Lately I’ve been using Hashicorp Packer to automate my golden master #Citrix images. A few years back, I was mostly using the normal BIOS setting for the virtual machine configuration. Fast forward to now, it is best practice to configure the firmware as EFI. In essence, UEFI is the preferred choice for modern computers because…
If you manage a Citrix environment chances are you’re using hosting connections to manage power actions. Whether it’s for MCS/PVS, reboot schedules, or to simply perform a reboot or shutdown on VMs from Citrix Studio. One of the bigger “Gotchas” I see is when the power state changes to ‘unknown’. This can be due to…
I recently had to figure out which Functional Level goes to which Citrix version/release. I figured I would provide the full list as of Citrix 2209 along with some of the Powershell code I used to gather details. Citrix says “The functional level controls which product features are available to machines in the catalog. Setting…
The last couple weeks have been a hoot. Here’s the progress that’s been made. XenServer hosts have all been setup (running 7.1) Storage (FC) and NAS have been setup All the VMs have been built, joined to the domain, patched, and prepped. The FMA Site has been configured and settings have been replicated (see ‘delivery…
I’m at the point now where the Datacenter#2 has Networking, Storage, and Hosts ready for me to use. That means it’s VM building time. You pretty much need the identical components you have for your existing site. Remember the key focus here is Highly Available and reliability. So if one datacenter goes down, the other…
Since Part 1 has been published we have learned a little bit more about the overall design of the environment. Let’s recap the initial requirements. Management has instructed the team to build a Highly Available and Stable environment that spans multiple data centers. Each technology component must be separate in each datacenter. Which means, no sharing…
Ok, where does one begin when talking about an Active/Active Citrix Deployment? I’m frazzled just thinking about it. Do I start with the Profiles, Netscalers, PVS Images, XenApp Sites…? Let’s first describe the requirements. Management has instructed the team to build a Highly Available and Stable environment that spans multiple data centers. Ready…Go! However…
SmartAccess and SmartControl let you change ICA connection behavior (e.g. disable client device mappings) based on how users connect. Decisions are based on NetScaler Gateway Virtual Server name, Session Policy name, and Endpoint Analysis scan success or failure. Carl Stalhood has a great blog on how to configure/setup Smart Access. You can find it here: http://www.carlstalhood.com/smartaccess-smartcontrol-netscaler-11/…
For brand new Xenapp/Xendesktop implementations you are given the option to build out the Site quickly using SQL Express. While SQL Express may be supported, it’s certainly not recommended. Any Citrix XA/XD production site/farm should be installed into a full version of SQL. Many Citrix projects start out as ‘Proof of Concept’ or Trial phase,…