More and more people are moving their file servers to Windows 2008. For this reason it’s essential to do some SMB 2.0 tuning in the registry to get the best possible performance with Citrix XenApp 6.x.

SMB 1.0 was originally designed 15 years ago and was introduced with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. Since the fastest networks in use at the time generally offered a maximum transfer rate of 10 Mb/s, the protocol has become out of date.

Indeed, with Gigabit Ethernet interfaces now a common feature even on budget motherboards, SMB can’t keep up with current network speeds.

SMB 2.0 is the new version of SMB that has been redesigned for today’s networking environments and the needs of the next generation of file servers. SMB 2.0 has the following enhancements:

• Supports sending multiple SMB commands within the same packet. This reduces the number of packets sent between an SMB client and server, a common complaint against SMB 1.0.
• Supports much larger buffer sizes compared to SMB 1.0.
• Increases the restrictive constants within the protocol design to allow for scalability. Examples include an increase in the number of concurrent open file handles on the server and the number of file shares that a server can have.
• Supports durable handles that can withstand short interruptions in network availability.
• Supports symbolic links.

SMB 2.0 seems to perform significantly faster than SMB 1.0 under optimal circumstances. I’ve heard of improvements ranging from 50% faster to 3500% faster. The bad news is that, as you might expect, you have to have SMB support on both ends of the communications pipe for SMB 2.0.

SMB 2.0 Tuning File Server :

Our XA5/XA6 Group Policy Tuning Templates have been downloaded more than 12.609 times. The SMB 1.0 tunings are ready-to-go as long as you set the values on your File Server(s) correctly. If you’re running a pure SMB 2.0 environment there’re still some SMB 2.0 Tuning needed. These registry keys needs to be added to your File Server(s).

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanServer\Parameters]
"TreatHostAsStableStorage"=dword:00000001
"MaxThreadsPerQueue"=dword:00000040
"Smb2"=dword:00000001
"Smb2CreditsMin"=dword:00000040
"Smb2CreditsMax"=dword:00000400

SMB 2.0 Tuning Citrix XenApp 6.x Servers :

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanManWorkstation\Parameters]
"DisableBandwidthThrottling"=dword:00000001
"MaxCredits"=dword:00000080

All credits for this article goes to Dan Allan from Citrix Consulting. Make sure you check out his in-depth article SMB Tuning for XenApp and File Servers on Windows Server 2008 over at Citrix Blogs.

Resource :

• SMB 2.0 Tuning
• Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008 R2

ControlUp has in the last month become my favorite free monitoring application. The tool is extremely powerful and I’m constantly adding it to all my customers. There’s simply so many cool features to cover that you’re better of trying it out yourself, seeing is believing.

My most commonly used ControlUp features are :

• Refresh Machine Group Policy
• Check memory and CPU utilization
• Check all event logs
• Number of application process running on all Citrix servers

Resource :

• ControlUp - Free Enterprise Monitoring Tool

What’s your favorite Monitoring solution for Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop? If you’re already using ControlUp, whats your best feature and what could be improved? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Keeping up to date on all Recommend Citrix and Microsoft Hotfixes for XenApp 6 can be a time consuming job. A perfect way to get notified is to add CTX129229 to Google Alerts.

We’ve just released a complete Downloadable ZIP file with all the current recommended Citrix and Microsoft hotfixes as well as an unattended installation script. If you get any WUSA errors in the Eventlog this just means that the Windows Update doesn’t apply or are already installed on your system.

@echo off
set AppHotfixesPath="%XA%\Applications\XA6_2008R2_ML\Hotfixes"

for %%i in (%AppHotfixesPath%\*.msp) do start /wait msiexec.exe /update %%i /qn /norestart

start /wait msiexec /i "ServerConfigurationInstall.msi" /qn /norestart
start /wait msiexec /i "XenAppGpmx_x64.msi" /qn /norestart

echo.
echo Enable and Start Windows Update Service
sc config wuauserv start= auto
net start wuauserv

for %%i in (%AppHotfixesPath%\*.msu) do start /wait wusa.exe %%i /quiet /norestart

echo Recommended CTX & MS Hotfixes - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX129229

echo XA600W2K8R2X64012 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126679
echo XA600W2K8R2X64017 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126958
echo XA600W2K8R2X64021 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127036
echo XA600W2K8R2X64029 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127405
echo XA600W2K8R2X64046 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX128342
echo XA600W2K8R2X64058 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX129131
echo XA600W2K8R2X64060 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX129224
echo XA600W2K8R2X64062 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX129278
echo XA600W2K8R2X64063 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX129375
echo XA600W2K8R2X64068 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX129741
echo XA600W2K8R2X64077 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130236
echo XA600W2K8R2X64079 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130333
echo XA600W2K8R2X64089 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130828

echo XASCTW2K8R2X64003 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130279
echo DSCXAGPMX100WX64001 - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126656

echo KB979530 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979530
echo KB975777 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975777
echo KB980663 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980663
echo KB2265716 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2265716
echo KB2465772 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2465772
echo KB917607 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917607
echo KB2383928 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2383928
echo KB983460 - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-US;983460
echo KB2388142 - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-US;2388142
echo KB2444328 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2444328
echo KB2551503 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2551503
echo KB2578159 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2578159

The Citrix GoToManage iPad App that was announced at Citrix Synergy 2011 is now available on the App Store. This app will make it much easier for administrators to support end users from anywhere in the world. You can try the app today by signing up for an account at the GoToManage website. The current version doesn’t support sign-up from the iPad app.

Simply install the GoToAssist client on your computer(s) and you’re ready to go.

From the iPad app you got many options in terms of support.

• Connect to Windows machines in your inventory
• Start a support session and direct your customer to www.fastsupport.com
• Send an email with the necessary information to your customer

The iPad app worked smooth to my Windows 7 and Mac OSX machine. The Unattended Installer currently only support Windows machines. This is clearly an enterprise app with a price tag of $660 per technician/year. The Citrix GoToManage application compete with similar services from companies like Bomgar and TeamViewer.

Update :

Thanks to Tim Arenz for providing me with the link to the free account. Citrix have different plans. If you only need to provide live support from the iPad then use the GoToManage Free Mobile Plan.

What’s your favorite iPad Remote Support Application? Please share your experience in the comment below.

This is the second post in a series of articles articles where the goal is to create the optimal workstation for us consultants. In the first post Why I ditched XenClient for Hyper-V Part I we highlighted the missing features and bugs in Citrix XenClient.

For my setup I purchased a OCZ Vertex 2 180GB SATA II 2,5″ Solid State Drive with TRIM Support based upon recommendations from @shawnbass and @easi123. This is the most affordable SSD which supports 250MB/s read and write performance and TRIM support that is important for good performance. The boot time is now down to less than 15 seconds.

The first thing I did was to flash my drive with the latest firmware and then installed all the necessary drivers and software. A great resource is a website called Convert your Windows Server 2008 R2 to a Workstation. You’ll find an automatic conversion tool and articles describing the different elements. They also have great information on how to find all the drivers for your system automatically.

After I installed all my software I noticed that the new Firefox 4 was crazy slow. There is a new option called FireFox Hardware Acceleration that needs to be disabled.

My Customization :

• Enable Wireless networking
• Create network bridge between WiFi and the Virtual Network to get internet access
• Enable the Desktop Experience feature
• Replace the logon background image
• Enable audio and tuned it to remove the stuttering sound
• Microsoft Update for Desktop Experience Decoder for Windows Server 2008 R2

My first impression after running this configuration for 2 weeks are very good. The boot time is awesome and it now longer matters that Hibernation doesn’t work. I also successfully deploy our corporate image inside a virtual machine. Happy go lucky.

I’ve been running Citrix XenClient for almost a year now and it was a great opportunity for me to get a brand new computer because of the limited HCL support. Overall I’m pretty satisfied with the XenClient, but it’s still missing some important features. My computer setup is a Lenovo T500 with 8GB of memory with a standard IDE disk.

The main reason I’m ditching XenClient for Hyper-V is the lack of support and the possibility to get our company image inside a VM. I’ve tested this successfully with MDT2010 in my home lab, but our company PXE service are controlled by CA and internal IT doesn’t support XenClient.

There’s also many other missing features and bugs listed below :

• Sometimes there’s a graphic bug on the hypervisor, only parts of the screen shows up and I need to shutdown the VM’s and restart my computer.
• Hibernation doesn’t work properly. My computer get’s really hot and burns a hole in the computer bag if I leave it on for more than 2 hours. This means its better to shut the system down.
• WI-FI is using 172.x addresses instead of the IP-address provided by DHCP which means you cannot run WI-FI scanners, setup WI-Fi printers, run AirVideo or PlexApp Server for Video Streaming.
• Battery life is worse
• Long boot time
• Wake up from Hibernation takes ages….
• Wake up from Hibernation connects to unprotected WI-FI instead of my preferred WI-FI network
• No GUI for hard disk resize
• No Snapshot function
• 3GB memory limit per VM

There’s probably a lot more things I’m forgetting, but in the next post I’ll take you through the process of bulding the optimal computer for consultants. The setup will be based upon Windows 2008 R2 SP1 with customization to make it look and feel like a normal Windows 7 machine.

What you should do next :

Make sure to Like our FaceBook page. You’ll find awesome information and resource on our page that are never published on the blog.

In last week’s post I talked about the importance of setting goals. I’m happy to see that you have taken action. The eBook download have double since last week. Today we’re going to talk about what YOU can do to free up some time to reach your 2011 goals.

The biggest problem today are information overload and because of all these distractions, we waste our precious time. If you follow the simple tips listed below I’m pretty sure you can save at least 30 minutes each day.

Reading email :

Read email only two times a day, the best time is at noon and end of work. I will warn you that it’s hard, but for the email addicts that constantly check their emails 100 times a day will be overwhelm on how effective this simple step is.

Email, IM and other notifications :

• Turn off email envelope icon in taskbar, email alert and the “You got mail” sound
• Turn off email push to your smart phone and iPad
• Sign out of instant messaging or set status to Don’t disturb
• Turn off Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin email notifications

Create email rules :

Every time I leave for vacation I do a major mailbox cleanup. I create rules for emails that are sent to me as CC as well as distribution lists and organize them into folders. This way only important message shows up in my inbox whenever I would like to check it.

Make sure to unsubscribe from newsletters and sales offers you no longer wish to receive. For important newsletters like xenappblog make sure to create an rule to automatically move it into and folder. This way you will have a nice email archive.

Reading Twitter, Facebook and News :

Try to limit this to 30 minutes a day and check those at noon and end of the day when you’re finished reading and responding to your emails.

Subscribe to RSS Feeds :

To save even more time subscribe to interesting web sites by RSS. This way you don’t need to check these sites daily for updates, they are automatically delivered to your Google Reader. Check out this post How to stay up to date on industry news.

Be more productive when you’ve some free time :

When you’re waiting for the bus, train or your next dentist’s appointment be sure to use this “free” time to the max. Here’s a list of my favorite applications.

• Reeder for iPad/iPhone – Makes it very easy to stay up to date on new RSS feeds. It also allows me to share interesting articles to Twitter, Facebook, email, InstantPaper etc.
• Evernote for iPad/iPhone – Take notes and sync them to the cloud for easy access on a later time.
• iTAP RDP for iPad/iPhone – Connecting to my private cloud computer wherever I’m in the world. The Cloud server rental is as low as $21,60 a month – Move Your Office Into The Cloud.
• Worldmate for iPhone – This application keeps all my travel information for easy access. Whenever I buy a travel the receipt are automatically forward to Worldmate via an email rule.

I really hope this article helps you getting things done and getting more done in less time. If you have any other tips please leave a comment below to share it with the rest of the community readers.

If you’re getting bored of your current default search engine in Internet Explorer or you want the Corporate default search engine to be Google this is the post for you. Microsoft have not made this easy not even with the default Group Policy Templates.

The different search engines providers are located in HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerSearchScopes where the DefaultScope key defines the default search provider. The Bing key is {9F4BEE75-5E51-4568-87AF-67C35184D4B5} and Google is {9F4BEE75-5E51-4568-87AF-67C35184D4B5}. You will see this clearly by clicking the image above.

So to change only the default search provider you can push this key with Group Policy Preferences, but if you don’t have the Google Add-On configured on the client side you will probably get into problems. The best solution is to add all the providers you want on the Windows 2008 Server you’re using to manage GPO or a Windows 7 machine with RSAT.

The subkey FaviconPath which contains a user profile location can be ignored because it will automatically be recreated. If you don’t want search engine suggestions you can drop those 2 keys or set the ShowSearchSuggestions to 0 to disable it. This will make it possible to enable it later by setting the value to 1.

Tell me what you think or if you have any better solution by dropping a comment below.

This is a follow up post for Why Internet Explorer will kill your memory – Part I that I published in March this year. A lot of people have been requesting this and I’m sorry for keeping you waiting so long. I think the reason why this post have been delayed is that I’ve been putting to much into it. I wanted it to cover everything; Internet Explorer 8 tuning, Citrix HDX MediaStream for Flash and so on. Well I just figured out let’s take the IE8 tuning in Part II and then the rest of the stuff can come in some other series.

The setting I’m about to reveal for you will save you a big chunk of memory and money, in both XenApp and XenDesktop environments. By default,  IE8 will start with two instances of iexplore.exe (one for the Frame, one for the tab) and grows the number of tab processes as needed based on the amount of available RAM, the number of tabs, the integrity levels for tabs, and the number of distinct IE sessions. Let’s take a look at some examples :

1 tab – msn.com

2 tabs – msn.com | facebook.com/xenappblog

3 tabs – msn.com | facebook.com/xenappblog | twitter.com/xenappblog

In total memory per user this would be in the correct order : 71mb / 111mb / 154mb

So with only one simple registry setting we can limit Internet Explorer to only run one instance of iexplore.exe for the frame and one for the tabs. This is a REG_DWORD key located under HKCU. For full details check out this MSDN blog post : Opening a New Tab may launch a New Process with Internet Explorer 8.0.

The numbers speak for themselves : 52mb / 62mb / 80mb. I encourage you to check it out right away, and yes it would also work on you personal computer with IE8.

Some other things to keep in mind in terms of Internet Explorer 8 :

• Add-ons add load times every time you open a new browser window or tab
• Keep restriced or trusted site zone list to a minimum
• Keep add-ons and plug-ins up to date. e.g older versions of Adobe Flash may result in browser crashes or hang

Every Citrix Web Interface Server (WI) without any form of load balancing is a potential single point of failure in your environment. Network Load Balancing is available in both the Standard and Enterprise Editions of Windows 2008 so there shouldn’t be to many excuses for not implementing. This picture tutorial will take you through the process of creating a Network Load Balancing Cluster for your Citrix Web Interface Servers.

IP Address Overview :

winlb1.ctxlab.local    10.0.10.40
winlb2.ctxlab.local    10.0.10.41
nlb.ctxlab.local         10.0.10.42

Configure Citrix Web Interface :

1. Assign static IP Address to both nodes in the NLB Cluster
2. Install and create a Site on Citrix WI on Node A
3. Install and create a Site on Citrix WI on Node B
4. Customize, test and replicate WI Site from Node A to Node B
5. RoboCopy c:inetpubwwwrootCitrix \winlb2c$inetpubwwwrootCitrix /MIR

Configure Network Load Balancing :