From the session description:

As more and more users rely on Citrix/Terminal Services for application delivery, extremely fast login times have become more and more of a necessity. Not only does it enhance the user experience it also creates less resistance for porting applications. Between profile creation, policy processing, folder redirection, antivirus software, and “roaming profiles” login times seem to be increasing! Users expect consistent, reliable, and fast login times regardless of server user load.

Attendees will learn:

• Detailed overview of the user login process.
• Various system settings which dramatically decrease login time.
• How to enable User Environment Debugging to trace user login experience to determine bottlenecks.
• Streamline GPO policy processing time.
• Proper antivirus software configuration and other various filter driver tweaks.
• Various redirector and workstation service settings which enhance performance.
• Understanding of how various disk/profile layouts affect login time.
• How to reduce user profile size.
• Demonstrate efficient methods for creating “roaming” user profiles/settings.
• Recommended methods and techniques for folder redirection including Favorites, My Documents, IE history, cookies, and others.
• Monitoring/Reporting on user login/application experience.

Michael will be updating his session once again for this year's BriForum in Chicago to include multi-threaded logons.  Be sure to check out the session description.

To watch the session click here or on the screen shot below.  You can download the PPT that accompanies the presentation here .

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From the session description:

In this session, Kevin Goodman and Michael Thomason provide an in depth exploration of Citrix Virtual Channels. Included is a comprehensive analysis of the often misunderstood wfshell.exe. As a bonus, the authors will present a fully working virtual channel that can be controlled entirely though scripting. After this session, attendees will be able to write scripts that:

• run when a user logs on or off
• when a user connects or disconnects
• transfer files between the Citrix server and the client and vice versa.
• run applications on the client or collect information on the client based upon events on the server.

To watch the video, click the image below.  To download the supporting files for this session, click here .

If you want to suggest a video for release, check our the session lists from BriForum 2007 Chicago and BriForum 2007 Amsterdam and let me know.

BriForum 2008 Chicago takes place on Navy Pier from June 16-18 and is open for registration right now.

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We got onto this topic because I mentioned that a student in our 5-day Citrix Master class in Ausralia a few weeks ago told of doing the "right" thing. He said that he had taken the time to learn PowerShell and rewrote all of his VBS Citrix login scripts in PowerShell. The result? Login times went from about 2.5 seconds to over 15 seconds per user!

This is because PowerShell requires the .NET Framework. On a Terminal Server, the .NET Framework has to load in every user session. So not only does this produce a login delay as it loads the framework in each session, it is also very inefficient.

As a quick aside, during this conversation, Tim asked, "What? Powershell requires the .NET Framework? Then how does it work on Windows 2008 Server Core? (Since Server Core doesn't support .NET.)"

Benny's response: "It doesn't."

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In the first session, Joe gives a beginner to intermediate presentation on how to script installs. In this session, you'll learn:

• Why every Administrator/Engineer should learn how to script
• The different types of installers
• Develop a methodology and approach
• Scripting best practices
• How to troubleshoot and pinpoint problems
• In-depth analysis of several installation scripts

In the second session, Joe dives in a little deeper and talks about how to create a flexible scripting framework to tie in all the techniques learned in Part One.

To download the materials used and mentioned in this presentation, click here.

To view the presentations, click the appropriate image below:

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The most common of these is a Citrix Published Application which then keeps the user session open on the server until the Disconnect/Terminate timers step in.  The user launches a published application running on the server.  This creates a user session on the terminal server and the primary exe of the application is started.  If this exe starts a child process but does not directly manage it, when the primary exe terminates because the user is through with this application this child process will keep the session open.  This is what you might want if the child process has a visible GUI.  For example if the child process is a mshelp application - the user may have shut down the app as troubleshooting and wants this help page to remain up as (s)he restarts the application.  But many times the child has no GUI.  So the session remains open on the server until the termination timer hits (typically an hour).

With Windows 2008 and RDP published applications there will be the same problem (although with Windows 2008 and either rdp or ica sessions there will be a change that extends the life of the session for a short while anyway, hoping that the user will launch another app.  This will be more like 2 minutes.  I am hoping we can configure that time frame down in the final release).

We also see this problem in Virtualized Applicaitons, such as in SoftGrid and Citrix Streaming for sure, and I suspect Thinstall as well.  Instead of keeping a session open, it would keep the virtual environment open, which is bad enough on a desktop OS - but on a terminal server also manages to keep the user session open.  SoftGrid added a option that will terminate the child processes a couple of years after I wrote this utility to help out.  This is the unabashedly named TERMINATE_CHILDREN=TRUE tag in the OSD.  But we still have need for this app.

LaunchIt (available in the Tools section at www.tmurgent.com ) is a simple exe that takes as an argument the path/name of another exe to launch and monitor.  For example, to launch word the command line would be "LaunchIt.exe msword.exe".  In the case of the user starting a child mshelp process, when msword.exe terminates LaunchIt will terminate the child processes for you.  So you just include LaunchIt on your system (or in your virtual application package) and modify the published command line.

There is also a nice option of using "LaunchIt.exe /v msword.exe" which will detect msword ending and (if there are any child processes) prompt the user about these processes.  The dialog box lists the short name of the exes and process IDs and asks if the user wishes to terminate these as well.  Many times this is the desired approach.

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