Throughout the last couple of months, I have written multiple posts on Citrix Smart Tools, with a special interest in Smart Check. Have a look here and here. Not that long ago I had a short talk with Mathew Varghese, the Director of Product Management for Smart Tools and Insight Services, which also includes Scout. He told me about, and showed me some interesting features that are coming to Smart Check, not that long from now (Q4).
XenDesktop & XenApp 7.14 multi-type licensing – what it is, how it works and what to be aware of
Version 7.14 introduces a new licensing option known as ‘multi-type licensing’ allowing you to consume different types of XenDesktop & XenApp license models within the same Site on a per Delivery Group basis. This post is meant to answer one or two questions you might have around this new feature.
The one-stop shop for Citrix Smart Check – sneak peak of upcoming version included
In the past I have written numerous times about Citrix Insight Services, or TaaS before that, which stands for Tools as a Service (don’t be confused, Insight Services was just another name change from TaaS). Smart Check builds upon these services and offers (at least) the same type of pro-active checks (equal to Insight Services) keeping your XenApp and/or XenDesktop Site healthy at all times. However, it is important to note that Smart Check is a completely new service on its own, part of the Smart Tools portfolio (formerly known as Citrix Lifecycle Management Services), which are a 100% Citrix cloud based, though they can be applied on-premises as well. This post is meant to provide you with all relevant information on Smart Check available today as well as any future developments going forward.
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.
How to: Rebooting your XenDesktop 7.x application servers.
Sounds easy enough right? Rebooting your XenDesktop Site’s application servers. When your Site isn’t that big and you don’t have a few hundred machines running or you have to deal with 24/7 shifts and so on, it can be fairly straightforward. I don’t want to spend to much time on why we would want, or need, to reboot our machines on a weekly or perhaps daily basis etc. a lot of factors come into play and there’s really no ‘one size fits all’. You could be using App-V or Citrix provisioning Services for example, both caching data which you would like to clear from time to time. Or perhaps the underlying Windows OS, when physically installed, might need a refresh every once in awhile, which we all know it does! Fact of the matter is, reboots are a given and need to be thought trough to keep operations running as smooth as possible. Make sure to finish the article, there is a question on the Citrix build-in reboot tooling, maybe you can help me out!
Configuring Citrix XenDesktop 7.x Desktop publishing and Limited Visibility!
With the merge of XenApp into XenDesktop’s Flex Management Architecture (FMA) a lot changed, for most XenApp admins it meant they had to rethink their designs and as a result it was back to the drawing board. Take application, or resource, publishing for example, we now have to deal Delivery Groups and Machine Catalogs, nothing new if you’re used to working with XenDesktop, but if it’s ‘just’ XenApp you know, well… Even now where XenApp 7.5 is a product on it’s own, again, it’s still based on the Flex Management Architecture meaning it also still uses the same wizards and configuration options as in XenDesktop 7.x a few months ago, for the most part anyway.