Recognize that toolbar? It's the Desktop Toolbar and it's pretty useful - when you're using a Desktop resource. If you're using a Seamless Published Application, it's a nuisance if it's not configured properly. And what's properly? Configuring the Desktop Toolbar to only show with Desktop resources and not showing for published applications allowing them to run properly in Seamless Mode. To do this, follow these general steps. On your Web Interface server, backup the current configuration. I recommend copying the c:\inetpub\wwwroot\citrix\xenapp\ folder somewhere else for safekeeping

Not everyone has access to equipment at home or work to learn, experiment or test software. It often requires a pretty good chunk of money up front to get started – that won’t fly for everyone. For those who want access to fast, reliable and affordable computing power, the cloud is the perfect place to look. In this article we’ll cover building a 2 server lab to run Citrix XenApp 6.0 and a Domain Controller on Windows Server 2008 R2 on Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2). Yes, Citrix offers pre-built AMIs for this task, but it doesn't help learn the entire process of installing a

According to their website, Cloud.com is poised to be acquired by Citrix Systems. The actual details of the transaction have not been made public, but TechCrunch indicates the purchase price could be up to $250 million.  A move like this further reinforces Citrix's stance on cloud computing solutions and puts them ahead of VMware for cloud solution software offerings. According to the press release, CloudStack will continue to support Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere. It's also been stated that Citrix is planning on adding support for Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center. As the industry

The newest version of Citrix XenServer is now available. Version 6.0, referred to as "Project Boston" has been made available on Citrix.com Click Here for the official page. Some notable features and changes include: Workload Balancing is now available a virtual appliance for ease of use. New Self-Service Manager feature allows for easy creation of Private Cloud environments that includes support for both XenServer and VMware vSphere. Lab Manager superseded by SSM XenServer hosts and guests can now be managed with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012. HDX Enha

When using the Citrix XenDesktop Setup Wizard on your Provisioning Services server, you may encounter this error when creating new virtual desktops from a template. Unable to create the desktop DESKTOPNAME. Unable to clone the virtual machine for this desktop. Exception thrown : SR_BACKEND_FAILURE_44 Unable to provision a vDisk for the desktop. This error often appears when there is no longer sufficient space on your Storage Repository to clone the VM Template. To resolve this, either remove the storage requirement from your template (if it's not needed) or add additional space to the des

While XenServer 5.5 has a pretty decent GUI, there are still a few tasks that we have to use the command line for. Resizing Storage Repositories would be one of those tasks. In my environment, we use a Fibre Channel SR in our main XenServer resource pool, so I can vouch that these steps will work for that type of environment. Before starting with these steps, make sure you have actually resized the LUN using whatever software provided by your SAN vendor. This process is simply getting XenServer to recognize the change. Open the console of your XenServer Resource Pool Master. Run xe sr

As an administrator of both XenDesktop and XenApp environments, I'm absolutely sick of multiple consoles. I've finally managed to easily integrate XenDesktop and XenApp administration into a single console (AMC). Unfortunately, we're unable to integrate the "Presentation Server Console" that is still used for manging policies. While alternative methods may exist, I know the following steps will work. On your XenDesktop 3.0 Media, run autorun.exe Select Install Optional Components. Install Management Consoles. Install XDE300AMC004 (Download here). Open the Access Management Conso

Citrix has released a new version of the Virtual Desktop Agent for XenDesktop 3.0 (Not Feature Pack 1). In this new version, the file copy process between target and endpoint device has been improved. Time last Modified and Accessed will be properly updated when copying between devices. Also, mapped network drives on the endpoint device will now be properly mapped on the target device (A fix welcome by all). For those who use Registry-based Desktop Delivery Controller Discovery on their target devices, registration should now complete properly and consistently. Other fixes and the downlo

When configuring your vDisks in Citrix Provisioning Server, you're able to define which mode you would like your vDisk to be in. While many people know the basic differences, not everyone understands how to leverage them in their environment. Private Mode Private mode puts the vDisk into a volatile state where a target device can make permanent changes to the vDisk. Changes are not stored in a write cache file, they are changed immediately. When a target device connects to the vDisk, it gains exclusivity and no other device may connect to that vDisk. This mode is best used when a sing

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,