Expert Insights

Or why Microsoft killed the ​​ConcurrentUserSessions setting ​​in the new FSLogix versions ​​and why you (probably) never needed it anyway... Often I would see this set as part of an FSLogix deployment under the misapprehension that it is required on Server OS to make multiple sessions work. It's not required. It never was. This setting doesn't exist any more. Let's talk about what it said originally and why Microsoft changed it. Originally it said: Enable FSLogix to handle ...

One of the things I needed was a fast, quick, down-and-dirty secondary FSLogix profile server. At the time, the business required me to deploy FSlogix ASAP, so I only built one server to satisfy what the company wanted. Now, ideally, you would like to do some HA in your profile solution, architect this out, and put a lot more time into this solution, as this wasn't an option for me during that time. Please note my statement that " One of the things I needed was a fast, quick, down-and-dirty secondary ...

Last year, I put out a blog on FSLogix's quick Default Exclusions explanation (see FSLogix Default Exclusions Explanation and Quick Fix (mycugc.org) . That solution is working very well. But anything that remains in the FSLogix Profile before I reversed the GPO to purge the %Temp% and INetcache doesn't purge from the user's profile. I needed a quick solution to achieve this, and I recall reading about this somewhere, but I couldn't remember where. Later that night, I went to bed with it heavy ...

The related presentation recording is here:  User Share: Windows Build Automation w/Packer, PowerShell 2022 Redux - CUGC (mycugc.org) Last year, I wrote a long post about using Packer.IO to automate basic VMware shell creation and Win 10 / Win 2019 installation. At that time, I only ended up using the solution for re-builds on my own home lab. This year, I've had the need to build golden images for multiple clients, each time, the process was manual and error prone as no automation was used. ...

I recently moved a PVS farm that consisted of 4 servers from a Single Database instance to a SQL AG instance. I wasn’t 100% sure how to do this, so I reached John Carmody, aka @c4rm0 , who sent me his blog as a reference. In this write-up, you will notice that there are very similar steps at a high level. I wanted to share my experience to confirm that it does work, and I tried to add more details so that my blog and his blog should cover all questions that may arise. Again, I wanted to clarify ...

Here's a quick little write-up for Zoom users around Citrix VDI setups who want to stop all connections coming in unless they have the Zoom HDX plugin on the Client. In other words, it prevents unoptimized connections. I needed a way to stop users from using Zoom if they didn't have the Zoom HDX Media Plugin installed on their clients from home. Without the Plugin, it uses the VDA resource in an unoptimized fashion. I know you can tune Citrix policies around this, and this may be ok for smaller ...

In 2019, I wrote “ Suggested Leading Practises for the Secure Browsing Service ” in light of the recent sharp rise in cyber incidents and attacks against organisations of all sizes in the City of & Greater London (and worldwide). Here, I've written about some suggested field leading practises on securing access for IT administration   while also taking the opportunity to review the previously published field leading practises shared from 2019. What is the Secure Browsing Service (SBS) ...

As you know, FSLogix does have profile exclusions, and more importantly, they have two significant FSLogix profile exclusions built-in. But in this quick little blog, I will focus on a little FSLogix "gotcha" (well, not really). It's more of a MS GPO that many of us have set for specific scenarios that we needed in older Profile cases. Well, with FSLogix, it will backfire. In my case, if IE will slow down and get tons of calls (yes, I know IE stinks, and it's moving on soon 😊 ). This blog post ...

This guide is geared around explaining how Zoom and Citrix work together, and it will show you the architecture and provide information for what is needed on clients. There is information added in the document for education purposes as well. At the time of writing this blog, I tested everything on an older version. However, I updated some screenshots to reflect a new version. I did keep the old screenshots to help show the details as well. The same principle applies though. Zoom requires both ...

Here is a quick blog around migrating Citrix Session Recording Databases to a new SQL server. This is only a single instance and it's not load balanced. It's a very basic configuration and I wanted to go into the CTX article a bit more. 1. Stop the Services on your recording server. 2. Take a full backup of existing Session Recording databases (SessionRecording and SessionRecordingLogging).   3. Copy backed up databased to the new SQL server.   4. Restore Session recording ...

As many of you know from my recent blogs, I am using Nutanix AOS/AHV for my Citrix environment. Before, I used VMware 100% for all workloads, including XenApp (Virtual Apps) and VDI (Virtual desktops). However, I needed to move the delivery controllers, Storefront, and all the Citrix Infrastructure pieces that make Citrix work to the Nutanix Cluster. At the time, I wasn't sure how to go about this. Good thing for me, Nutanix already accounted for this and has a product called Nutanix Move. Nutanix ...

In my first blog post here,   Part 1 ,   I showed how to set up Windows Deduplication on Server 2016. This second series will show my production results and what I gained in space-saving. I estimated 18.5% in savings in the first post. However, I got 23% back. That is good, in my opinion. I enabled Windows Deduplication on my production File Server   Part 1. Here is the drive space before; windows deduplication was running. I would often run get-dedupstatus to give me an idea of ...

We recently made a good investment in our VDI CVAD space: We purchased 28 Nutanix Nodes, and this is our first upgrade so, I wanted to break down everything we did. It was over two days, and I captured all the screenshots and documentation I could in a production environment. Nutanix does a fantastic job of documenting everything. I do have to admit, this was one of the smoothest upgrades in my entire career. This doc is to go over what they already have written up. It's purely AOS/AHV and Super ...

Sustainable Citrix Implementations Watch Now: "Best Practices for Sustainable Citrix Implementation" with Owen Reynolds.   I recently returned as a consultant for a client that I was working for in 2020, and it's inspired this piece. The reason being, I realized I'd left some items in place that should have been removed and had confused the local staff. This is a common scenario; where you are the trusted expert for an implementation as an SME, but don't fully hand off to other people ...

Create a Start Menu for RDSH Users - Part I   You all know the challenge on a RDSH Windows Server 2019 to turn the start menu into a suitable start menu for the users. Without making any changes, users get a start menu that is fine for administrators, but not for normal users. Unfortunately, Microsoft only offers a few options for making changes to the start menu with standard tools like group policies. In this post, I will show you how to create a start menu for your RDSH users. Part II deals ...

How to Check the MS Teams Optimization State The situation   Many of us now use MS Teams on Citrix desktops (also because of Covid-19). For MS Teams to run satisfactorily, the “Citrix Teams optimization” should always be active. This isn’t always the case, often the client is not ready for the optimization or requirements are missing, especially on Linux clients. It is very difficult for the user to recognize whether MS Teams is running optimally, the normal way would be this:     ...

In this short blog, I am going to show you how to upgrade ControlUp from 8.1 to 8.2 and show some basic screenshots of ControlUp SOLVE. I am excited because ControlUp 8.2 is changing the game and introducing some great features. I am not a ControlUp employee, and this is my experience and opinion only. ControlUp has saved me many times in my areas and is a must for any organization with any EUC setup. There is still a lot I must learn in ControlUp so I can use it even more. It is a fantastic ...

About three years ago, I posted a blog about how to perform an unattended installation and configuration of Citrix StoreFront with Ivanti Automation. It did the installation, the creation of a new store and it added a second StoreFront server to the server group. Since most organizations are stepping away from (still awesome) tools like Ivanti Automation and are moving towards solutions like Puppet , Ansible , Chocolatey , Packer , plain PowerShell, etc., I wanted to create a PowerShell script ...

I recently converted from VMware to AHV, and I wanted to show how I did Nutanix Files 3.7 with FSLogix. While I haven’t moved everything over yet, I have tested this very hard, and it’s solid as iron. I still use VMware for my datacenter servers, but we wanted our Citrix Environment on all Nutanix because it’s a solid product, and it’s simplified so that we can focus on other areas. This is how I did it, and I have learned a lot so far in the process. I am by far no expert, and this is for beginners ...

In this article, I would like to show you how easy it is to deploy applications from the Citrix Cloud using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Service based on Windows Virtual Desktop. While I will only cover basic deployment in my article, I think it gives a very good impression that Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service even simplifies Windows Virtual Desktop deployment for both desktops and apps. In preparation for this article, I have already created a Tenant in Citrix Cloud and installed a ...