Archive
Faster, more secure access to business files on the go – #Citrix, #ShareFile,
Very interesting update to ShareFile apps or iOS! Especially the encryption on the devices by the pin-protection! This is something that I know companies have been waiting for! Thanks for a great blog post Peter Schulz!
Announcing all new updates to ShareFile for iPhone and iPad!
We hope you’ve had a chance to check out the ShareFile for iPhone and iPad apps – available for download from the Apple App Store. Today, we are excited to announce new features across both apps that address two major customer needs: 1) security and 2) access. These features include:
- Passcode support with local encryption – The ShareFile apps now allow the user to select a PIN to assign to an account in ShareFile. This provides a simpler means of accessing your account without having to type in your account password each time.
- Jailbreak Detection – This feature allows account administrators to block account access from devices that are detected to be jailbroken.
- Support for StorageZone Connectors – StorageZone Connectors let you connect existing file shares to ShareFile and access the data remotely on your iOS device. Customers have shared that they want easy access to their data wherever it’s stored across their organization. We built StorageZone Connectors with this in mind, allowing users to view data stored beyond ShareFile.
Each of these updates improves the mobile file sharing experience by making it easier and safer to access your data from anywhere. For everyday use, my personal favorite is passcode support with local encryption.
When I use my iPad, I don’t want to bother with setting up a device passcode for normal use, but I still want to protect my ShareFile data from anyone who might pick up the device. On the other hand, I don’t want to type in my (fairly long) password each time I launch the app. With this update, I can set a 4 digit PIN just for my ShareFile account. Where does the local encryption come in? ShareFile always flags your data for device encryption, but iOS will only enable that when you have a device passcode set. When you turn on the ShareFile PIN, we will encrypt your data using AES 256-bit encryption even though the iOS protection isn’t enabled…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Who’s making money in the cloud? – #Citrix, #SAP, #Fujitsu, #HP, via @douglasabrown
This was a very interesting post as well that Douglas posted!
Who’s really making money in the cloud computing market?
It can be tough to say for sure because most cloud computing companies don’t make official revenue and earnings figures available. But, that hasn’t stopped some analysts from making estimating at least the revenue results.
Analyst firm Technology Business Research estimates annual revenue for the top public cloud companies in 2012 across infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS)…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Citrix #NetScaler VPX on the #Cisco 1110 Virtual Network Services platform – via @pigram86
Interesting!!! 🙂
This week at Cisco live! in London, Citrix is demonstrating the Citrix NetScaler VPX virtual application delivery controller (vADC) on the Nexus 1110 Cloud Services Platform . NetScaler VPX is the industry-leading vADC and is further testimony to the expanding ecosystem for the Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual networking portfolio and the Cloud Network Services platform. The integrated Cisco-Citrix solution follows on the heels of last year’s agreement by the two companies that Cisco would reference sell the Citrix NetScaler portfolio, and Cisco’s demonstration of its Nexus 1000V virtual networking portfolio on Citrix XenServer.
The Nexus 1110 is the latest generation of appliances that started with the Nexus 1010. The Nexus 1110 helps customers that are virtualizing more of their application and security services and want to run them on a dedicated platform. For example, virtual firewalls, like our Virtual Security Gateway (VSG), complement physical firewall appliances to support virtual application deployments and VM mobility requirements. The Nexus 1110 appliance serves that need, running a range of virtual services on a platform that the networking and security teams can more directly control than the other application servers.
With Citrix NetScaler VPX integrated into the Nexus 1110 Cloud Services Platform, enterprise IT admins can scale-out deployments by enabling additional virtual NetScaler instances (VM’s) directly from the Nexus 1110. NetScaler VPX also provides feature and management consistency across physical and virtual ADC’s, as well as consistency across physical and virtual workloads that are being managed. The NetScaler…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
POC vs. Pilot vs. Production via #Citrix blogs
A good summary here from Scott Campbell! And I see many cases where steps are forgotten, scope’ing being totally off and customer getting unhappy in the end…
To successfully deploy a Citrix solution, it’s important to be aware of how users are interacting with the environment, understand the purpose of the environment, and plan how the environment fits into the support structure. In the course of my 8+ years with Citrix I have seen countless customer environments, and being aware of the items above can make or break your deployment. At a basic level it comes down to understanding the difference between a Proof of Concept, Pilot and Production. There tends to be a few unique commonalities across all POCs, all Pilots and all Production deployments that made them successful.
Additionally, I’ll discuss a hybrid approach that uses a simplified and streamlined approach to accelerate a virtualization project to get a medium sized user population on-boarded.
This article is by no means meant to be exhaustive, but is instead to provide some food for thought to get you in the right mindset and on the right path when planning your virtualization project.
POC – Proof of Concept
It probably sounds intuitive, but the point of a POC is to prove the feasibility of a solution, or the feasibility of a critical aspect of a solution. Typically a POC is trying to answer questions similar to the ones below:
- Will this technology meet our needs?
- Will this product perform as advertised?
- Will the prospective end user communities be productive with the new way of doing things?
- Will the ultimate solution be feasible?
What does a POC look like? In order for a POC to be successful, it must be broken up into the following steps:
- Definition of success criteria.Clearly and specifically defining success criteria will set you up for success. Appropriate success criteria typically come from business decision makers, IT, end-users, or end-user representatives. Obtaining success criteria from the internet or solution vendors typically presents a skewed point of view and probably won’t accurately address what is important to your situation.There are two..
Continue reading here!
//Richard
New #Citrix #Visio Stencils – via @djfeller – #XenApp #XenDesktop #XenClient #XenServer
Thanks a lot for the great work you did on Project Accelerator, and for sharing the Visio stencils!! 🙂
By spending a little time in the Assess phase, Project Accelerator creates this awesome looking diagram
The truth is, this diagram took many, many, many revisions. We wanted to create something that was easy to follow while providing the most important information people wanted to see, which included IOPS, servers, VMs, storage space, desktop images, infrastructure components, and so much more. It took a few revisions before I had something in Visio that did all of that. Then we gave my diagram to Marta Guerra, a senior designer on the Project Accelerator team. She turned the diagram into something easy to follow and very clean with new images/icons for all of the components. I’m still impressed. I know many of you are too because you’ve asked for the Visio stencils.
Unfortunately, Project Accelerator diagrams aren’t done in Visio, but that didn’t stop us from giving you what you wanted. With the help of Marta, I’ve been able to turn these images into a new set of Citrix Visio Stencils.
Get them here!
//Richard
Documenting #Citrix #XenApp 6.5 with MS PowerShell V2 – @CarlWebster via @anders_keis
Good work Carl and the rest of you guys! Will try it out ASAP! 🙂
The original article on Documenting a Citrix XenApp 6.5 Farm with Microsoft PowerShell was released on October 7, 2011. The original script has been downloaded over 15,000 times. I decided it was time to update the script to have the output match what was shown in AppCenter. With a lot of help (and patience) from Exchange MVP and PowerShell guru Michael B. Smith, I updated the original script from over 1800 lines to over 2900 lines of PowerShell to thoroughly document a XenApp 6.5 farm. This article will focus on the changes to the script.
I would like to thank the following people for helping to test the script.
- @BYODre
- Andrew Morgan
- Bart Jacobs
- Brian Hecker
- Derick
- Jarian Gibson
- J. L. Straat
- Jennifer Auiler
- Kees Baggerman
- Knut Gunnar Neggen
- Magnus Hjorleifsson
- Mark Fermin
- Thomas Poppelgaard
- And 25 others
Before we get started, I want you to know that I am NOT a programmer. I am NOT a software developer and I am NOT a real PowerShell coder. I am simply a hack who brute forces his way through all this PowerShell stuff until I either figure it out myself or have to use a lifeline. i.e. Michael B. Smith, Jeff Wouter or worse, I have to read a book!
The prerequisites to follow along with this article are:
- A server, physical or virtual, running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with or without SP1
- Citrix XenApp 6.5 installed with or without HRP01
Note: A few testers reported that neither this script nor AppCenter displayed the hotfixes installed on the data collectors. Citrix has a public hotfix that should resolve that specific issue. http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX132713
The nice thing about XenApp 6.5 compared to both XenApp 5 and XenApp 6 is that all the basic Citrix PowerShell stuff is installed when you install XenApp 6.5. But we still need the XenApp 6.5 PowerShell..
Continue reading here!
//Richard
How to leverage the new multiple datastore options of VDI-in-a-Box 5.2 – #VDIinaBox
Another good Citrix blog post, thx Richard Khan!
Last year with version 5.1, VDI-in-a-Box introduced the ability to take advantage of two separate data stores, allowing VDI-in-a-Box to better leverage the direct attached storage of servers. When using the Hyper-V or ESX hypervisors, VDI-in-a-Box allows you to define a second datastore to separate the storage of golden images, and linked clones. Now with version 5.2 of VDI-in-a-Box we have introduced the option for a third datastore. In addition to the datastore options for golden images and desktops, there is now an option to store the personal vDisks associated with personal desktops on a separate datastore. Administrators now have the ability to store images, desktops, and personal disks separately or together on the datastore of their choosing. Best of all, this option is available on all supported hypervisors.
Upon initial configuration, the vdiManager uses a single datastore. This primary datastore contains all of the golden images, desktop instances, and the vDisks associated with Personal Desktops. Enabling the multiple datastore feature in vdiManager’s advanced properties makes it possible to separate these three types of data onto their own data stores.
The flexibility of multiple datastores can be leveraged by storing pooled desktops on an SSD datastore for improved IOPS performance. Since pooled desktops…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Citrix VDI-in-a-Box 5.2, now supports CloudGateway etc. – @VDIinaBox, @CitrixCG
Ok, now VDI-in-a-Box is becoming more and more “complete”! This release delivers some of the features many have wanted for a while! For instance the support of the latest hypervisors as well as CloudGateway!
Read more below taken from the Citrix blog post:
Version V5.2 is now ready for prime time. The focus of this release was to support the latest hypervisors and Citrix components. Actually we did a lot more because we added a few features that our users have been clamoring for.
Support for the latest hypervisors:
As always we need to stay current and so version 5.2 supports vSphere 5.1, XenServer 6.1 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012. The latter should increase desktop density quite a bit. We’d love to hear your experiences along those lines. Please post on the forum what sort of density increases you are experiencing.
Unified access to VDI-in-a-Box desktops and your applications and data:
Version 5.2 now supports Citrix’s Cloud Gateway and allows you to access VDI-in-a-Box through it. Cloud Gateway provides a unified application and data store allowing you to access Windows, web, SaaS and Mobile applications seamlessly and so we felt it important that VDI-in-a-Box work with this application and data aggregation service.
Real-time collaboration with Microsoft Lync:
In addition, we support Microsoft Lync via the Citrix HDX RealTime Optimization Pack for Microsoft Lync. Now users can seamlessly participate in audio-video or audio-only calls to and from other HDX RealtTime users and other standards-based video desktop and conference room systems. This is especially good for call centers and the like who want wide ranging soft phone functionality with their virtual desktops.
Highly available Personal Desktops with PVD:
Many had asked that we provide some form of high availability for Personal (PVD) desktops. We provide this by allowing you to place PVD desktops on shared storage. Here’s how it works. You specify a third datastore which resides on shared storage and VDI-in-a-Box will honor this request and store all Personal desktops using PVD on it.
Turn old desktops into locked down thin clients:
Kids will be kids and so many school lab administrators have asked that we provide a way to lock down the devices used in their labs. Now, you can download the Desktop Lock from the VDI-in-a-Box download page on the Citrix web site. It will allow you to lock down the physical device and essentially turn your old desktops and workstations into a thin client that connects directly to VDI-in-a-Box and keeps the kids from doing any mischief.
Fully automated software update with our Touchless DTagent:
And since we’re always looking for ways to make things simpler, with V5.2, we now have a fully automated way for you to upgrade the VDI-in-a-Box software. We had two issues in the past. First, you had to manually install the VDI-in-a-Box desktop agent on a golden image (that is then used to stamp out multiple desktop instances). Second, when you upgraded the VDI-in-a-Box software, you had to manually update the agent on each existing golden image. In Version 5.1, we automatically install the agent on all new images. With V5.2, we now provide you a list of existing golden images whose agents need to be updated and once you click yes, we walk you through a wizard to automatically upgrade the agent and test the golden image. For more details on this, see the blog by David Liu: http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/01/22/viab-5-2-makes-updating-desktop-agents-easier/.
Continue reading here!
//Richard
@WorkWeb & @WorkMail release candidates available – #Citrix, #CloudGateway
Finally! The apps are available at MyCitrix! Stay tuned for test results etc…
//Richard
PVS support in XenServer 6.1 – via @_POPPELGAARD – #XenServer, #Citrix, #PVS
Good blog post from Thomas Poppelgaard!
And this is something that many have waited for, either they upgraded and ran into the issues and had to revert back to 6.0.2… but now it’s fixed! 🙂
Citrix have released Hotfix XS61E009 & XS61E010 for XenServer 6.1 and now you are able to have Citrix Provisioning Services with XS 6.1 and use VVS.
I have been waiting for this for a while.
Issues Resolved In This Hotfix XS61E009
- Virtual Machines (VMs) with out of date XenServer Tools, may not be flagged as “out of date” in XenCenter. This hotfix resolves this issue and enables customers to be notified in XenCenter when new XenServer Tools are available.
- Booting a Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) target device using a Boot Device Manager (BDM) image can take an extended time to complete. This hotfix resolves this issue.
Issues Resolved In This Hotfix XS61E010
- Customers using XenServer Platinum Edition to license Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) may find that one PVS license per VM is checked out, rather than one PVS license per XenServer host. This may lead to a shortage of PVS licenses and an inability to provision VMs. Installing this hotfix along with CTX135672 – Hotfix CPVS61016 (Version 6.1.16) – For Citrix Provisioning Services 6.1 – English resolves this issue.
- Attempts to shut down Microsoft Windows Vista and later VMs can cause intermittent blue screen errors, with a "STOP: 0x0000009f..." error message.
- Adding more than eight NICs to Microsoft Windows Vista and later VMs, using the xe CLI can lead to a blue screen error on reboot.
- Copying data to a Microsoft Windows 2003 VM can cause the VMs to hang and lead to a grey screen error.
- When Dynamic Memory Control (DMC) is enabled, attempts to migrate Microsoft Windows XP and later VMs using XenMotion can cause the VMs to hang and lead to blue screen error.
- When the Citrix Xen Guest Agent service is running, Cut and Paste will not work between a XenDesktop virtual desktop and the endpoint device.
- Microsoft Windows XP and later VMs may hang during the boot process and may have to be forced to reboot.
- Attempting to install or upgrade the XenServer Tools on Microsoft Windows Vista and later VMs, which do not have access to a paravirtualized or an emulated network device can cause the installation process to hang.
- Manually installing the Legacy XenServer Tools without changing the device_id to 0001 can result in a "STOP: 0x0000007B..."error when rebooting a Windows VM. After installing this hotfix, customers will not be able to manually install the Legacy XenServer Tools by running xenlegacy.exe…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
The IT Melting Pot! 
