Ulrik Christensen

Ulrik Christensen

Citrix Workspace Cloud is here, but…..

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I remember the first time that I saw Citrix Workspace Cloud. I was just amazed. Taking your Citrix backend to the cloud and never have to worry about upgrades. New features will just appear in your Studio console and you will be able to use them right away. You have some of the best people to take care of your XenApp installation. What’s not to like??

I do believe that Citrix Workspace Cloud is a great idea and I think that the product has great potential. It is still a new product and I do believe that it needs to become more mature.

Citrix Workspace Cloud is a great product for smaller companies. They don’t have the necessary skills to run a whole XenApp installation. I do believe that small companies get a great deal out of XenApp. But XenApp is just to big a mouthful for smaller companies. That is why I do believe that Citrix Workspace Cloud is great fit for them

When it comes to bigger companies, they have other concerns. Things like:

  • SLA
  • Upgrade schedule
  • Notifications
  • Roadmap

All of these things are what larger companies ask about when they presented a product. This is not how a cloud product is meant to work. Let’s take a look at Dropbox. Dropbox is cloud service that you most likely use. But you never worry about when they upgrade your client or when they upgrade the back-end. Some people will say that XenApp is a lot more complex than Dropbox.

I do believe that Citrix Workspace Cloud is a great product for the cloud. It still needs some finishing touches, but I’m sure it’s getting there.

Windows 10 Migration as a Success

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In these days, many are looking into upgrading their Windows platform to Windows 10. For many companies, a Windows 10 migration this is a very hard task. Upgrading Windows is not the hard part. But testing all the Windows applications is. I have worked with companies that had over 1000 applications. Sometimes even more. Each and one application needs to be tested and that is for most of IT organisation an overwhelming task. All companies also have applications that needs a different platform or maybe they can’t even coexist on the operating system.

How to get started with Windows 10 migration

Introducing Citrix AppDNA for companies that are looking into a Windows 10 migration will really help them to get started and get to the goal a lot faster. With AppDNA you can cut cost and time used with up to 90%. With Citrix AppDNA you are able analyse all your applications and get information which applications that are ready to get installed on Windows 10 and which ones that you need to test or even replace.

Not all applications can be replaced. The reason is that these applications are core business applications. The solution for these applications is to host them on a Citrix XenApp solution. With a Citrix XenApp solution, you can present the application from an older version of Windows to the Windows 10 machine. So you separate the application and the Windows 10.

If you want to hear more about how to get your business up to date on the latest Windows 10, you are more than welcome to contact me.

How to release unused Citrix user or device licenses

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When using Citrix CCU licenses (ConCurrent Users), the license used gets release as soon as the users is logging off. When using User/Device licenses, the license gets locked to the user or the device for 90 days. Sometimes it is necessary for testing purposes to reset the User/Device licenses. This can be done by using the following steps.

  1. Stop the Citrix Licensing Service
  2. Stop the Citrix License Config Service
  3. Stop the Citrix Support Service
  4. Go to this folder “C:\Program Files(x86)\Citrix\Licensing\LS\resource\cache”. Delete all the files in this folder.
  5. Start the Citrix Support Service
  6. Start the Citrix License Config Service
  7. Start the Citrix Licensing Service

The license count is now reset.

Citrix Netscaler Gateway using self signed certificate

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Since Netscaler version 10, its been a lot easier to setup a Netscaler Gateway for your XenApp / XenDesktop installation using the wizard. But there is no way to get around the server certificate, which is needed to get the VIP to response to queries from clients. A public singed certificate costs money and you might want to safe those money because you only need it for testing.

Create a Root Certificate Authority (CA) Certificate.

Go to Configuration -> Traffic Management -> SSL

Click on “Create RSA Key”.

  1. Fill out the “Key Filename” with your own filename.
  2. Write 2048 in “Key Size(bits)”
  3. Click “Create”

Netscaler-pic1

Create a Root CA CSR.

Go to Configuration -> Traffic Management -> SSL

Click on “Create Certificate Signing Request (CSR)”.

  1. Fill out the “Request File Name” with your own filename as shown bellow.
  2. For the “Key Filename”, browse for RSA Key from the previous step.
  3. Fill out the “Distinguished Name Fields”.
  4. Click “Create” at the bottom of the screen.

Netscaler-pic2

Create a Root CA Certificate.

To do that go to Configuration -> Traffic Management -> SSL

Click “Certificate”.

  1. Fill out the “Certificate File Name” with your own Filename.
  2. Make sure the “Certificate Type” is set to “Root-CA”.
  3. Browse for the “Certificate Request File” by clicking on “Browse”.
  4. Browse for the “Key Filename” by clicking on “Browse”.
  5. Click on “Create”.

Netscaler-pic3

Create certificate for Netscaler Gateway

Create a RSA key

To do that that you need to go to Configuration -> Traffic Management -> SSL

Click “Create RSA key”.

  1. Fill in your own filename. I choose to call the file the same as the domain name ending it with .key.
  2. Set “Key Size” to 2048.
  3. Click “Create”

Netscaler-pic4

Create the CSR

Go to Configuration -> Traffic Management -> SSL

Click “Create Certificate Signing Request”.

  1. Fill the “Request File Name” with your own name.
  2. Browse for the key created in the previous step.
  3. Fill out “Distinguished Name Fields” as shown below. Fill out “Common Name” with your FQDN for your Netscaler Gateway.
  4. Click “Create”.

Netscaler-pic5

Create Server Certificate for Netscaler Gateway

Go to Configuration -> Traffic Management -> SSL

Click “Certificate”

Fill “Certificate File Name” with your own filename.

Set Certificate Type to “Server”.

Browse for the CSR file created in previous step.

Browse for the Root CA Certificate created earlier.

Browse for the Root CA Key file.

Browse for the CAserial file.

Click “Create”.

Netscaler-pic6

Your certificate is now ready to use on your Netscaler Gateway.

XenServer will not boot after installation

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XenServer-Install-01
Click for larger image

The other day, i installed XenServer 6.2 on my new Lenovo ThinkCentre. I thought that would be a great idea since Citrix announced that XenServer is now Open Source.

After the installation was done, i was not able to boot on the new installation of XenServer. After some asking around, i found this solution:

  1. Boot on the Xenserver installation media
  2. When you get to the install screen. Type menu.c32 as on the first picture.
  3. A new screen comes up. Press tab.
  4. You can now see the string that the menu generate in order to start the installation. Just before the last ’—’, type disable-gpt as the picture below and press enter.

    XenServer-Install-02
    Click for larger image

Run through the installation as you always do. After the installation is done XenServer will now boot up.

This issue can be experienced on Lenovo computers and IBM servers.