Today’s blog is about an application that was migrated to Citrix XenApp. During testing the users reported that several application menu’s were missing.

An example is the settings menu where the System tab is missing:

Fat Client:	XenApp:

I suspected a permissions issue so I added the account to the Local Administrator group to verify that. And indeed the System tab was visible.

Process Monitor
I removed the account from the Administrators group and fired up Process Monitor. I set a filter on the process name (ra60.exe) and on Result (ACCESS DENIED):

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Yesterday I was working with an Excel document that contained Combobox form controls.

I wanted to count the number of cells containing a particular value using the COUNTIF formula. However the count returned 0 because the LinkedCell property of the Combobox was not set to the Cell that contained the Combobox.

To set the LinkedCell Ctrl-Click the Combobox to select it, right-click and select Format Control. Then set the correct Cell in the Cell link field:

My sheet contained about 150 Comboboxes, so obviously I was going to do this using a script. I couldn’t find anything useful with Google so I wrote my own Macro.

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I have developed a strong aversion against the term “VDI”. Basically because customers don’t understand what VDI means, caused by the simple fact that the people who explain this to the customers (the people in IT) don’t understand it either.

The term VDI is roughly 7 years old. Back then we presumed it was the right term to use, and maybe it was. But time has changed and I strongly believe we are ready for some change.

Are you ready for some virtual desktop word bingo?

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Denamik introduces the Denamik Analyzer, an add-on to the Denamik LoadGen product. With Denamik LoadGen one can perform load- and stress tests on hosted shared and hosted private infrastructures like Citrix XenApp and XenDestop.

While the LoadGen executes a test and gathers data about the performance metrics and response times, visualizing and analyzing the data required a third party solution and knowledge about the performance indicators. The Denamik Analyzer now enables you to analyze the captured data, create and save charts and start creating a report in minutes.

I’ve had the opportunity to play with an early release of the Denamik Analyzer in my lab and get some hands-on experience.

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In the first part of this article I’ve explained what Atlantis ILIO products and components there are, explained what type of Session Hosts there are and how the Replication Host works. In this part I will dive a bit deeper in the boot process and the how the hosts are managed.

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When Atlantis Computing added persistent support for their ILIO Diskless VDI in Q1 2013 I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy. Last week I was able to deploy an Atlantis ILIO environment with a Replication Host.

In the first part of this article I will explain what the replication host is, how it’s used and how it works. In the second part I’ll dive into the boot process and how the hosts are managed.

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The content of a products database can tell you a lot about the inner working of that product. The Atlantis ILIO database stores the configuration and resource usage of the different components.

Since I’m building an environment including Atlantis ILIO I thought it would be good to learn about the internals of it. Having to troubleshoot some configuration issues motivated me to see (and maybe change) the configuration. So I’m not a badass hacking the database for malicious reasons.

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Configuring sites on multiple Citrix Web Interface servers can be cumbersome. It is a repetitive task that needs to be executed exactly the same on each Citrix Web Interface server. Missing one setting results in a inconsistent environment, and as we all know those situations suck to troubleshoot.

Shared Configuration

Fortunately Citrix came up with a solution: shared configurations. With shared configuration slave servers use the configuration of a master server, all the changes needs to applied once on the master servers and the slave servers inherit the same configuration.

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RES Workspace Manager is a user environment manager (UEM) that enables you to centrally manage the user workspace (RES term for the users desktop, start menu and all user related settings) for both virtual and physical machines. UEM products like RES Workspace Manager are common in virtual desktop environments like SBC or VDI (I don’t like the term VDI) because they simplify management and improve consistency between all the machines.

Virtual desktop machines are either persistent or non-persistent. When a machine is non-persistent the machine reverts to the state it was before (also called stateless) as it is stored in the “golden image”. This has a lot of benefits but comes with some challenges.

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Recently RES Automation Manager 2012 SR4 was released. One of new features of this new service release is that you can now execute PowerShell 3.0 scripts with RES Automation Manager. An important side note is that PowerShell 3.0 has to be installed on the target device. Regarding PowerShell 3.0 you should keep in mind that if you install PowerShell 3.0 on a Windows Server 2008 (R2) or Windows 7 device you don’t get the same functionality as PowerShell 3.0 on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. This is because some cmdlets are designed for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Here is an list of all the new cmdlets http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh857339.aspx#BKMK_Core. For each cmdlet in the list it is noted on which platform you can use it.

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