General Announcements

Citrix Joins Microsoft Cloud Storage Partner Program to Extend Productivity Across Organizational Boundaries

“Citrix announced it is an inaugural member of the new Microsoft Cloud Storage Partner Program. Citrix and Microsoft’s longtime partnership of more than 25 years is enhanced by this alliance agreement, enabling new ways to work for their joint customers. Work is increasingly done by virtual teams spanning employees, contractors, vendors, partners and customers. By joining the program to integrate Citrix ShareFile with Office Online, Citrix and Microsoft are facilitating easier collaboration across organizational and geographic boundaries, increasing cross-team collaboration, productivity and operational efficiency.”

Citrix and Google Enhance Enterprise Security and Management of Android Devices

“Citrix today announced an extension of its long-standing collaboration with Google by providing XenMobile support for Android for Work. This announcement builds on the multi-year collaboration between Citrix and Google that includes virtual app and desktop delivery on Chrome devices and existing enterprise mobility management (EMM) support for Android smartphones and tablets. Together, Citrix and Google empower both businesses and government institutions with a secure, scalable, app-centric, mobility solution that delivers exceptional user experience, providing people with new ways to work better.”

BYOD: Fragments and silos are the new norm

“Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, phones, tablets… and the list goes on. It’s safe to say we’ve all come to accept that the modern business is a multi-device, multi-OS world. But something we’re perhaps slower to recognise is that the same diversity we see in the above list, also applies to our data. As BYOD becomes the norm, so too does the fragmentation of data and it’s now time we accept this and consider what it actually means for business.”

Citrix Expands vGPU Support

“A large user base of Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop continues to be successfully deployed and officially supported on VMware’s popular vSphere hypervisor for non-graphics workloads. Citrix will offer the same level of quality support to customers who deploy XenApp or XenDesktop for NVIDIA GRID vGPU, starting from day one that VMware vSphere 6 is generally available (March 12, 2015) with the capability.”

Five Ways Virtualization is Changing Enterprise Business Models

“Virtualization is leaving its mark on more than just the IT department.First virtualization hit the data center, changing how servers are operated and making today’s cloud computing possible. More than 70 percent of x86 server workloads are virtualized today, according to Gartner research, and virtualization hardly counts as an enterprise trend any longer since everyone is using it. Now its impact is being felt outside of the IT department, as the technology of virtualization enables new business models and fundamentally changes how business is done.”

Best Practices/Reference Architecture Documents/Blogs

Citrix Synergy 2015: Sessions that you should not miss!

“Having attended quite a few conferences, I know how frustrating it can be when you attend a session with high hopes, only to find out that the content was not what you expected. With this in mind, I spent some time this year going through the Citrix Synergy session catalog and picking the ones that I feel are most relevant to attendees”

Making the case for a heterogeneous hypervisor strategy in the datacenter

“When it comes to server virtualization in the datacenter, most customers tend to standardize on a single hypervisor platform, and VMware today clearly has the market share. The most common reasons for standardization are ease of support and skill set of resources. However for certain workloads, it can be argued that you do not need all of the bells and whistles offered by the main hypervisor platform and you could be overpaying significantly.”

Securing XenApp and XenDesktop Environments

“When deploying Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop within large organizations and government environments, security standards are an important consideration. The Security Standards and Deployment Scenarios document addresses common issues related to such environments, and Citrix products offer a wide range of features for securing a XenApp and XenDesktop system.”

Welcome to Receiver X1

“This is the first of a series of blogs explaining what X1 is, and in particular how you can customize it.”

Monitor Citrix PVS Cache In RAM Using Powershell

” I’m a firm advocate of Provisioning Services ‘Cache in RAM with overflow on hard disk’ leveraging operating system RAM for write-cache. This results in better response times and a greater number of IOPS for the write-Cache than using traditional SAN or Local storage. However, careful planning and monitoring of the size of this cache is imperative as a breach in the available RAM will cause an overflow to the assigned slower disk which dramatically reduces performance. Much speculation has surrounded how to monitor the write-cache with some relying on the Target Device System Tray data but this only reflects the amount of physical cache used. I wanted to be able to monitor the amount of Ram Used so that a typical usage baseline at a customer of mine could be taken. Buried away in the Citrix eDocs (as most things are!) is reference to the actual metric that gives an indication of how much cache in Ram is in use. This can be done by checking the Pool Nonpaged Memory and is shown in the task manager.”

When to use Outlook Cached Exchange Mode on XenApp and XenDesktop

“The other day, I was in my workshop building a new desk for my wife when one of my kids came in asking me about the different tools I had scattered all over the room. I said “this is a radial arm saw, this is a circular saw, this is a band saw and this is a scroll saw”. Of course they asked “Why do you have so many saws?”. I replied “Because each saw does something really well and if I use the wrong one for the job, we will have big problems.” Your IT toolkit will also contain many different tools, but it is important to understand when to use which tool.”

Citrix WorkspacePod, an HP Moonshot Architect’s Perspective

“The genesis of Citrix WorkspacePod originated with Citrix’s acquisition of a company called Solid Instance along with the founder and CEO Tyrone Pike. I’ve already gave away the big secret, Citrix WorkspacePod is all about bundling, but what exactly is included? Putting marketing buzz words like “ultra-converged infrastructure” aside, there are some really unique elements to look at here.”

How to force users to use the Citrix Receiver app on mobile devices using NetScaler

“You can tell your users to install Citrix Receiver on their mobile devices, yet they still continue to open Receiver for Web in a mobile browser to launch their apps and desktops because that’s what they do on their PCs at work. It’s tough to get them to understand there are 2 ways to access their apps while on a PC, using the Citrix Receiver OR Receiver for Web in their browser. But on a mobile device, they should use Citrix Receiver only for the best possible touch friendly experience.”

How To Setup Citrix XenMobile 10 (including configuring Netscaler)

“On February 17th, Citrix released the long awaited XenMobile 10. The big difference with its previous versions is that XenMobile 10 now consists of just one component, the XenMobile Server, so no longer a XenMobile MDM installation on a Windows server and configuring a separate App Controller.”

Netscaler Insight Center Deployment and Sizing Guide

“In today’s Application centric market the visibility challenges are being realized and its significance is growing as the data is increasing day by day. Most of the enterprise Apps has a common & basic requirement of being load balanced and providing optimized data delivery, thus ADCs like NetScaler become the central node through which all application data traverses. This is where technology like AppFlow comes in picture. AppFlow is the standard for fetching the visibility information through NetScaler and forwarding to NetScaler Insight Center. NetScaler Insight Center collects the AppFlow records, analyzes them and brings precise analytical reports for administrator’s consumption.”

Citrix Profile Management – User Store Revealed

“One of the biggest problem in Application or Desktop Virtualization is end user experience and consistency of user profile and customizations. Luckily there is a bunch of tools available on the market that help solve that problem. One of them is Citrix Profile Management intended as a profile solution for XenApp servers, virtual desktops created with XenDesktop, and physical desktops.”

Making the Citrix License Server (Truly) Highly Available

“I’ll begin by saying that this solution is certainly not for everyone. It adds complexity. It creates additional management overhead. It requires NetScaler integration and mildly advanced networking skills. We have never publicly documented the solution before this week. But it is absolutely the only bulletproof solution for making our License Server (LS) truly highly available in an active/active fashion without any downtime.”

XenServer 6.5 Performance Comparison

“I love to go fast. I love fast cars and I love fast software. In fact, earlier in my career I used to specialize in software performance. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been so excited by the performance improvements in the recently released XenServer 6.5. You can read my last blogon the features of XenServer 6.5 for more details on the speed improvements. While it’s great to do your own measurements to track improvement over time, it’s even more fun and rewarding to see others validate your results for you.”

Support Articles/Bug Fixes

Upcoming Events

Mar 31 Solution Webinar: Mobility Dream Team Citrix, Google and Samsung Offer New Ways to Work Better

Find out how you can easily secure, manage and deliver enterprise, web and mobile apps and data to the latest Samsung Chromebooks and Android-based smartphones and tablets using mobile workspace solutions from Citrix.

Mar 31 On-demand Solution Webinar: End-to-end Visibility for XenApp and XenDesktop

Join us for a deep-dive discussion on HDX Insight for NetScaler and CloudBridge.

It is the only solution that provides unmatched visibility for XenApp and XenDesktop.

Watch Now | Download Invitation | Contact for More Info

Apr 1 Master Class: High availability and content switching

Live technical webinars to learn about the most critical elements of cloud infrastructures and enterprise datacenter architectures.

Feb 19 – Jun 23 Seminar Series: Managing the Unmanageable: How to Secure the Enterprise

Join us at this live security-focused seminar series to learn about how to secure sensitive data on managed and under-managed devices, measures that enforce security across unmanaged apps and network, models that control access to sensitive data, specific to application usage and access, and how to develop and enforce policies to “manage the unmanageable.”

Mar – May 7 In-person Master Class Seminar Series: Protect Your Mission Critical Web Apps With Citrix NetScaler

Join us for this in-person master class. We will demo and discuss best practices to secure your network and apps against threats.

Ongoing (Tuesdays, Thursdays) Weekly Deminars: Citrix Workspace Suite

Take a close look at the capabilities of Citrix Workspace Suite in these twice weekly technically-focused, demo-led webinars.
Register Now | Contact for More Info

Ongoing (Wednesdays) Weekly Deminars: NetScaler

Join us to understand how Citrix NetScaler can empower your organization with the most comprehensive set of application security, acceleration, load balancing, and monitoring tools.

Ongoing (Wednesdays) Weekly Deminars: Empowering Mobility with XenMobile and ShareFile

See how Citrix can empower your organizations to provide secure, remote access to company resources through mobile app and device management as well as data sharing.