Interesting article stating that VMWare has removed the profile management portion of the View 4.5 solution.
This is critical as customers need a way to manage and centralize user profiles. Also the fact that View is being pushed back in shipping leads me to have some concerns….
I’ve been trying to install Smart Auditor on W2K3 recently but running into major headaches. During the installation I get the following error:
Smart Auditor Installation Error 1001
Apparently this can be resolved through extending the time that the service is allowed to load up. This can be done through the following article which creates a registry key that should be set to 300000 (Five Minutes).
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922918
I tried this but still was unsuccessful, further research led me to the solution that the NIC has to be disabled during installation!? Crazy, I know, but I tried it and low and behold the installation completed.
Now, with my freshly installed SmartAuditor Administration server I am running into another issue – the service refuses to respond when the server is rebooted. I can get around this by disabling the NIC but surely this is not right….?
UPDATE!: Success, I ended up moving away from the version of SmartAuditor that comes on the XenApp 5 for W2K3 Component CD and switching to the W2K8 version instead (which still installs on W2K3) and it worked without an issue. Too bad I wasn’t told this after I spent 2 days troubleshooting the original install!
Here’s a handy matrix I’ve had to refer to when designing future ready deployments. Unfortunately it could use a little more information in some of columns!
And for those who want a trip to the past – the legacy support matrix
XenApp Streaming has been around a while now, with the most current release included in XenApp 6. For those of you who aren’t too familiar with streaming it allows an administrator to capture an application install as a package (.profile extension) which is then saved to a file share.
From there users can launch the application at which time it is streamed in real time and executes locally where the streaming client is running. In some cases this is then delivered via ICA in a “Streamed to server” environment. With the streamed to server XenApp administrators can avoid unnecessary silos of XenApp servers.
So whats the big deal?
Good question, streaming allows applications to be isolated in that they have no ability to modify or write to the underlying operating system, either in the file system or the registry.
So whats the big deal?
Another good question! The benefit of this is that applications that may not have been compatible on a single system in the past, can now be delivered and run concurrently. For example this would allow a user to run Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 applications all on the same system. All without ever having to install the application once!
From an administrative standpoint, it allows a single streamed package to be maintained. Lets say a service pack is released for the users application, this can be applied to the application package and users will receive the updated package the next time they launch the application. This can even be done without an outage as users currently in the application would not be affected. This simplifies things for an administrator as now they only have to update a single instance of the application rather than every copy for every user!
Another plus, is stability of the system running the streamed applications. We all know with every application that gets installed, and possibly later uninstalled, operating system performance degrades over time. This is due to applications modifying the underlying OS. As stated previously streaming does not modify anything and is completely isolated in its package, therefore leading to a cleaner system and hopefully more stable system.
Great you say- are there any drawbacks?
With streaming it can be a lot more tricky to troubleshoot an application that does not work. Although if it works it will tend to stay working as the application package is read only. Additionally some applications that are improperly coded will often fail in an isolated streamed package as the restrictions will not be conducive to the improper application calls.
Some applications will flat out not work. I’ve been having lots of fun trying to get Office 2010 to work and it appears the changes to MS licensing are causing me grief. This is a good example where even though the application streams, there is a license lookup that fails currently in the streamed environment. I am still investigating this and will have a solution when I find one.
What about App-V?
Microsoft has their own streaming software called App-V. This was originally known as softgrid. The technology is effectively the same but handles things a little differently so some applications that don’t work in Citrix packages may work in Microsoft and vice versa. The nice thing is that XenApp supports publishing App-V packages natively within a XenApp farm.
XenApp Fundamentals is marketed to the small customer. It provides the benefits of XenApp but at a cost effective price for small businesses. This leads to the question when do you make the jump from fundamentals to XenApp.
Citrix XenApp Fundamentals has the following limitations over XenApp advanced:
This link identifies some unsupported features of fundamentals including some of the ones I’ve highlighted here.
EDIT: Here is an updated link to unsupported features as pertaining to XenApp 6 Fundamentals
With these items identified its clear that Fundamentals while being useful for some smaller companies, does not allow for growth or redundancy. This combined with the fact that there are no streaming options or alternative client options make XenApp advanced a much more common road to take.
Here is a link to an extensive matrix comparing all XenApp versions: Xenapp Feature Matrix
EDIT: I am still looking into this as there seems to be some conflicting information in regards to multiple server support and exactly how failover works. Will update with more information shortly.
Here is the follow up information:
So if you have two servers:
- XenAppFund1.citrix.com 1.1.1.1
- XenAppFund2.citrix.com 1.1.1.2
You would add a separate entry in DNS:
- XenAppFund.citrix.com 1.1.1.3
When configured, at least one of the servers in the farm will respond to 1.1.1.3. So if the XenAppFund1.citrix.com master server goes down, XenAppFund2.citrix.com takes over as temporary master. If users use the XenAppFund.citrix.com (1.1.1.3) address, it will always resolve to a currently active XenApp server.
With both Citrix and VMWare leading the VDI charge with their respective XenDesktop and View technologies this has definitely become a hot topic.
Both of these technologies offer interesting and compelling use scenarios to deliver a customized desktop to your end users. However they both have high investment costs as far as physical resources (CPU, Memory and in some cases huge SAN usage). Additionally the number of moving parts can be quite high and administration skill level is something that can be intimidating to those who are new to the field.
One solution that I am finding consistently meets the needs of many customers who are interested in VDI is a simple published desktop delivered via XenApp. With the latest version of XenApp – version 6 running on W2K8 R2 a lot of the XenApp shortcomings that were not issues in XenDesktop and View are now integrated in XenApp.
Items such as:
Many of these items vastly improve a user who is leveraging XenApp as a traditional desktop replacement.
I like to combine the published desktop with a PNAgent (XenApp online services plugin) so I can deliver customized applications to a standard desktop. This lets me maximize the number of users that a single XenApp server can support without the need to silo into multiple servers.
This PNAgent when configured correctly will allow users applications to populate the start menu and/or desktop and do passthrough session sharing. This session sharing is the secret to a great user experience. Applications launch immediately without the need for another session to be created, and allows drag and drop functionality within the desktop.
This solution is often the final destination for those who have heard of VDI and come looking to find out more.
A common question asked by many implementers, and the answer can sometimes be hard to come by. Now there is a tool that can verify the HDX stack is operating properly and that the user is obtaining the best experience as originally intended in the design. This tool is currently designed for Citrix Xendesktop 4.
Here is the link to the HDX monitor tool. HDX Monitor tool
