About two and a half years ago I published the ultimate Citrix XenDesktop 7.x internals cheat sheet, version 1.0 and it turned out to be a big hit. In the meantime, it has been viewed over 80.000 times already. All the more reason to start working on version 2.0. Since I have been writing about Citrix technologies for the last couple of years I have built up a broad archive, which I can now partly (re) use and re-write to come up with an even more detailed edition, version 2.0 of the Citrix XenDesktop 7.x internals cheat sheet. I would strongly advice you to download a .PDF copy – If you like the blogpost, you’ll love the .PDF, trust me! It includes a full Table of Contents making it easier to navigate.
For your convenience – 100+ Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop FMA facts listed!
I like, no wait, I love lists… there, I’ve said it. But no, really, I think (bulleted) lists are one of the best ways to share facts and knowledge. That’s also why I used multiple lists in my book, dozens of them containing hundreds of bulleted (FMA) facts. Throughout the various chapters I highlight multiple so-called ‘FMA facts’, 116 in total to be exact and I conclude each chapter with a list of key takeaways. This post is meant to share with you most of the FMA Facts that I came up while writing The FlexCast Management Architecture, though I did slightly alter quite a few of them.
Citrix XenDesktop Essentials – all facts listed!
A couple of days ago Citrix shared with us the pricing and purchasing options of their latest Citrix Cloud based service, XenDesktop Essentials. This post is meant to clear up a few misconceptions and to answer one or two questions you might have. Due to license restrictions, Microsoft didn’t allow Windows desktops to be offered from multi tenant cloud platforms. As a result of current changes to their Windows 10 PUR, or Product Use Right agreement this has now changed. Windows 10 desktop machines are soon to be available from the Azure cloud/Marketplace Read on to learn more…
Demystifying the Citrix XenApp logon, enumeration and launch steps — new details included
This continues to be a topic of interest. Not only is it interesting and fun (right?) to know what is going on underneath the hood once you fill in your user credentials, it can also be very helpful when it comes to troubleshooting certain issues. While I have written about the login, enumeration and launch processes before, again I managed to include a couple of subtle changes/details.
The Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop FMA Services complete overview – new 7.12 Services included
The release of XenApp/XenDesktop version 7.12 introduced couple of new FMA services (primarily used by LHC) — time for an update. As you might be aware, I have written multiple articles on the FlexCast Management Architecture in the past (including my book) talking about its core services, their responsibilities, capabilities, communication channels/interfaces and so on. Throughout the past two years I also came up with a nice graphical overview (at least I like to think so) representing a Delivery Controller including all main FMA services. This article/post is meant to provide you with a continues update on the FMA and its primary core services, graphical overview included. Each time something changes you’ll read about it here – as soon as NDA has been lifted of course.
What’s new with XenApp & XenDesktop 7.12?
I can’t remember the last time I wrote about one of the new XA and/or XD releases, I think it was version 7.5. However, with version 7.12 comes the new and improved LHC, which is something a lot of ‘us’ have been waiting for. Or at least were/are curious about. Go here to find out more about the LHC, now part of the FlexCast Management Architecture, I covered it in detail. And while writing I thought I’d cover some of the other (new) 7.12 features as well.
Citrix XenApp single machine setup – Cheap, fast and supported!
We all know that Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop are both well established within larger enterprises. Smaller companies however, also often rely on Citrix (using XenApp mostly) to securely deliver their applications and/or desktops to their end-users. Today I would like to focus on how to deliver XenApp hosted applications and desktops while minimizing costs and maximizing both performance and manageability. Note that this is not going to be a Microsoft RDSH vs. Citrix debate, instead I will assume that XenApp licenses are already in-place.
E2EVC… The one in Lisbon. The XD 7.6 HA (im) possibilities – presentation video!
A few moths ago, back in November 2015, Wilco van Bragt and I gave a presentation at E2EVC in Lisbon, Portugal. Our session was named: The XenDesktop 7.6 HA and Failover (im) possibilities, suggestions are welcome. We talked about some of the options we had (for example, Zones were not optional back then) in making our workloads highly available (Load Balancing included) using features and technologies like: StoreFront MultiSite configurations, Connection Leasing, Application groups and more. Next to that we also touched on some of the things still missing, at least according to our point of view. You can watch the full recording here.
How to configure zones in XenDesktop and XenApp 7.7 plus some extra’s!
Yes, Zones are back! This seems to be a very popular quote on Twitter and Linked-In ever since Citrix released XenApp/XenDesktop 7.7 last week. And to honest, I’m exited as well. Are these the zones we were, or are used to in XenApp 6.5? No. But they’re close. After I installed XenDesktop 7.7 the morning after its release, I had 3 zones up and running within 5 minutes, and that’s only because I didn’t read the ‘manual’ up front. Let’s have a look and see what we come up with along the way. I took the bullet approach on this one. Scroll down for some screenshots on how to configure XenDesktop / XenApp zones.
My personal Community Edition… The best of September 2015!
The amount of useful, interesting and fun to read community content in the form of blog posts, webinars, podcasts, tools etc. being shared each month can be overwhelming sometimes. This is my second attempt; I did one for August as well, in collecting some of the most popular blog post shared within the EUC community. Have fun reading.