Hot off the Presses: Citrix Acquires Sanbolic, Creators of Melio FS. What’s Next?

The news is out! Citrix has acquired Boston based Software Defined Storage (SDS) company Sanbolic. Click here to read the full press release. Several months back Eva Helan (Co-founder, president and COO of Sanbolic) put me in touch and I had a call with fellow geek Andy Melmed (VP, Enterprise Architecture). Folks who have been in the Citrix space a while know Andy, but this was my first time chatting with him. Among other things, Andy told me a little bit about his history of working at Ardence (pre-Citrix acquisition) and later on the ISV certification team at Citrix (i.e. [...]

Citrix Chained Reboot Scripts, now supporting Citrix Cloud, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD), and XenApp/XenDesktop 5, 6, 6.5, and 7.x!

Updated 2018.12.22: Revision 1.9 Now Supports Citrix Cloud! One script now works with all current and modern versions of XenApp, XenDesktop, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD), and Citrix Cloud Virtual Apps and Desktops Service from 7.0 and later, through 1811. In zero-downtime 24/7 environments with shift employees, customers rarely want users to be notified of scheduled or mandatory XenApp server reboots. As a result, most of these environments have reboots disabled or this process is done manually. Unfortunately, this isn’t a good process since the XenApp servers are susceptible to memory leaks which can lead to failure and poor performance. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Rebranding AppSense Management Suite to DesktopNow Requires a Fresh Look at AppSense User Virtualization! Part 1

Meeting with a colleague earlier this week, I discovered that a significant rebranding/realignment occurred with one of our ecosystem partners, AppSense. Similar to Citrix’s acquisition of Xen, requiring a rebranding of all core products, our friends over at AppSense have finalized their branding initiative to classify three core product families, DesktopNow (Formerly AppSense Management Suite / AMS family includes Environment Manager, Application Manager, and Performance Manager), DataNow (Corporate/secured Dropbox solution), and MobileNow (Mobile Device Management / Mobile Application Management / Enterprise AppStore). While I won’t go into detail on what each of these product families will cover, I felt it [...]

Rebranding AppSense Management Suite to DesktopNow Requires a Fresh Look at AppSense User Virtualization! 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: AppSense DesktopNow Single Server Installation Part 2: AppSense DesktopNow Single Server Configuration < YOU ARE HERE! Part 3: Importing the Base Configuration Part 4: Deploying the Client Communications Agent Click Launch Management Server Configuration once the install has finished: Review the Welcome screen and click Next: Review the prerequisites and click View: Click Repair All to remedy any required prerequisites: Click Refresh: Once all requirements have been [...]

Rebranding AppSense Management Suite to DesktopNow Requires a Fresh Look at AppSense User Virtualization! 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 four parts: Part 1: AppSense DesktopNow Single Server Installation Part 2: AppSense DesktopNow Single Server Configuration Part 3: Importing the Base Configuration < YOU ARE HERE! Part 4: Deploying the Client Communications Agent From the Start Menu, launch the AppSense Environment Manager Console: To provide a starting point for Proof of Concept deployments, I am providing a Base Configuration MSI that can be imported into Environment Manager. This is a collection [...]

Rebranding AppSense Management Suite to DesktopNow Requires a Fresh Look at AppSense User Virtualization! Part 4

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: AppSense DesktopNow Single Server Installation Part 2: AppSense DesktopNow Single Server Configuration Part 3: Importing the Base Configuration Part 4: Deploying the Client Communications Agent < YOU ARE HERE! From an AppSense Managed System, navigate to http://%appsenseservername%/ManagementServer in a Web Browser. Click either AppSense CCA 32 Bit or AppSense CCA 64 Bit: Click Run: Click Run: Click Next: Accept the License Agreement and click Next: Click Next: [...]

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