Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) is a great tool that is what our local Citrix Sales Engineer calls "the Secret Sauce" behind XenDesktop. For those who are new around these parts, PVS is software that allows us to stream an Operating System to a PC, physical or virtual, ESX or Hyper-V or XenServer - anything that can PXE boot pretty much (including Thin Clients!). Once you've made the plunge and start deploying or planning your PVS infrastructure, High Availability and Redundancy is going to be a top concern. Here are a few guidelines to help you plan. Let's assume we have a single farm,

Only 5 days after Citrix released XDE310VDA003, VDA004 was released. It fixes a total of 28 issues, many of which have plagued XenDesktop users. This recent trend of hot fixing is comforting and worrysome - so many issues with XenDesktop, but on the other hand, Citrix is fixing them relatively quickly. Some fix examples: Disconnecting from an RDP session can cause a Virtual Desktop Agent running on Windows XP to become unresponsive or to restart. After installing Version 3.1 (Build 3231) of the virtual desktop agent on Windows XP, the Citrix Audio Service fails to start. After in

On Saturday Citrix released a new version of the Citrix Virtual Desktop Agent (VDA) for XenDesktop 3.0 Feature Pack 1. It upgrades version 3.1.3236 to 3.1.3241 via XDE310VDA003. All in all there are 22 fixes in this release; 7 fixes for the previous hotfix, and 15 new fixes. Usually I would recommend waiting a while before applying a hotfix unless you experience one of the issues addressed, but most XenDesktop environments will suffer from at least one of these. Virtual Desktop Agents fail to register with Desktop Delivery Controllers located in separate Active Directory farms. This fi

While I'm sure many are still struggling to get XenDesktop working properly with a VMWare ESX hosting infrastructure and vSphere 4, Citrix is still hard at work pumping out fixes for it. Yesterday, Citrix released a hotfix for Citrix Pool Management which updates it to 3.0.3068 using hotfix XDE300PM002. The Citrix Pool manager can now reconnect to ESX after losing network connectivity or if Virtual Center restarts. It also fixes an issue with the previous hotfix where you could not import virtual machines through pool management if using vSphere 4. Get the hotfix and read the release

On Thursday, Citrix released a hotfix that resolved an issue where Virtual Machines would crash when migrated on Intel Nehalem processors. If you are using Intel Hardware with EPT support, you should install this hotfix. You can download Hotfix XS55E002, CTX122348 at the link below. http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX122348

Apple has released iPhone OS 3.0.1 this afternoon. It addresses the SMS vulnerability that allows hackers to take control of your handset. This update should be considered critical and should be performed immediately. To update your iPhone to 3.0.1, plug it in and launch iTunes. If you do not have Auto Update enabled, check for updates manually and then apply. Details on the Vulnerability: http://jorgeorchilles.blogspot.com/2009/07/iphone-and-sms-hack-what-does-it-mean.html Informal Announcement w/ Screenshot: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9915844&tstart=0

Yesterday Citrix released a new version of the Citrix XenDesktop Setup Wizard. The Setup Wizard is the tool used to provision Virtual Machines for use with XenDesktop. It creates the VM using a template, names it according to your specified convention, adds the target device to the Provisioning Server database, creates the Active Directory Machine Account, and then places the VM in the desired Desktop Group. Previously, there was an issue when you attempted to query vSphere 4 for VM Templates in order to provision new VMs. According to Citrix, this issue was fixed in CTX122057 as part of Ci

After many have voiced their opinion about Citrix's lack of support for VMWare's vSphere 4 product with XenDesktop 3.0, Citrix has released "Citrix Pool Management, Version 3.0.3061 (XDE300PM001)." CPM 3.0.3061 adds support for vSphere 4 for use with XenDesktop 3.0. Voiced Concerns:  http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=246967&tstart=0 http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX121997

Citrix has updated their Technical Support Brief Troubleshooting Guide today, David McGeough announced. The guide is a wonderful troubleshooting resource that is of use to anyone using Citrix products. It gives you a simple and straight forward answer, links to CTX articles included. David explained that all categories were updated and the following new products were included: • Citrix Offline App Plug-in • Citrix Receiver for Windows • Citrix XenServer • Citrix Repeater Client • Command Center • EdgeSight for NetScaler • EdgeSight for Load Testing • Citrix User Profile

When troubleshooting problems, it's essential you have as much information is possible. Logging is the best passive way to achieve this. Even in these modern times, we're editing files in Notepad... Virtual Desktop Agent Logging 1.     Create a new directory called c:\ctxlogging\. The Network and Local service accounts should have write access. If you are using standard vDisks, I recommend putting the log file on local storage so that it persists after log out. 2.     Navigate to c:\Program Files\Citrix\Virtual Desktop Agent\ 3.     Open WorkstationAgent.exe.config with your