PowerShell – Page 2 – basvankaam.com

How to: Upgrading and configuring StoreFront 3.0 – The Unified Experience!

Average time to read: 6 minutes

During the last couple of weeks I have been testing several StoreFront / Receiver features. Relatively simple things like single sign-on for Receiver, working with multiple stores, hiding applications and/or desktops from StoreFront (Store) using PowerShell etc. things like that. At first I started out with the Tech Previews of the X1 Receiver and StoreFront 3.0, which worked ok, but I couldn’t do everything I wanted. When I reverted back to the (back then) latest Receiver build things were again fine and I could continue testing.

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Troubleshooting the XenDesktop FMA… Citrix Scout deep dive – Part one!

Average time to read: 18 minutes

About two weeks ago I wrote (slides included) about my talk at the Dutch Citrix User Group (DuCUG) where I presented about troubleshooting the FMA. I also mentioned that when we do have to deal with CTX Support, and note that I’m not trying to sound negative here, we need to understand what to do when we are asked to inventory our Sites or to (CDF) trace certain components / modules for example. I also went into a bit more detail regarding CDF traces and the accompanying modules and trace messages that come with it, including some of the steps we can take to interpreted the collected data ourselves. That’s what I’d like to discuss in this (short) two part series as well, let’s have a closer look at Scout, CDF tracing / control, some of the FMA services (PortICA) etc… I’ll start out with some of the basics and take it from there.

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The ultimate Citrix XenDesktop 7.x internals cheat sheet!

Average time to read: 31 minutes

Ever wondered what happens after a user fills in his or her username and password? What the difference is between internal and external user authentication, resource enumeration and the accompanying launch process? Or what about Web-Interface and StoreFront, do they both have the same authentication mechanism? What are the differences between the server and desktop VDA’s? What about the VDA and XenDesktop internals, what happens inside a VDA when a resource is launched? How does a connection get brokered? Read about this and more during the next 8 (mini) chapters.

Troubleshooting Citrix XenDesktop & XenApp 7.x ? Read this !

Average time to read: 15 minutesWhen I was thinking about what to write next I thought it might be a good idea to use something ‘from the field’, an issue that I’ve been involved in personally during the past two weeks or so. Then I figured, why just discuss one specific use case when there is so much more to tell. So I won’t, instead I’ll focus on troubleshooting in general and use my ‘real world’ example as a reference throughout this article.

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Connection Leasing vs. Local Host Cache. Conclusion? CL doesn’t stand a chance!

Average time to read: 7 minutes

When Citrix re-released their XenApp and XenDesktop products not that long ago, things changed. XenApp’s Independent Management Architecture, IMA, was no more and got replaced by XenDesktop’s Flexcast Management Architecture, or FMA. With it some of the functionality and features loved and used by many disappeared as well. Features like Sessions Lingering, Anonymous Users, Pre-Launch and a few more, were missed, and for some this even became one of the main reasons not to migrate at that time. Luckily Citrix has again reinstated some of the most popular features known to XenApp 6.5, again, not all, but some, in its latest XenApp release, version 7.6.

Continue reading Connection Leasing vs. Local Host Cache. Conclusion? CL doesn’t stand a chance!

How to: Rebooting your XenDesktop 7.x application servers.

Average time to read: 7 minutes

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!

Continue reading How to: Rebooting your XenDesktop 7.x application servers.