Archive
#XenMobile on Android and MicroVPN issue unless you really synch Worx releases…
Hi,
If you’ve worked with XenMobile and especially the AppController to deploy WorxMail and WorxWeb you know that these establish a MicroVPN tunnel to reach internal resources when needed.
One thing that I noted today was that when you upgrade your AppController and NetScalers and people also upgrade their Worx Home app on Android you can run into an issue unless you upgrade and align your Worx Home and WorxWeb apps.
The new Worx Home 8.6.1 on Android requires that you run WorxWeb 1.3.3 from Citrix, otherwise the MicroVPN tunnel won’t be established and you won’t reach your internal resources through it.
So it’s more important than ever to ensure that you try your NetScaler, AppController and Worx apps and align their releases.. once they work then you see this great progress and tunnel being established.
It would be nice to get a good table of which versions of each product/component that you should run and which ones that can support all use cases like; XenMobile , ShareFile on prem, ICA/HDX proxy, SSL VPN and SmartAccess for RfW and proxy! I’ve not yet found one combination that delivers everything. 😉
Happy XenMobile’ing!
//Richard
#XenDesktop 7.1 on #Hyper-V Pilot Guide! – #Citrix
This is a great PoC guide, some thing I would have done differently in detail but overall great work!
You’ve heard of XenDesktop 7.1, experienced a demo and worked through the Reviewer’s Guide. Now where do you turn when you’re ready for a PoC, pilot and preparations for a full-scale rollout?
Here on the Citrix Readiness and Enablement Team, we’re always looking for ways to empower our customers to be successful on their projects. To this end, we’ve taken one of our most popular hands-on lab guides used to train hundreds of internal and external students and reworked it for consumption by the masses. The XenDesktop 7.1 on Hyper-V Pilot Guide can be download fromhttps://citrix.sharefile.com/d/scaa256260df4ab3b. In this guide we cover the following topics with step-by-step instructions and screenshots:
– Configuring System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Installing the Agent
– Setting Up SQL Server Mirroring for a XenDesktop site
– Setting up the XenDesktop Site
– Joining a Controller to an Existing Site
– Configuring StoreFront and Installing Certificates
– Configuring NetScaler for StoreFront Load Balancing
– Installing the VDA Software on Desktop and Server VMs
– Creating Catalogs of Machine for Desktops and Servers
– Creating Delivery Groups for Desktops and Servers
– Delivering Installed and App-V Applications
– Provisioning Services Configuration and Optimizations
– Using the XenDesktop Setup Wizard
– Setting up Remote Access with NetScaler and StoreFront
– Internal and External Connectivity Scenarios
– Load Evaluator Policies
– Monitoring with Director
– Exploring Configuration Logging
– Exploring Delegated Administration
– Working with PowerShell
And much more!
Take a look through the document and let us know your thoughts…
IMPORTANT: This guide is designed to be used as a reference for building PoC and/or pilot environments. Production environments should always be…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Almost perfect.. #ShareFile StorageZones on Azure is now generally available! – #Citrix, #Azure
This is a great addition I must say, but some things are missing!
One thing that I’m missing is the full integration with Azure storage containers! You still have to specify a temp/cache storage location that today ShareFile controller requires to be on a CIFS share when you have multiple controllers. And if you put the controller up in Azure as well, how do you then get that CIFS share and make it highly available? There is no CIFS exposure directly from the Azure storage, you have to setup a couple of VM’s in Azure, do something like DFS to expose is.. and then all of a sudden you have a whole file service to manage there as well.. and to monitor and all of a sudden you need AD and monitoring and reporting of it.. phuuu…
So I hope that in next version we can specify an Azure storage container for that cache/temp storage as well! 😉
The other thing I’d really like to see is NetScaler support in Azure, so that we could do proper AAA/CS/LB of the controllers in Azure as well so that we can get a simple and fully cloud based service in Azure! 🙂
BYOD and a growing global workforce are generating demand for instant access to data, offline productivity and seamless collaboration from anywhere. Organizations are challenged with reconciling these forces with leveraging existing investments, protect intellectual property and meet regulatory compliance requirements – driving interest in ShareFile StorageZones. StorageZones offers IT the flexibility to store data in secure Citrix-managed datacenters in multiple worldwide locations, or on-premise within their own datacenters.
At Citrix Synergy 2013, we announced new ShareFile StorageZones options with Microsoft Windows Azure. We are now pleased to announce the general availability of ShareFile StorageZones on Azure with the release of ShareFile StorageZones Controller software version 2.2. This release includes support for Windows Azure storage containers, therefore if you have a Windows Azure account, you can use an Azure storage container for your private data storage instead of a locally maintained share. Hosting ShareFile data natively in your Microsoft Azure account helps IT build the most cost-effective and customized solution for their organization. This customer-managed solution integrates ShareFile with Microsoft Azure’s Binary Large Object (Blob) storage, a cloud service for storing large amounts of unstructured data that can be accessed from anywhere in the world via HTTP or HTTPS.
Product Overview
Azure storage is customer-managed storage hosted in the Windows Azure cloud. File uploads are initially deposited into a temporary storage area shared by all StorageZone controllers. Then, a background service copies those files to the Windows Azure storage container and deletes the local cached copy of the file(s).
Typically with CIFS based StorageZones, the Controller servers are installed on-premise in the customer’s datacenter. However, if a customer is hosting virtual machines in Azure, they could install the StorageZone Controller software on instances running in their Azure account and not necessarily on-premise.
Read the ShareFile StorageZones on Azure Storage Technical Brief and watch the video Installing and Configuring ShareFile StorageZones v2.2 with Microsoft Azure to learn more about this solution.
Check out our Citrix and…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Citrix and Palo Alto Networks Team to Deliver Consolidated, Multi-tenant Network Security and #ADC Services on #NetScaler SDX
This is really interesting!!
With the myriad of features that we launched in PAN-OS 6.0, you may have missed a new deployment option for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series in your data center. In addition to the support of VM-Series for VMware environments, you can now deploy the VM-Series on the Citrix NetScaler SDX platform. We launched this with Citrix officially today.
Virtualized and cloud environments require the secure and efficient delivery of the right applications to the right users using any device and from any location. To do this, you need an infrastructure that supports all aspects of application delivery (security, availability, performance and visibility) and embraces the key characteristics of cloud:
- Multi-tenancy – the ability to support differing needs of new application owners, business units or service provider customers
- Agility – the services must have the ability to be provisioned and de-provisioned on demand, with support for automation and orchestration
- Scalability – the services must have the ability to flexibly scale up, scale out capacity to meet the needs of the business
Citrix NetScaler SDX is an open, multi-services platform that addresses these requirements. The NetScaler SDX platform consolidates NetScaler application delivery controller (ADC), and best-in-class network and security services required for application delivery. Now, with the introduction of VM-Series on Citrix NetScaler, you’ll be able to provide dedicated instances of security and ADC for per application load balancing with dedicated firewalling. You now also have a complete, integrated security and availability solution for Citrix XenApp XenDesktop deployments – from secure remote access, high-availability…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#VDI Calculator v5 is Now Available with Major New Features – #IaaS, #Storage, #BYOD via @andreleibovici
This is awesome! Great work by @andreleibovici!
I am happy to announce the General Availability of the new VDI Calculator v5. This new version is the single biggest release since I started delivering the calculator. I have completely re-architected the way the calculator works, allowing multiple types of desktops to be configured in a single calculation for a single solution.
All existing features have been retained and will work in the exact same way you are used to, but you now have the ability to select different options for different types of desktops or desktop pools.
As an example, you may choose Desktop Type 1 to be a ‘student’ desktop using Linked Clones with 10 different pools; conversely you may choose Desktop Type 2 to be a ‘professor’ desktop using Full Clones with 5 individual pools. This new calculator gives you much more granular control over your calculations eliminating repetitive tasks when sizing larger environments.
To enable multi-desktop pool calculations just select ‘-’ and ‘+’ in the top bar menu.
Another additional feature is what I call ‘Ask for Help‘. During the application session when you select the Update option a new screen will show up asking if you would like to be contacted by VDI solutions vendors that can help reduce costs, improve performance or improve manageability of your VDI solution. If you are interested…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Performance Tuning Citrix Storefront 2.x – #Citrix, #StoreFront via @PeterSmali
Another great blog post from my colleague Peter Smali!
Performance Tuning Citrix Storefront 2.x
First of all I would like to thank Sandbu who came up with an extra performance tuning trick that I have been testing for a while now.
In this post I’ll be demonstrating an updated version of Sandbu’s due some small changes since the introduction of Citrix Storefront 2.x
As we all are aware of, Citrix Storefront is fully dependent on IIS to work, but it is really suffering of some perfromance issues that surely most of us who have been testing or implementing it are aware of. So Let’s give Storefront a new perfromance birth by doing the following
Attention! Take a backup of all files you are going to modify before doing this! And Remember that Citrix Systems does not support this!!
1. Enable Socket Pooling (pooledSockets=”on”)
Open your C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\Storename\Webweb.config file as administrator and chenge pooledSockets=”off” to pooledSockets=”on”
By enabling socket pooling, Storefront maintaines a pool of sockets instead of creating a new socket each time a new user connects to Storefront, this will give a better performance for SSL based traffic.
2. Changing the application pool to always running (Windows Server 2008 R2)
If you are running Storefront on Windows Server 2012, there is already a new feature implemented in IIS called always running on the application pools but if you are still Windows Server 2008 R2 as I do then you need to do some manual changes…
But if you are still running Windows Server 2008, then you need to do the following:
2.1 Download and install Application Initialization Module for IIS 7.5. A reboot may be required to finish the installation process…
2.2 Open the C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config on the storefront server as administrator and locate the following setting <configuration><system.applicationHost><applicationPools> and add thealways running paramter startMode=”AlwaysRunning” on each of following application pools
•Citrix Delivery Services Authentication
•Citrix Delivery Services Resources
•Citrix Receiver for Web
•Citrix Delivery Services
The result may look like this:
add name=”Citrix Delivery Services Authentication” autoStart=”true” managedRuntimeVersion=”v2.0″ managedPipelineMode=”Integrated” startMode=”AlwaysRunning”>
2.3 Now locate <configuration>…
Continue reading here!
And you can also check this tuning blog post:
Finetuning a Citrix StoreFront deployment
And also ensure that you intelligently load balance your XML brokers, my suggestion is to use content switching in combination with load balancing to get a more optimal solution in place.
Ensure that you DON’T use FQDN’s when you add the XML broker name into the Delivery Controllers config of the StoreFront Store!! Use NetBIOS names, and NOT like farm1.company.com, rather specify “farm1″ and then ensure that the StoreFront server can resolve “farm1″ to your CS VIP, that will speed enumeration up a lot due to that StoreFront first checks via NetBIOS/WINS which isn’t that optimal!
Content Switching instead of Load balancing of XenApp XML brokers? – #XenApp #NetScaler #CS #LB
Happy StoreFront’ing!
//Richard
How to: Create Desktop Appliance site on StoreFront – #Citrix, #StoreFront, #ThinClient
I guess that some of you out there by now are using Thin Clients and some are using Desktop Appliance site functionality in the old Web Interface for these thin clients that are XenApp- or XenDesktop-ready.
So now you have or are thinking on how to setup this on StoreFront!
Citrix has A LOT of work to do in order to ensure that StoreFront becomes a stable and enterprise ready! There are so many tweaks and configurations needed in config files etc. that just isn’t ok! Add them into the console! It’s not hard, even I could code in some menus, forms windows and trigger the underlying PowerShell scripts!
But back to the topic, how do we configure Desktop Appliance site in StoreFront? Well, first we need to have a look at the following edocs articles that explain how to do it:
Desktop Appliance sites – And the most important in this article is the bottom that details WHAT DOESN’T WORK!
Important considerations
Desktop Appliance sites are intended for local users on the internal network accessing desktops from non-domain-joined desktop appliances. When you decide whether to use Desktop Appliance sites to provide users with access to your stores, consider the following restrictions.
- If you plan to deploy domain-joined desktop appliances and repurposed PCs, do not configure them to access stores through Desktop Appliance sites. Instead, configure Citrix Receiver with the XenApp Services URL for the store. For more information, see XenApp Services URLs.
- Desktop Appliance sites do not support connections from remote users outside the corporate network. Users logging on to NetScaler Gateway cannot access Desktop Appliance sites.
How do you release this and don’t support connecting through a NetScaler Gateway? Then you miss the whole point of SmartAccess, you cannot trigger EPA (host checks) for instance to control ICA/HDX features like drive mapping etc. internally. And you cannot have thin clients on the Internet that connects into the enterprise through NetScaler Gateway!
Next you should read this article that details the PowerShell madness 😉
Configure Desktop Appliance sites
I won’t go into details of the article above but rather show you how it’s done and with some examples of arguments to pass to the PowerShell scripts.
Step one is to log on to your StoreFront server, and just to show you our current setup is that we have one Receiver for Web (RfW) sites used for browser access into StoreFront:
From a Store perspective you can see that we have one (1) store that the RfW site exposes:
#XenMobile Mobility promotion from #Citrix – #EMM, #BYOD, #XenDesktop
XenMobile mobile device management (MDM) or enterprise mobile management (EMM) capabilities for the price of Software Maintenance!
Personally I wonder if this is a move triggered by VMware’s acquisition of AirWatch where Citrix now is kind of pushing it’s MDM solution out the door to really get some more market, and at the same time push VMware to give their new MDM capabilities away together with Horizon View…
This is an interesting and good action, thank you Citrix!
XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum Mobility Promotion
Promotion effective From January 31, 2014 to September 30, 2014
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The XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum Mobility Promotion is a limited-time promotion that offers new or existing XenApp or XenDesktop Platinum customers with perpetual licenses current on Subscription Advantage (SA) the ability to receive FREE XenMobile MDM edition licenses or get 20% off XenMobile Enterprise licenses with the purchase of first year Software Maintenance for all licenses obtained via this promotion. For either XenMobile promotion options, the maximum number of discounted licenses customers can purchase is based on the total number of XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum licenses owned. XenMobile MDM edition provides key device-level security capabilities for users accessing XenApp and XenDesktop desktops and apps on mobile devices. The mobile device management (MDM) solution lets you:
XenMobile Enterprise edition supports the next step in your EMM strategy by complementing the device-level security capabilities of XenMobile MDM edition with app-level security features. These include:
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Continue reading here!
//Richard
#XenApp 7.5 is launching! – #Citrix, #HSD, #DaaS, #VDI
Wow… this is really interesting and “weird” I must say…
XenApp is back! 🙂
And of course AppDNA is in there as well to simplify software/application management on this platform.
Description
New Citrix XenApp 7.5 makes it simple to deliver any Windows app to an increasingly mobile workforce, while leveraging the cost saving and elasticity of hybrid clouds and the security of mobile device management. Learn more at http://www.citrix.com/xenapp
Hear more about it in this video!
The video above was removed because of that it was accidentally published too early.. but you can find it on YouTube here:
//Richard
#Citrix #NetScaler Traffic Domains ins and outs – via @barryschiffer
Another great blog post by Barry!!! Keep up the great work!!
Citrix NetScaler Traffic Domains are a way of segmenting network traffic for different applications or even tenants. You are able to use a traffic domain to create fully isolated network environments on a single NetScaler instance. An instance is a single appliance or a HA setup of two appliances.
Citrix NetScaler Traffic Domains were introduced with NetScaler 10.0. At first NetScaler Traffic Domains started as a somewhat hidden feature which you could only configure by CLI. As of version 10.1 Traffic Domains are fully configurable in the NetScaler GUI which makes it a lot simpler to use.
In a way NetScaler Traffic Domains could compete with the NetScaler SDX platform. With Traffic Domains we segment networks on a single NetScaler instance instead of the SDX where we create a virtual appliance per network segment.
A downside of using NetScaler Traffic Domains is the fact that some features are only supported for usage inside of Traffic Domain 0. Traffic Domain 0 is the default Traffic Domain, all services run inside Traffic Domain 0 unless explicitly specified.
An example of non supported features are NetScaler Management and NetScaler Gateway. For a complete list of supported features follow this link.
For non supported features for which you need isolation you have two options, NetScaler SDX or additional NetScaler appliances (virtual or physical).
My expectations are that we will see more and more features being supported on NetScaler Traffic Domains. An amazing feature would be to enable management functionality on Traffic Domains where you would only be able to manage or create services assigned to that Traffic Domain. This would be especially useful for multi-tenancy or multi management in situations where for example one team manages Mobility and one team managing a web application.
A few use cases Citrix describes for NetScaler Traffic Domains:
- Use of duplicate IP addresses
- Use of duplicate NetScaler entities
- Multi Tenancy
A use case I’m actually using NetScaler Traffic Domains for is the ability to deliver services in a DMZ as well as an internal network.
Internal Network services like Microsoft Exchange Client Access Services and Microsoft App-V are heavy on traffic and I don’t like those services traversing the firewall in the DMZ. This also works great combined with Direct Server Return (DSR) which is blocked by most firewalls. Check out more on DSR combined with App-V on this article by Ingmar Verheij.
The IT Melting Pot! 