Home » xendesktop

Tag: xendesktop

Upgrading to Citrix Receiver 4.2

We have a number of functional expectations to test prior to Upgrading to Citrix Receiver 4.2. It is imperative that things as simple as ‘desktop shortcuts’, appropriate start menu integration and XenApp session sharing work to keep the end users happy and prevent the “same ole service calls being logged again”.

Examples:

  1. A 100% dynamic client start menu (locally or in the XA/XD sessions – built based on the apps published to them) and support for XenApp6.5 session sharing
  2. Ideally one storefront “store” and one receiver version if possible deployed across the organisation (if support for all features exists)
  3. We would prefer not to rely on web interface servers if it can be helped.
  4. Simple desktop and start menu shortcut management with filtering based on device or platform (presently we use separate web interface sites)
  5. Support for File type association and Prelaunch.

Nice to haves / Things to test.

Company Laptop & desktops: Selective or filtered apps on the clients desktops (to avoid conflict with citrix published apps like Citrix outlook vs local outlook) to XenApp 4.5, XenApp 6.5 and XenDesktop 7.6.

Citrix desktop: End user ‘refresh’ on the XenApp desktop (without logging off)

Issues Encountered with Citrix Receiver 4.2

Session Sharing still broken: Whilst the configuration is not officially supported running the receiver via a published XA6.5 desktop and launching a Citrix app would start a brand new session even launching it on the same server.

Receiver Disconnects: During opening, launching or refreshing of the receiver (inside a Citrix session) the local Citrix session would disconnect http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX136339

Shortcut refresh slow: In selfservicemode=false or with user subscriptions disabled (effectively making all apps mandatory) the initial log into receiver would deploy the apps to the start menu under 2 minutes (which is slow compared to pnagent and depending on how many apps were available for your login) following this Citrix article we also set the InitialRefreshMinMs and MaxMs to 1 http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX200337

 

Receiver not started automatically for new users logging onto the workstation:

We had to set a shortcut in the users startup folder or regrun keys for the receiver to open.

 

Receiver Installation:

We decided against recommending the selfservicemode=false option in combination with receiver deployments script to end user devices (as its much more difficult to reverse) rather we’d recommend to use the group policy ADM that comes with the new client to manage the selfservicemode so you can easily change it later if desired.

GPO Location: C:\Program Files(x86)\Citrix\ICA Client\Configuration\icaclient.adm

Kiosk Users: if you have a generic desktop login and people each use their own credentials just for citrix its best to just use storefrontweb as the receiver shortcut deployment to the start menu and even in the receiver window constantly got confused between the different logged on users and was definitely too slow to be a usable solution. Possibly this could be fixed with the GPO ‘Remove Apps on Logoff’

 

Storefront Filtering is per store: If we filtered an application (by its keyword: description) it was effectively hidden from all parts of that store including

  1. Receiver
  2. Storefront web
  3. Legacy Config xml receiver
  4. Regardless of any other store settings (new subscriptions enabled or disabled or the app set to mandatory)

See here how to configure Storefront Filtering

 

Mandatory Apps Ignore Start Menu Directory:

Via GPO we tried forcing the Start Menu directory (different to what the app has published) which worked for all applications except some instances of mandatory apps refused to move. This was most obvious when the user had already synced their apps to the start menu then the start menu directory was forced via GPO.

XA6.5 Published App Start Menu Folder property name is ignored:

Receiver only uses the “Client Application folder” varilable for the shortcut publication.

This makes more sense however when looking at application publication in the Citrix Studio for XenApp 7.6.

Changing the Start menu Path left all the old shortcuts initially unusable:

Changing the start menu path after a user had already sync with the store resulted in all the shortcuts being completely recreated under the new folder hierarchy, whilst the old path was left (during the sync) intact, but unusable.

Running the old shortcuts resulted in the fun message:

After the initial sync completed again (took over 2-3 minutes as I had heaps of published shortcuts) the old folder ‘Citrix’ was eventually removed.

Desktop shortcuts delivered in folders: If an application is published in the XA6.5 console with a Client Application folder, and the app is published to the desktop as well the Client application folder is also created.

Shortcuts doubled up: If there was an application with the same name locally as remote, we would end up with 2 – making it confusing for the end users – Citrix’s solution to this is the “keyword: Prefer” in the application description – which we found continued to only launch the Citrix application.

See here for an excellent explanation of the supported Storefront and Receiver Keywords: http://www.martijnhs.com/2014/05/08/citrix-storefront-keywords-explained/

 

 

Summary

The deployment method we have had most success with (so far) has been:

  • The Citrix Receiver 4.2 packaged and deployed simply with “CitrixReceiver4.2.100.exe /includeSSON” (no other commands or calls)
  • The actual storefront Store configured via GPO

  • The SSO option enabled via GPO

  • The storefront site added to trusted or intranet sites
  • The SSO options/passthrough setting enabled in the storefront servers / site
  •  We enabled The Shortcut managment options to stop confusion for end users (all citrix apps delivered in a start menu sub folder)

  • We also disabled the selfservicemode via gpo rather than forcing it during the installation in the 4.2 receiver.

  • We forced the receiver to connect to the store asap by: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\Dazzle]

“InitialRefreshMinMs”=”1”

“InitialRefreshMaxMs”=”1”

  • We placed the receiver in the Startup Folder of the local machine, so it would launch automatically

This configuration would also mean that ALL the application shortcut are all delivered to the users start menu, but people connecting via the ‘storefront web’ page can still have subscriptions enabled so they don’t see things like the accessories published apps ‘calc, or snipping tool or magnifier etc’ from the ‘storefront web’.

*Additional Note: If upgrading existing users devices, you may find it useful to set the legacy web interface to delete / remove all shortcuts on logoff / exit –  that way you can be 99% sure that there there should be no remnants of the legacy clients shortcuts on the desktop or star menu etc for the end users

Windows Desktops / Clients

The 4.2 Citrix receiver is an absolute must have for 3D Pro / HDX graphics, the improvements are numerous for graphics display and the smoothness of 3D apps. When deploying 4.2 locally with self service it grants the users that little bit of flexibility and control over their own start menu and the customisable GPO can help you easily change your mind later should the need arise.

XenApp

On a XenApp published desktop where session sharing is still broken with Receiver 4.2 we are going to stick with Citrix Receiver 3.4 enterprise Cumulative Update 4 and have it pointing to the storefront legacy config.xml file for now – which delivers the full dynamic Citrix start menu and still supports session sharing.

It is incredibly frustrating as an integrator and even as an end user to see ‘similar’ issues that Citrix has previously fixed in prior versions of their ICA Client reappearing all over again in the new Receiver, it certainly does nothing for their reputation.

We are very interested to hear how other people are managing their upgrades and end user shotcuts. Does anyone have a simpler, quicker, inexpensive and truly dynamic way to manage end user shortcuts whilst still conglomerating the users application experience from all their platforms (i.e local client apps, Citrix apps, Microsoft SCCM, VMWare thinapp and Microsoft App-V to name a few) and still support things like true session sharing and access gateway filtering??? Drop us a line.

Also please see this excellent article to address or workaround some of the problems described above.

 

 

Should I upgrade Citrix XenServer 6.2 to XenServer 6.5?

In Short … HELL YES, see this PDF from Citrix with the large list of the improvements in XenServer 6.5

The new console is sleek and quick and a hell of an improvement over the previous with a number of bug fixes (notably for vGPU / VDI settings). It has a couple of new views (similar to the VMware Client), and from rudimentary tests the VMs on 6.5 are performing marginally better than 6.2.

xensrver_6.5_console_view2       xensrver_6.5_console_view1

The in place upgrade tested was flawless and preserved existing VMS on the host, including snapshots and templates. (it does however wipe out the XenServer backup directory so be prepared if you have any backups saved). Overall the entire upgrade process for one host (Dell R720) took around 8 minutes for the upgrade to complete (not including reboot time)

XenServer_6.5_upgrade_prompt

xenserver_6.5_backup-partition-prompt

XenServer6.5_InPlaceUpgrade

Benchmarking for GPU / VDI Passthrough

VM with 4vCPU, 90GB RAM, 150GB Local disk, Client with receiver 4.2 and local resolution of 2 x 1400 x 900, Running XenDesktop 7.6 on a Dell R720 Server. (3 benchmarks were run consecutively to ensure the results were not a one off – Final result was recorded)

  1. Grid K2 GPU in W7 XD VDI Passthrough on 6.2 – Heaven benchmark Score 1631
  2. Grid K2 GPU in W7 XD VDI Passthrough on 6.5 (without tools upgrade) – Heaven benchmark Score 1666
  3. Grid K2 GPU in W7 XD VDI Passthrough on 6.5 (with tools upgrade) – Heaven Benchmark Score 1666 (marginally higher FPS – but every bit helps in the world of VDI right?)

Results

Its worth noting the below results are only really recording the performance of the GPU not the over all VM, its ability to serve applications or open files etc and a load testing solution like Edgesight Load testing or LoginVSI should really be used in a production scenario to determine a more ‘real end user load’. It is nice to see however that even from this rudimentary test the performance is heading in the right direction!

Heaven Benchmark XenServer 6.2 vs 6.5 FPS Min FPS Max FPS
XS 6.2 64.7 19.1 139
XS 6.5 w 6.2 Tools 66.1 19.4 141.6
XS 6.5 w 6.5 Tools 66.2 22.3 142.1

Results Graph

xenserver_6.2-6.5-upgrade_GPU_Performance_Improvement

Note: the VM tools were upgraded with the GPU removed and direct from the Xenserver 6.5 console, I did not remove the VDA or Nvidia drivers first (experience shows that this is a best practice)

 

Things discovered whilst implementing a PoC of Citrix HDX 3D Pro

Here is a non exhaustive list of things recently discovered during a PoC of Citrix XenDesktop 7.6 with Nvidia GPU Passthrough from XenServer 6.2 SP1 (i.e Citrix HDX 3D Pro) for the Oil and Gas Industry

The alternative (rather long) heading for this article should probably be “how to deliver 3d graphic intensive Oil and Gas Applications via a Citrix virtual desktop with HDX”

You could say its a general bunch of optimal Citrix Xendesktop 7.6 HDX 3D pro settings or lessons learned

  • It’s awesome and actually works pretty much out of the box!
  • A low network latency is required for uninterrupted performance – ensure you are seeing less than around 30ms from Session to Server (Use the Citrix HDX Monitor 3.x)
  • This can then easily be delivered to iPads, tablets, anything that supports the Citrix receiver which is pretty nifty!
  • Ensure you are using the latest receiver 4.2 on ALL the clients – reconnecting a session to an older client (3.x or 12.x) pretty much renders the live HDX session useless.
  • When installing the NVIDIA drivers in your VM for GPU passthrough you must ensure you have downloaded the driver version for the VM operating system (aka the Nvidia GRID Drivers for Windows 7 if using passthrough) – If you are using vGPU then you must get the NVIDIA GRID Drivers for vGPU XenDesktop
  • Driver version here was important when running applications like Petrel or EDM Landmark that call specific functions from the native GPU, they will open if the driver version is wrong, but certain functions (like seismic Picking will perform poorly, if at all)
  • Racked workstations with only one GPU (Nvidia K5000 etc)  will not be available for passthrough if they are the only video card available in the system. You must have one available for DOM0 / console. Then Xenserver will free up the NVIDIA for passthrough.
  • Of the performance testing we attempted on a host with 2.4GHZ Intel Xeon the performance for smaller resolutions (1440×900) was ok – but on larger resolutions (2560×1600) or for bigger processing – a minimum CPU in the host of 2.8 ghz (3.x better!) *A Faster CPU configuration may not work in some servers with 2 x Grid K2 cards as the power consumption of the cards themselves will be too high. Be sure of the resolutions you are trying to deliver first.
  • Ensure the host system BIOS settings are set for Max Power / Performance mode.
  • XenServer max NIC speed for a VM is 1gb, even with 10GB nic in the host.
  • By default the Citrix policies will only allow for 30fps, you need to apply a policy to increase this to aim for 60fps.
    • Read this article and walk through the settings listed by Jason Southern as they improve the performance of the Citrix session substantially
  • Ensure your VM is getting the correct amount of vCPUS from xenserver, if not you can change the cores per CPU socket via the following commands (workstations are limited to 2 cores per socket)
    • xe vm-list (find the UUID of the vm you want to fix / change)
    • xe vm-param-set platform:cores-per-socket=4 uuid=xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Set the number of available cores per socket assigned to the VM here) Citrix article here
    • Install http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX142095
  • With the right configurations and modest end client resolutions (dual screen 1440 * 900) from a Unigine Heaven Benchmark we were seeing 8min-147max fps, with an average of 65.3fps
  • With large client resolutions (dual screen 2560*1600) from Unigine heaven benchmark we were seeing 11min – 24max fps, with ave of 21.9fps

Drop us a message if you have any questions or leave comments below, we are happy to assist you with your virtualisation solutions!

Big thanks goes out to the teams at NVIDIA (Jason and Sarah) and CITRIX (Mark and John) for their assistance during this PoC – their instant access to knowledge, or – been there done that, meant all niggling issues could be sorted with a simple 30 minute phonecall!

Storefront 2.5 'Cannot Complete your Request'

Ive seen this error a number of times:

  1. Misconfiguration of storefront server itself
  2. The server has just rebooted and IIS is still starting up
  3. A firewall preventing the storefront server(s) getting back to the SNIP of the Netscaler(s)
  4. and now today…

Today I added a new Delivery controller in Storefront 2.5 so I could publish ‘XD’ resources.

In the XD7.6 studio console I created a new machine catalogue and delivery group called ‘J&J Testing’

When accessing the delivery group in the Studio it looked fine

When testing the login process via storefront we received ‘Cannot complete your request’.

Removing the ‘XD’ from the list of delivery controllers in storefront – worked instantly, storefront logins working again
This was not a solution however.

Deleting the delivery group ‘J&J Testing’ and re-adding the ‘XD DDC’ back to storefront as a delivery controller worked straight away.

Solution: Can only assume here that the ‘&’ ampersand in the name of the delivery group killed the publication there of, or the delivery group publication process failed and a recreate was required.

Eitherway dont use ‘&’

Xen Desktop 5.6 Join to VMWARE fails

Problem: When pointing Xen Desktop 5.6 to a VMWARE management center you may receive the following error.

Error Message: Unable to contact the hypervisor. Check that the address, user name, and password are correct; the Controller and hypervisor are connected; and the SSL certificates have been set up correctly if you are using HTTPS. For more information see: CTX131512

Solution: Easy one really

  1. Ensure you are connecting to the Virtual Center server NOT the ESX or ESXi host itself.
  2. Install the certificate of the Virtual Center server into Trusted People Local Computer store (I just browsed to the site in IE and installed from there)
  3. Ensure you are using HTTPS in the Xen Desktop Wizard
  4. Ensure you place a /sdk after the Virtual Center servers https address ie.. https://vc.home.local/sdk

References: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX131512