Expert Insights

EXPERT INSIGHTS

Thoughts shared by CUGC members who are recognized experts in Citrix technologies.

Be a Metrics Master: Hosted Application Usage

By Alain Assaf
Intro I have been working with Citrix deployments for many years, and the primary aspect of these environments is change. You could add a new software package to thousands of users or refresh your server hardware. Collecting and tracking performance metrics over time helps you to understand how these changes affect your user capacity and user experience. In this post, we'll discuss Application Launches ( specifically, hosted application usage ). Note: This post assumes you are running Citrix Director (pics are from ver 7.15 and have access to Microsoft Excel (365 on-prem) OTHER BLOGS IN THIS SERIES : Be a Metrics Master: Logon Performance ...

Secure SaaS on Zero Trusted vs. (Earned) Trusted Devices with Citrix Access Control Service

By Lyndon-Jon Martin
A macro scale of organisations are now in a situation of enabling remote (flexible) working styles at pace with the outbreak of COVID-19 throughout Europe. As a Londoner, I have noticed a huge difference in the volume of people’s movement, starting last week Monday. Employees are shifting to a new workplace operating model at home and, are likely to be at home until the start of the Spring time frame (maybe longer–though I hope NOT). Even organisations who must abide by regulatory compliance frameworks are having to enable huge volumes of employees to work from home for health and safety reasons . Many have already (or are due to) implement strategies to avoid ...

Be a Metrics Master: Logon Performance

By Alain Assaf
Intro I have been working with Citrix deployments for many years, and the primary aspect of these environments is change. You could add a new software package to thousands of users or fresh your server hardware. Collecting and tracking performance metrics over time helps you to understand how these changes affect your user capacity and user experience. In this post, we'll discuss Logon Performance. Note: This post assumes you are running Citrix Director (pics are from ver 7.15 and have access to Microsoft Excel (365 on-prem) Other blogs in this series: Be a Metrics Master: Concurrent Users Why Track this Metric When your user’s log on and start ...

SAML Authentication between CVAD & Azure AD with Azure MFA & Citrix FAS

By Manuel Winkel
As a result of increasing projects, here is a small How To with the following points: SAML Authentication (Azure AD as IdP & Citrix Gateway as SP) Citrix Federated Authentication Service (FAS) Microsoft Azure Multi-Factor-Authentication with Conditional Access Requirements Fully working Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop Environment (StoreFront & DDC Minimum Version 7.9) Citrix ADC with successful base configuration & activated Enterprise or Platinum license (Minimum Version 12.1 Build 50+ for native workspace app, for browser Minimum Version 11.1) Configured Unified Gateway ...

Be a Metrics Master: Concurrent Users

By Alain Assaf
Intro I have been working with Citrix environments for many years, and the primary aspect of these environments is change. You could add a new software package for thousands of users or refresh your server hardware. Collecting and tracking performance metrics over time helps you to understand how these changes affect your user capacity and user experience. In this post, we'll discuss Concurrent Sessions. Note: This post assumes you are running Citrix Director (pics are from verSION 7.15 and have access to Microsoft Excel (365 on-prem) Other blogs in this series: Be a Metrics Master: Logon Performance Why Track this Metric Concurrent Sessions ...

ADV190023 - Enable LDAPS in Windows DC and Citrix ADC

By Manuel Winkel
Important Info: The scheduled update ( ADV190023 ), regarding LDAP Signing and Channel Binding for new and existing domain controllers, scheduled for March 10, 2020, has been postponed to the second half of calendar year 2020. The March 2020 update will only provide additional auditing capabilities to identify and configure LDAP systems before they become inaccessible with the later update. The later update results in no more connections to the domain controller, via unsigned / Clear Text LDAP on port 389. Then it is only possible to use either LDAPS via port 636 or Signed LDAP (StartTLS) on port 389. Affected Domain Controller ...

How to Quickly and Easily Provide Home Office Workstations (Not Only During the Outbreak of COVID-19)

By Thomas Preischl
Everyone is currently talking about COVID-19. In view of the current rapid spread and the danger of infection, many companies are reacting. They want to protect their employees, customers and partners. The most obvious solution in this case is to provide employees with access to their workplace from home. But how is it possible to do this in a simple and fast way without a comprehensive project or a virtual desktop environment?  A simple and very effective way is to give users access via a Citrix ADC that acts as a remote desktop proxy. Such a configuration can be set up within a few hours and offers comprehensive protection and easy administration.   ...

The Future of Work is Today NOT Tomorrow Part 3: Keeping Productive in a Modern World

By Lyndon-Jon Martin
The Future of Work is Today NOT Tomorrow Part 3: Keeping Productive in a Modern World Hi folks, this is the third post in my blog series on “The Future of Work is Today NOT tomorrow.” My first two posts are available at The Future of Work is Today NOT Tomorrow Part 1  and  The Future of Work is Today NOT Tomorrow Part 2 . I spoke in my previous post about my new way of flexible working in 2019, which has two primary personas. The "creator" persona accounts for up to 12-17% of my workspace on devices that support traditional interfaces with a keyboard + mouse, while the remaining 83-88% is a "consumer" style persona, in which I access my workspace through ...

Extending NLS with Dynamic Beacons

By Eltjo van Gulik
A short while back, in November, Citrix premiered the Network Location Service (NLS) for the Citrix Gateway Service (CGS) functionality of Citrix Cloud. Without the NLS, providing external connectivity via the Citrix Gateway Service is an all or nothing solution: We can either enable external connectivity for all users or not at all. And for this reason, the NLS feature for CGS offers a way to differentiate between internal and external users. This leads to the possibility to negate the all or nothing approach and offers some more flexibility with CGS. Although the NLS functionality is a welcome one, it was met with skepticism in the field: ...

User Personalization Layer–First Impressions

By Benjamin Crill
NEW LTSR!!!!! Citrix gave customers a year-end present by releasing the newest Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) long term service release (LTSR). Enterprises have been clamoring for this update to get so many of the updated features that have been released in the current release line since 7.15. It’s been two and a half years and Citrix has released many solid feature updates. For a large enterprise, like where I work now, being on current release is not feasible; so, a new LTSR is a welcome present. User Personalization Layer One of the new features that is truly a welcome surprise, as I don’t even recall it being hinted at, was the addition of ...

Hey! You know what? There is a new Citrix VAD LTSR version!

By Samuel LEGRAND
On December 18th, Citrix released the 1912 version of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop 7. There is a new release every 3 months now, so why a blog post? Because, this version is “special” – It’s a LTSR. LTSR??? LTSR stands for Long-Term Service Release and each version tagged as such comes with 5 years of mainstream support and 5 years of extended support. In addition, by electing to implement a LTSR version, customers receive fixes, known as Cumulative Updates. A Cumulative Update typically includes only fixes for the LTSR components without introducing new features and functionality that might impact the environment. You understood correctly, LTSR are ...

SDX 15000 Bundle Upgrade Fail

By Carl Behrent
Citrix ADC SDX 15000 Bundle Upgrade Fail Environment: Citrix ADC SDX 11.1 Build 61.112 (brand new appliance that came with 11.1 out of the box). Issue: After uploading Bundle 13.0 Build 36.27 to the SDX, I attempted to upgrade the SDX appliance. According to article https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-hardware-platforms/sdx/supported-versions.html you can go straight from 11.1 to 13.0. The upgrade passes the 'Upgrade initialization' phase and after a short period of time, it fails on the 'Management Service upgrade' with the following error: "Upgrade of Management Service to build-svm-13.0-36.27.tgz failed. Upgrade of Management ...

Automating Citrix Cloud & Windows Virtual Desktop

By Chris Jeucken
Automating Citrix Cloud & Windows Virtual Desktop by Chris Jeucken and Chris Twiest (See the script in action! Watch  the webinar recording for a demo and discussion around the script.) Introduction The year 2019 has been all about Windows Virtual Desktop. If you are even slightly active in the IT circles on social media, you have definitely read about it. The most interesting part about it is the fact that it finally turns Windows 10 into a multi-user OS. Of course, there are other benefits (access to FSLogix!), but that’s not what this blog is about, nor is it about Citrix’s reaction to it in the form of Citrix Managed Desktop. ...

Citrix Converge - Post Event Recap

By Preston Gallwas
This post is a collaborative recap by CTAs Preston Gallwas and Martin Therkelsen Citrix Converge wrapped up on October 3 rd , 2019 at the Citrix campus in Santa Clara, California. The event was a first of its kind and, as Citrix put it, is the first step in creating a community of developers that are engaged and prepared to take advantage of the platform that Citrix is developing for the MicroApps platform.   The event kicked off with breakfast and networking opportunities. The start of the day was quite relaxed as more than 100 developers from around the globe filed in, had some morning coffee and introduced themselves. A variety of Citrites ...

Citrix Workspace Service Setup

By Carl Behrent
Citrix Workspace Service Setup As I am going through my first Citrix Cloud/Workspace/CVAD deployment, I thought I'd blog the process I go through to configure Workspace. This blog post will get updated as I go and discover more about Workspace.   After authenticating into your Citrix Cloud instance, browse to Workspace Configuration   Access Enable the Workspace URL and then click Edit . Choose a relevant name for your Workspace URL, once it has been Saved , it can take 10 minutes to become available as mentioned below. Authentication Select the authentication method used to sign into Workspace. Configuration of each ...

Have PowerShell Keep Your Confidential Information … Confidential!

By Sam Jacobs
Have PowerShell Keep Your Confidential Information…Confidential! As an IT professional, you have no doubt needed to run processes with elevated privileges. PowerShell makes it quite easy with the Get-Credential cmdlet: $creds = Get-Credential This pops up a window for you to securely enter your credentials: You can then use the credentials in cmdlets that support the -Credential parameter. So, if I wanted to connect to a DDC to get a list of all Citrix sessions, I might do something similar to the following: $sessions = Invoke-Command -ComputerName CitrixDDC01 -Credential $creds -ScriptBlock {        Add-PSSnapin Citrix* ...
  User Created PowerShell

Citrix Cloud – Connecting your Local Site as a Data Source for Analytics

By Ronnie Hamilton
Citrix Cloud – Connecting your Local Site as a Data Source for Analytics In this, my first blog on the CUGC site, I would like to run through how we connect to your local Citrix site and allow Citrix cloud analytics service to collect all the data touch points which enable the service to make some intelligent decisions around Security & Operations. In the coming updates, we will also see the introduction into performance details and user scores.  I recently authored a quick post on ronnie.ie  which details how to connect a site to Citrix cloud. This is the first requirement before you are able to connect the site as a data source, which will be accessible ...

Introducing PowerScale! A Community Driven SmartScale Replacement by Leee Jeffries

By Jake Walsh
Introducing PowerScale! A Community Driven SmartScale Replacement by Leee Jeffries Hello All! :) Yesterday, a CUGC Webinar took place covering a new community project called PowerScale ! (Click here for the recording and slide deck.) PowerScale is a community-driven replacement for Citrix SmartScale, which went end of life in July 2019. PowerScale was created by Leee Jeffries , in response to a number of clients he works with asking for similar features. PowerScale provides the following scaling features for Virtual Machines in a XenDesktop Environment: Scaling by Virtual Machine Numbers Scaling by CPU/RAM Scaling on a scheduled basis ...

Leveraging your Citrix Current Release Investment–Director Style

By James Kindon
For customers on the Current Release path for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, one of the best features available to you is the ever-growing list of cool stuff that Director Introduces. A few features that I find have not gained enough love, given how important and awesome they are, are listed below with some real life data against them: Profile Management Drill Down . No kidding, as I was writing this post, I was working with a customer who just upgraded to 1906 from LTSR 7.15. Their profile load times (showing at 40 seconds for one user), took about 5 seconds in Director to identify the problem. Two guesses as to what was going wrong… Interactive ...

Swimming to Success with Citrix Cloud

By Gareth Carson
Swimming to Success with Citrix Cloud   Introduction As a child and young man, I was involved in swimming. Many an hour was spent within the swim lane, every week, early morning and evening. This culminated in some races/galas that I took part in and sometimes I was able to bring home a medal, a smile and some chlorinated hair. Eventually, I reached the stage where the effort vs. the reward was not worth it. In hindsight, this was a mistake, and partly brought on by misjudging the benefits and rewards I was getting from the experience. The way I was judging the success I achieved from the sport was narrow, limited, and lacked the vision for my future ...