Last Tuesday I gave my first ever Citrix Synergy presentation. It was a so-called Expo Theater session as part of the ‘Meet the Experts’ program over at the Citrix booth. Exiting to say the least. Luckily it went well and I received some very positive feedback. Afterwards multiple attendees approached me asking for the slide deck. I promised to make it available on basvankaam.com as soon as possible. So here it is. Just imagine the slide animations being in there as well. If you have any questions and/or other remarks please let me know by leaving a comment, a PM on Twitter, or just send me an email. Thanks everybody.
VCNRW… A deep dive into the FMA, the 2016 edition – Presentation video!
During E2EVC in Lisbon, Portugal, back in November 2015, I was asked by Helge Klein if I might be interested and willing to come and present at their first ever VCNRW full-day event over in Cologne (Köln), Germany. While I was honoured, I told Helge I wanted give it some thought mainly because I didn’t really had a topic ready at that time, but luckily that didn’t take too long. A few weeks later I accepted and the rest is history. While my presentation went ok, unfortunately my timing was a bit off and I finished about ten minutes early. Another lesson learned.
Presenting… The Remote Display Analyzer!
Back in November 2015, at the E2EVC conference in Lisbon Bram and Barry first introduced us to their latest and greatest community contribution, the Remote Display Analyzer. And I can tell you, it was very well received *understatement* It seemed that this was something a lot of IT folks were waiting for. Today you have the opportunity to try it out for your self. Read on to learn why this tool will make all the difference when working with and/or troubleshooting the different HDX codes available from Citrix today. Keep an eye on basvankaam.com for any future updates.
The ultimate Citrix printing internals cheat sheet! BIG Takeaway list included!
In this article (part two) I’d like to focus on the Citrix printing pathways, how they differ and when one or the other will, or can be used. I’ll also highlight the universal print driver, server and printer together with a whole bunch of CTX defaults, best practices including some of the most common troubleshooting tools and a BIG list of takeaways. However, knowing what happens after a user hits print and how traffic flows throughout our infrastructure is probably the best place to start. I have also included a BIG list of takeaways, which is available as a separate download as well.
Continue ReadingMy personal Community Edition… The best of August 2015!
Average time to read: 3 minutesThe amount of useful, interesting, fun to read, watch or listen to, community content in the form of blog posts, webinars, podcasts, presentations, tools etc. being shared each month can be overwhelming. It’s hard to keep track. Here are some of my personal picks during August. Enjoy!
HP Moonshot revisited. Well… by me anyway
Average time to read: 12 minutesDuring the last year or so I have had my eye on the HP Moonshot platform. I followed what other community members had to say about it, how HP marketed the product and of course the announced partnership between HP and Citrix, introducing the Workspace Pod series at Summit not that long ago. I was rather skeptic, and I guess I still am. On the other hand, I also acknowledge that times are changing and that, if the use case fits, HP Moonshot might be a valuable solution, it just depends.
How to: Get up to speed with Windows Azure. Deploying your personal test lab, fast!
Average time to read: 15 minutesDuring the last couple of weekends I have been playing with Microsoft Azure. Once I was up to speed with the basics and concepts involved I was surprised how easy it was to set up a small test lab environment. Without using any automated setup and/or configuration scripts, it only took me a few hours to set up a fully functional test environment including Active Directory, DNS, a Certificate Authority, a XenApp/XenDesktop/Director Site, StoreFront/Receiver, Control-up and a few in place policies. Best of all, during the first 32 days it’s completely free of charge, at least for the first 150 euros. And I can tell you; those 150 can get you a long way if spend wisely. Make sure to check my 20+ takeaways and lessons learned near the end.
The glass is half full… 50+ reasons why I think it might be time to move to XenApp 7.6!
Average time to read: 7 minutesIn this post I’ll list a whole bunch of reasons why I think it might be time to move your current XenApp IMA setup onto the new and enhanced FMA, which, depending on your license, could be either XenApp and/or XenDesktop. I’m sure you’ll find some of my arguments a bit to far-fetched or perhaps plain stupid even, and that’s fine. Feel free to comment. As the title implies I’m trying to take a positive approach here, so I won’t focus on any of the features (still) left out. Eventually we will all migrate, it’s only a question of when. Note that the below comments are in a random order.
Who needs Citrix Synergy Europe when we have events like E2EVC?!
Average time to read: 10 minutesDon’t get me wrong, I like Citrix, but every now and again companies, since their run by people, make mistakes, it happens. Normally you’d learn from them, but I guess there will always be exceptions. Dear Citrix, please listen to us, the community, and bring back Synergy to where it belongs (as well), Europe! Luckily we have E2EVC, which, even if Synergy would return, is ranked Nr. 1 by many, and since a couple of months I know why. Of course it’s hard to compare these types of events and maybe we shouldn’t, but let’s just say that Citrix leaves us no other choice. Read on please, it’s not all bad.
Citrix Synergy 2014 Keynote wrap-up, here’s what’s new!
Average time to read: 9 minutesFinally, Synergy Keynote time! All eyes were on Mark Templeton as he took the Synergy stage for, what is supposed to be, the last time, since he’s resigning as Citrix CEO later this year. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to experience the buzz myself, but SynergyTV turned out to be a good alternative. At least it was warm where I was sitting :-) With around 5000 people, spread over 66 countries and over 2000 companies, attending Synergy in person and another 5000 following the Keynote live stream you good say that the event was a success before it even started, but to be honest, I didn’t expect anything less, especially with Mark resigning.