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Citrix XenDesktop 7.5 Remote PC Access, HDX 3D Pro, and League of Legends and Diablo 3!

In the last several years there has been such a focus on getting to that lofty end-state of hosted desktop virtualization from the data center, that many forget to stop and think about how they can obtain real business value today! Case and point is the long forgotten option in the Flexcast model called Remote PC Access (Remote PC for short). With Remote PC, I can walk into any enterprise and tell them in less than a week they can be piloting remote access for their users with the best of breed remoting protocols! Don't you think that is a [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|March 2nd, 2014|Citrix|5 Comments

Scale-Out File Server Role and Citrix Provisioning Services vDisk Stores: My Thoughts and Recommendations

Updated: The focus and root cause in this blog post has changed since I initially wrote it. There are tons of good nuggets in the first section, so I decided to leave them so readers could follow my troubleshooting logic... Over the last couple months I've been playing and working extensively with Windows Server 2012 R2. Citrix's release of XenDesktop 7.1 and PVS 7.1 added full support for Windows Server 2012 R2, so I figured it was time to re-evaluate my current standards and deployment preferences around XenDesktop, Provisioning Services, etc. In my current setup, I'm using a CIFS Store [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|January 4th, 2014|Citrix|13 Comments

Bay Area Citrix Users Group October 23rd Presentation – Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2013 Primer!

I was recently asked to give a Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2013 Primer at the Bay Area Citrix Users Group (http://www.meetup.com/baycug). Below are the images from the slide deck along with a YouTube upload of the recorded server deployment demo! Enjoy!! Click any image to view the full slide: 1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: 13: 14: Click the maximize button in the YouTube video below to view full screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKRvmudaDTY&amp;feature=youtu.be 16: 17: If you have any questions, comments, or just want to leave feedback, please do so below. Thanks for reading! –youngtech

By Dane Young, MBA|October 24th, 2013|Citrix, Microsoft|1 Comment

Using PowerShell and Windows Network QoS Policies to Throttle Web-Based Downloads

I wrote a series of Twitter messages this morning with a couple quick how-to steps, but I figured it would be valuable to summarize in a quick blog post. Back in the day I used web Download Managers to throttle bandwidth usage so I didn't interrupt other traffic on the LAN/WAN. While a LAN/WAN QoS network appliance based approach is the best approach, this capability is built into Windows and PowerShell! Additionally, this can be turned on and off very simply with minimal configuration, so if you're in an internal or customer environment conducting downloads, you can very quickly set some [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|September 27th, 2013|Citrix, General Technology, Microsoft, VMware|1 Comment

Creating a Load Balanced Multi-Node Citrix StoreFront 2.0 Server Group with NetScaler Gateway 10.1!

Over a year ago I wrote a blog post covering the recently released Citrix Receiver StoreFront 1.0 at the time, which can be found here. Much has changed in the world of Citrix technologies in a year and a half, and I felt it was time to provide an update for the new Citrix StoreFront 2.0 which among other major enhancements has removed the Microsoft SQL database requirement!! Horray! Here’s the updated architectural overview that I will be covering in this blog post: Additionally, you’ll notice updated vernacular relating to the Access Gateway component as CAG VPX (v5.0.x) can be [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|July 15th, 2013|Citrix|14 Comments

VDI-in-a-Box (VIAB) Project Curacao Technology Preview: Installation and Configuration Using Hyper-V Server 2012! Part 1

As many of you know, Windows 8 virtual desktops are supported (in technical preview) in the current release of VDI-in-a-Box (VIAB) 5.2 with the following limitation: RDP Connections Only. This has been available since day one of Microsoft’s Windows 8 release. About a week ago (on May 10th), Citrix made available a public tech preview for VIAB Project Curacao (Read more here), which adds full HDX/ICA support for Windows 8 virtual desktops along with several other key enhancements. In the following blog post, I will share my experiences building a stand-alone Hyper-V Server 2012 host with local storage and a [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|May 18th, 2013|Citrix|2 Comments

VDI-in-a-Box (VIAB) Project Curacao Technology Preview: Installation and Configuration Using Hyper-V Server 2012! Part 2

If you’ve just stumbled upon this article, I recommend you start from the beginning by clicking the Part 1 link below. For easy reading, I’ve broken this blog post into three parts: Part 1: Hyper-V Server 2012 Installation and Importing VDI-in-a-Box Part 2: VDI-in-a-Box Initial Configuration < YOU ARE HERE! Part 3: Windows 8 Image and Template Creation Since Hyper-V Server 2012 doesn’t include any consoles or snap-ins, I recommend using Windows 8 or another Windows Server 2012 machine to remotely connect Hyper-V Manager. Instructions for installing Hyper-V Manager on Windows 8 can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2012/05/29/installing-the-remote-management-tools-for-windows-8-hyper-v.aspx. Once installed, launch Hyper-V [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|May 18th, 2013|Citrix|2 Comments

VDI-in-a-Box (VIAB) Project Curacao Technology Preview: Installation and Configuration Using Hyper-V Server 2012! Part 3

If you’ve just stumbled upon this article, I recommend you start from the beginning by clicking the Part 1 link below. For easy reading, I’ve broken this blog post into three parts: Part 1: Hyper-V Server 2012 Installation and Importing VDI-in-a-Box Part 2: VDI-in-a-Box Initial Configuration Part 3: Windows 8 Image and Template Creation < YOU ARE HERE! Next, we will go ahead and create the Windows 8 VM that will be used for creating our VIAB pools. In Hyper-V Manager, select the Action menu and click New –> Virtual Machine (Also available on the right navigation window): Click Next: Enter [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|May 18th, 2013|Citrix|2 Comments

Microsoft App-V 5: Installation and Configuration Using Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8! Part 1

I have been spending quite a bit of time building and playing with Microsoft App-V 5 in my lab and decided I would post a quick setup guide to help get evaluation and initial environments up and running. This blog series will be broken into many parts, from SQL to App-V management, reporting, publishing, load balancing, sequencing, and client installations. The following topology diagram shows the initial environment including all the pieces broken out for scalability and high availability: For easy reading, I’ve broken this blog post into five parts: Part 1: Microsoft SQL Server Installation <-- YOU ARE HERE Part [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|April 23rd, 2013|Microsoft|5 Comments

Microsoft App-V 5: Installation and Configuration Using Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8! Part 2

If you’ve just stumbled upon this article, I recommend you start from the beginning by clicking the Part 1 link below. For easy reading, I’ve broken this blog post into four parts: Part 1: Microsoft SQL Server Installation Part 2: Management and Reporting Server Installation <-- YOU ARE HERE Part 3: Publishing Server Installation, Registration, and Load Balancer Configuration Part 4: Sequencing and Client Installation To ease deployment, I’ve created a Prerequisites PowerShell quick reference. Copy the following to paste into an elevated PowerShell prompt: Install-WindowsFeature Web-Server Install-WindowsFeature Web-Asp-Net Install-WindowsFeature Web-Net-Ext Install-WindowsFeature Web-ISAPI-Ext Install-WindowsFeature Web-ISAPI-Filter Install-WindowsFeature Web-Windows-Auth Install-WindowsFeature Web-Mgmt-Console Install-WindowsFeature NET-Framework-45-ASPNET [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|April 23rd, 2013|Microsoft|1 Comment