While I'm not entirely sure why they call it brief at just over 70 pages, Citrix has released an update to their Brief Troubleshooting Guide which is IMHO one of the best docs that's come out of Citrix (ok, aside from Jay Tomlin's WI/CSG troubleshooting guides).  It's essentially a workflow guide that can be used when trying to troubleshoot problems in a Citrix environment.  There's also links to all of the admin/troubleshooting guides as well as important KB links for well known problems.  Yesterday's update to the guide adds in information on Netscaler, WANscaler, EdgeSight, and of course Presentation Server 4.5.

Get it here:  CTX106727

Shawn

Over at the SoftGrid Team Blog, Microsoft posted information that the new Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2007 has been released (which includes SoftGrid 4.2).  The VAS components have not been updated since SG 4.1 SP1, so no update is required on your servers (just the client and sequencer).

Shawn

Ok, so...

It's not a joke and it doesn't involve a bar.

But it is a burning question of mine.  What exactly consitutes a twitter versus a blog entry versus a full-fledged "article".  There are a variety of websites/blogs/article columns, etc. out there that have differing content.  When does a simple twitter become a blog entry?  When does a blog entry become an article?  And finally how does one avoid joining in on the throng of bloggers who do nothing more than aggreggate content that's found on thousands of other blogs?  While I find myself re-reporting some of the same content that may be available elsewhere, I should make it known that I only post information ... Read More »

NetMon 3.1 is released and available on the Microsoft Connect site (the final release on the MS Download site will be posted in a few weeks).  Here's a rundown of the new features:

• Wireless (802.11) capturing and monitor mode on Vista – With supported hardware, (Native WIFI), you can now trace wireless management packets. You can scan all channels or a subset of the ones your wireless NIC supports. You can also focus in on one specific channel. We now show the wireless metadata for normal wireless frames. This is really cool for t-shooting wireless problems. See signal strength and transfer speed as you walk around your house!
• RAS tracing support on Vista – Now you can trace your RAS connections so you can see the traffic inside your VPN tunnel. Previously this was only available with XP.
• Right click add to filter – Now there's an easier way to discover ho ... Read More »
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  shawnbass.com - Network Administration blog

So how many times have you plotted directions between two points and thought to yourself, I really wish these directions showed me taking this highway instead of that, etc.  While planning a trip to head down to Citrix's offices later this month, I noticed that Google had added a new option in Google Maps that allows you to do just this!  While viewing a resultant map, you can simply drag and drop the designated highways to choose an alternate route path.  How cool is that?

See the Google Maps help site for more info on this and other features (such as their traffic info that was recently added).

Shawn

The Spanish Flu (aka 1918 flu) was a worldwide pandemic virus killing between 50 to 100 million people worldwide within 18 months.  These numbers completely dwarfed that of World War I which was occuring during the same time.  Arguably, World War I contributed significantly to the spread of the 1918 flu due to the increased mass movement of people worldwide.  Mortality rates varied greatly between countries, but one thing is known for sure:  Those countries that limited their maritime travel had significantly less mortality than those that did nothing to control the travel of people.  For example, Japan had a 0.425% mortality rate from the flu due to restrictions in travel.  Many other countries had mortality rates in the 5-10% range or more.  With increased global travel is the world of today equipped to handle such a lockdown on travel?

The 1918 flu is also known as the Spanish Flu, but recently developments suggest that it ac ... Read More »

Wilco van Bragt has a nice article in a series of articles describing alternative products to Citrix Presentation Server.  It's definitely worth reading.

MSTerminalServices.org - Alternatives to Citrix Presentation Server (Part 1)

Shawn

In a recent blog entry titled "A brief architecture overview of VMware ESX, XEN and MS Viridian", Massimo does a great job explaining the architectural differences between the competing virtualization products from VMWare, Microsoft, and the open source Xen.  While it's clear that there's no true winner from an architectural perspective, my personal thoughts are that many people are going to adopt Viridian simply because it will be made available more easily and cost effectively.  Time will tell though.

Shawn

So those Mac user's out there that have been using the Coherence feature of Parallels virtualization product, you need to checkout this video posted on VMWare's VMTN blog.  It's pretty amazing!

Shawn

Michael Burke has a nice article up on MSTerminalServices.org on high availability and recovery strategies for TS Licensing Servers.  Hopefully most of you are aware that in the absense of a functional TS Licensing environment, your entire Citrix environment is useless.  To that end, Michael has some great info on how you should design your TS License servers for high availability.

Read the full MSTerminalServices.org article.

Shawn