Tag Archives: RDS

XenApp Essentials Services Understood powered by Citrix Cloud

The following content is a brief and unofficial prerequisites guide to setup, configure and test delivering virtual apps from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace powered by the Citrix Cloud XenApp Essentials Service prior to deploying in a PoC, Pilot or Production environment by the author of this entry. The views, opinions and concepts expressed are those by the author of this entry only and do not necessarily conform to industry descriptions or best practises. The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Citrix.

Shortened Names
XENAPP – xa
XENDESKTOP – xd
XENAPP/XENDESKTOP – xad
MACHINE CREATION SERVICES – mcs
AZURE REMOTEAPP – ara
XENAPP ESSENTIALS SERVICE – xes
HIGH DEFINITION EXPERIENCE – hdx
REMOTE DESKTOP SERVICES – rds

What is it?
It is a replacement for the deprecated Microsoft Azure RemoteApp (ARA) – https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/08/12/application-remoting-and-the-cloud/ (“…Support existing Azure RemoteApp customers on the service through August 31st, 2017..“) which provides simplicitic beauty of Microsoft Azure RemoteApp now with the “Secure by Design” enterprise security methodology, platform scalability with FMA in 7.x and HDX virtual app delivery protocol capabilities & power of Citrix XenApp.

ARA brought Remote Desktop Services (RDS) capabiltiies from a multi private cloud deployments on Windows Server to Azure with non-persistent RDS/RDP sessions delivered from the Microsoft Azure Cloud only! The XA Essentials Service is only available from Microsoft Azure Marketplace hosted on Azure and only supports the delivery of Windows apps delivery from Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016 prepared Templates or Bring Your Own Templates (BYOT) uploaded. Citrix has prepared a full FAQ available at – https://www.citrix.com/global-partners/microsoft/resources/xenapp-essentials-faq.html

Overviews & Demonstrations
Introducing XenApp Essentials Service is a demonstration of the Service by Citrix.

Extend the Microsoft RDS platform in Azure through Citrix solutions was a presentation at Microsoft Ignite 2016.

What Feature’s Are Available?
The following feature matrix compares XenApp, XenDesktop Platinum vs. XenApp & XenDesktop Service vs. Azure Marketplace XenApp Essentials vs. Azure Marketplace XenDesktop Essentials –
https://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/reference-material/xa-xd-deployment-options-feat-comp-matrix.pdf.

High Level Getting Started, System Requirements & Pre-requistes
1. You’ll need an Azure subscription with a resource group defined with a virtual network.
2. Define your preferred Azure region which you can ref from – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/regions/.
3. Decide on your AD stratergy which can be Active Directory sat in the Azure resource location using a min A3 Standard VM instance for AD or you can utilise “Azure Active Directory Domain Services” and eDocs suggested that you review – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-domain-services/#main prior to implementing AAD for the XA Essentials Services vs. traditional AD.
4. Define your preferred OS strategy for the service which currently supports server OSes for Windows Server 2012 R2 or 2016 and you’ll need to define master image stratergy e.g BYO image or a Citrix prepared image for the service! Notes: “(a)BYO with your own Server OS template including apps + licenses for those apps or choose Citrix prepared templates with Apps. (b)RDS CALS w/SA to Azure or purchase RDS SALs.”
5. Customer owned Azure Subscription as is responsible for per monthly IaaS consumption costs e.g compute, network, bandwidth & storage
6. Only MCS based provisioning is support for public (Iaas) clouds and for this Service hosted by Microsoft Azure.
7. Subscribe to XenApp Essentials Service through Azure Marketplace at – https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/Citrix.XenAppEssentials?tab=Overview.
8. Connect your Azure subscription to Control Plane operated by Citrix Cloud. Citrix Cloud controls customer Azure subscription via Citrix Cloud Connectors to provide capabilities to manage, provision and monitor your XenApp servers which will deliver your HDX virtual apps

Deploying your Virtual Apps (Draft!!!)

The above is an graphic from the official XA Essentials Service documentation from Citrix eDocs at – http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-cloud/xenapp-and-xendesktop-service/xenapp-essentials.html and the below is my personal text based step by step summary explaining how to get started with the XA Essential Service powered by Citrix Cloud and Microsoft Azure based upon the Ignite session at – https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ck0mtVXqOuM. Please note that these steps can change as the service is delivered from Citrix Cloud which is a secure SaaS style evergreen control plane – http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-cloud/overview/about.html.

1. Before you begin you will requires a subscription to XenApp Essentials Service from
2. Azure Marketplace + Server Images + RDS CALS w/SA
3. Create app collection similar to ARA
4. Create a name
5. Domain Joined (Popular) or Non-Domain Joined (TBC)
6. Link Azure subscription to XAE and select Resource Group, Virtual Networks & Subnet
7. Enter in Domain details which include Domain name, OU, Srv acct + passed
8. Select template image Citrix provided or your OWN
9. Select capacity and mange costs  by selecting instance type and power settings scheme (saver logoff after 10min; standard after 1hr; performance after 4hrs or always on i.e do not perform any power mgmt
10. Enter in # of users concurrent and you’ll receive an estimate cost calculator prior to provisioning to understand the costs based on 40hr usage per month
Summary and the deploy
11. Time access is short as CC will provision your instances in your subscription
12. Select app collection click Apps tab then select apps to publish
13. Select users tab and search domain by user or group 
14. Return to Manage home and you’ll see that your app collection is now ready with a green tick
15. Select app collection and you’ll see the StoreFront URL to send to users
16. Users login with domain\user + passed
17. Users are now able to launch there HDX virtual apps secured by there organisations Cloud-hosted StoreFront FQDN which provides secure remote access via the NetScaler Gateway Service also review caveats re bandwidth through-puts below.

Caveats, Current Known Issues with the Service
The list of current know issues one are my ones to pay attention to most as of 04/04/2017 and a full list is available at http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-cloud/xenapp-and-xendesktop-service/xenapp-essentials.html so please check and read them all!

1. Live.com accounts cannot be used for authenticaiton
2. Users cannot launch and app if an existing RDS session is present on the XA VDA worker.
3. Machine catalogue failures may occur if deploying a VM instance size in a region that does not support that instance type any more.
4. A premium storage account is not supported see “Prepare Your Azure Subscription”
5. Each end-user is limited to 1-GB outbound data transfer per month but you can increase the limit via by acquiring a 25 GB add-on via the Azure Marketplace see “StoreFront and NetScaler Gateway in XenApp Essentials Service”
6. See eDocs for more…

HDX Broadcast now with Thinwire Compatible Mode

The following content is a brief and unofficial prerequisites guide to setup, configure and test HDX Broadcast now with Thinwire Compatible Mode with XAD 7.3 FP3+ prior to deploying in a PoC, Pilot or Production environment by the author of this entry. The views, opinions and concepts expressed are those by the author of this entry only and do not necessary conform to industry descriptions or best practises.

Shortened Names
XENAPP – xa
XENDESKTOP – xd
XENAPP/XENDESKTOP – xad
VIRTUAL DELIVERY AGENT – vda
HIGH DEFINITION EXPERIENCE – hdx
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS – uc
MICROSOFT – ms
NETSCALER GATEWAY – ns(g)
INDEPENDENT COMPUTING ARCHITECTURE – ica
FEATURE PACK – fp
NETSCALER UNIFIED GATEWAY – nug
NETSCALER GATEWAY – nsg
EXPERIENCE 1st – x1
STOREFRONT SERVER – sfs
THINWIRE COMPATIBLE MODE – tcm
THINWIRE COMPATIBLE MODE – ecm

My Own View/Opinion
ThinWire Compatible Mode can be implemented to replace the Citrix SuperCodec (H.264) in my personal opinion for numerous use cases hOwEvEr based upon your organisations end-user use cases and or scenario’s by department and role you should always test which graphics mode/encoder(s) are most suitable within your environment by department or role to meet your end-user’s X1 UX expectations on a daily basis.

What is Thinwire Compatible Mode?
If your new to Citrix I’d suggest that before reading any further to get a better understanding of what Thinwire Compatible Mode (TCM) is and does i’d suggest that you read the following entitled “HDX technologies for optimizing application and desktop delivery” available at – http://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/products-solutions/citrix-hdx-technologies.pdf. Its the latest graphics encoder/mode available within Citrix XAD 7.6 FP3 supported on the following OSes Windows 8.x, 10 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

Use Cases for TCM
1. Lower powered endpoint devices that can support Receiver but do not support Citrix’s SuperCodec which requires an H.264 decoder
2. Delivery of virtual apps and desktops over low bandwidth networks e.g remote branch offices that have limited internet uplink capacity based upon there geographic location i.e. ISDN, 3/4G or low capacity ADSL.
3. Delivery of 3D apps over LAN networks offers a great X1 UX which a fuzzy-first approach as described at – http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/xenapp-and-xendesktop/7-6/xad-hdx-landing/thinwire-compatibility-mode.html search for “Build to lossless” on that web page. You should always thoroughly test between both TCM/H.264 graphics modes to ensure that your end-users X1 UX meets there expectations and requirements day to day.
4: Greater user density on Windows Server 2012 R2 for XenApp based workloads.

TCM Key Features
The following is just a short snippet into some of the features part of TCM below so be sure to check out and read the following CTX Blog article –
https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2015/10/09/a-big-leap-in-ica-protocol-innovation-for-citrix/ for a full list of all the details and more.

– Intelligent bitmap matching for a bitmap-only provider. As much as possible, previously sent bitmaps are reused resulting in lower bandwidth.
– Emulated 16-bit mode, further reducing bandwidth for typical workloads.
– Ultra-low server CPU usage, improving scalability.
– Designed for port to Linux (already used by the Citrix Linux VDA)
– …

Demonstration of Thinwire Compatible Mode
TBC…

Pre-requisites & System Requirements for Deploying a Basic/Intro Thinwire Compatible Mode policy (Draft + The Basic’s Only)
1: Download and install the latest component’s for XAD 7.6 FP3 within a test/poc environment and not in a PROD environment!
2: Currently the XAD 7.6 FP3 VDA’s provide support for TCM with the following Windows OSes Windows 8.x, Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 R2 OSes.
3: Citrix Receiver You can utilise the latest or older Citrix Receiver’s including the HTML5 Receiver with Thinwire Compatible Mode encoder.
4: Create the following policy in Studio below to enable TCM within a ICA/HDX session:

– Create a new policy
– Search for the following policy entitled “Use video codec for compression” select it and set the following value – “Do not use Video codec” which will force the ICA/HDX session to utilise Thinwire Compatibility Mode.
– Assign the policy to your test “Delivery Group” with either a virtual desktop (Win 8.x, 10 or Server 2012 R2) and save the new policy.
– Login to ReceiverforWeb or Citrix Receiver and launch your virtual desktop ensure that your test user was assigned to the test delivery group which you assigned the TCM policy to/against.

Tuning Thinwire Compatible Mode
You can easily tune TCM to utilise less bandwidth with a single policy entitled “Preferred colour depth for simple graphics” but still delivery a really good eXperience 1st User eXperience for your end-users. Simply modify the TCM policy that your created earlier in this blog article and search for and add “Preferred colour depth for simple graphics” and select either “16 bits per pixel” or “24 bits per pixel” then click next and next again saving the policy. Now disconnect from your existing ICA/HDX session to your test virtual desktop and re-launch it and if you’ve opted for 16 bits per pixel in the policy above you’ll notice a difference straight away BUT the UX is still acceptable graphically for knowledge/task workers and more importantly its still as responsive and usable.

There are obviously many other policies that can be applied to make even more efficiencies so for a full list including detailed notes of what to configure please refer to and check out the following CTX article entitled “HDX Graphics Modes – Which Policies Apply to DCR/Thinwire/H.264 – An Overview for XenDesktop/XenApp 7.6 FP3” available at – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX202687. I have embedded the basics into a simple HTML table below with how to explicitly enable ECM for testing purposes.

Policy Name Default Value Comment
Display memory limit 65536 KB http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX201696 – Support for Monitors Including 4K Resolution and Multi-Monitors
Dynamic window preview Enabled
Extra color compression Disabled Legacy Mode *
Moving image compression Enabled Legacy Mode
Preferred color depth for simple graphics 24 bits per pixel Legacy Mode **
Target frame rate 30 fps Legacy Mode
Target minimum framerate 10 fps
Visual quality Medium Legacy Mode
OPTIONAL Adjusted Policy Comments
Use video codec for compression Do not use Video codec Force ECM on explicitly by turning H.264 off (Testing)

Example of Tuning between 8 (red), 16(amber) and 24(green) Bit Modes of Thinwire Compatible Mode below but please note that the image is not in a high resolution JPEG format!

Useful Resources
A Big Leap in ICA Protocol Innovation for Citrix – https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2015/10/09/a-big-leap-in-ica-protocol-innovation-for-citrix/.
Thinwire Compatibility Tuning: Lowering Your Bandwidth Even Further – https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2015/10/23/thinwire-compatibility-tuning-lowering-your-bandwidth-even-further/.
Read Blog articles by this author Muhammad Dawood – https://www.citrix.com/blogs/author/muhammadj/.

Supported Citrix Receivers
1: You can download either Receiver by visiting your OSes app store or navigating to – http://receiver.citrix.com for help download the correct Receiver for your platform.
2: The HTML5 Receiver is also supported.
3: The Citrix Receiver feature matrix is available at – https://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/products-solutions/citrix-receiver-feature-matrix.pdf.

XenDesktop 7

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The following content is a brief and unofficial prerequisites guide to setup, configure and test XenDesktop 7 prior to deploying in a PoC, Pilot or Production environment by the author of this entry. The views, opinions and concepts expressed are those by the author of this entry only and do not necessary conform to industry descriptions or best practises.

Shortened Names
REMOTE DESKTOP SERVICES – rds
VIRTUAL DESKTOP INFRASTRUCTURE – vdi
VIRTUAL DELIVERY CONTROLLER – vda
VIRTUAL GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNIT – vgpu
SERVICE LOCATION – srv

What is and does it do?
Citrix XenDesktop 7 allows you to deliver Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) workloads and secure remote access to an existing PC estate by installing the Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) into those existing PC’s. All this capability is enabled from one single common architecture – FlexCast Management Architecture (FMA). If you are a Citrix XenApp 5.0, 6.5 Administrator I would encourage you to read through the following Citrix eDoc article – http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/xendesktop-7/cds-overview-info-previous-xa-customers.html and follow on with this free Citrix 2 hour long course covering XenDesktop 7 weather your sales, pre-sales, sysadmin or engineer its useful in getting your mindset ready for XenDesktop 7 – http://training.citrix.com/mod/ctxcatalog/course.php?id=595.

Citrix TV & YouTube Videos To Watch
SYN320: XenDesktop 7: What You Should Know About FlexCast Management and XenApp Migration
– http://www.citrix.com/tv/#videos/8493.
Citrix XenDesktop 7 3D Pro Demonstration – http://www.citrix.com/tv/#videos/9008.
XenDesktop 7 Masterclass – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSFJ0xx7ztY.

XenDesktop 7 Handbook
Check out the blog article announcement – http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/10/10/new-xendesktop-7-handbook-published. You download the XenDesktop 7 Handbook directly at – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX139331 and the XenDesktop 5.x Handbook at – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX136546.

Components of XenDesktop 7 Explained
1: Studio is allows you to design and build your RDS, VDI workloads.
2: Director allows you to support and monitor your organisations XenDesktop 7 virtual machines, user sessions via MS RemoteAssistance, historical trending & metrics, network analytic’s if you have a NetScaler.
3: Delivery Controller is responsible for brokering the connections to your servers (ICA/RDS), virtual machines (VDI) or existing workstation PC’s.
4: Citrix Licensing Server is responsible for checking in/out of your FlexCast licenses. XenDesktop 7 requires CLS 11.11.
5: StoreFront provides users with a self-serve AppStore to tab to click to add your Windows hosted apps, hosted shared desktops (Windows Server 2008 R2) or VDI desktops (Windows 7,8).
6: Machine Creation Services (MCS) is built into XenDesktop 7 which enables as allows you to provision virtual machines from your master VM images. All you need to do to configure it is to input either XenServer, Hyper-V (Requires SCVMM) or ESX (Remember to trust the root certificate) hypervisor FQDN and the access details.
7: Provisioning Services (PVS)
8: User Profile Manager 5 (UPM) is built into XenDesktop 7 and provide Citrix’s profile management solution.
9: MS SQL is required to store configuration information and details about your XenDesktop 7 site. MS SQL express, standard, enterprise and data center* editions are supported and for H/A configuration options please visit this eDocs article at – *http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/xendesktop-7/cds-sys-requirements.html.
10: Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) is responsible for delivering a hosted shared desktop, windows hosted app and VDI desktop to users brokered via the Delivery Controller.

What Editions Are Available? VDI, App (XenApp capabilities e.g delivery of RDS workloads) , Enterprise and Platinum. To compare the feature sets of edition please check out – http://www.citrix.com/go/products/xendesktop/feature-matrix.html. At the time of writing this post you are required to login to Citrix.com with your access details.

Setup & Configure nVidia GRID VIRTUAL GPU (vGPU) on Citrix XenDesktop 7.1
To learn how-to setup and configure a test demo or PoC environment to leverage the vGPU capabilities of XenServer 6.2 and XenDesktop 7.1 Tech Preview check out – http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/grid-virtual-gpus-uk.html. You can download the XenDesktop 7.1 Tech Preview at – and the system requirements can be found at – http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/xendesktop/cds-xendesktop-71-landing-page.htm and the HDX system requirements please check out – http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/xendesktop-71/hdx-enhance-ux-xd.html.

NVidia Resources
XenApp 6.5 GPU Sharing – http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/grid-xenapp-uk.html.
XenDesktop vGPU – http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/grid-xen-desktop-uk.html.

Multi-Site Configurations & High Availability
Coming soon! I will cover multiple data centres and sites and how-to enable and ensure H/A access to your published resources if you lost/lose communication with your XenDesktop 7 delivery controller(s) and the pitfalls. I would strongly recommend your environment is N+1 and with VM’s common these days setting and configuring an N+1 environment should be best practise for H/A, business continuity and DR.

How-to Enable Local App Access
Coming soon! However in the mean time please refer to http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/xendesktop-7/laa-configure-enable.html#laa-enable.dita.

XenDesktop Introduction Training Course CXD-102
Citrix training offers a 2 hour introduction course to XenDesktop 7 for free. The course is available at – http://training.citrix.com/mod/ctxcatalog/course.php?id=595.

Howto Configure Email Based Discovery& Why It’s Important
Configuration of email based discovery using SRV records is simple and greatly enhances the users login experiences as they all know there email addr and domain password much like logging into Facebook, Twitter e.t.c so offering the same login user experience weather users are in or outside or the organisation means they don’t need to remember logging in with the following format domain\username and domain password they can simple use there corporate email addr and domain password.

There is a great Citrix blog article that covers covers configuration of e-mail based discovery in and outside of your organisation leveraging a NetScaler Gateway check out – http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/04/01/configuring-email-based-account-discovery-for-citrix-receiver/.

The process below is for configuration of SRV records within a trusted corporate environment. If you would like to know more about what else you can configure in terms of SRV records check out – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRV_record, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc961719.aspx (A Windows 2000 article but will get you thinking if your new to SRV records) and howto add other resources records into your organisations DNS – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772362.aspx.

1: Launch your Microsoft DNS management console
2: Right click on your organisations Forward Lookup Zone that contains the StoreFront FQDN
3: Click “Other New Records”
4: Scroll down and select “Service Locaiton (SRV)” and click “Create Record”
5: Your organisations domain should already be pre-populated e.g citrix.lab or axendatacentre.com
6: Type in “_citrixreceiver” in the Service feild
7: Type in “_tcp” in the Protocol field
8: Type in “443” in the Port number field or 80 if you don’t use 443 internally
9: Type in “storefront.domain” in the Hosting offering this service e.g storefront.axendatacentre.com or storefront.axendc.local
10: Save/Commit the changes and close the current active window in DNS
11: Navigate to physical or virtual machine install and launch Citrix Receiver when prompted enter in your email addr and password when prompted.

Troubleshooting
Open up a Windows Command prompt and execute these two commands below and for more information in validating your SRV records check out – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816587.

1: Type in “ipconfig /flushdns”
2: Type in “nslookup”
3: Type in “set type=srv”
4: Type in “_citrixreceiver._tcp.domain” e.g _citrixreceiver._tcp.axendatacentre.com

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 & Windows 8 Support
http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/10/08/citrix-xendesktop-with-flexcast-management-architecture-adds-support-for-windows-server-2012-r2-and-windows-8-1/.

More coming soon!
In the mean time check out https://www.citrix.com/products/xendesktop/overview.html and Design Guide: Mobilising Windows Apps (Requires Form Input From Citrix)