General Announcement and News
Synergy Session Catalog Is Live
“Citrix Synergy is the premier industry conference on digital business transformation. Synergy provides attendees with the tools and confidence they need to say yes to workforce mobility, security and compliance, BYO, workplace redesign, hybrid cloud infrastructure—and whatever comes next. This year Synergy is in Las Vegas from May 24th-26th. Find out more about the various sessions, keynotes and hands on lab by reviewing our session catalog which is now live at citrixsynergy.com”
Driving Digital Transformation – Kirill Tatarinov, Citrix CEO
“Citrix is an enabler of digital transformation, helping customers in all industries to unlock their business potential. It has been terrific to hear resounding support for this mission in my many conversations with our customers and people around the world.”
Shelton Public Schools Saves Two Million Dollars Using Citrix Technology
“One of the most influential trends in education today is differentiated learning, whereby educators provide students with different pathways to learning in the same classroom. Shelton Public Schools, a K-12 school district in Western Connecticut, has addressed this trend by using Citrix technology to support the Google Chromebox computers that mount on the back of a monitor and retail for less than $200 – a fraction of the nearly $500 per device Shelton Public Schools would have had to spend on desktop computers for its classroom learning centers. ”
Citrix Radically Simplifies the Secure Delivery of Browser-based Apps
” Citrix Secure Browser product family provides a quick, simple way for any IT organization – even those that have never used a Citrix product – to securely deliver web and SaaS applications to any modern browser. In minutes, an administrator can set up any web application to be securely delivered to any device, even internally hosted web apps, without intrusively installing anything on an employee’s device.”
Hospital CTO finds virtualization and security in Citrix
“As associate vice president and chief technology officer of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Sean Updegrove works to make sure his physicians get their patients’ health data safely, quickly and conveniently whether they’re on hospital rounds, at home or in the clinic. For this task, he chose Citrix technology for virtualization and security of the physician portals and workflows that transport data from Children’s Cerner Corp. EHR to clinicians as they move around the hospital.”
” Serving as the “invisible middleman,” enterprise mobility management (EMM) gives IT and employees the tools and confidence they need to just say yes to workforce mobility. With empowering employees to work and collaborate the way they prefer as a baseline (hearkening back to today’s trend for organizations to adopt BYOD policies to let people use their own PCs and mobile devices for work), Citrix recently polled customers that deployed EMM in the cloud using XenMobile last year.”
iOS 9.3 – What’s In It For the Enterprise?
XenMobile provided same-day platform support for the release of iOS 9.3. With every new iOS release I’m always curious to see what’s in it for the enterprise and 9.3 doesn’t disappoint.
Citrix Unleashes Industry-First Integrated Platform for SD-WAN
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) offers the reliability, visibility, control and flexibility businesses need today to address the demands placed by new bandwidth intensive applications on their wide area networks—and in 2016 there is strong momentum toward mainstream adoption. Citrix unveiled a complete solution for enterprises on this path: CloudBridge Enterprise Edition, a single platform with fully integrated WAN virtualization, WAN Optimization, enterprise-grade security, and end-to-end visibility.”
The Fastest PoC in the Cloud – XenApp in the Azure Marketplace
“I am pleased to announce that you can now try XenApp 7.8 in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. This offering is the latest addition to our already existing portfolio in the Azure Marketplace, which includes NetScaler VPX (BYOL) and ShareFile StorageZones Controller.”
Best Practices/Reference Architecture Documents/Blogs
Citrix Appdisks How To Guide – Administration Basics and Gotchas
AppDisk, an application layering solution was part of XenApp/XenDesktop 7.8 released in late February this year. This post is not meant to cover the basics of application layering or image management as a whole. My goal in this post is to cover the administrative aspects of application layering using Citrix AppDisks.
Remote PC Access for XenDesktop: Not Flashy, Just Fantastic
“With over 1,500+ customers and 500,000 systems actively enrolled and using Remote PC Access, it is gaining visibility everywhere as a valuable standard in deploying XenDesktop. And who wouldn’t adopt it? Combining the power of HDX, energy cost savings with Wake on LAN (WOL) and security provided by NetScaler, its simple deployment model appeals to every vertical and every customer size.”
Session Recording in XenApp & XenDesktop 7.8 Ensures Compliance & Productivity
“Session Recording, available in XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum Editions, allows administrators to record on-screen user session activity and play it back at a later time as required. It has been available for server-based desktops and published applications for some time, and now, VDI desktops are supported as well. Policy control and notification options provide flexibility to meet environment requirements and regulations.”
Configuring XenMobile Unified Gateway
“Where remote users needed to access their SaaS and Enterprise apps along with XenApp/XenDesktop published apps via their web browser, they used to launch the NetScaler Gateway’s URL. Post authentication if the AppController was integrated with StoreFront, they get access to apps published by AppController and StoreFront. Unified Gateway is integrated into NetScaler 11.0 release. When configured, Unified Gateway provides consolidation via one URL to access multiple secured services.”
Updated Guidance on PVS Ports and Threads
“Recently, I had a chance to talk with our PVS Sr. Architect Jeff Pinter-Parsons who led me to believe that we need to reevaluate the details surrounding this leading practice. Per our discussion, PVS is actually not using a standard threading model where each client gets it own port/thread much like a TFTP server does. Instead PVS has a listener for each port that receives a request and dumps it on a port specific thread pool. The threads in the pool process each request, one per thread. If there are more threads than cores, the leftover threads simply block. Adding more threads than CPU logical core is not going to help on performance.”
StoreFront Message Customization
“This is a newer version of a customization I wrote about last year. This version will work with StoreFront 3.0 and up. (Previous version StoreFront 3.0 Message Customization)”
Delete Local User Profile Folders on StoreFront Servers
“As many of you might be aware, the Citrix StoreFront authentication service provides an option for users to change their passwords when they expire. By default, this option is disabled when the authentication service is created, which prevents users from changing their passwords even if the passwords have expired. If you decide to enable this option in Citrix Receiver for Web, keep in mind that StoreFront creates a local user profile to check whether a user’s password is about to expire. Hence, sufficient disk space is required on the local disk of the StoreFront servers.”
Machine Learning with Octoblu and Microsoft Azure
“Octoblu enables companies to create IoT services with secure realtime exchange of data. The services are built on open communications and management platform that supports a variety of protocols for physical devices to communicate seamlessly with each other, people, legacy applications, and cloud services. Through public, private, or hybrid clouds users can connect, design, process, and analyze the flow of information. All services have been designed to operate over a robust security and right management architecture.”
Support Articles/Security Bulletins
- Cannot Promote VDISK to Production Mode. Error: An unexpected MAPI Error Cccurred. Catlog Not Found – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX208896
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Troubleshooting the HDX MediaStream Feature – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX104912
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Communication Ports Used by Citrix Technologies – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX101810
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Director Not Retrieving Data – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX208236
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How To Configure Database Mirroring and Always on High Availability – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX208136
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How to Generate Diagnostic Data for Upload to Citrix Insight Services – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX208136
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How to Generate Diagnostic Data for Upload to Citrix Insight Services – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX135408
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IExplore.exe Hangs/Freezes Within ICA Session – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX207748
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Supported Databases for XenApp and XenDesktop Components – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX114501
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Storefront monitor shows DOWN when monitoring the Storefront version 3.5 – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX209111
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Case Study:- Sharepoint 2010 can’t edit/upload the document via Netscaler LB/CS VIP with AAA – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX209054
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Notice of Status Change Announcement for NetScaler Access Gateway 5500 – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX209002
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SSL Error 61: You have not chosen to trust “XYZ Certificate Authority”, the issuer of the server’s security certificate. Error number: 183 – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX209114
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How to Enable Client Debug for a Particular User – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX209107
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ICA Sessions Failover upon Access Gateway Enterprise Edition High Availability Pair Failover – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX209108
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Poor Performance of XenDesktop VDI from IGEL Linux Based Thin Clients through Cloud Bridge Devices – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX209056
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Error: You cannot access this session because no licenses are available – XenDesktop – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130961
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How to Decouple the VPN plug-in from Citrix Receiver – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX208914
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[FAQ] Difference between HA and Cluster – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX208814
Events/Webinars
Webinars
Mar 30 Solution Webinar: Who’s driving your Windows 10 migration – employees or IT?
Join Citrix and Windows IT Pro contributor Theresa Miller to learn how to support employees on Windows 10 devices, cut the time and effort of application migration to a fraction of past projects, rollout standardized Windows 10 that’s easier to manage and update and measure your OS migration in hours (not months and even years).
Mar 30 Solution Webinar: What’s Your Biggest Worry with Windows 10 Migration?
Join us as we take a technical deep-dive into the tools built into XenApp and XenDesktop that you can use today to make this your best Windows migration ever and avoid the headaches of the past.
Seminars
Oct 2015 – Mar 2016 Seminars: From vulnerable to secure: Strategies to mitigate mobile security threats
Join us at a city near you for a mobile and virtualization security focused complimentary luncheon, filled with use case scenarios and live demos, to learn how you can protect apps and data and mitigate security threats with Citrix.
Mar – Apr 2016 Seminars: Q1 NetScaler Master Class Seminar Series
Join us at a city near you for an in-person master class covering best practices for installing and securing your website with Citrix NetScaler and a deep dive on the role that NetScaler plays in SDN.
Mar – May 2016 Seminars: Cisco on the Road (Formerly Cisco Live Local Edition; Cisco Tech Days)
One day educational and training event, organized by Cisco Enterprise, Commercial and Public Sector Teams. Customer attendance rate ranges from 100-500 attendees per event, in which 80% are Technical Contributors and the rest 20% are in IT Management, Sr. Management and Executives.
Apr — June 2016 Seminars: Technical Demo Days
Join us in a city near you for a demo-driven, interactive technical seminar showcasing the entire Citrix story through dynamic “day in the life” end-to-end demonstrations across a range of devices.
Deminars
Every Tuesday and Thursday Deminars: Intro to Citrix Mobile Workspaces
Join us for an interactive, technical session on the benefits and capabilities of Citrix Workspace Suite in these demo-focused webinars. Each session will begin with a valuable use case review that you do not want to miss! Register now to select the date that works best for you.
Register Now: Tuesday Session – Thursday Session
Every Wednesday Deminars: Intro to Citrix NetScaler
Join us for an interactive, technical session on the benefits and capabilities of Citrix NetScaler in these demo-focused webinars. Register now to select the date that works best for you.
Register Now: Wednesday Session
On Demand
Mar 2 Master Class: Back to basics: Server Load Balancing on NetScaler and Admin partitions
Mar 8 Solution Webinar: What’s New in XenApp & XenDesktop 7.7 and 7.8
Mar 9 Master Class: EMM for Windows 10 and the latest Citrix XenMobile MDX features
Mar 15 Solution Webinar: Deploying Skype for Business with Citrix NetScaler
Mar 23 Desktop Master Class: Browser Apps, Better Management and Brilliant Graphics