Citrix – Page 4

VMwares’ Instant Clones technology with a touch of XenDesktop

January 17, 2017 by Bas van Kaam 1 Comment

Average time to read: 6 minutes

Also know as Just In Time (JIT) desktops, or vmFork technology. In short, it enables you to clone an existing virtual machine in just a matter of seconds — close to one clone per second actually. Its technology is based on in-memory cloning of a Master virtual machine (which also means it shares the memory of the so-called parent virtual machine) and copy-on-write for rapid deploy purposes. As you can probably imagine, this approach offers some unique desktop provisioning options when combined with, let’s say a Citrix XenDesktop Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI in short. Do note however that initially Instant Clones are/were a feature of VMware Horizon version 7 (Enterprise edition) and upwards, it was VMware’s Project Orion that introduced Instant Clones to Citrix’s XenDesktop, which is still in tech preview.

Citrix acquires Unidesk — here’s everything you want/need to know!

January 9, 2017 by Bas van Kaam 3 Comments

Average time to read: 4 minutes

Today Citrix announced that they have acquired Unidesk — the leading application packaging (layering) and lifecycle management solution for the digital workspace. If you are not familiar with Unidesk, or application layering technology in general for that matter, I would strongly advice you to go and have a look at their website. They offer a couple of unique features taking application packaging and delivery to a whole new level. As they like to say ‘Layering changes everything‘. Let’s have a look at what this all means for both Citrix and Unidesk.

2016 — A personal look in the rearview mirror

January 3, 2017 by Bas van Kaam 3 Comments

Average time to read: 6 minutes

And what a year it has been! Personally as well as professionally I have managed to improve and surprise myself on multiple levels. On some occasions I wasn’t even capable of spelling ‘comfort-zone’ correctly, I was so far off. The best thing is, I already have some great prospects for 2017 as well, but I’ll (have to) save that for a future post, not to long from now. 2016, like 2015 before that was again packed with community get-togethers’, mostly in the form of conferences, some small (er) some big/huge, but all fun and it truly never gets tiring, presenting included. Ok, let’s reflect for a minute, shall we…

Demystifying the Citrix XenApp logon, enumeration and launch steps — new details included

December 19, 2016 by Bas van Kaam 7 Comments

Average time to read: 10 minutes

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

December 15, 2016 by Bas van Kaam 5 Comments

Average time to read: 15 minutes

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?

December 6, 2016 by Bas van Kaam 3 Comments

Average time to read: 5 minutes

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.

The long awaited… XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12 Local Host Cache

December 5, 2016 by Bas van Kaam 8 Comments

Average time to read: 8 minutes

Finally, it’s here, with XenApp and XenDesktop version 7.12 Citrix has re-introduced the Local Host Cache functionality. A long awaited feature by many Citrix admins globally. Though many of us are familiar with the LHC feature within 6.5, LHC as part of the FlexCast Management Architecture, which is basically what we are talking about here, is architected differently, or built from the ground up even. This has resulted in a more robust solution, immune to corruption (at least that’s the general idea) also needing less maintenance. Let’s have a look and see what it is about.

Citrix Support – A new model, a new hope, Citrix Customer Success Services

November 8, 2016 by Bas van Kaam 2 Comments

Average time to read: 5 minutes

About two weeks ago Citrix announced part of their new support portfolio for 2017 and beyond, a.k.a. Citrix Customer Success Services. Starting January 1^st 2017 customers will be able to purchase, or better said subscribe to (annually) a new support package named ‘Select’ (as part of the Customer Success Services umbrella) with two more packages following mid-2017 (June / July) referred to as ‘Priority’ and ‘Priority Plus’, although for now there is no detailed information available regarding these two additional packages. Let’s have a look at what we do know.

Citrix Call-Home, a potential successor for Scout — here is what you need to know

October 18, 2016 by Bas van Kaam 2 Comments

Average time to read: 4 minutes

Citrix Call Home according to the e-docs pages “Call Home collects diagnostic data and then periodically uploads telemetry packages containing that data directly to Citrix Insight Services for analysis and troubleshooting”. A nice summary, but of course there is a bit more to it. Below I have put together a brief ‘did you know that’ overview, a somewhat different format then what you are used here on basvankaam.com — let me know what you think.

SURVEY (pre) announcement. The state of public cloud services – the 2016 community edition

August 30, 2016 by Bas van Kaam 1 Comment

Average time to read: 3 minutes

Earlier this month I published a post named ’13 reasons that might prevent companies from successfully leveraging public cloud services’. Again, this post wasn’t meant to negatively position the cloud, not at all. I just wanted to point out some possible downsides and highlight a couple of, potentially important factors that need to be taken into consideration when ‘the cloud’ comes into play. With this in mind I thought it might be useful to put together a survey specifically aimed at public cloud computing services – consider this post a warm-up.

Recent Posts