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App-V 5 and Provisioning Services

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

sconfig 300x151 App V 5 and Provisioning Services

In my last blog 7 Reasons Why You Need to Learn App-V 5 I talked about how important it is for you to start playing around with App-V 5.

Since all Citrix XenApp / XenDesktop and RDS should be running App-V 5 with Shared Content Store it’s important to leverage Windows 2012 and SMB 3.0 as I wrote about in this post Make your network 10x faster.

With App-V 5 you can easily publish all packages from a folder. This is the PowerShell script I’m running at startup for my XenApp 6.5 VM’s streamed with Provisioning Services.

It first removes all the packages and then it grabs and publishes all those App-V packages and App Connection Groups from a DFS-R share hosted on Windows 2012.

Import-Module AppvClient
Remove-AppvClientPackage -Name *
Get-ChildItem "\\ctxlab\appv5\packages\WS2008\" -recurse -force -include *.appv | Add-AppvClientPackage | Publish-AppvClientPackage –global
Add-AppvClientConnectionGroup -Path '\\ctxlab\appv5\packages\PG\JDK Netbeans.xml' | Enable-AppvClientConnectionGroup –Global

On Windows 2008 you needed to choose between Windows Server Full or Windows Server Core during the installation. With Windows Server 2012 you can simply install the GUI, configure your software and then remove the GUI with PowerShell.

Remove-WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Shell, Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra
Restart-Computer

I would recommend you locking down most of your Windows 2012 Servers this way, you can always enable it later if needed.

So my Citrix Provisioning Services 6.2 is running on Windows 2012, but I have used the App-V 5 Sequencer to virtualize the Provisioning Services Console and run it from my XenApp Desktop.

App V 5 with Provisioning Services 01 238x300 App V 5 and Provisioning Services

So what do you need to get started?

RDS CALs (2008 R2) include an App-V CAL so you really just need to install the App-V 5 RDS client on your servers, an App-V 5 Sequenzer machine and a share to put the packages.

If you need more information I’ve created this App-V 5 Training Course to get you up to speed. This is the fastest and easiest way to learn Microsoft Application Virtualization 5.

Read next:

Posted in appdeploy, provisioning services, xenapp, xendesktop| No Comments »

7 Reasons Why You Need to Learn App-V 5 Today

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

App V 5 300x246 7 Reasons Why You Need to Learn App V 5 Today

We’ve been doing server virtualization for years and hopefully most businesses run the majority of their servers on a hypervisor from Citrix, VMware or Microsoft by now.

With the release of Microsoft Application Virtualization 5.0 the same is going to happen to the application space. I remember back in the days when VMware took off, those consultants got some pretty amazing projects at their hands.

The same is happening now, so you better learn App-V 5 today.

At Citrix Synergy next month the learning lab “Implementing Excalibur on Microsoft Hyper-V” is running every day. Attendees will learn about next-generation delivery architecture of Excalibur with Microsoft’s newest operating system and System Center 2012 SP1. This is not a coincidence!

There are many reasons why App-V 5 will be part of your XenApp or RDS environment, either you want it or not. Below is the main reasons :

  • Microsoft App-V 5 is FREE of use on Citrix XenApp / Microsoft Remote Desktop Services
  • App-V 5 Shared Content Store is perfect for non persistent desktops
  • Citrix XenApp 6.5 integration with Microsoft Configuration Manager 2012
  • Deploy App-V 5 apps with SCCM 2012, PowerShell, GPO or as stand alone
  • Run multiple versions of the same application on the same server. No more need for silos
  • Run the same App-V 5 package on various platforms
  • App-V 5 Sequencer Ease of use. Let the Application Managers be responsible for their software

There are many more reasons, but seeing is believing. I’ve created a new App-V 5 Training Course to get you up to speed. This is the fastest and easiest way to learn Microsoft Application Virtualization 5.

So if you want to become an App-V 5 expert, you better get started. Microsoft App-V 5 is becoming the de facto standard and WILL be the way we handle applications in the near future.

Read next:

Posted in appdeploy, windows, xenapp, xendesktop| 3 Comments »

Best Practices Preparing a Provisioning Services vDisk

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

citrixtools Best Practices Preparing a Provisioning Services vDisk

In this blog post I will show you my Prepare for PVS script that contains Best Practices obtained after years of experience with Provisioning Services.

Let’s say you’re going to run Windows Updates. Well since you’ve already launched the Target Optimizer tool, that services is disabled and you need to head into services, enable and start it. Run Windows update and all good. When the update is finished you shutdown the machine and switch from Private to Standard Mode.

What you didn’t remember was to reboot the server for Windows Update to complete it’s updates. What happens now, is that every time your servers reboot, Windows Update will kick in and finish it’s things.

Click Here to Read More »

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Posted in provisioning services, xenapp, xendesktop| 4 Comments »

Citrix XenServer – Make your network 10x faster

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

iperf 300x190 Citrix XenServer Make your network 10x faster

When putting most of your workloads on a Hypervisor you should not take for granted that you automatically get the maximum performance out of the box. You as the administrator need to perform additional tests to verify that the network performance are at it’s best.

Last week I upgraded my Citrix XenServer Home Lab and gained 10x faster network performance. In this blog post I’ll show you how you can run some simple tests to accomplish the same.

So I started testing Network Throughput Using Iperf. The Virtual Machines where 2 vanilla Windows 2008 R2 hosted on Citrix XenServer 5.6 SP2 with all hotfixes applied.

Click Here to Read More »

Read next:

Posted in windows, xenserver| 3 Comments »

ControlUp – Terminal Server and VDI Management

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

controlup ControlUp Terminal Server and VDI Management

My favorite IT management console is just released in version 2.0 with a great bunch of new features and enhancements. This is a sponsored review, but I love this product and have been using it at all my customer since the first release.

In this blog post I’ll cover what’s new in this release. I’m also going to host a webinar with the CTO of ControlUp Tuesday, February 26, 2013 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM IST with live demo and Q&A. Make sure to reserve your spot HERE.

Central Configuration:

ControlUp 03 300x188 ControlUp Terminal Server and VDI Management

In earlier versions of ControlUp you needed to create the configuration on each and every management computer. Now the configuration can be stored in the cloud secured by your own encryption key. This way all the users of ControlUp can share the organizations computer tree, delegate administrative task and permissions (similar to AppCenter) and receive alerts on performance bottlenecks. The alerts is at the moment just sent to the event viewer, but I was told that an SMS / SMTP solution will be available in the next release.

Click Here to Read More »

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Posted in group policy, windows, xenapp, xendesktop| 2 Comments »

Troubleshoot Citrix XenServer Network Performance

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

Troubleshoot Citrix XenServer Network Performance 300x181 Troubleshoot Citrix XenServer Network Performance

Last week I was troubleshooting extremely slow network performance on Citrix XenServer 6.02 installed on HP Proliant BL460C G7. The solution was based upon Citrix Provisioning Services 6.1 and Citrix XenApp 6.5 with all hotfixes.

You might ask why not run XenServer 6.1? The customer did a Citrix XenServer Rolling Upgrade to 6.1 and a Provisioning Services Target Device software upgrade.

After the upgrade was completed they where experiencing problems and who would even think that Citrix XenServer 6.1 does NOT support Provisioning Services or XenDesktop. The XenServer Tools Workaround for XenServer 6.1.0 did not work in this environment.

Today Citrix acknowledges that some customers are experiencing intermittent Windows issues with XenTools in the XenServer 6.1 release. Hotfix (XS61E005) for all XenServer 6.1 installations will be released in early January 2013 and support PVS 6.1 (but what about XenDesktop?).

Click Here to Read More »

Read next:

Posted in provisioning services, xenapp, xenserver| 4 Comments »

GoToWebinar – SMS2 Free 2 Factor Authentication

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

gotowebinar GoToWebinar SMS2 Free 2 Factor Authentication

I’m very proud to announce my first webinar. To further add value to the Citrix community I’m going to host webinars with Industry Experts and exciting upcoming software. First out is Citrix Ready SMS2.

Imagine a 2-factor solution where you can send an email to your users with a QR code which they scan with Google Authenticator and uses that code to access your XenApp / XenDesktop solution through Netscaler Access Gateway. Did I tell you it’s free and can also be setup to send out SMS as well?

google authenticator 02 200x300 GoToWebinar SMS2 Free 2 Factor Authentication

google authenticator 01 200x300 GoToWebinar SMS2 Free 2 Factor Authentication

Join me and Steven Wright the creator of SMS2 which recently was approved as Citrix Ready on these webinars showing you how to install and configure basic functions of SMS2, integration of AGEE / CAG and how software tokens can be quickly provisioned to large numbers of users across your site.

PS: There’s only room for 100 attendees at each session so make sure you reserve your spot now. The webinar will be recorded, but are only made available to the xenapptraining members.

Read next:

Posted in xenapp, xendesktop| 2 Comments »

Configure an Authoritative Time Server with Group Policy

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

time server group policy 01 262x300 Configure an Authoritative Time Server with Group Policy

An Authoritative Time Server is a must in every environment. This is one of topics covered by CTP Carl Webster in the presentation “10 things in AD that can hurt XenDesktop or XenApp and how to fix them“. Make sure you clear a half day and go through the presentation and your Active Directory to make sure it’s as healthy as possible.

Setting up an Authoritative Time Server is easy, but doing it incorrectly will get you into trouble. The same could happen if you move your PDC emulator role to another domain controller and forget to reconfigure an Authoritative Time Server.

So in this post I’ll show you how to configure an Authoritative Time Server Group Policy and using WMI filtering to apply it to the Primary Domain Controller only.

Click Here to Read More »

Read next:

Posted in group policy, windows| 2 Comments »

Why You Shouldn’t Redirect Favorites to Home Folder

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

Shawn Bass 300x238 Why You Shouldnt Redirect Favorites to Home Folder

During Citrix Synergy 2012 in San Francisco it was argued numerous times by Shawn Bass that redirecting Favorites to the home folder is a very bad idea. Shawn mentioned that Internet Explorer causes an extensive number of calls on your file server when browsing so I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into this topic.

Folder redirection to home folder is the rule of thumb to improve logon speed and create a better user experience across platforms. That being said, redirecting AppData should be avoided at all costs.

To redirect or not is a sensible topic and I think it would be a great Geek Speak Session with CTP Shawn Bass and Aaron Parker vs Citrix Consulting Services.

What happens under the hood :

To illustrate this I’ve been using Internet Explorer 9 and Process Monitor on my Windows 7 laptop. The filter beeing used is Path IS C:\Users\Administrator\Favorites.

When opening Internet Explorer you’ll see 13 calls in Process Monitor.

Click Here to Read More »

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Posted in group policy, terminal services, windows, xenapp, xendesktop| 17 Comments »

Netscaler Certificate – The fastest way

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

Netscaler Certificate Netscaler Certificate The fastest way

When working with Netscaler certificate you’ve probably been confused by all the articles around OpenSSL to convert exist or new certificates to be in a Netscaler compatible format.

In this example I’m going to show you how you convert and import a Comodo Positive SSL certificate. This is a $7,95 certificate which are perfect for a lab or a Netscaler PoC in parallel to an existing Access Gateway VPX / Citrix Secure Gateway solution.

I’m not going to cover how to create the CSR from the Netscaler, that’s done perfectly over at this Citrix blog post : NetScaler for the XenDesktop XenApp Dummy.

Netscaler Build 10.0.69.4

If you’re running the latest build of the Netscaler be aware of the Save config issue bug. To resolve this you’ll need to first add your license file and then reboot before you can save any configuration.

Click Here to Read More »

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Posted in xenapp, xendesktop| No Comments »

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