Search results matching tag 'Support'

Citrix Summit 2008: Day 1

tim — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:34:00 GMT

Tim Mangan is at the Citrix Summit this week. Citrix runs the Summit is yearly to update their partners on upcoming product changes. While this is an NDA event, preventing reporting on much of the details, there still is much to talk about this week.

This is the second Citrix Summit event of the year. Because Citrix chose to move Synergy (the conference formerly known as iForum) from the fall into the spring this year (presumably to get it away from VMworld), Summit has moved from a January event to be in the fall, this year from October 25 - 28th. This makes for a lot of Citrix conferences in the last 12 months, but there is also a heck of a lot that Citrix is doing so its not so bad. The event is being held at the Dolphin in Orlando Florida.

Additional posts on this event:

See Day 0 post

Day 1 Post(below)

Day 2 post

Day 3 post

Day 1

Today is the first official day of the conference. Yesterday, after a half day of technical sessions we had a welcoming reception on the show floor, and an opportunity to meet with some of the exhibiters.

It always seems odd to have an exhibit floor at a show without end-user customers. Most of the sponsors have "complementary" products and are either are looking to expand their reseller/var network. The year brings a few new names to the floor. Some are new companies while others were just "new to me". I will cover as many as I can in these posts over the next few days.

There are probably a few less people here this week than in the past - maybe two thirds what I remember from the past, but that is not bad considering that this is the second Summit event of the year.

For me, having skipped Synergy, this was an opportunity to catch up with the plans I heard about in January (but couldn't write about due to NDA) that have slid out into the market in between. In my mind, the most important of these is the branding of the "Branch Repeater". The Branch Repeater may be nothing more than the branch end of an implementation using NetScaler . But the concept sounds well and should play better in the market than "you need a pair of boxes to speed up the WAN".

Also of note to me is what is happening with the Citrix Ready program. Citrix long ago abandoned working with ISVs to make applications compatible with Citrix. Maybe they thought they all worked. That doesn't mean that the need went away. I am contacted all the time by ISVs needing help with their applications needing to work on "that Citrix thing". But Citrix has been quietly working with ISV vendors for the last year with the Citrix Ready program (www.citrix.com/ready) and is now moving forward with the Citrix Community to become involved in certifying applications as well.

At the opening keynote, CEO Mark Templeton had the difficult task of telling the VAR/Reseller community to sell more product in a likely down economy. In a time of shrinking budgets and cancelled plans there will be far fewer opportunities, but no doubt they will exist. CTOs (often) understand that now is the right time to examine their operations and look for opportunities to simplify the back end of their operations in order to set themselves up for the growth that will follow the following year(s). Tapping into those inclinations will be important for the VAR community to succeed, and Citrix does have a reasonable message to play into all of this. Of course, so will others… We had some nice demos, some of existing released products and some previewing future capabilities, but there was no earth-shattering wow shown today.

Vendor Floor

Here are a few of the vendors I met with last night. There are others I met with that I want to go back with a few more questions before posting, so stay tuned.

Accario. http://www.accario.com/ These guys have been in the security space and are known for their product "EPA Factory". What they have that is new (at least to me) is a product they call "Wrapter". Wrapter takes the technology of virtual applications and applies it to the components a client needs for Citrix access. Think of it like using ThinApp with the Citrix Client. Just one file that you can put on a USBstick or any storage device and have everything you need for access. In the demo I saw, they placed it on an iPhone as the storage device. Walk up to any PC and plug in your iPhone and you can now, without admin access to the PC, run the ICA client with security credentials or even stream apps and run them on the PC. The product is sold using two different models. One model is for companies that regularly use Citrix on a daily basis, and is per user. The other interesting model is much cheaper, but provides for a limited number of uses per year - targeting those that would use Citrix as a disaster incident backup access option.

App DNA. http://www.app-dna.com/ It is hard to believe that you can build a company around application compatibility, but here you have it. My partner Kevin Kaminski turned me on to these folks last summer. So let's say there is an end-user customer with a bunch of ugly in-house developed apps and they want to move to Citrix and contact a VAR to help. AppDNA targets the VAR/Reseller/Consultant community with a product , called "AppTitude Citrix Manager", that the VAR can use as the basis of a service for these customers. This service would analyze and verify applications for application compatibility issues using AppTitude. The App DNA software will analyze the msi or setup.exe and provide a scorecard showing at a high level if there are compatibility issues. Where there are issues, it does not tell you how to fix/work-around them, but at least you know what the issues are. The reports are "cool enough" looking to present to the end customer as part of the service. This analysis service would likely become the lead-in to providing a hard quotation on the overall project.

Redfly by Celio Corp. http://www.celiocorp.com/ Redfly is a small dumb terminal (6x9 inch and 1 inch think when closed) that provides a reasonable sized portable keyboard and screen to use with your mobile devices that are running things like the Citrix Client. Personally I'll continue to haul a real laptop around but for others perhaps hauling a small dumb device to connect to your phone makes sense.

Vasco Data Security. http://www.vasco.com/ The company is in the security space, with a two-factor authentication solution. They try to place themselves in the center of the Technology/Cost/Ease-Of-Use triangle. The company may not have any technical wow pieces, but has done a good job of making a workable solution for smaller less-it savvy customers. They even have a 5 user package.

VisionApp AG. http://www.visionapp.com/ These guys are fairly well known so I won't spend much time here. New for them is support for XenApp 5.0 and XenServer 5.0. They bought a company called mRemote which they think is really important but quite frankly I left the booth not knowing what it was (probably more my fault than theirs). They have updates to their web interface that allows you to use Flash or Silverlight for an improved UI experience for the end user.

Commentary

I have been critical of Citrix's relationship with the ISV community over the last couple of years. I sense that Citrix may be turning a corner on managing these relationships. The question is whether they again really "get it" that these vendors are complimenting the Citrix solution even if they have a product that completes with a part of what Citrix sells. I can say that Citrix is making the right noises, but only time will tell. Citrix is certainly a big enough company that they should do better.

On the other hand, the Citrix commitment to their channel has been excellent for a long time. The growth, especially the acquisitions, force the company to change somewhat, but one senses a true commitment to the channel here. Clearly, they need a channel that is a "higher end" channel than what many of their resellers were a few years back. But to their credit they have been slowly pushing the channel to sell at a higher level - even somewhat training them on how to do so. Not all can make that transition, but they certainly have been given every opportunity to do so.

Error on Citrix Server 4.5

SMoon — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:00:28 GMT

Dear All,

Users are receiving the following error when opening up Explorer.exe on Published Desktops on a PS4.5 Citrix Server: -

WcTrace

Run-Time Error '52'

Bad File Name or Number

This error appears - you have to click OK - and then Explorer.exe will open? So not really stopping people from working but obviously it is a very annoying error.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what this error may relate to?

Regards

Simon Moon

Printing to a Vista64Bit OS from 32Bit Windows Server 2003 - Lexmark

SMoon — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:12:06 GMT

Dear All,

Server setup = PS4.5 two Servers in the Farm. Server 2003 R2 SP2

Client setup = Vista64bit Laptop

Client is accessing a Published Citrix Desktop via the WI and Secure Gateway (over the internet - user is working from home) using the latest XenApp Web Client.

Printer Drivers are installed on the PS4.5 Server the client is connecting to.

Client has bought a Lexmark 2690 All in One Printer

Only the 64Bit Driver for the printer has been installed on the Vista OS.

I have installed both the 64Bit and 32Bit drivers for this printer on the PS4.5 Server - when he connects to his published Desktop the Printer appears (Lexmark 2960 from Session 10 for example) and when I check the Properties of the Printer I find that the printer is using the installed driver and not the Citrix Universal Print Driver.

Everytime he attempts to print the Job gets stuck in the Print Queue - Status = Sent to Printer?????

Not sure what that inplies? I read somewhere that Disabling Bidirectional Printing may resolve this bit it did not.

Prior to the User purchasing this Lexmark printer he was using an old Epson which worked fine allowing him to print from the server locally to his printer - before the Epson he had another Lexmark, which again I couldn't get to work either!!!!

Can anyone assist with this issue?

Citrix presentation server 4.0 version query

JB_user — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:48:15 GMT

I have encountered an error alert on our Citrix Farm:
"Database connection server requires upgrade" message,

After investigation I have discovered that there are different versions of Citrix PS4 on our servers.
One server has Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server for Windows 4.0.5
and the other has Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server for Windows 4.0.6

Does anyone know how I upgrade version 4.0.5 to 4.0.6?

Many Thanks for reading.

Session Reliability with the Linux ICA client

DDot — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:08:53 GMT

I have searched all over the internet and tried many different things but I cannot figure out how to enable Session Reliability in the Linux ICA Client.

We run a mix of Windows (10.15) and Linux ICA clients (9.0 and 10.6) who connect to Presentation Server 4.5 through either the Windows or Linux Program Neighborhood. I can easily use Session Reliability with the Windows Client and see the connections go over port 2598 but I cannot find the option in the Linux Client. My Linux boxes all use 1494 to access the farm.

I found the parameter CGPAddress= in the config files and changing the value from *:2598 to blank causes the Windows clients to connect over the different ports 2598 or 1494 respectively. The same line doesn't seem to make a different in Linux.

Searching the internet really didn't give me much insight at all. In fact, I cannot find a statement saying if Session Reliability is explicitly supported or not supported in Linux.

Has anyone tried using it before under the Linux ICA client and how did you get it to work?

Web Interface account lockout

TheCitrixNinja — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:34:58 GMT

I am having an issue on a XenApp 4.5 farm where when the Web Interface logs out, as is should per the time settings, it locks the Active Directory account out as well. I have only notices this through the CAG Standard so not sure if it is related and may need to narrow that down.

Has anyone seen this? Thanks for the help!

Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 Licensing errors. Event ID 26 and Event ID 9017

clieberg78 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:51:40 GMT

Over the past 2 weeks I've been getting the following errors.

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Application Popup
Event Category: None
Event ID: 26
Date: 10/14/2008
Time: 8:52:13 AM
User: N/A
Computer: WSPRD048
Description:
Application popup: Citrix Client Logon Message : Citrix Presentation Server license acquisition error (500): Unable to acquire a license from (WSPRD048) server. Please contact your system administrator or open Event Viewer for more details.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

--------

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: MetaFrame
Event Category: None
Event ID: 9017
Date: 10/14/2008
Time: 8:52:13 AM
User: N/A
Computer: WSPRD048
Description:
This computer running Citrix Presentation Server will now stop accepting connections. This server is no longer in or could not enter a licensing grace period.

I have been working with Citrix support, but with limited success. It seems that I can correct the issue for a couple days if I change the license server that it's talking to, then back. This recreates the MPS-WSXICA_MPS-WSXICA.INI file and forces the server to communicate with the license server.

The servers are all on Presentation server 4.5 Roll-up 2 with Hotfix PSE450R02W2K3036. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Chad

Citrix Client Creating Event ID: 1004 License Errors?

nodeuces — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:21:28 GMT

Yesterday I had a server which is only published to a group of lab users who were having trouble not logging in. Unfortunately, no one would email the specific message they received but the terminal server logs were full of 1004 MS Events. This was ridiculous because the DCs were online and issuing licesnses on every other box in the farm.

A field engineer arrived and noticed machines all had the same old Citrix client. On a whim he upgraded them all to the latest XenApp 11 and to all of our amazement the errors ceased and users were able to logon.

So what is causing this and why in the thousands of citrix and 1004 articles on "the internets" can I find no mention of the ICA client being to blame?

Background: Windows 2000 server/Citrix Xpe Clients were 7 or earlier and the workstations are Windows 2000. Clients access via 4.6 web interface.

Problems adding STA server! HELP

laslo — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:42:51 GMT

Hi there,

We have some problems adding the right Sevure Ticket Authority.
Each time it gives the eroor: "STA server verification ""failed!"

On all PS servers xml is set to port 8080. On our IIS/Citrix WI server XML is also set to port 8080.
In IIS virtual directory /Scripts en all it's settings are there. I've checked the settings 1001 times with all i could find online.

Does anyone has a right step-by-step suggestion what i can do to make it work?

I've tryed to add a STA sever with
full.domain.name.com:8080 --> /Scripts/ctxsta
full.domain.name.com --> /Scripts/ctxsta
10.10.10.10:8080 --> /Scripts/ctxsta
10.10.10.10 --> /Scripts/ctxsta

unreggistred and registred the xmls service, manually addes to IIS etc etc...

hope someone can help me out,

grtz
Läslo

Video Knowledge Base Article

Anonymous — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:03:59 GMT

Would you rather watch a short instruction video than reading pages of instructions? Now you can. I've been working with Citrix support team to enhance the existing knowledge base web site with relevant videos.

Here is one example. We recently linked a "CitrixTip" video from our Citrix tip video site with the relevant knowledge base article. You can find the video link in the summary section of the knowledge base article. This video shows how to gather debug trace on Citrix XenApp servers.

Many thanks to the colleagues from our knowledge center team to make this happen.

Click here to watch the higher resolution video with notes.

Here is the embedded version

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Please leave your comment if you have any suggestion. It's your chance to make the knowledge base site even more useful to you.

Ray Yang

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