I completely agree that licensing can . . . → Read More: Underutilized Features of XenApp Platinum]]> 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.

Ok so there are more than just a few problems…  Basically Hot Desktop doesn’t work with Password Manager Agents 4.6.265 and 4.6.266.

When using either . . . → Read More: Hot Desktop Functionality Broken in Password Manager Agent]]> In working on a new deployment of the Hot Desktop feature within Citrix Password Manager I discovered that there are a few problems with the latest Password Manager agents.

Ok so there are more than just a few problems…  Basically Hot Desktop doesn’t work with Password Manager Agents 4.6.265 and 4.6.266.

When using either one of these two agents you will find that Hot Desktop installs without incident but the process that executes the session.xml functions only appears to be triggered on the first logon after a reboot.  That’s a BIG problem because the whole idea behind Hot Desktop is the fast switching from one user account to another!  So if you have to reboot each time a user logs off just to prepare the system for the next user then you probably aren’t shaving very much time off of the logon process.

The good news is that Password Manager Agent 4.6.264 DOES work properly with Hot Desktop.  The bad news… it doesn’t support the new XenApp Platinum licensing model for desktop and offline usage.  As it turns out this isn’t that big of a problem because it’s not very likely that you would need the Hot Desktop functionality in a disconnected or offline mode.

I briefly spoke with Citrix support and they verbally acknowledged that in fact they were aware the functionality was missing or broken in the two latest agents.  I didn’t get a very clear sense of when or if a fix would be available but I did hear that a new release of Password Manager might be on the horizon.

Open the XTE service configuration file: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Citrix\XTE\conf\httpd.conf

You will need to scroll down about half way through the file to the <VirtualHost> section.