From the Skunkworks Dept. As we are approaching the release of Workspace Manager 2012 later this year, here's a sneakpeek into the goodiebag of good things to come. Specifically I've taken the RES Relay Server for a spin and kicked the tires in the lab, in order to give you a better understanding of what this thing is. This technote article should hopefully help you gain a better understanding on what new options we will have at our disposal for designing tomorrows workspace solutions.

<<< Click here to read the article

While we're at it, I've updated an old article RG004 – Workspace Manager commandline parameters, so it reflects the new parameters to unattended configure a Relay Server connection for a Workspace Manager 2012 agent. Click here to see the updates.

From the TechNote Dept: A new article by Patrick Kaak has been posted in the TechLibrary. This time around Patrick shows us the advantages of incorporating existing scripts into RES Automation Manager, illustrating by example how an otherwise semi-static script can be converted into a reusable runbook, which requires no editing what so ever. The example at hand utilizes Thomas Koetzing’s excellent Citrix Hotfix downloader script. By embedding it into an AM runbook you don’t have to ever edit it again. As usual for your convenience, an example buildingblock is included

<<< Click here to read the article

From the partially RES related dept. It finally happened! Last year RES Software’s US-resident Cowboy Viking got the marching orders to head out west, to set up shop, in what happens to be my old stomping grounds around the Bay Area. While Philadelphia and the east coast have been an interesting and rewarding experience, as the song goes; my heart never really left San Francisco. Within the year I’ve been here on the east coast, a lot of good things have happened; we’ve trained and certified partners from Toronto down to Miami, from New York to Chicago. 2011 was inded a busy year in the RES US channel.

Here in 2012, it’s now time for yours truly to head “home” and focus on getting the western US territories stood up technically. As you may have noticed, we have significantly leveraged our relationship with Citrix this year, hence I really look forward to working more with the guys in Santa Clara in the near future. This article will kick off a series of mini photo-blog articles on a separate page (book mark this), started January 28th, 2012, covering the trip from Philly to San Francisco, expected to last 6-7 days.

Just on the off note: If you are wondering why I’m planning to document the trip, it’s because it’s just one of those things one rarely gets a chance to do. Besides that, I expect it’s going to be fun, at least in the eyes of a Scandinavian. My wife and and I are packing up our stuff in a bigass Uhaul trailer and taking the 3.000 mile drive (that’s about 4.800 km for you Europeans :) across the United States. Some of the folks around here ask me; Why not just have your stuff shipped and fly out yourselves? This is where I want to pause for a moment and remind my American friends that you and I live in of the most interesting geographical places on this 3rd rock from the Sun! There’s enough to see on the road to last you a lifetime. There are beautiful, wacky, tacky, terrible, awe-inspiring and jaw-dropping things to see all over this country and you have it all on your doorstep. Just get in your damn car and go! :)

With all that being said, here’s Mr. Rock from Detroit, who’ll explain what it’s all about (PS: if you’re stateside, click here for HD version.

The trip is now over! We made it safely to San Francisco. Read all about the trip on the pages here. (Currently being updated as I missed out writing in the last couple of days)

From the RES Community Hero Dept. Today I’d like to introduce a new blog site, which one of my good colleagues, Musa Cakar from RES Support has launched. The blog is called My Virtual Environment, or MYVE.nl. His first article is very useful, as it deals with reducing the size of Mozilla Firefox profiles, using the RES Workspace Manager. Be sure to check out the article here!

From the Mayday-We’re-Syncing Dept. On the last day of 2011, the Service Release 3 for the RES Workspace Manager 2011 was released. Among a bunch of new cool enhancements, there is one that I especially would like to elaborate on. Workspace Manager supports Microsoft Sync Center, a part of Windows 7. Specifically the support consists of that network drive-mappings, created in Workspace Manager will continue to work nicely, when Sync Center is used to bring stuff offline. This means you don’t have to worry about scripts to map the network drive when you’re offline. A new technote RG044 has been added to the Technote Library describing how this works. A helpful buildingblock has been included.

<<< Click here to read the article

From the Technotes-R-Us Dept. With the Automation Manager 2012 currently available as RC2, a RESguru article describing the nuts, bolts and registry settings of the new Dispatcher+ has been overdue for a while. To the rescue comes Rob Aarts with a great article, which explains the ins and outs of the new dispatcher component. Also covered in the article is the Master Dispatcher/Cache feature. The most important registry settings to tweak the behavior of the Dispatcher are also covered. Finally the article also covers the new WebAPI for Automation Manager.

<<< Click here to read the article!

Today, Jan 3rd we celebrate the 3rd year of RESguru.com and a new staffmembers arrival. As you may recall there was a bit of controversy surrounding RESguru.com’s date of inception, but I’m glad this is behind us now and the usurper was silenced – at least for a while anyway :-) At this time, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank YOU, our regular readers and commentors for help in making the site what it is today. Your feedback and constructive critique has been essential to motivating myself and the other writers to continue what is essentially a labor of love.

I would also like to thank my current co-writers for providing quality content over the years. As all contributions to RESguru.com are on a completely voluntary basis, it’s with gratitude that I am able to publish the shared works of our regular staff, colleagues, friends and industry partners. To all of you: Thank you!

On that note, I would also like to welcome another RESguru onto the regular writer’s staff: Mr. Rob Aarts. Rob has a load of technical RES product experience which he’ll be sharing here on the ‘Guru site. His first article is about the new Global Variables in the RES Automation Manager. I’d suggest you give it a read! Rob’s bio can be found here.

From the sideline comments dept. Just before xmas Brian shares his view on what’s important for vendors in relation to Desktop Virtualization. I’m not going to recap his article in total, you can read it here. What I wanted to comment on specifically, is that it’s really nice to have been working with a vendor for 11+ years now, who all along has been doing what the good Dr. Madden orders today! :-) While we originally back in the late ’90s started out being a product only for Terminal Services/Citrix environments, RES products were kept in tune with the times and trends to embrace all windows platforms: Workstations, Laptops and Server Based Computing – what I referred to as tri-platform support back in the day.

With the emergence of virtualization, first on hardware, then later on applications, it was  possible for RES to add 3 more innovative dimensions to that picture:

1. Early VDI Workspace support: RES Software actually didn’t have to change much, if anything in the Workspace Manager (back in the day known as PowerFuse) to support VDI. As the Workspace Composer runs inside the user’s session, seen from a technical perspective of the product, it’s running on a workstation OS, which just happens to be accessed as a terminal server through RDP, HDX or whatever. In other words, all the goodness which Workspace Manager offered already for Laptops, Physical workstations and Terminal servers, was available for VDI from day one.
2. First App-V integration: RES was TRUTHFULLY, THE VERY FIRST VENDOR who worked proactively with the Grand-Daddy of all application virtualization technologies, SoftGrid by Softricity – now known as App-V by Microsoft. Since then, we’ve adapted to support pretty much every major App Virtualization platform out there. Application virtualization is an important piece of VDI as it will allow you to have more apps to co-exist in the same image. Using the workspace manager to differentiate access to these apps, you can litterally cut down your VDI configuration to one golden image per operating system. Look out for an article on this topic later.
3. First Reverse Seamless provider: Back in the day, RES had this little – relatively un-noticed – sidecar utility to the Workspace Manager, known as the RES Subscriber aka Workspace Extender. These were the first implementations of Reverse Seamless Windows. Few people saw the potential early on, but I’d like to highlight a specific video, made by my former colleague Rick Eilenberger, that demonstrates what it was able to do already then in 2007. It was known as the RES Subscriber. The technology later licensed by Citrix, evolved to a stand-alone product, known as VDX. For more information on VDX, go read here.

The only thing we’ve left alone in regards to virtualization, is so called ‘User Virtualization’. This is some sort of horn which the Usual Suspects likes to blow (and do I mean blow… ;-) To my experience, the concept of virtualizing the user makes no sense at all. The user is the only real “object” in the entire getup anyway. Sure, hardware is quite real too, however unlike the behavior of users, it’s behavior is way more predictable, hence virtualizing it is relatively easy in comparison. This is one of the reasons why I believe the idea of redirecting the profile to a database is a flawed concept to begin with. You want as fast and reliable access to your settings to your settings as well as your documents to cater for the user’s sometimes erratic behavior. This is why the RES Workspace Manager was built with purpose to store User Settings in the same manner as User Data is stored; in a location which is unique and readily accessible to the user.

With the ever-growing adaptation of Cloud Computing into the Enterprise space, the profile game is a-changing. Boatloads of other pundits have been describing in vivid detail how users will demand access to their settings virtually anywhere. One way of dealing with this is to provide ACCESS from anywhere to a centralized solution. Citrix have been doing this for well over 20 years. Thing can however quickly become harrowing if changes the user makes should follow them between different infrastructures (different server farms, operating systems or even different laptops). This is where an intelligent and granular approach to handling user settings is required. If you are contemplating storing your settings only in a standard SQL database – or on a fileserver for that matter you are asking for trouble, or at the very least unnecessary complexity. I’ve discussed this previously in this article.

Anyway, while the usual suspects are duking it out on the commentary section over on BM, RES Software is ready to take on the new year. Stay tuned to this blog for even more tidbits and useful info in 2012! Happy new year everybody.

From the Get-Yerself-Certified Dept. As the year is drawing to a close, it's my pleasure to share with you the partner training calendar for the United States, 2012. We'll be hosting a number of classes where you can learn the nuts & bolts of the RES product line, from the ground up. The classes will primarily be run by yours truly in 2012. According to the wishes of existing and new RES partners, we've selected a number of US cities where technical training will take place. Mark down the dates and contact me if you want to reserve a seat. Registered participants will receive information about the venues, prerequisites and everything else, when time is approaching.Here are all locations, dates, courses and abreviations: AM=Automation Manager, WM=Workspace Manager, SO=Service Orchestration.

Here's a bit of background info on these classes. If you've never sat through a RES training class, you're in for a pleasant surprise. These classes are very heavy on practical labwork rather than the usual PowerPoint + 15 steps of boring labwork. Having trained a slew of technologies over the last 20+ years, including Citrix, RES, App-V and Packeteer, I've formulated a good recipe which resonates well with most participants:

• Get the basic theory of operations
• See how it's done
• Try to build it yourself
• Possibly fail. Don't panic! This is a good thing. See below.
• Fix the problem and learn from the experience
• Repeat on a new topic.

The failure part at first seem to worry some folks in the modern business culture which seems predominant, being spewed and enforced by clueless managers that "failure isn't an option". You, as an engineer or an admin, got to look at it with better eyes than that, because that's how we learn best as Human Beings. Somehow we seem to forgotten this basic rule of human nature in the ruthless corporate world we inhabit as IT people. Pause and think back for a moment: It is likely that ever last one of us as a youngster , learned the hard way a stove is indeed hot! (well, maybe Harry didn't ;) – All because we were unable to absorb the experience of the senior people in the household.

In a much too typical IT class, you watch the numbnut at the whiteboard yammer on for 1-2 hours, showing off his Powerpoint skills, while reading aloud from the curriculum, followed by; "So, let's turn to Lab Excersize 23A on page 451 and take 15 minutes to complete this lab". This is where you with 98.2% probability will see the Instructor bolting for the door to answer voicemail or go on his smokebreak. You as a participant, in the meantime get the sheer thrill of following 15-20 lab steps: Click here, now click there etc. etc…Done. My question to you at this point is – and think hard about this one:

What. Did. You. Learn ?

Did said lab exercise provide you with the opportunity for independent thought or ideas? Did it expose any weaknesses in the procedure (or god forbid, in the product!) which would help you in the field later? Did you get the chance to fail, fix and learn from the experience? If the answer is no to all of the above, you have to ask yourself if you feel properly prepared. After all, chances are that your employer is not pulling you from the field, just to enjoy the nice catering and my lame Chuck Norris jokes during class.

When dealing with potent and extremely versatile products – such as the ones RES Software produces – a different approach is needed as described above. Setting you up for potential failure during class will help you avoid making similar mistakes when in front of your customer. It's as simple as that. Being thrown into the deep end of the pool is not a bad thing here, as long as there's a qualified lifeguard on duty. What that translates to is that during my classes you can expect to be challenged, but at the same time fully supported.

I look forward to seeing you in class. For more information on the classes and a handy training and certification FAQ, see this article.

‘Twas a month before Xmas and through the hotel, nothing was stirring… well maybe, except for the 450+ geeks and guru’s who assembled at the Hilton Universal City, Los Angeles for the first major Citrix Technology Exchange event on Dec 2nd 2012. RES Software had been invited as a platinum sponsor of the event. Besides showing our products at the vendor’s tables, we also had a couple of presentation slots. I want to take a moment to specially thank my friend Rick Eilenberger at Citrix for putting this great event together. Be sure to check out his follow-up article here.

During one of the RES Software presentations, I had the pleasure of once again demonstrating the unparalleled awesomeness of the RES Automation Manager. This time I had the good Mr. Luca Lo Castro with me on stage, as he is indeed the evil mastermind behind this latest creation. What we have here is nothing less than one of the most awesome Run Books created for RES Automation Manager yet. The Runbook does the following:

• Unattended installation of Citrix Provisioning Server 6.0 (PVS)
• Unattended installation of Citrix XenApp 6.5 (XA)
• Unattended installation of Xen Desktop 5.5 (XD)
• Preparation of a Windows 7 image (application of best practices, per Citrix’s recommendations.

This is quite valuable for anyone who installs these products for a living, no matter if you are a consultant, a Citrix SE or perhaps a Citrix admin at a large installation. The cool part is that ALL of the above is done in less than 45 minutes! Add that to the approx. 15 minutes it takes to stand up the RES Automation Manager infrastructure, and ask yourself this: How long does it take you to stand up a XenDesktop + PVS + XA environment under normal circumstances? I trust you see my point. So what are the prerequisites for all this? You’ll need the following:

• Your 3 .ISO files, respectively for PVS, XA and XD. If you haven’t got them, download them from MyCitrix.com
• A server (200x, doesn’t really matter), which will hold your DBMS for Automation Manager and be a mount point for your ISO’s. Let’s call it Server1. If you can run a compatible datastore for Automation Manager, this could be your laptop!
• Mount the ISO’s on this server using Daemon Tools or similar. Alternatively, if you are using a VM, you can just mount the ISO’s directly on the virtual machine as DVD drives. Finally if you already have the ISO’s extracted somewhere, you can just share those folders. Either way, make sure you share the individual mount folders, so the contents of each ISO is available as a \\server1\share UNC path.
• You will also need 3 blank x64 Server 2008R2 servers. And I do mean blank. For example, not manually install the .Net 4 client profile ahead, as it will mess up the unattended installation of SQL Express. These servers will be the target servers for PVS, XA and XD. Lets call these machines Server A, B and C
• Finally you’ll need a blank Windows 7 machine. This is the machine which will be prepped for use with PVS (registry hacks applied, services configured etc) as the golden image.

To get things stood up, here are some guidelines to get you started:

1. Download and install the RES Automation Manager aka AM. Refer to the Getting Started guide.
2. Deploy the AM Dispatcher to Server1
3. Deploy the AM Agents to the 3 blanks Servers A..C
4. Import the buildingblock, which you will find at the end of this article.
5. In the AM console, go to Repository | Run Books
6. Rightclick on the Citrix POC-Sales runbook and select Schedule Job
7. Fill out the parameters for the runbook as described below
8. Hit OK, then hit the local Starbucks.. :)

The parameter screen needs a bit of explanation, because if you don’t fill things in right, then of course “interesting” things may happen. You know the drill: BS in, BS out. So let’s have a look at a screen I’ve already filled out below. Click to enlarge:

 The table below explains each field and what you need to enter. There’s a couple of blank spots, but as soon as I get them validated by Luca I’ll be sure to update the posting.

Those of you who are savy with Automation Manager may wonder why that AM resources aren’t utilized for this RunBook. The reason is twofold: First of all, you don’t wan’t to be waiting to upload the close to 8GB of the 3 ISO’s together to the datastore. Not that it can’t handle it, but think about that you would have to do that every time there is a new .ISO. it would make things really cumbersome. Second, by not using a linked resource we preserve the flexibility of the runbook, without having to modify it, i.e. we don’t need to edit any resource every time we go to a new place where we want to use the Run Book.

I guess at this point you want to have a go at the RunBook, so just click on the Christmas present on the right to download:

Enjoy!

Note: If you have problems with getting the runbook to work, again: Make sure the 2008 servers are blank. If still no luck, post your results in the forum, so we can get some eyes on it. The buildingblock is provided as-is. It’s not something that has been provided officially in the context of RES or RES Support.