Configure an Authoritative Time Server with Group Policy

An Authoritative Time Server is a must in every environment. This is one of topics covered by CTP Carl Webster in the presentation “10 things in AD that can hurt XenDesktop or XenApp and how to fix them“. Make sure you clear a half day and go through the presentation and your Active Directory to make sure it’s as healthy as possible.

Setting up an Authoritative Time Server is easy, but doing it incorrectly will get you into trouble. The same could happen if you move your PDC emulator role to another domain controller and forget to reconfigure an Authoritative Time Server.

So in this post I’ll show you how to configure an Authoritative Time Server Group Policy and using WMI filtering to apply it to the Primary Domain Controller only.

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Why You Shouldn’t Redirect Favorites to Home Folder

During Citrix Synergy 2012 in San Francisco it was argued numerous times by Shawn Bass that redirecting Favorites to the home folder is a very bad idea. Shawn mentioned that Internet Explorer causes an extensive number of calls on your file server when browsing so I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into this topic.

Folder redirection to home folder is the rule of thumb to improve logon speed and create a better user experience across platforms. That being said, redirecting AppData should be avoided at all costs.

To redirect or not is a sensible topic and I think it would be a great Geek Speak Session with CTP Shawn Bass and Aaron Parker vs Citrix Consulting Services.

What happens under the hood :

To illustrate this I’ve been using Internet Explorer 9 and Process Monitor on my Windows 7 laptop. The filter beeing used is Path IS C:\Users\Administrator\Favorites.

When opening Internet Explorer you’ll see 13 calls in Process Monitor.

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Netscaler Certificate – The fastest way

When working with Netscaler certificate you’ve probably been confused by all the articles around OpenSSL to convert exist or new certificates to be in a Netscaler compatible format.

In this example I’m going to show you how you convert and import a Comodo Positive SSL certificate. This is a $7,95 certificate which are perfect for a lab or a Netscaler PoC in parallel to an existing Access Gateway VPX / Citrix Secure Gateway solution.

I’m not going to cover how to create the CSR from the Netscaler, that’s done perfectly over at this Citrix blog post : NetScaler for the XenDesktop XenApp Dummy.

Netscaler Build 10.0.69.4

If you’re running the latest build of the Netscaler be aware of the Save config issue bug. To resolve this you’ll need to first add your license file and then reboot before you can save any configuration.

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PHD Virtual Backup 6 – What’s new

This is a sponsored review of the new PHD Virtual Backup 6 for XenServer. I’m a big fan of PHD and are using it personally to backup all my Virtual Machines that are part of xenapptraining.com. With over 55 video modules there’s a lot of VM’s on my XenServer. Needless to say, a disk failure without a proper backup solution would send me back to the stone ages!

If you’re new to PHD Virtual Backup you can check out this video taken from our xenapptraining members area showing you how to import the Virtual Appliance to XenServer and do some basic configuration.

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Citrix Secure Gateway – Replace or Upgrade Certificate

Many Citrix Secure Gateway implementations are old and based upon 1024 bit encryption. So when you get the email notification about your certificate soon expires you find out that it’s no longer possible to renew a 1024 bit certificate.

The procedure for creating a new 2048 bit or higher is quite fast and simple as long as you know how to do it. Below I show you the way.

First off create a new website, in the example above I’ve used the name NewCertSite.

Then right click the new site, select Properties and navigate to the Directory Security tab.

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Pin Icons to Start Menu for All Users with GPO

Pinning and unpinning icons to the Start Menu or Taskbar can be a pain on Windows 2008 or Windows 7. After doing some research I came up with an how to that I wanted to share with you today.

The first problem I got was that the Pin to Taskbar / Start Menu was missing from the menu.

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Citrix XenServer Rolling Upgrade

The Citrix XenServer Rolling upgrade feature was introduced in Citrix XenServer 5.6 Feature Pack 1. This is a fantastic wizard that will upgrade all your XenServers automatically to the latest version from a central FTP/HTTP or NFS network share. So instead of upgrading hundreds of XenServers manually with DVD/USB you can now use this tool instead.

There’s currently a lot of threads on the Citrix Forum so I thought it would be nice to provide a detailed guide on how to do this with NFS.

First of you’ll need to upgrade Citrix XenCenter to the latest version and setup a NFS share with the extracted content of the latest XenServer-6.0.201-install-cd.iso. To extract ISO files you can use Pismo File Mount or WinRAR.

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Citrix Access Gateway – Configure Failover

In this post I’m going to show you how to setup and test failover for Citrix Access Gateway. In this example I’m using the default network interface for Applicane Failover, but it’s recommended to add a dedicated interface.

When you’re setting up Failover the Citrix Access Gateway both appliances new to be on the same version. You also need to make sure that both applicances have matching passwords since those aren’t replicated.

With two appliances joined as a failover pair, users connect to a shared virtual IP address instead of the real eth0 or eth1 IP address. You define one virtual IP address that users will connect to and another virtual IP address which Citrix Access Gateway will use when communicating with back-end resources. The internal and external virtual IP address can both be the same as in our example.

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PHD Virtual Backup and Exporter

PHD Virtual Backup is a fantastic piece of software that I highly recommend. I’ve been running this backup solution in my xenapptraining lab since June 2011 and it has saved my ass many times. It also made it very easy for me to setup my new lab in Brasil – Citrix XenServer The Optimal Cheap Home Lab.

Since then the PHD Virtual team have added more features and better performance so in this post I’ll show you how to upgrade your PHD Virtual Appliance to the latest version and configure the new PHD Virtual Export feature. If you’re new to PHD Virtual Backup you can check out this video taken from our xenapptraining members area.

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