Citrix Upgrade Workflow

The following is a handy workflow for the Citrix Workflow upgrade.

Citrix Session reliability screenshot of the user experience

The Citrix Session reliability feature has been around for ages. It has changed its behavior a bit recently dependent on Citrix Receiver Version. The following show the differences for the end-user experience. Thanks to Kaleigh at Citrix for her help with this.

Citrix Receiver 3.4 - This shows a reconnecting systray bubble. 

Citrix Receiver 3.4

 Citrix Receiver 4.0 thru 4.2 - This shows a systray bubble and grey's the window to show its not active

Citrix Receiver 4.0

Citrix Receiver 4.3 & 4.4 - This shows a systray bubble with newer logo and connection interrupted message. The window goes grey the window to show its not active

Citrix Receiver 4.3

Citrix Session reliability screenshot of the user experience

The Citrix Session reliability feature has been around for ages. It has changed its behavior a bit recently dependent on Citrix Receiver Version. The following show the differences for the end-user experience. Thanks to Kaleigh at Citrix for her help with this.

Citrix Receiver 3.4 - This shows a reconnecting systray bubble. 

Citrix Receiver 3.4

 Citrix Receiver 4.0 thru 4.2 - This shows a systray bubble and grey's the window to show its not active

Citrix Receiver 4.0

Citrix Receiver 4.3 & 4.4 - This shows a systray bubble with newer logo and connection interrupted message. The window goes grey the window to show its not active

Citrix Receiver 4.3

Citrix ICA file behaviour (some of it)

When connecting to a Citrix environment the connection between end-point and resource is established via an ICA file. (receiver for web)

The ICA file is generated by storefront and delivered back to the end-point.

ICA file Location
The ICA file get stored in the users
"%Appdata%\local\Temp" or "%LocalAppData%\Local\Citrix\Web Helper\Temp\2"

ICA files downloaded 
IE downloads - 4 ICA files
Chrome downloads - 2 ICA files
Firefox - 4 ICA Files
(Note : 4 files are downloaded for desktops and 2 for published applications)

File Assocation
The ICA file is then launched via file Association to open Citrix Receiver or Citrix Connection Manager.

File Delete
When the session is disconnected or logged off the ICA file should be deleted. This is contolled via the Default.ICA file on storefront with the setting RemoveICAfile=Yes

Testing
My testing showed that Firefox did not always clean up the ICA files on logoff or disconnect and left 1 ICA file behind. This was always true when "Connection Manager" was used to open ICA files. When Receiver was used within Firefox the ICA files removed as expected.
It was noticed that ICA files are always called ICAxxxx except in firefox with connection manager which names the files WEQ3xxxxx

Citrix XenDesktop 7 Connection Leasing (LHC replacement)

Citrix XenDesktop 7.6 Connection Leasing

Description

When Citrix changed the management architecture from IMA to FMA we faced a challenge in that database connectivity became important as without we lost management and the users could not make new connections. 

The "IMA" architecture featured a LHC (local Host Cache) Feature which kept a subset of database information on Farm Controllers. This meant a loss of connection to the database server would only impact the administrators. 

The newer "FMA" architecture had no such caching option and as such always required access to the SQL database to service admin and user requests.

This meant that we had a much greater reliance on a High available SQL than before. 

The release of XenDesktop 7.6 gave us a feature called "Connection Leasing" which gives us back a similar safety net that LHC had given us. 

The connection leasing feature supplements the SQL Server high availability best practices by enabling users to connect and reconnect to their most recently used applications and desktops, even when the Site database is not available.
Connections are cached for a lease period of two weeks. So, if the database becomes unavailable, the desktops and applications that the user launched in the previous two weeks remain accessible to that user through StoreFront. However, desktops and applications that have not been launched during the previous two-week lease period are not accessible when the database is unavailable
Connection Leasing will only occur in the event of a failure of all controllers within a site.

Database Sync

Each controller retrieves the sync information from the SQL database. This is throttled at a rate of up to 1000 leases every 10 seconds until all leases are synchronized.

Lease Files

The lease files are stored by default in
%programdata%\Citrix\Broker\Cache
The number of expected lease files can be calculated  using the following formula for Desktop accessible via LAN and Access Gateway.
(Users *2) + (Users * Desktops) + (Users * Application delivery groups) + VDAs
Leases file vary in size (0.5K – 512K) but will typically consume 4K blocks on NTFS file systems.

Example VDI Sizing

table to follow

VDA Registration

During connection leasing there is a 2 minute period at the start and end of the outage where VDAs maybe un-registered and then re-registered. This can have a performance impact with large amounts of machines registering in a short period.

In the event that some controllers remain connected to the database while others  fail, VDAs should register themselves with the working controller. Connection Leasing will only occur in the event of a failure of all controllers within a site.

SQL TimeOut

SQL queries have a default of 30s before they are deemed to have timed out, then the controllers will wait another 90s for a response, giving a total of 120 seconds before leasing will activate. This value can be altered if desired. (see parameters table)

Query Commands

The following commands can be used to view Broker Leasing information.

• Set-BrokerSite -ConnectionLeasingEnabled $true|$false - Turns connection leasing on or off. Default = $true 

• Get-BrokerServiceAddedCapability - Outputs “ConnectionLeasing” for the local Controller. 

• Get-BrokerLease - Retrieves either all or a filtered set of current leases. 

• Remove-BrokerLease - Marks either one or a filtered set of leases for deletion. 

• Update-BrokerLocalLeaseCache – Updates the connection leasing cache on the local Controller. The data is resynchronized during the next synchronization.

Configurable Parameters

table to follow

Citrix MCS Catalog Failure Troubleshooting

 The following technique can be used to troubleshoot Image Preperation errors in Citrix Xendesktop.

1.) Set reg Key
On the master machine that will be cloned logon
add the following registry key
HKLM\Software\Citrix\MachineIdentityServiceAgent\Logging = 1

2.) Shutdown
Shutdown the Master VM

3.) Snapshot
Take Snapshot

4.) Disable auto-shutdown
On the DDC powershell run the following command
Set-ProvServiceConfigurationData -Name ImageManagementPrep_NoAutoShutdown -Value $True

5.) Create catalog
Create a new catalog from the snapshot

6.) Get Logfiles
When a new VM is created in the hypervisor , logon and check the log files in the root of C:\

7.) Enable auto-shutdown
On the DDC powershell run the following command
Remove-ProvServiceConfigurationData -Name ImageManagementPrep_NoAutoShutdown

Citrix VDA Standalone Installer

Citrix have the VDA component of their product contained on the XenDesktop 7 ISO.

However if you want to remove the VDA from the ISO and make a portable version that can be used by deployment teams its not as easy as just copying a MSI or files in the \VDA folder.

This is un-tested but i believe the following are the required folders to remove the VDA agent from the main installation ISO


├ AutoRun.inf

├ AutoSelect.exe

├ ProductVersion.txt

├───Citrix Receiver and Plug-ins

│   └───Windows

│       ├───ReceiverEnterpriseMetadata.xml

│       ├───ReceiverMetadata.xml

│       └───ReceiverMetadataForCitrixUpdates.xml

├───Support

│   ├───AdDeploy

│   ├───Tools

│   ├───UnregisterVDA

│   ├───VcRedist_2005

│   ├───VcRedist_2008_SP1

│   └───VcRedist_2010_RTM

├───x64

│   ├───MediaId_7C57BFC2-CAA2-4a7f-8A81-4D9DEC545EF4_x64

│   ├───MediaId_C8096DF2-8AF8-45DE-B01B-A6CC9AFBCA9C_x64

│   ├───ProfileManagement

│   ├───Virtual Desktop Components

│   └───XenDesktop Setup

└───x86

    ├───MediaId_7C57BFC2-CAA2-4a7f-8A81-4D9DEC545EF4_x86

    ├───MediaId_C8096DF2-8AF8-45DE-B01B-A6CC9AFBCA9C_x86

    ├───ProfileManagement

    ├───Virtual Desktop Components

    └───XenDesktop Setup

Citrix Xenapp SCOM rules impacting IMASRV.EXE

A Citrix Customer recently reported this major incident which caused them an outage.


IssueUsers were unable to logon to Citrix XenApp 6.55 farm.
Clicking on web interface icon would not do anything, so users might click multiple times.
In the past, the Web Interface was unable to load until we restarted XML service. This time however this was not the case.


Looking on a member server a qfarm /load or qfarm /ltload would take an age (10mins to comeback).

The ZDC showed 20-40%CPU for IMAsrv.exe


To get round the problem we had been playing with Load throttling policies (we have medium now) and also swapping most preferred server.


ResolutionA CDF Trace sent to citrix however resulted on the following conclusion. 

Disabled the following rule in SCOM
"Sample Published Application load from load balancing"

This chance corrected the issue. 

Citrix HDX Adobe Flash Redirection

Citrix Flash-Redirection allows us to redirect Adobe Flash playback to be rendered on a compatible end-point.This technique ensures an optimal experience with the end-point taking the processing hit as opposed to the CPU on the VM or server.

Flash Redirection Set-up and Configuration
In order to ensure Flash redirection can occur the following are required.

1)Adobe Flash player Installed within the VM or Xenapp server host.

2)Adobe Flash player Installed on the end-point (for IE or other depending on your browser)

3)Citrix Receiver Client (V13 or newer for Gen2 Flash redirection)

4) Flash Redirection enabled in Citrix Policy (Default=Enabled)

5)Enable Flash Optimisation on the end point in the Receiver desktop viewer preferences

Testing its working

Once enabled we need to ensure that everything is working as expected. 

The HDX monitor tool from Citrix is great for this as it can show if Flash redirection is enabled and active.

(screenshot of Flash redirection working)

To Test the experience visit a decent flash website. I found this one pretty good as it provide statistics on the playback experience. This video playback will resize based on the available bandwidth. 

http://wwwns.akamai.com/hdnetwork/demo/flash/default.html

Note : Newer IE Browsers failing to perform Flash Redirection in Citrix Sessions

For Internet Explorer 11 the following may be required,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\HdxMediaStreamForFlash\Server\PseudoServer

Add the entry named IEBrowserMaximumMajorVersion with a DWORD value = 11 (decimal). The hexadecimal equivalent is 0x0000000b

Xenapp 6.5 server fails to shutdown

Our customer had a number of computers that failed to restart on the scheduled reboot policy.
The servers would hang on a grey screen and require manual intervention to restart them.

The following Microsoft fix corrected this issue.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2494816

APP-V Autoload Settings

APP-V by design performs checks on application launch to ensure that the latest version of the application is cached on the device. This action does have an overhead and in environments where the deployment of software is managed outside of APP-V (eg. SCCM or scripts) this behaviour can be considered for being disabled. 

The behaviour is controlled by the following registry keys. Setting to 0 disables the action.

HKLM\Software\Wow6432node\Microsoft\Softgrid\4.5\client\configuration

AutoLoadTriggers = 0

AutoLoadTarget = 0

Full information here

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd464849.aspx

Citrix Streaming with Raderun

The raderun.exe can be used to launch a Citrix profiled application without using web interface or Receiver.

This can be handy for quick tests.

the syntax is

RADERUN.EXE /app:"appname" /package:"\\nas\share\apps\myapp.profile"

optional switches are
-c    pre-flush the cache
-C    pre-flush the cache, including user data
-d    post-flush the cache
-D    post-flush the cache, including user data
-e    pre-extract all files
-o    deploy the application for offline use
-x    run isolated command prompt

It should be noted that the appname is the name that shows in the profiler and not the published application name.

If you want to flush cached applications enter Radecache /flushall

All this information is from this Citrix article
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX115191

IOMeter IOPS Benchmark Testing

The freeware tool IOMeter is very handy for testing the kind of IOPS that a given bit of storage can deliver.

The following are some recommended settings for using IOMETER to test IOPS for a VDI solution.


Atlantis computing have a newer article and set of setting detailed here.
Atlantis Advised Settings

My testing has shown best results with 6 workers , disk size of 2071952 and 16 threads per worker.

A full guide to IOMeter can be found here

http://www.randylee.com/hp/iometer_images/Iometer.pdf

A good guide to IOPS testing has been written by Atlantis Computing
Windows_7_IOPS_for_VDI_a_Deep_Dive_1_0

Citrix XenApp Streamed App Cache Size

By default the Citrix Cached application repository is set to a max size of 1GB

This seems a bit mean with most customers wanting to fully cache the applications.
To change the size and/or the location of the cache use the following EXE or REG hack methods.

GUI Method
C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\Streaming Client\ClientCache.exe

Registry
HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Citrix\Rade
CacheLimitMb   (REG_DWORD)

XenApp 6.5 Published Application on network drive fail to launch

Published applications on a network drive fail to launch

In the eventlog you may see messages like
Event ID 10000 H:\apps\thisapp.exe is not valid on XXXX verify the correct servers and/or worker groups are assigned

By default XenApp 6.5 performs a check that the published application location is valid on the server.
If publishing applications that are stored on users network drives the application will fail to launch as the server is unaware of the drive mapping.  

eg. H:\apps\thisapp.exe

A workaround is to use a UNC path for the data area, though the local system account of the server will need access to the data area in order to check that it exist.

Another workaround is to use the solution documented in Citrix article CTX131565 or use a UNC path  instead of a drive letter. The servers local system account will need access to the UNC path in order to validate the applications existence.

XenApp Lingering Processes on Logoff

In VMWare virtualised XenApp environments the VMTools may prevent users logging of cleanly.
The user will remain connected to the XenApp server and also their profile may continue to reside on the server after they have logged off.

Ensure that the entry VMHGFS from the NetworkProvider order list

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider\Order

Applications not running in seamless mode

In my XenApp 6.5 Farm my published applications would not run in Seamless mode. They all had the desktop wrapper around them. My internal web interface site launched the applications seamless as expected by my external website reached by users coming in remotely did not.


All my installs were pretty much out the box. The only slight thing worth noting is that the web interface box was an install via XenDesktop installation. I then use this web interface site to allow connection to both my XenDesktop and XenApp environments. I have a site set up for LAN users and another setup for External connections.


To resolve the issue i had to add TWIMODE=ON into the default.ica file in the external website directory.
This file lives in  Inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\xxxx\conf  where xxxx is your website path 


I got this information from this article 
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX116357

XenApp 6.5 IMA service fails to start

On the build of a new XenApp 6.5 farm the IMA service failed to start on the first server build. The only error in event log was


System Error : The program can't start because ctxsecureima64.dll is missing from your computer.The IMA service showed in the starting state.


 However after about 10 minutes the service did finally start. A CTX article explains that the IMA has a default timeout of 6 minutes so a slow database might have been the cause of this and the DLL error message a red herring.

Citrix Profile Manager

This is a good article covering Citrix Profile Manager

It recommends that as a minimum that Local and LocalLow and Local Settings are set excluded from roaming.

http://blogs.citrix.com/2012/02/11/citrix-profile-management-and-vdi-%E2%80%93-doing-it-right/

Disable Adobe Flash Auto Updates

In a RDS environement you will not want users prompted each time that adobe updates the flash version.

Adobe document a process to prevent this
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/167/16701594.html

The steps are pretty simple.
Use Notepad++ to create a file with the line
AutoUpdateDisable=1

Convert this file to a UTF-8 text format and save as MMS.CFG
This file then need to be deployed into
%windows%\system32\macromed\flash
%windows%\syswow64\macromed\flash

This file overrides individula users settings.sol files.