xenappblog.com – citrix xenapp | xenserver | xenclient | xendesktop

Citrix XenServer Rolling Upgrade

The Citrix XenServer Rolling upgrade feature was introduced in Citrix XenServer 5.6 Feature Pack 1. This is a fantastic wizard that will upgrade all your XenServers automatically to the latest version from a central FTP/HTTP or NFS network share. So instead of upgrading hundreds of XenServers manually with DVD/USB you can now use this tool instead.

There’s currently a lot of threads on the Citrix Forum so I thought it would be nice to provide a detailed guide on how to do this with NFS.

First of you’ll need to upgrade Citrix XenCenter to the latest version and setup a NFS share with the extracted content of the latest XenServer-6.0.201-install-cd.iso. To extract ISO files you can use Pismo File Mount or WinRAR.

For this demonstration I’ve used haneWIN NFS Server which allows you to setup a NFS share on a Windows 7 machine. This is a great tool for people that want to setup a NFS share on a laptop as Storage for XenServer/ESX or even a multimedia center.

My share is located on D:\xs602 and the -public switch enables WebNFS access.

Start Citrix XenServer Rolling Upgrade from the Tools menu of Citrix XenCenter

Select your pool

and then Automatic Mode – automated upgrade from network install files.

The wizard will run pre checks to make sure that e.g. all VM’s are suspended or shut down and that all VM’s have an empty DVD drive.

The last step before the upgrade starts is to setup the path. Select NFS from the drop down list and type in the path. So in my example my drive is D and the share name is xs602. So the path would be 192.168.1.148:/d/xs602. Make sure to click the Test button to check that everything is okay before you proceed.

The Citrix XenServer Rolling Upgrade feature is a godsend tool to administrators of big XenServer solutions. The only con is that if you’re running Citrix Provisioning Services and using a PVSboot.iso as a backup function for your PXE than you got some work to do. 100 XenServers and 10 VM’s per host would mean 1000 eject/insert of the ISO in the DVD drive of each VM.

Would be great if anyone have made a script to eject and insert ISO images in the DVD tray of all VM’s for a complete Citrix XenServer Pool.

Resource :

Citrix XenServer Rolling Upgrade

Citrix Access Gateway – Configure Failover

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

In this post I’m going to show you how to setup and test failover for Citrix Access Gateway. In this example I’m using the default network interface for Applicane Failover, but it’s recommended to add a dedicated interface.

When you’re setting up Failover the Citrix Access Gateway both appliances new to be on the same version. You also need to make sure that both applicances have matching passwords since those aren’t replicated.

With two appliances joined as a failover pair, users connect to a shared virtual IP address instead of the real eth0 or eth1 IP address. You define one virtual IP address that users will connect to and another virtual IP address which Citrix Access Gateway will use when communicating with back-end resources. The internal and external virtual IP address can both be the same as in our example.

Primary VPX :

Head over to your Primary Citrix Access Gateway VPX and from the Management Node select Networking and check Application Failover.

Now the Appliction Failover node will be available and here you’ll need to provide some information.

Appliance Failover Role : Primary
Shared key : Your Private Shared Key
Peer IP Address : The address on you secondary VPX
Internal virtual IP : Interal and Extrnal can be the same address
External virtual IP : Interal and Extrnal can be the same address

Click Save and Start and then restart the appliance. You’ll now be able to access your Citrix Access Gateway from the external virutal IP address.

Secondary VPX :

Type in the Shared Key, the Peer IP address (the Primary VPX), click Join Primary and reboot the appliance when the button turns red.

On the secondary appliance most of the configuration pages will become unavaiable, since it inherits configuration settings from the primary VPX. This includes host name, certificates, authentication profiles and so on.

The easiest way to test the configuration is add the internal/external virtual IP address to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and then shut down the Primay VPX. If you get the following error 401 – Unauthorized: Access is denied due to invalid credentials you’ll need to change the host file on you Web Interface server to point to the new external virtual IP address.

When Citrix Access Gateway 5.0.5 is released I’ll show you how to upgrade the applicances in a failover pair.

Resource :

Citrix Access Gateway Deep Dive – Failover

PHD Virtual Backup and Exporter

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

PHD Virtual Backup is a fantastic piece of software that I highly recommend. I’ve been running this backup solution in my xenapptraining lab since June 2011 and it has saved my ass many times. It also made it very easy for me to setup my new lab in Brasil – Citrix XenServer The Optimal Cheap Home Lab.

Since then the PHD Virtual team have added more features and better performance so in this post I’ll show you how to upgrade your PHD Virtual Appliance to the latest version and configure the new PHD Virtual Export feature. If you’re new to PHD Virtual Backup you can check out this video taken from our xenapptraining members area.

PHD Virtual Backup Upgrade :

First you’ll need to download the upgrade image and then run PHDVB_Install.exe to upgrade the PHD Virtual Backup Citrix XenCenter plugin to the latest version.

From the console browse to the PHD file to upgrade your appliance.

After the appliance has restarted you should navigate to the License Manager node and check that your license is working correctly.

PHD Virtual Backup Exporter :

The PHD Virtual Backup Exporter lets you export backup files from any existing backup storage for long term or off-site storage. You only need to install the PHD Exporter if you plan to export backups to another location.

From the Configuration node enable the share and setup an username and password.

For performance reasons, it’s recommended that you install PHD Exporter to a physical machine. Run PHDVB_Exporter_Install.exe and follow the instructions. After the setup is completed navigate to the configuration node and define the location to store exported backups and the PHD VBA backup storage.

Now create a exporter job and select the virtual machines you want to export offline.

You also have the possibility to add the job to Windows Task Scheduler.

The VM’s are exported in the Open Virtualization Format.

OVF files can easily be imported using VMware OVF tool or Citrix XenCenter.

Resource :

PHD Virtual Backup

As you might see PHD Virtual Backup is a fantastic product, and I have’nt even covered the Replication feature that let’s you replicate your virtual machines to an HR site. Virtualization is an industry standard now, but you would be surprised by the numbers of customers running without a proper backup solution.

Yes you can use Windows Backup, Symantec Backup Exec and so on, but with PHD Virtual Backup you’ll restore VM’s or files in minutes instead of hours. This product is really seeing is believing so I would highly recommend them to provide a free Express license similar to Citrix’s Express products.

Free SMS 2-Factor Token for Citrix Web Interface 5.4

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

There are many SMS 2-factor solutions for Citrix Web Interface, but only one of them are free. This awesome add on has been created by Claus Isager and there exist many blog posts dating back to 2007. Since then many things have change e.g. the release of Citrix Web Interface 5.4 and the fact that more and more companies are running Windows 2008 R2.

So in this blog post we’ll show you how to install and configure this solution for the x64 platform. First you need to download the source files from Claus Isager web site and make sure you have .NET Framework 3.5 on the domain controller(s) you want to use to manage this SMS 2-factor solution.

Copy the following files below into C:\Program Files (x86)\SMSToken

C:\Windows\winsxs\msil_mmcfxcommon_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_523dc6fcd93e7961\MMCFxCommon.dll
C:\Windows\winsxs\msil_microsoft.managementconsole_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_3e39b04275a2b575\Microsoft.ManagementConsole.dll
C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_installutil_b03f5f7f11d50a3a_6.1.7601.17514_none_0826be6cc9481df4\InstallUtil.exe
SMSToken.dll from the SmsToken_AD64.zip

From CMD run the following command : InstallUtil.exe SMSToken.dll

Open Active Directory Users and Computers and check that you’ve got the SMS Token tab as show in the first image. This is not an Active Directory Schema extension so don’t worry. At the same time set a pin code for your test user and select if you want to use Flash or Normal SMS delivery. Also make sure you add a phone number in the Telephone Number field with the format +47xxxxxxxx.

Head over to Clickatell and create a free account. Make sure you select Central API. Even tough the sign up is free you need to buy at least 400 credits for $23.36.

When you’re finished with the registration and the validation process you’ll need to create a HTTP API Connection. Note down the details because you need those later.

From your Citrix Web Interface 5.4 server create a test site and set Authentication Methods – Properties – Two-Factor Authentication to Safeword.

Navigate to <yoursite>\app_code\PagesJava\com\citrix\wi\pages\auth\twofactor\ and make a backup copy of the files NextTokenCode.java and ChangePinUser.java to C:\Temp (Cannot be the same folder).

From the sms5254email.zip copy all the 3 java files and replace the current files in this folder. Then do the following :

Copy smscode.dll to <yoursite>\bin
Copy smscode.aspx to <yoursite>\auth
Copy smscode.conf to the <your site>\conf
Edit smscode.conf with your API information
Edit webinterface.conf
Replace the line in Webinterface.conf AdditionalExplicitAuthentication=Safeword with
AdditionalExplicitAuthentication=smscode

The final step is to change the IIS Application Pools – Advanced – Identity to NetWorkService and then finally restart the IIS Server.

Resources :

Happy Go Lucky! There’s also documentation in the source files, but it was missing information related to Citrix Web Interface 5.4 and Active Directory on Windows 2008 R2. If you have any topics you want us to blog about, just drop a comment below.

I blew $23.36 on this blog post so it would be cool if you shared this post with others by Clicking on the Social Icons below.

Ericom AccessNow and Secure Gateway

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

Ericom AccessNow is a software that allow HTML5 Browser-based RDP Access to any Remote Desktop enabled computer or server using just a web browser. The software provide instant access to Windows desktops and application from almost any device. The exception is Internet Explorer users which has a Desktop Market Share of 53% January 2012 according to NetMarketShare. Internet Explorer doesn’t natively support HTML5 WebSockets so these few users need to install Google Chrome Frame.

The installation of Ericom AccessNow Server and WebComponent is straight forward and you’ll be up and running in a couple of minutes. Brian Madden has already posted a great article : A deeper look at Ericom’s “AccessNow” HTML5 client. Why wait for Citrix & VMware? This thing is out now & works with View and vWorkspace. In this post I will focus on how to install and configure Ericom Secure Gateway (ESG) instead. This is a SSL Gateway that’s free of charge with Ericom AccessToGo, Blaze, PowerTerm WebConnect and AccessNow.

First of I need to said that I was disappointed of the setup wizard that didn’t check for pre-requirements which made the installation fail with “Error 1920. Service Ericom Secure Gateway (EricomSecureGateway) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services”.

After getting this error on 2 different servers and no Google match for this kind of error I went of to read the documentation and it turned out that Ericom Secure Gateway requires .NET Framework 4 Client Profile. The wizard also had some check boxes for adding port 443/444 to Windows Firewall inbound rules, but this didn’t work for my Windows 2008 R2 Server so I needed to do this manually.

When using the Ericom Secure Gateway, the connection between the Ericom AccessNow browser client and the Secure Gateway is always secured. The Secure Gateway is installed with a self-signed certificate by default, but supports trusted certificates as well. The AccessNow documentation refers to Secure Gateway Administrator’s Manual for full instructions on how to install and configure it for use with Ericom AccessNow. Guess what, there’s no information on how to add trusted certificates there. I would expect these issues to be resolved in the next release.

An administrator can modify configuration settings for AccessNow by editing the config.js file that is installed as part of the AccessNow web component. This makes all settings pre configured instead of asking the user to configure the AccessNow Server address, RDP host, domain, Secure Gateway address and so on. I would really like an application that creates this config.js file instead of me messing around with code I have no clue about. My guess is that it would cost around $200 creating something like this.

Ericom AccessNow is a great product that could be even better with a few improvements.

Update 29.02.2012 from Ilan Paretsky – VP of Marketing

In the coming AccessNow version 2.0 Ericom will add support for HTTPS communication as an automatic fallback when WebSockets are unavailable or cannot be used. As a result, AccessNow 2.0 will very shortly support Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 without requiring the installation of Google Chrome Frame.

Ericom advises that they are enhancing the installer to perform pre-requirements tests, as a part of Ericom AccessNow version 2.0. The same applies for the missing information in the documentation listed above.

Resources :

Customize Citrix Access Gateway Logon Point

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

With the release of Citrix Access Gateway VPX 5.0.4 you’re now able to Customize Citrix Access Gateway to brand your logon point and replace the default gray and boring logon point. Simply download the maintenance release and do the following :

Snapshot – Import – cag_5.0.4.223500.bin
Create a Snapshot of the current configuration
Click Migrate
Restart the Citrix Access Gateway Appliance

To Customize Citrix Access Gateway select Edit on your Logon Point from Management – Logon Points. Click the Customization Tab.

We’re using a background color of #DFDFDF and a template Background image (Center-Center) with a white border to make the image stand out. You can buy this or other professional images over at iStockPhoto.com for as low as $9.99 to get started. A size of 900x600px seems to look great on both big screens and iPad. We recommend adding some text below the image to provide the users with customer support information.

Unfortunately the bug with the double Password/Password fields when enabling Radius is still not fixed. Let’s cross our fingers for Citrix Access Gateway VPX 5.0.5

Resource :

Customize Citrix Access Gateway – Download Citrix Access Gateway VPX 5.0.4

Write for xenappblog.com

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

Are you a Citrix Administrator with a tip to share?
Do you want a place to talk about some of your Best Practices?
Are you interested in helping the Citrix Community with tips and tricks to make day to day work easier?

If so we´d love to feature one or more of your tips here on xenappblog.com

What are we looking for?

We accept tips and tutorials for beginner, intermediate and advanced Citrix Administrators.
We are looking for tips on everything and anything related to Citrix or other 3rd party products.
We´d love your tip to include a screenshot (at least one) that illustrates what you´re writing about.
We give you a byline and include a link back to your blog, website or wherever you have a web presence in return for you tip or tutorial. Our site is read by 35.000 visitors a month and subscribed to by over 5.700 – we can introduce them to you.

Submissions need to be original content that has not (and will not) been published elsewhere online and you need to be willing for us to use them on this site indefinitely.

The Way to Submit a Tip

Email it to us – submit your tips or tutorial ideas via email using our Contact Form. This is the best option if you´re wanting to do a longer more in depth tutorial – just email us with the idea for the article and we´ll be in touch as to whether we think we can use it or not on the blog.

Adding Printer Drivers from Print Server using PowerShell

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

This is a follow up post to last week Replicating Print Drivers in Citrix XenApp 6.5. There’s indeed many smart people out there so today I wanted to share a similar script created by a friend of mine Microsoft PowerShell MVP Jan Egil Ring. This blog post is just a summary of his awesome work so please visit the original blog post and give Jan Egil some creds in the comments on his blog.

As I described in the last post the easiest way to install printer drivers is to manually or automatically connect to your print server(s) to install the drivers. This is normally not a problem in small environments with only 1 print server and <50 printer objects, but can definitely create some headaches in enterprise environments.

Example: A print server has 500 shared printer objects, while there is only 10 unique printer drivers. It would make more sense to add a printer connection (in order to install the driver) to 10 printer objects rather than 500, given the time consumed by installing a printer connection. Jan Egil

For all great automatic solutions there’s always some pros and cons. The biggest con in my opinion is that you could possibly risk to install malfunction printer drivers that could halt your print services for good or at least for some time during production hours.

One workaround could be to run this script only on your Citrix Data Collector / Print Driver Golden Image server and then using the $ExcludedDriverList parameter to add the printers to the Auto-Replication-List. Take a look at the comment from Frank Peter Schultze on the Replicating Print Drivers in Citrix XenApp 6.5 blog post for more details.

Resource :

Adding printer drivers from a print server using Windows PowerShell

Replicating Print Drivers in Citrix XenApp 6.5

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

Many people are wondering where the Printer Management node used for replicating print drivers is located in Citrix XenApp 6.x. This is now managed with the Windows Printer Management Role in Windows Server 2008 R2 or through XenApp PowerShell Cmdlets. I’m a big fan of the Citrix Universal Printer Driver but in some cases that’s not good enough and replicating print drivers to all Citrix XenApp servers are required. Luckily there’s light in the end of the tunnel.

Citrix Universal Print Server Tech Preview is available and will most likely be released at Citrix Synergy 2012. The Citrix Universal Print Server Technical Preview extends XenApp 6.5 and XenDesktop 5.5 Universal printing support to network printing. This feature eliminates the need to install numerous network printer drivers on XenApp and XenDesktop hosts, and enables more efficient network utilization. The new Citrix Universal printer driver supports direct network printing on Windows and non-Windows clients.

So while we wait for this new Citrix Universal Print Server, here’s the steps for replicating print drivers with XenApp PowerShell Cmdlets :

First you’ll need to decide which Citrix XenApp server you’ll be using as the source. A good suggestion would be your Preferred Data Collector. In our example that would be XA65-01. Start PowerShell as Administrator and run the following commands

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
Add-PSSnapIn Citrix.*
Get-XAPrinterDriver –Servername XA65-01

This will display a list of all the locally install printer drivers on that particular server. The simplest way to install a lot of printer drivers is to connect to your print server and select to connect to the printers you need.

Now rerun the command : Get-XAPrinterDriver –Servername XA65-01

To make sure that all your Citrix XenApp servers have the same printer drivers it’s recommend to add the required printer drivers to the Auto-Replication-List. A good tip would be to have these commands in a Notepad file to make it easier for you to Add/Remove printer drivers.

Simply copy and paste the commands to the PowerShell window.

Add-XAAutoReplicatedPrinterDriver “Print Driver Name” -SourceServerName XA65-01

To display a list of Printer Drivers in the Auto-Replication-List you’ll use the following command :

Get-XAAutoReplicatedPrinterDriver

I’m pretty sure there’s some smart people out there in the Citrix Community who have already created some smart automatic scripts for replicating print drivers in Citrix XenApp 6.x. Please share with the rest of the readers by adding your comment below if you know any good resources.

Resoures :

How to Migrate to Citrix License Server VPX

by Trond Eirik Haavarstein

Citrix has just released a new version of the Citrix License Server VPX which are a self-contained Linux-based virtual appliance that allows you to easily deploy licensing in your Citrix environment. The requirement is only 256 mb which are sufficient for up to 500 Citrix servers and approximately 50.000 licenses. Currently the Citrix License Server VPX is only available for Citrix XenServer 5.6 Feature Pack 1 / Service Pack 2 or higher.

To get started download and import the Citrix License Server VPX Appliance via XenCenter and then configure hostname, dns suffix and ip address. If you’re testing this out I would recommend using the same name as your current Citrix License Server. This way you don’t need to return and reallocate all your licenses. Even though the hostname is the same it won’t register in DNS so you’re all safe.

Log on to your license server and import all your licenses and restart the appliance.

Most likely you’re using Citrix Policy to define your License server host name. Simply change this to the ip address of your new Citrix License Server VPX.

To be sure that everything is working properly you should stop your old Citrix Licensing Server Service. Then run the command : gpupdate /force and qfarm /load on one of your Citrix XenApp servers to verify that everything is okay.

If the Server Load is 20.000 there’s something wrong, most likely the hostname. Remember that this is case sensitive.

For those wanting to Return and then ReAllocate the licenses to a new host name please logon to your MyCitrix account.

So should you transfer all your licenses to this new Citrix License Server VPX appliance? That’s up to you, but since the current Windows version normally runs side by side with Remote Desktop Services Licensing it won’t make sense to me. On the other side this is a great way to setup a standby Citrix License Server for Disaster Recovery.

Resource :

Citrix License Server VPX

Get FREE Citrix XenApp 6 Video Training Course

Citrix XenServer Rolling Upgrade

Read next:

Citrix Access Gateway – Configure Failover

Read next:

PHD Virtual Backup and Exporter

PHD Virtual Backup Upgrade :

PHD Virtual Backup Exporter :

Read next:

Free SMS 2-Factor Token for Citrix Web Interface 5.4

Read next:

Ericom AccessNow and Secure Gateway

Read next:

Customize Citrix Access Gateway Logon Point

Read next:

Write for xenappblog.com

Read next:

Adding Printer Drivers from Print Server using PowerShell

Read next:

Replicating Print Drivers in Citrix XenApp 6.5

Read next:

How to Migrate to Citrix License Server VPX

Read next:

Purchase Access

Join over 5700 people
who get fresh content from xenappblog.com

FREE UPDATES + eBook

Sidebar Form

Sponsors

Blog features

Recent Posts

Recommended Posts

Get FREE Citrix XenApp 6 Video Training Course

Read next:

Read next:

PHD Virtual Backup Upgrade :

PHD Virtual Backup Exporter :

Read next:

Read next:

Read next:

Read next:

Read next:

Read next:

Read next:

Read next:

Purchase Access

Join over 5700 people who get fresh content from xenappblog.com

FREE UPDATES + eBook

Sidebar Form

Sponsors

Blog features

Popular Posts

Recent Posts

Recommended Posts

Join over 5700 people
who get fresh content from xenappblog.com