michaelcolson.com » xenapp

XenApp 5 FP 2 First Impressions

michael — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:04:31 +0000

I did my first XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 upgrade/install today and I have to say that for the fist time the installer is actually quite nice. If you hadn’t heard, Citrix has finally combined all of the components of XenApp into a single ISO image.

Now from a single DVD you can install XenApp 5.0 with HFRU5, Password Manager, EdgeSight, SmartAuditor, Web Interface, etc. It made my upgrade process so easy all I had to do was run through the wizard select the components I wanted to upgrade and after a reboot all was done.

Even on a new installation I was able to save quite a bit of time as all of the components for Password Manager and EdgeSight were installed as a part of the overall XenApp installation.

Great job Citrix on getting all of this stuff together in one place!

Underutilized Features of XenApp Platinum

michael — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:33:40 +0000

Anyone who has worked with or around Citrix licensing knows that there is an incredible amount of value that can be obtained by either upgrading or purchasing XenApp Platinum Edition licenses. But most people who go the route of Platinum licenses aren’t utilizing all of the features.

I completely agree that licensing can be a real pain sometimes especially when there are frequent changes as there seem to have been lately with Citrix XenApp licensing. I would love to post a simple listing of what products are included with the XenApp Platinum license… but unfortunately it just isn’t that simple. It turns out that for some products like EdgeSight portions of the product are included with Advanced and Enterprise with the all of the individual product features being exposed only in the Platinum license.

OK so I admit that I may not have cleared up any licensing mysteries here, but that wasn’t my goal. On with the show. Here are what I feel are the most often overlooked features or products in the XenApp Platinum suite.

Citrix EdgeSight for Load Testing- If you can honestly tell me that you have never had to answer the question “how many users can I expect to get on a single XenApp server” then I would say you haven’t built too many XenApp environments. Citrix EdgeSight for Load Testing is an amazing product that allows you to record and replay interactions with XenApp published applications. Once you have your set of instructions compiled you can then setup a test by replaying those instructions over and over again until you find the breaking points or performance thresholds you are looking for.

Citrix Password Manager- Quite possibly my favorite Citrix product I use Password Manager EVERYDAY for single sign-on to what feels like about 1000 different applications. Password Manager as you may have guessed is a single sign-on product that also has self service password functionality. I find that right out of the box (without complex scripting) I have a very high success rate with configuring applications for single sign-on. Furthermore, Citrix has expanded the licensing terms of Password Manger to extend its reach to both desktop and offline users! If you are constantly setting, forgetting, and resetting password on websites you NEED to try Password Manager.

Citrix SmartAuditor- If you have ever worked in any type of support role you know how difficult it can be to diagnose or troubleshoot a problem without some vision into what the end user is seeing. SmartAuditor can address this problem area by recording sessions and allowing for storage and playback at a later date. SmartAuditor may also help to address some compliance issues you may have because you can now have a complete visual representation for auditing instead of combing through logs from multiple systems. I do have to say that I really liked the older name of this product: Project IRIS (ICA Record ICA Surveillance).

I should point out that I purposely left out the XenApp Platinum features that require additional appliances. I should also point out that EdgeSight for Load Testing is actually available to XenApp Enterprise and XenApp Platinum customers.

XenApp Myth Busting

michael — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:51:17 +0000

Just came across this awesome video that reveals some of the myths surrounding Citrix XenApp. Gotta love the ‘branch’ office…

Check it out at YouTube.

Older Citrix Clients with Windows Server 2008

michael — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:54:32 +0000

In order to get Citrix clients prior to version 11 to function with Citrix XenApp running on Windows Server 2008 you will need to install a hotfix from Microsoft.

Basically this has to do with the encryption that is used for terminal services licensing having changed its key size from 512 bytes to 2048 bytes.

Here is the link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949914. Unfortunately this is one of those hotfixes that you have to request from Microsoft. The good news is that they aren’t making you jump through a lot of hoops to get it. Mine came right away in an email!

Installing Lotus Notes on Citrix Presentation Server

michael — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:20:04 +0000

Here are some helpful guides on how to install my ‘favorite’ mail client, IBM Lotus Notes on Citrix Presentation Server. There are very few differences between the installation methods for Lotus Notes versions 6 through 8, but just for completeness I have included links to all of them. The official Citrix article is quite good and includes screen shots of not only the Lotus Notes installation but also the publishing of Lotus Notes.

Lotus Notes Version 7
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX112963

Lotus Notes Versions 6 and 7
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&uid=swg21202109

Lotus Notes Version 8
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=463&uid=swg21265898

Disable Beep in Terminal Services

michael — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 02:59:18 +0000

One of the most often requested ‘tweaks’ for a Citrix or Terminal Services environment is to disable the console beep that annoys users when a dialog box appears in a session.

Its relatively easy to do but does require two different configuration items and a reboot of the Terminal Server. The first configuration item involves disabling the beep hardware object.

First open the device manager.
From the View menu select “Show Hidden Devices”
Navigate to Non-Plug and Play Drivers > Beep
Disable the Beep device

The second part of this configuration is a simple registry edit.

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\DisableBeep = 1

Now all thats left is a reboot. That should get rid of that annoying beep once and for all!

Migrating the Citrix data store to SQL Server

michael — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:04:14 +0000

Moving the Citrix data store is a fairly straight forward practice. Often times a farm is created with an Access database as a data store, but this does not lend itself well to a scalable, highly available environment. Here are the basic steps involved in moving the data store from Access to SQL Server.

Create the a blank database on the SQL Server.
Create a new DSN file that contains the SQL Server and database names.
- Save the DSN file to the %PROGRAMFILES%\Citrix\Independent Management Architecture folder.
From the XenApp server, open a command prompt and navigate to the %PROGRAMFILES%\Citrix\Independent Management Architecture folder.
Execute the dsmaint migrate command with the following parameters:
- dsmaint migrate /srcdsn:[OLD-DSN] /srcuser:[BLANK] /srcpwd:[BLANK] /dstdsn:[NEW-DSN] /dstuser:[NEW-DSN-Username] /dstpwd:[NEW-DSN-Password]
Execute the dsmaint config command with the following parameters:
- dsmaint config /user:[NEW-DSN-Username] /pwd:[NEW-DSN-Password] /dsn:[NEW-DSN]
Restart the Citrix Independent Management Architecture service.
Copy the DSN file to all remaining servers in the farm.
Execute the dsmaint config command on each server with the same parameters as above to establish a direct connection to the new data store.
Restart the Citrix Independent Management Architecture service on all remaining servers in the farm.

2 Load Evaluators Attached to 1 Server

michael — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:57:43 +0000

I ran into a situation today where I had two load evaluators assigned to the same server. No amount of reconfiguration through the CMC would get things back to normal. To solve this problem I ended up checking and ultimately repairing the Citrix data store.

Download the latest version of DSCheck (CTX107800 – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107572)

Then back up your DS
Back it up again
And back it up again
Run dscheck /full Servers /clean

Citrix Releases Presentation Server 4.5

michael — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:08:07 +0000

It’s Official, Citrix has posted Presentation Server 4.5 for download on mycitrix.com. This included the x86 and 64bit version of Presentation Server along with the components CD that includes Web Interface 4.5 and much more…

Change the STA UID a Cloned Server

michael — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 03:01:52 +0000

If you have several servers that have been cloned or imaged they will likely have identical STA UID’s. Because they are all the same you will only be able to add one of the servers to the Citrix Secure Gateway STA listing. To correct this problem and gain the ability to add all cloned servers to the STA listing follow these steps:

Locate the file CtxSta.config (normally under %programfiles%\Citrix\System32 on Presentation Server 4.0 or Inetpub\Scripts if IIS port sharing is used).
Open CtxSta.config in a text editor, such as Notepad.
Change the value of the UID to a unique value and save the file. It should now be possible to add multiple STAs to the Access Gateway.
After making the change(s), restart IIS or the XML Service as appropriate.

You should now be able to add all of the cloned servers with their new STA UID’s to the STA listing in the Citrix Secure Gateway configuration.

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX108361