By Shawn Bass on Friday, December 21, 2007 8:25:38 AM

Whether your company has started it or not, companies all over the world are investigating what it would take to become more green.  What does "more green" mean?  Well, it means finding ways to reduce your companies electrical power consumption when you're not needing it.  Many companies have done simple things like ensuring that all desktop PC monitors have a Power Saver timer after 20 minutes of inactivity.  However, many organizations still leave their desktops (and servers) powered on 24x7.

Citrix is attempting to do their part by releasing their Citrix PowerSmart Management Utility.  What is PowerSmart?  In essence, it's a utility that let's an administrator control which servers in a farm are able to be powered off when their session co ... Read More »

By Shawn Bass on Thursday, December 20, 2007 10:25:45 PM

Ok, I'll admit it that it's not a business reason to use a software product, but it is ridiculously cool.  Derek Thorslund posted a video about a month ago that demos the features that Project Pictor brings for OpenGL acceleration.  While acceleration of Catia CAD software is really exciting stuff, it leaves a little to be desired for those folks who aren't familiar with how poorly CAD software runs on Terminal Services.  If you're in for a more true to life demonstration, then watch the end of the video when they play Quake 3 in OpenGL acceleration via Project Pictor.  That's some amazing stuff.

Thanks to Doug Brown for the heads up on the video.

 

By Shawn Bass on Thursday, December 20, 2007 9:58:37 PM

There is a bug in the installation routine for PS 4.5 HRP01 that in certain server configurations will cause MSI Self Healing to be triggered on systems where HRP01 has been installed. There are very specific conditions that cause this problem and there are several workarounds/fixes. Read More »

By Shawn Bass on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 4:22:30 PM

Citrix has finally integrated an official blog site into their public presence.  I have to say I've been very happy with the content that has come out of Citrix in the previous Citrix Community and Citrite.org blog sites, and I'm hoping to see even more content coming out of the official site.  Go visit them and give them some feedback on the new site.  Between this site and the Knowledge Center updates, Citrix has really been investing heavily in overhauling their web presence.

By Shawn Bass on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 4:11:11 PM

Jason Conger has published a development road map for the amazing Web Interface for Resource Manager.  If you're not using this tool, I highly recommend that you download it (it's free) and start using it.  You need to have an RM Summary database as it uses that info, but it's one of the greatest free utilities for Citrix server environments.  Anyway, Jason recently published the roadmap which hints at some fantastic new features such as AJAX, MFCOM Real time performance data, and integrated Configuration Logging database reports, etc.  I can't wait for the new version.

By Shawn Bass on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 1:48:11 PM

For those who are using Citrix Installation Manager as a deployment strategy for MSI packages and hotfixes, etc. you should be aware that if you deploy HRP01 for PS4.5 and then attempt to deploy MSI packages that include transforms (MST files) the installation via IM will fail.  Citrix has a private hotfix named PSE450R01W2K3021.msp that resolves this issue.  However, there's still a number of issues which are:

1) The fact that this is still a private hotfix and it came out in August 2007.  Come on Citrix, where's the final public hotfix for this thing already?

2) The fact that it's private and most people don't know that it exists.

3) The fact that it seems to be invalidated by newer hotfixes.  I've done test deployments of hotfix numbers greater than 21, and it seems from my testing that if you don't deploy limited release hotfix 21 at the very end of your Citrix hotfixes, then you lose the ability to de ... Read More »

By Shawn Bass on Monday, November 26, 2007 10:16:28 AM

While this whitepaper is coming from a vendor and is partial to their profile management solution, it's still a very nice review of the Windows Profile Management headaches and provides info on how the sepagoProfile solution resolves this issues.  It's definitely a nice read.

By Shawn Bass on Monday, November 19, 2007 3:51:18 PM

Brian Madden has recommitted himself to completing the upcoming CPS 4.5 book.  Brian is approaching this book in a slightly different approach than previous books.  In the new CPS 4.5 book, Brian will be writing chapters and releasing them online immediately in a brand new content management system built by Brian's web developers.  This will allow for immediate release of new information, as well as corrections and community feedback.  To this end, Brian has released Chapter 3: Network architecture.

By Shawn Bass on Sunday, November 18, 2007 7:12:34 AM

A client of mine is just putting in Secure Gateway 3.0 with WI4.6 (and PNA).  I noticed that they didn't have Session Reliability enabled and I was going to set it up for them.  I noticed that they didn't have any hotfixes for Secure Gateway 3.0 (which is a no-no since you'll have problems connecting in with newer ICA Clients 9.2+ when using Session Reliability).  Citrix fixed the issue with the hotfix SGE300W003 (CTX110661), but that hotfix was later superceded by SGE300W008 - CTX114059.  So you go off and download CTX114059 and attempt to apply it to your Secure Gateway 3.0 setup.  During the installation the hotfix stops and tries to restart the Secure Gateway service.  However, you receive an Error 1920 from Windows Installer stating that it's unable to start the Secure Gateway Service. ... Read More »

By Shawn Bass on Saturday, November 03, 2007 3:34:03 PM

Ruben Spruijt from PQR posted a blog entry over at BrianMadden mentioning that Citrix support has released a video of their CSEIT session that covers troubleshooting tools for CPS environments.  I attended this session myself and it's a overall good session, though much of the tools covered are things I'm already using.  Still, a great review of the available tools.  Ruben is kindly hosting the video/PPT download on his site here.