Configuring – basvankaam.com

Two factor (SMS) authentication — done right with SMSPassword!

Average time to read: 5 minutes

I have always been a fan of two factor authentication, or 2FA in short. Almost all companies and customers I have worked for and with used it in some shape or form. Especially SMS based 2FA — from an administrative perspective it is easy to set up, configure and maintain (if it isn’t you might want to consider switching vendors) and next to that it is also extremely user friendly and secure, when properly implemented that is. And of course, there is no need for any additional (expensive) third party tokens.

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How to configure zones in XenDesktop and XenApp 7.7 plus some extra’s!

Average time to read: 8 minutes

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.

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How to: Get up to speed with Windows Azure. Deploying your personal test lab, fast!

Average time to read: 15 minutes

During 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.

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Control, or control not. There is no manage! Free VMworld Europe tickets!

Average time to read: 5 minutes

What a great title for a blog post, don’t you agree? To bad I didn’t came up with it myself, my friends at VMTurbo did. You’ve probably heard of them, they are the ones that enable virtualization teams to control complex environments and at the same time enhance the performance of VMware, Hyper-V, RHEV and Citrix orientated architectures and deployments. The reason for this blog is twofold, first of all I would like to spend a few minutes briefly introducing VMTurbo, and secondly, as some of you might already know, they love to give a way free stuff, and I’m not talking about a baseball cap or a T-shirt, read on …

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