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.
Liquidwarelabs ProfileUnity & FlexApps overview. Version 6.5 soon to be released!
Last week Jason E Smith, who is the Global Director of User Management and Performance Solutions within Liquidwarelabs, showed and told me a thing or two about ProfileUnity, their User Environment Manager, including their application layering a.k.a. FlexApp solution. They are on the verge of releasing ProfileUnity / FlexApp version 6.5 (as of early October) which currently holds the status of Release Candidate 1, which is the one Jason showed me.
HP Moonshot revisited. Well… by me anyway
During 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!
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.
The glass is half full… 50+ reasons why I think it might be time to move to XenApp 7.6!
In 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.
Desired State Configuration & the Citrix XenDesktop DSC Tech Preview
Desired State Configuration (DSC)… Ring any bells? No? It should by now. Although it isn’t a technology or concept thought up by Citrix, it is still very much applicable to Citrix components and infrastructures. DCS is a (still relatively) new management platform for Windows PowerShell allowing you to configure, apply and maintain a certain desired state (duh) on a single or multiple machine(s). A desired state can be anything related to software installation and configuration, the management of files and folders, registry entries, local group and account management, adding and removing server roles and the list goes on. Best thing is, as soon as something changes DSC will step in and correct it for you, preserving the desired state. DSC is a PowerShell extension and ships with Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1. Let’s have a closer look at what is needed.
12 services that make up the Citrix XenDesktop Flex Management Architecture!
The Flex Management Architecture is a service-orientated architecture, it consists out of ten, or twelve depending on your point of view, primary services in total. Let me explain, when administering a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for example, the Broker Service, a.k.a. the Desktop service, and the PortICA service both live on your desktop OS based VM’s, which are then part of the FMA as well, making it twelve services in total. Here I’ll provide you with a rundown of all services that make up the FMA including their responsibilities and some background information. I’ve included some artwork as well.
Citrix Synergy 2014 Keynote wrap-up, here’s what’s new!
Finally, 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.