R2 Archives | YOUNGTECH

Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) 7.6 vs. 7.7, VHD vs. VHDX and Scale-Out File Server Update
Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) 7.6 vs. 7.7, VHD vs. VHDX and Scale-Out File Server Update

Citrix

Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) 7.6 vs. 7.7, VHD vs. VHDX and Scale-Out File Server Update

A couple years ago I was troubleshooting through a Versioning and Merge VHD issue with Provisioning Services (PVS) 7.1 and Windows Scale-Out File Server (SOFS), which resulted in my recommendation to create a Maintenance store for vDisk Versioning. I am happy to see in the last two years this has completely improved and dare I say is fully resolved, specifically with the recent release of PVS 7.7. In this blog post, I'm going to share a little bit of testing data from my experience with PVS 7.7, along with a couple recommendations. Let's get started! A couple notes about PVS [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|January 11th, 2016|Citrix|19 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

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

Microsoft App-V 5: Installation and Configuration Using Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8! 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: Microsoft SQL Server Installation Part 2: Management and Reporting Server Installation Part 3: Publishing Server Installation, Registration, and Load Balancer Configuration Part 4: Sequencing and Client Installation <-- YOU ARE HERE The next logical step is to install the sequencing components. In my topology, I have a Windows 8 Sequencer and a Windows Server 2012 Sequencer. The installation process is the same for both. I would highly [...]

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

Configuring Windows Server 8 Core with DHCP Failover and Replication!

In consulting with clients over the years for Virtualization, VDI and Cloud initiatives, an inevitable conversation that surfaces is DHCP high availability. While Microsoft allows Enterprise customers to protect DHCP in a Failover Cluster, my experience is that this option lacks mass adoption due to licensing requirements, increased complexity and an added dependency on the quorum storage (also a single point of failure). Another option involves an approach called DHCP split scope whereby two servers provide addresses for the same subnet, but do not overlap. This results in wasted address space, sometimes significant in the case of VDI with multiple [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|March 19th, 2012|Microsoft|0 Comments

Installing and Configuring Citrix Desktop Director 2.0 for use with XenApp 6.5
Installing and Configuring Citrix Desktop Director 2.0 for use with XenApp 6.5

Citrix

Installing and Configuring Citrix Desktop Director 2.0 for use with XenApp 6.5

If you’re anything like me, the minute you heard that Desktop Director 2.0 would now integrate with XenApp 6.5, you became all excited! If you haven’t used or seen Desktop Director yet, you are in for a treat! If you’ve tried configuring an existing Desktop Director instance to point to XenApp 6.5, you may have experienced my frustrations and in my experience the eDocs guide linked here was no help. According to eDocs, this should be as simple as configuring Service.AutoDiscoveryAddresses for XenDesktop and Service.AutoDiscoveryAddressesXA for XenApp. If you’re supporting multiple XenDesktop sites and multiple XenApp farms, you should be able to comma separate these [...]

By Dane Young, MBA|December 9th, 2011|Citrix|15 Comments