xenapp

Citrix Datastore Backup and Recovery

In this post I’m going to show you how to automatically backup and restore your Citrix DataStore Database on SQL Server Express. First you’ll need to download and install Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio and then connect to your server.

Backup :

Right click your Citrix Datastore Database and select Tasks – Backup.

Use the default settings on the General and Options tab. If you’re using SQL Server Express select Script Action to File from the Options tab. If you’re running a full blown SQL Server select Script Action to Job.

Save the SQL Server Script file in your preferred location. In this example I’ll be using C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft SQL Server.

Open up Notepad and paste the content below (double click to mark and copy). These commands will automatically backup the SQL Database and then copy the XA6DB.bak to a network share. This way you can easily go back in time and restore your database even if your SQL server has crashed.

Continue Reading

VirtuAll User Environment Manager (VUEM)

VirtuAll User Environment Manager (VUEM) was finally released in the beginning of this month. I’ve covered VUEM before in this post Virtual User Environment Manager – A Sneak Peak and this Interview with Pierre Marmignon – CitrixTools.Net. This tool is a fantastic present to the Community and will let you eliminate your login scripts once and for all!

To test VUEM in a isolated environment I spun up some servers in RackSpace Cloud (Getting started with Rackspace). The installation and configuration are straight forward and Pierre have also created a Quick Start Guide. This tools is an perfect addon to Citrix User Profile Manager and does some awesome stuff that’s hard to do with Microsoft Group Policy Preferences (GPP). E.g. dynamically adding icons to Quick Launch, Pin to TaskBar and Start Menu as you can see in the image below.

Continue Reading

Boost your Citrix Career and Increase your Value

First of all Happy New Year. It has been a awesome year growing from 7.000 to 20.000 visitors per month, 50.000 YouTube views and more than 3.000 eBook downloads. All this because I choose to Take Action.

This year I want to help you to take action to boost your career and maybe increase your salary. Don’t be the one that always says “I should have done this, I should have done that”. Be the one that set goals and Take Action. Write down your goals for 2011 and set them as a wallpaper on your computer & smart phone. A daily reminder of your goals will lead to amazing results.

If you are not aware of it, the world is missing a lot of Citrix educated people. I have seen this myself interviewing people and I know other countries have the same problem. This means that if you have the proper Citrix certifications you will stand out from the rest, boost you career and most likely increase your salary. It gives you freedom and the possibility to work from anywhere in the world. I’m spending 4 months of combined work and vacation each year in Brasil.

Continue Reading

Why Internet Explorer will kill your memory – Part II

This is a follow up post for Why Internet Explorer will kill your memory – Part I that I published in March this year. A lot of people have been requesting this and I’m sorry for keeping you waiting so long. I think the reason why this post have been delayed is that I’ve been putting to much into it. I wanted it to cover everything; Internet Explorer 8 tuning, Citrix HDX MediaStream for Flash and so on. Well I just figured out let’s take the IE8 tuning in Part II and then the rest of the stuff can come in some other series.

The setting I’m about to reveal for you will save you a big chunk of memory and money, in both XenApp and XenDesktop environments. By default,  IE8 will start with two instances of iexplore.exe (one for the Frame, one for the tab) and grows the number of tab processes as needed based on the amount of available RAM, the number of tabs, the integrity levels for tabs, and the number of distinct IE sessions. Let’s take a look at some examples :

Continue Reading

Using Group Policy to hide and map specified drives

Do you remember the old days when we used the hide drives.adm template to hide specified drives along with some kind of hide drives calculator to get the proper value ? So if we wanted to hide drives for Domain Users but not the Domain Admins, we had to create another policy to lock it up again. Those days are long gone thanks to Group Policy Preferences, for me it’s the life before and after. Get rid of all your adm templates and 30+ page vbs logon scripts once for all. This will speed up the logon time and make your administration much easier.

To leverage Group Policy Preferences (GPP) you’ll need to administrate Group Policy’s from a Windows 2008 server (just member server) or Windows 7 with RSAT. On Windows XP and Windows 2003 machines you’ll need Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions to properly read GPP settings.

Continue Reading