logon Optimization Guide – XenApp/XenDesktop |
| CTX110351 | User Profile Best Practices for MetaFrame Presentation Server |
Top 10 Hotfixes
| Article Number | Article Title |
|---|---|
| CTX132122 | Hotfix Rollup Pack 1 for Citrix XenApp 6.5 for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 |
| CTX126653 | Citrix Online Plug-in 12.1.44 for Windows with Internet Explorer 9 Support |
| CTX133066 | 12.3 Online Plug-In – Issues Fixed in This Release |
| CTX133882 | Hotfix Rollup Pack 2 for Citrix XenApp 6 for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 |
| CTX135025 | Hotfix XA650R01W2K8R2X64033- For Citrix XenApp 6.5 for Windows Server 2008 R2 |
| CTX116550 | Credential Handling Weakness in Presentation Server Client for Windows |
| CTX135709 | Hotfix XS61E006 – For XenServer 6.1.0 |
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#EnvokeIT is expanding – looking for a new exciting career? #Mobility, #Networking, #Citrix
It’s exciting! EnvokeIT continues to expand and we are looking for new colleagues within the Mobility, Networking and Virtualization areas. It doesn’t matter if you currently are a Junior or Senior consultant! It doesn’t matter, just as long as you have the will to grow! Come join us on our exciting journey!
We are looking for someone who wants to grow with us!
EnvokeIT are confident that our employees are our most important assets. Employees who are happy and like to go to work makes a difference. Our continued success is based on finding, retaining and developing talents that understands customers’ business processes and future IT needs. As a consultant with EnvokeIT you are employed by us but you work with one of our clients. Assignments can be for longer or shorter periods depending on what you are working with, what customers need and your personal preferences. You build on your resume with new experiences and skills, while contributing to customer business activities with your knowledge and skills.
We want to be one of the best and most exciting employers in the IT industry. As an employee of EnvokeIT you are given a unique opportunity to participate in the company’s further development. Periodically, you will be invited to consultant meetings where you get the chance to meet your peers that are working on various assignments on EnvokeITs behalf. Sometimes we organize lectures that will be a part..
Continue reading and apply here!
//Richard
The IT Melting Pot! 