Netscaler Archives

Entering the Atomic Age, the Intel Nuke (NUC) that will Change Desktop Virtualization History! Powered by MaximumBit Desktop365

Over the last several months I have had the honor of evaluating a killer new solution that will forever change the Desktop Virtualization industry! The Intel NUC (pronounced nuke) small form factor is very disruptive and innovative, but it's the power of ViewSonic's distribution and MaximumBit Desktop365 that will truly make this a game changer. Think of this as VDI Out-of-the-Box (not VDI-in-a-Box)! The automation and management platform that MaximumBit built enables this tiny device to support a full Desktop Virtualization solution in less than an hour from unboxing, hopefully opening up new markets to the value of Citrix products. [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|May 12th, 2015|Citrix|1 Comment

Creating a Bulletproof Citrix Licensing Server Infrastructure using NetScaler Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) and CtxLicChk.ps1 PowerShell Scripts

Click Accept to Download the Configuration Guide, Visio, and CtxLicChk.ps1 PowerShell Script I Accept the Terms and Conditions provided on the Copyright and Disclaimer page. Click to Download the Configuration Guide, Visio, and CtxLicChk.ps1 PowerShell Script from ShareFile.com I was recently doing Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop design workshops with Nick Rintalan and Brendan Lin from Citrix Consulting Services (CCS), along with my colleague Victor DiMascio from Entisys. As we were discussing some of the intricate details of the architecture decisions, we touched on a topic that has stumped many a Citrix architect for the last several years (myself included). The underlying question [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|February 11th, 2015|Citrix|28 Comments

Citrix WorkspacePod, an HP Moonshot Architect’s Perspective

TLDR: Citrix WorkspacePod summarized in one word: Bundling. For about the last year and a half, I have been affectionately called Mr. Moonshot among my peers and colleagues. Thanks everyone, you're too kind! Naturally, at Citrix Summit when one of the big keynote announcements on WorkspacePod surfaced, I started getting a lot of questions. I'm no expert on DataON, so I can't comment on that particular piece. For all I knew, DataON was a commodity/whitebox storage company, and have never even really looked into their Cluster-in-a-Box (CiB) product family. Who knew! Enough about DataON, that's not the focus of this [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|January 23rd, 2015|Citrix, General Technology, HPE, Microsoft|5 Comments

HP Discover 2014 Presentation TB3997 – Make your workforce more productive: Get the right solution, right now, for your mobile workers with HP ConvergedSystem for Client Virtualization

I recently presented a joint-session with HP and Tony Sanchez at Discover 2014 (TB3997) in Las Vegas (http://h30614.www3.hp.com/Discover). Below is the description of the session with exported images from the slide deck. Speakers: Travis Kuter, EG Alliance Manager, HP (www.hp.com) Tony Sanchez (@tonysanchez_ctx), Solutions Architect, Citrix Systems (www.citrix.com) Dane Young (@youngtech), Solutions Architect, Entisys Solutions (www.entisys.com) TB3997: Make your workforce more productive: Get the right solution, right now, for your mobile workers with HP ConvergedSystem for Client Virtualization Compute from anywhere. This is how workers get their jobs done today. Come to this session and talk to the experts from Citrix, HP, and [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|June 11th, 2014|Citrix, General Technology, VMware|0 Comments

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

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

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

Microsoft App-V 5: Installation and Configuration Using Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8! 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: Microsoft SQL Server Installation Part 2: Management and Reporting Server Installation Part 3: Publishing Server Installation, Registration, and Load Balancer Configuration <-- YOU ARE HERE Part 4: Sequencing and Client Installation On the Publishing Servers (WS12APPV502 and WS12APPV503 in my topology) complete the App-V installation, using the following processes. Repeat this same process for any additional publishing servers. To ease deployment, I’ve created a Prerequisites PowerShell quick [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|April 23rd, 2013|Microsoft|3 Comments