This is a follow up post to last week Replicating Print Drivers in Citrix XenApp 6.5. There’s indeed many smart people out there so today I wanted to share a similar script created by a friend of mine Microsoft PowerShell MVP Jan Egil Ring. This blog post is just a summary of his awesome work so please visit the original blog post and give Jan Egil some creds in the comments on his blog.

As I described in the last post the easiest way to install printer drivers is to manually or automatically connect to your print server(s) to install the drivers. This is normally not a problem in small environments with only 1 print server and <50 printer objects, but can definitely create some headaches in enterprise environments.

Example: A print server has 500 shared printer objects, while there is only 10 unique printer drivers. It would make more sense to add a printer connection (in order to install the driver) to 10 printer objects rather than 500, given the time consumed by installing a printer connection. Jan Egil

For all great automatic solutions there’s always some pros and cons. The biggest con in my opinion is that you could possibly risk to install malfunction printer drivers that could halt your print services for good or at least for some time during production hours.

One workaround could be to run this script only on your Citrix Data Collector / Print Driver Golden Image server and then using the $ExcludedDriverList parameter to add the printers to the Auto-Replication-List. Take a look at the comment from Frank Peter Schultze on the Replicating Print Drivers in Citrix XenApp 6.5 blog post for more details.

Resource :

• Adding printer drivers from a print server using Windows PowerShell

Many people are wondering where the Printer Management node used for replicating print drivers is located in Citrix XenApp 6.x. This is now managed with the Windows Printer Management Role in Windows Server 2008 R2 or through XenApp PowerShell Cmdlets. I’m a big fan of the Citrix Universal Printer Driver but in some cases that’s not good enough and replicating print drivers to all Citrix XenApp servers are required. Luckily there’s light in the end of the tunnel.

Citrix Universal Print Server Tech Preview is available and will most likely be released at Citrix Synergy 2012. The Citrix Universal Print Server Technical Preview extends XenApp 6.5 and XenDesktop 5.5 Universal printing support to network printing. This feature eliminates the need to install numerous network printer drivers on XenApp and XenDesktop hosts, and enables more efficient network utilization. The new Citrix Universal printer driver supports direct network printing on Windows and non-Windows clients.

So while we wait for this new Citrix Universal Print Server, here’s the steps for replicating print drivers with XenApp PowerShell Cmdlets :

First you’ll need to decide which Citrix XenApp server you’ll be using as the source. A good suggestion would be your Preferred Data Collector. In our example that would be XA65-01. Start PowerShell as Administrator and run the following commands

1. Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
2. Add-PSSnapIn Citrix.*
3. Get-XAPrinterDriver –Servername XA65-01

This will display a list of all the locally install printer drivers on that particular server. The simplest way to install a lot of printer drivers is to connect to your print server and select to connect to the printers you need.

Now rerun the command : Get-XAPrinterDriver –Servername XA65-01

To make sure that all your Citrix XenApp servers have the same printer drivers it’s recommend to add the required printer drivers to the Auto-Replication-List. A good tip would be to have these commands in a Notepad file to make it easier for you to Add/Remove printer drivers.

Simply copy and paste the commands to the PowerShell window.

Add-XAAutoReplicatedPrinterDriver “Print Driver Name” -SourceServerName XA65-01

To display a list of Printer Drivers in the Auto-Replication-List you’ll use the following command :

Get-XAAutoReplicatedPrinterDriver

I’m pretty sure there’s some smart people out there in the Citrix Community who have already created some smart automatic scripts for replicating print drivers in Citrix XenApp 6.x. Please share with the rest of the readers by adding your comment below if you know any good resources.

Resoures :

• How to Replicate Print Drivers with PowerShell in XenApp 6
• Understanding Universal Print Server (UPS)

Citrix has just released a new version of the Citrix License Server VPX which are a self-contained Linux-based virtual appliance that allows you to easily deploy licensing in your Citrix environment. The requirement is only 256 mb which are sufficient for up to 500 Citrix servers and approximately 50.000 licenses. Currently the Citrix License Server VPX is only available for Citrix XenServer 5.6 Feature Pack 1 / Service Pack 2 or higher.

To get started download and import the Citrix License Server VPX Appliance via XenCenter and then configure hostname, dns suffix and ip address. If you’re testing this out I would recommend using the same name as your current Citrix License Server. This way you don’t need to return and reallocate all your licenses. Even though the hostname is the same it won’t register in DNS so you’re all safe.

Log on to your license server and import all your licenses and restart the appliance.

Most likely you’re using Citrix Policy to define your License server host name. Simply change this to the ip address of your new Citrix License Server VPX.

To be sure that everything is working properly you should stop your old Citrix Licensing Server Service. Then run the command : gpupdate /force and qfarm /load on one of your Citrix XenApp servers to verify that everything is okay.

If the Server Load is 20.000 there’s something wrong, most likely the hostname. Remember that this is case sensitive.

For those wanting to Return and then ReAllocate the licenses to a new host name please logon to your MyCitrix account.

So should you transfer all your licenses to this new Citrix License Server VPX appliance? That’s up to you, but since the current Windows version normally runs side by side with Remote Desktop Services Licensing it won’t make sense to me. On the other side this is a great way to setup a standby Citrix License Server for Disaster Recovery.

Resource :

• Citrix License Server VPX

Many of you are probably familiar with the new Reboot Behavior Policy. Maybe you’ve scratched your head trying to figure out why the Citrix policy didn’t work. Maybe you’ve spent a whole day until you came upon this blog post telling you that the Reboot Behaviour Policy only works with Enterprise or Platinum license. Thanks for letting us figure it out the hard way Citrix!

Some of you may also have tried Citrix Power and Capacity Management finding out that it needs a similar license, its own database and control server. Kind of overkill for small SMB environments with only 10-50 servers.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon a superb Citrix XenApp Rolling Reboot Script created by Dane Young. The script supports XenApp 5-6.5 and basically it uses a Load Evaluator to drain servers one by one. Once all sessions have been logged off, the server will go down for a reboot.

The script will also validate that the last rebooted server was successful before continuing on to the next server in the farm. By implementing this script in your organization you’ll get a zero-downtime 24/7/365 system without the annoying “Please Log Off” messages.

We’ve been running this script successfully for a couple of weeks with great success. Right now we’re having a dialog with Dane Young to add more features and further improve the script e.g. adding the possibility to create an Exclude Servers list to the Citrix XenApp Rolling Reboot Script.

In Citrix XenApp 6.5 there’s now also a great new feature called Logon Control that will let you drain servers without adding any form of Load Evaluator.

Resources :

• Citrix XenApp Rolling Reboot Script
• Citrix Reboot Policy

The newest Citrix Receiver for Windows 3.0 (13.0.0.6685) requires almost 150% more memory per user than Citrix ICA Client 11.2. So when optimizing you Citrix servers for the highest user density you should consider if you even need some of these new features if any.

Normally the Citrix client is installed on XenApp servers only to allow for ICA in ICA to internal back-end or Cloud hosted applications.

Register the Citrix Receiver with web browser :

There’s currently also a bug with Citrix Receiver for Windows 3.0 and the Shadow Taskbar. This applies to both XenApp 5 and 6. The workaround for XenApp 6 is to copy the wshadow.exe from the XenApp 6.5 media, but on XenApp 5 there’s currently no hotfix available.

So keep safe and stick to the working Citrix ICA Client 11.2 and save some memory at the same time.

If your users are constantly getting a MSI repair when they visit a Citrix Web Interface site this is most due to the missing ConnectionCenter entry in Registry. Simply push this registry value through Microsoft Group Policy Preferences.

• For x32 this is located in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
• For x62 this is located in HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

While you’re at it, make sure you delete any references in Run to Acrobat Assistant 8.0, Adobe Acrobat Speed Lanucher, Adobe ARM, BCSSync and so on. These will only steal unnessecarry memory from your system.

Setting up Microsoft Office 2010 on Citrix XenApp delivered by Citrix Provisioning Services can be very confusing if it’s not done correctly. So in this post we will go through the necessarily requirements step-by-step.

First of all only a KMS license is valid, so forget about trying to get a MAK key working, even though you can see it in the Citrix Provisioning Services Console, this option is for OS only.

Install Microsoft Office 2010 KMS Host License Pack on a dedicated server e.g. the same as your Microsoft RDS and Citrix License Server. Make sure you get a _VLMCS record created in DNS under _TCP. If you have many _VLMCS records make sure you delete them to make troubleshooting easier.

1. Set vDisk to Private Mode
2. Set Microsoft Volume Licensing to None
3. Start the VM
4. Run Program Files(x86)\Common Files\Microsoft shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform\OSPPREARM.EXE
5. Shutdown the Target Device
6. Set to Shared Mode
7. Set Microsoft Volume Licensing to KMS
8. Start two or more PVS Target Devices and check that the GUID is unique

An unexpected mapi error occurred :

This happens when you’re switching from Private to Shared image if Microsoft Volume Licensing is set to KMS. The workaround on Citrix Provisioning Services 5.6 is to follow the steps above since we make a copy of the vDisk for every new version.

Guess what, there’s a major bug in Citrix Provisioning Services 6.0. Since we no longer make copies of the vDisk, but rather create new versions which are a fantastic feature. The problem is that as long as the vDisk is in use (like always) we’re not able to change the Microsoft Volume Licensing! So the only way to fix this is to shutdown ALL devices OR copy the vDisk and do it the old way. What a major bummer.

Resources :

• Managing Microsoft KMS Volume Licensing
• Windows Server 2008 KMS Setup Demonstration
• Microsoft Office 2010 KMS Host License Pack
• Configuring Key Management System (KMS) Licensing for Windows and Office2010 in Different Scenarios

Google+ Hangout Q&A :

We’re planning for some cool Citrix Q&A hangouts on Google+ so make sure you join the xenappblog circle.

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.

I’ve just recently moved to Brazil and for this reason I needed to build a new Citrix XenServer lab and restore all my Virtual Machines used in my xenapptraining.com course. Rebuilding the environment was not a option. So in this post I’ll describe my new hardware and how I managed to completely replicate the environment.

Citrix XenServer Hardware :

I purchased all the hardware in Norway except from the case that I bought here in Brazil. Be aware that I also bought an extra Intel network card as a backup in case I had problems with the network card on the motherboard. The issues with Realtek RTL8111/8186B is now solved with Citrix XenServer 5.6SP2 and 6.0.

So the total cost without case and network card turned out to be only $514,96. Pretty sweet for a 6 core – 16GB memory system. If you would like to boost the overall performance you could replace the SATA disk with a faster SSD disk. I prefer space before speed.

• ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3, Socket-AM3
• AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
• Intel Pro/1000GT Desktop Adapter
• Corsair Dominator DHX DDR3 1333MHz 16GB
• Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB

Backup :

I’ve been running the awesome software PHD Virtual Backup for some time so I simply transferred the backup catalog to my laptop, packed my suitcase and went to Brazil.

Citrix XenServer Installation :

After I purchased the case in Brazil I needed to create a bootable USB stick to install Citrix XenServer. Back in the days we normally used Unetbootin for this, but this tool doesn’t work anymore with the latest releases of Citrix XenServer. This is how to create a bootable USB key with XenServer.

1. Format the USB key with Fat32
2. Download the latest copy of syslinux and extract it
3. Open a command prompt and change directory to your extracted syslinux\win32/64 folder
4. Run syslinux.exe X: – replacing “X” with the drive letter of your USB key
5. Extract the Citrix XenServer ISO. To mount it you can use Pismo File Mount
6. Copy the content of the extracted XenServer ISO folder to the root of the USB
7. On the USB drive, copy the content of the \boot\isolinux folder to the root of the USB
8. At the root of USB drive, rename the isolinux.cfg file to syslinux.cfg
9. At the root of USB drive, rename the isolinux.bin file to syslinux.bin

I started this project trying out the new Citrix XenServer 6.0 (How to install Citrix XenServer 6.0). There seems to be a bug with DYI hardware since the console on each VM was booting like slow motion, so I ended up installing XenServer 5.6 SP2.

Restore :

I imported and configured the PHD Virtual Backup for Citrix XenServer appliance and shared my backup folder from my local computer. In the beginning I had some problems getting access so I contacted support who quickly responded to my support ticket.

Turns out that you cannot have non-ASCII characters (ie. #,$,%….) in the password and PHD requires both Share and NTFS Full Control permissions. The restore is straight forward and only took a couple of hours.

Your System :

I would like YOU to share your home lab environment either it’s a DIY system or a HCL Citrix XenServer supported vendor 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