About Roy

About Me

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 13:24:00 +0000

On 10th of January 2023 my existing organization told me that in they have evolved into a new business model and they let go many talents and in that one was me.

I had anticipated it but thought let it happen then we will plan. <--- Looking at current circumstances and market situation, I should had a "Plan B" ready.

It's important to maintain a positive attitude and believe that everything happens for a reason. However, it can be difficult to shift careers, especially at an older age and in the context of India's strong family and social structures. It is especially important to be selective when considering new job opportunities at this stage in your career, as you likely have limited time left before retirement.

What kind of job am I looking for ?

Before I answer this let me provide you my brief career background

I started my IT career in 2000 with Sonkh Technologies then worked with UV Infotech , Computer Associates , Tata Consultancy Service , Infosys and recently with Citrix.

Technical : How Technical am I?

I began my consulting career at Infosys, providing VMWare consulting services to various customers across different industries for nearly 5 years. I assisted Infosys clients in selecting the appropriate VMWare products (SRM/ESXi) and developing solutions based on their needs. During this time, I also designed solutions using HP Blades and worked with storage products such as NetApp. I also helped many customers with the process of converting their critical physical application servers to a virtual platform hosted on ESXi. (Check Linkedin recommendation section)

I was hired Citrix by my Guruji Girish Gupta (even now he is my guru) in 2010 and joined as a Principal Consultant for End User Computing .This was direct customer facing role where I use to understand customer business requirements and then design Citrix solution around it. I was a single man army who needs to have knowledge around Hardware (Blade, PC , Printer) /Storage /Active Directory / Networking / Database (SQL) /Anti Virus/ Cloud (AWS/Azure /OCI /GCP)

Throughout my career, I progressed from a consultant to an Architect and eventually a Senior Architect. During this time, I gained experience across a range of industries, including ITeS, Manufacturing, Telecom, Pharma, Retail, Government, Public Sector, Education, KPO-BPO, and Public and Private Banks. As I moved into higher-level roles, my responsibilities broadened beyond technical expertise to include leading teams of technical consultants, conducting webinars for partners, and assisting presales engineers with solution positioning. I remained in this technical role until 2021. My technical testimony is available on my blogs and if required reference can also be provided.

In 2021 , I decided to move beyond technical role. I joined team of Enterprise Architect under the leadership of Daniel Watson . We become part of customer success organization under the leadership of Gregor Preidl.

We started helping customer success organization by helping customers and sales organization:

Establishing and aligning architectural direction and principles within customer organizations.
Providing strategic roadmap recommendations based upon existing data sets or analysis of a customer's current platform(s).
Providing guidance and advisory services to Service Delivery Organization to ensure successful outcomes in multi-vendor / multi - organization programs.
Provide technical guidance ,validate technical concepts ,perform quality check and validate leading practice for all the consulting projects.
Position premium support service offering based on customer needs.
Prepare RFP response.

Recognization : In the year 2021

Training : Attended TOGAF training in 2021 -2022

Business : Do I understand Business ?

I have been provided additional responsibilities of Service Relationship Manager to help and drive business for customer success organization for India region.

Identify new revenue generating opportunities and programs by leveraging internal resources including Marketing, Technical Relationship Managers, Consulting, Account Managers.
Write Statement of Work on behalf of Citrix Professional Service
Use a “medium-to-long range” planning horizon sales strategy, ensuring that day-to-day tasks are being carried out effectively, while anticipating and planning for long-term growth.
Manage and build Consulting, Support and Education sales pipeline and accurately forecast quarterly revenues using SalesForce
Work with Citrix Sales, Citrix Presales, CSA and SI partners and others to qualify, manage and close Consulting opportunities
Develop and deliver Consulting and Education presentations at Executive Briefings, and client sites
Schedule and conduct quarterly account reviews with Enterprise Relationship Managers to identify Consulting and Education opportunities.
Successfully meeting 100 percentage target quote of 2 Million for last two year (2021 - 2022)

Switching back to previous question : What kind of job I am looking for ?

If your organization is planning digital transformation, I can help you with Digital Transformation journey.
If you are an ITeS organization , I can play business development architect and align with your various transformation unit during pre and post sales activities
If you are OEM , I can help you drive business around customer success portfolio.
If you are consulting organization, I can help you drive this business for you
If need someone to drive premium support business , I can help you with that

If you need resume in PDF or PPT format then drop me a note on my email ID

Restrict AGEE users from specific IP

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Mon, 26 Dec 2016 15:59:00 +0000

Writing after Feb 2016 . What I am going to write about ? Today I am going to show the way to restrict set of Internet users accessing AGEE URL
Here is the use case behind it. There are set of users who need to be restrict to access AGEE URL over internet so that they access it when trying from specific subnet . At the same time other users should be allowed to access from anywhere. How can we achieve this?
We thought of using AAA group and restricting it using session policy. We created two AAA group matching AD group, one which needs to be restricted and other unrestricted.

Now we created two policies . One which has AD group allowed only from specific set of IP . So how it’s expression looks like ?

And if you look at the session profile , we have bind this AD group under Gateway session profile –>security –>Advance –>

For the other set of we mapped the other profile with no IP is defined and profile is tagged to different set of session policy

Once this is created we have to check if the policy is getting hit when user try to access we will use following command “ nsconmsg -g pol_hits -d current “

Please provide feedback so that we can improve incase needed.

StoreFront HighAvilibility and Application aggregation

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 04:10:00 +0000

Warning :Hold your breath and read this maxi post . I am planning to get little bit about the design as well. Lets start the requirement and how to achieve the same.

Requirement :I wanted to aggregate resource from two site and show single icon to the users. I started with following KEYWORD option suggested but it just make the published application as primary and secondary. It will not aggregate the application as single icon. To get application aggregated we have to follow below steps .

We have two sites one in Mumbai and other in Chennai . Both site have their own farm but HighAvailability (and not the loadbalancing) is required between two sites. It would have been easier if we had single farm setup across the site as explained in my previous blog. In order to get that we have to create two resource group or delivery group at both the site and map users to those two delivery group .

What is the problem in doing it ?

If we map same set of users to both the site then user will see two icon for same resource and will unsure which one to click for Mumbai or Chennai.

What is the plan ? Plan is to get HSD/Paint/Calculator/Notepad published for both Mumbai and Chennai users. Below diagram represent that we have two separate farm with two separate SF server group .

Figure

Plan A To make simpler for the users , show one icon from both the site (HSD) and only icon from the respective site. Above figure shows for PlanA user in Mumbai see icon of paint and user in Chennai will see icon of Calculator though user have access to both the app. When users hit https://mumbai.company.com they will land on StoreFront of Mumbai and will get aggregated resource from Mumbai/Chennai . When XDC of Mumbai is down , they will get failover to Chennai .

Prerequisite for it : Citrix suggest to make changes in web.config file located under the store C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\storename\ directory, where storename (not the storeweb ) is the name specified for the store when it was created. There will be section within Web.config find out following section

Now file which needs to be included between above selection should look like this . But how do I get all these detail?

Make sure you gather it before hand and then start making changes.

To get value for name= domain\usergroup and sid=“Securityidentifier” use AD power shell. I would suggest map “EveryOne” or “Domain Users” so that latter you don’t have to make changes every now and then

equivalentFarmSet name="setname" : This can be Mumbai or Chennai based on which location I am specifying

loadBalanceMode="{LoadBalanced | Failover} : I have chosen Failover mode as I want to configure users to failover to other site

aggregationGroup="aggregationgroupname" : You can provide any name for the convenient . This can be same for both the site.

farm name="primaryfarmname" :Most of the time people make mistake to understand what exactly it is and how to get it. If you check storefront configuration for delivery controller it is the name of that set. And this is how it looks like. For Mumbai aggregationgroupname is “MumbaiController” and for Chennai it is “ChennaiController”, also this is case sensitive .

Note: StoreFront at both the site will have entry for all the XDC as shown below . MumbaiController will have XDC entry for Mumbai and ChennaiControler will have XDC entry for Chennai.

So what editior should I use it edit web.confi? I have tried many other editor like XML notepad but then found Oxygen XML editor very helpful .

The other reason I would suggest oXygen is because it will help you with tagging .

Wrong tagging

So here is the config file for Plan1. Changes need to made on both the site StoreFront and flip the order so that first site should be local site and second site will be remote site. Also note the change in this line

<resourcesWingConfigurations>
<resourcesWingConfiguration name="Default" wingName="Default" /> While making changes make sure you remove “/”

For Mumbai For Chennai

Plan B To make simpler for the users , show one icon from both the site and all the published application for the users. When users hit https://mumbai.company.com they will land on StoreFront of Mumbai and will get aggregated resource from Mumbai/Chennai and all the other resources which user has been assigned. Referring to above figure, user at both the site can see all the application (HSD/Notepad/Paint/Calculator)irrespective of the sites he/she belongs to.

For Mumbai For Chennai

Once the configuration is completed , StoreFront will point to both the XDC and changes can not be made. So it is important to make necessary changes prior to editing the web.config

To achieve this I have refer various blogs,article and to name few:

1 Citrix Blog and here

2. euc.consulting

3. LalMohan

4. vhorizon.co.uk

Meanwhile vhorizon.co.uk has published latest blog for StoreFront 3.1 . Currently SF3.1 is TP and is not supported under LTSR release.

Preparing Lotus Notes for Hosted Shared Desktop (XenApp)

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Wed, 23 Dec 2015 15:38:00 +0000

To start with Lotus Notes instalaltion use following command
D:\Lotus\setup.exe /v"SETMULTIUSER=1 MULTIUSERBASEDIR=H:\notes\data MULTIUSERCOMMONDIR=C:\SharedNotesData CITRIX=1

Choose next

After installation right click on the shortcut of lotus notes and add the line "=H:\Notes\Data\notes.ini"

After this User NSF file is required to be copied to <<MultiUserBaseDir>> path given during installation.
Also require copying all the content given in <<MultiUserCommonDir>> to <<MultiUserBaseDir>>
There is logon script which we can use to simplify last step

Inputs for this blog is from Vipul Tripathi

CA issued Client cert based authentication via NetScaler

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Sat, 26 Sep 2015 18:38:00 +0000

Where we use this : Let’s say I am publishing my resource via NetScaler AGEE and would like to ensure that user should be bind to the PC while accessing resources externally from non corporate device. For my use case , it was external users who uses dealer management system to update inventories. We choose this method over all the available options like

a) Symantec MPKI b) Two factor Authentication c) Smart Card

One of the reason why we choose below method was for simple reason, it doesn’t evolve extra cost.

To start with we setup enterprise CA on MS windows 2012 R2 server. You will get enough document on how to install CA but I will cover what we needed for this specific use case. We wanted to ensure that user certificate generated is in PFX format. Also we had challenge with given name in AD. When certificate generated based on given name CN it would look like this

When CN is checked for certificate via NS profile

It use to put + in place of space like this

Now it is important that certificate must be generated with SPN name

By default CA doesn’t generate certificate using UPN and attribute must be inputs. So let’s discuss how we setup CA to generate user’s certificate with attribute. To generate CA certificate for users, information must be filled manually. CA doesn’t allow certificate to be generated manually hence template properties needs to be set properly. To create certificate template select certificate templates and choose manage under certificate manager.

This will open certificate container which will have list of certificate which can be duplicated. Here we have to choose “Users” certificate then duplicate it. Remember while doing this, ensure that you have logged into appropriate ID since this changes are at Domain level. I have chosen Domain Admin to make changes

Once certificate is duplicated, it needs to be enrolled into all the certificate holders. Here I have chosen enrolled certificate hence option is “Reenroll All Certificate Holders”

Set the template properties for subject name to manual so it will allow to generate certificate for multiple users. Here we can define certificate validity period

Set the certificate for “Request Handling ” to “Allow private key to be exported”

Now when we browse certificate manager URL and then choose “Request a Certificate”

Then choose “Advance Certificate request”

Then choose “Create and Submit a request to this CA”

Choose correct template under drop down

Under Attributes supply SAN as SAN:UPN=Username@domain.com which matches the logon name of the users under users manager

Once certificate is created, it will be present under certificate manager then it will provide option to export into PFX format

Choose private key and then choose password to export the certificate. Same password will be used to import.

Once certificate is installed on client machine this will appear under Personal which can be viewed via IE – Internet option – Content – Certificate . If this doesn’t appear here then it will not work. In the next section we will discuss what setting is required on NetScaler.

In this case, I had been using NetScaler build 11.0 55.23Build . So will start with creation on certificate policy . For that we will create certificate profile with two factor ON and user name field as UPN and followed with policy to be set to ns_true

Once Policy is ready it need to bind to the AGEE vServer as primary authentication as Cert policy

Now SSL parameter needs to be set to client certificate to “Mandatory”

Since we have using client UPN for the login, LDAP policy must be set to use “userPrincipalName”

Now when client type the AGEE URL for access it will prompt to select client and if machine has multiple client certificate it will provide option to choose. Below example shows machine had multiple certificate and it prompt users to choose

Once users choose the certificate users name will populated and all the users will have choice to type password

Post login and application is launched it will prompt to choose the certificate. Below example users try to launched notepad and it prompt users to choose certificate. This is known behavior and one would like to fix this can follow CTX200193. There are otherway which I am yet to test.

NOTE of caution : At the time of writing this blog, it was found that client certificate doesn’t work with native receiver . So if you have the use case where customer would like to use both native receiver and browser then avoid to choose this option.

How to configuring IBM WAS / RAD for PVS streamed Virtual Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 11:06:00 +0000

Maxi Post by our guest Author

Application Name: IBM Websphere Application Server 8.5 and IBM Rational Application Developer for Websphere 8.5

Issue statement: Problem with IBM RAD/WAS faced by users who are using the lock down images was, when they create server profiles in RAD it gets saved in RAD installation directory which is c:\program files(86)\IBM\websphere_WAS8.5\Appserver\Profiles, on next reboot they will with no option but to create a new profile every time they launch RAD/WAS. So the option let with us is to provide Citrix personal vDisk or a persistent VM for these use cases. Instead of moving to PVD and persistent VM, here is how we mitigate to retain these users in streamed disk with modification in application configuration.

Please follow the steps to configure IBM Websphere Application Server 8.5 and IBM Rational Application Developer for Websphere 8.5 for streamed vDisk environment to redirect the IBM Rational Application Developer for Websphere 8.5 profiles in D drive instead of the default C drive path (c:\program files(86)\IBM\websphere_WAS8.5\Appserver\Profiles)

Navigate to path c:\program files(86)\IBM\websphere_WAS8.5\Appserver\Properties\

Files that needs to be modified are a)wasprofile.properties b) wsadmin.properties c) xd.spi.properties

Find ${was.install.root} and replace with D:/Program Files (x86)/IBM/WebSphere_WAS8.5/AppServer

Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\WebSphere_WAS8.5\AppServer\bin\ProfileManagement\eclipse64\configuration and make changes as shown below

osgi.instance.area.default=D:/AppData/Local/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/workspaces/WCT85

osgi.configuration.area=D:/AppData/Local/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/configurations/WCT85 Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\SDP_RAD8.5\configuration and make changes as shown below

osgi.instance.area.default=@user.home/IBM/rationalsdp/workspace

Change it to:

osgi.instance.area.default=D:/IBM/rationalsdp/workspace

Once the Changes are modified to properties file, upon launching of WAS/RAD or the Profile management Tool of RAD it’s going to create profile and associated workspace/logs in the D drive.

You may experience error when trying to create Profile using the PMT 8.5 Tool as shown below

After investigating the logs at the mentioned location you can get a clue to resolve it. Here is how to?

Just create a folder named “properties” in D drive in the mentioned path. This will resolve the profile creation issue.

How to retain RAD workspace location

Finally for the users to retain their workspace location on subsequent launches, we need to retain a file from

c:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\SDP_RAD8.5\configuration\.settings\org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs

to some common location or a script to copy the file from source to D drive and copy it back to source location for user to retain the workspace location on every RAD launch.

A better way is to educate users to create workspace in D drive with the common location like D:\IBM\rationalsdp\workspace. By hardcoding the path in the preference file in the base image on every reboot the preference file will show the common workspace path from the cache file, this will eliminate use of logon script / Appsense configuration for file copy just to retain the workspace preference.

Publish MS Dealer Management System (DMS) application in full screen mode

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 09:47:00 +0000

With XenApp 6.5 we had an option to maximize application by checking the box as shown below

Somehow this feature is not available while publishing application via XenApp 7.6 . To workaround we can use CTX132434 and publish application. In the below example I am trying to publish MS DMS application for the users in full screen mode. VBS script used to for DMS looks like this

Placed this VBS under shared location and then published application using the path with working directory as %windir%\system32\

Now when application will be forced to launched in full screen mode

Should I upgrade to XenApp 7.6 ?

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Sun, 29 Mar 2015 17:14:00 +0000

Are you confused about upgrading your existing XenApp 6.5 infrastructure to new XenApp 7.6?

Did someone told you that XenApp 7.6 doesn’t have all the feature of XenApp 6.5 hence don’t upgrade ? Well I tried answering by asking you 7 question which will help you take decision. Please watch the video

How to enable “Share file instead of Copying it “ for VMM

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Thu, 12 Mar 2015 21:34:00 +0000

I came across many deployment and keep forgetting it how to enable “Share file instead of copying it ” option for VMM. Yes I know Microsoft Article explain how to do this but missing screenshot .

Provided that all the library share has been setup perfectly , when we try to share the ISO instead of mounting we get following error message

“Error (12700)
VMM cannot complete the host operation on the xyz.com server because of the error: 'xyz' failed to add device 'Virtual CD/DVD Disk'. (Virtual machine ID 86AF5EBE-0B3D-4075-8BF2-DA7117C54322)

'xyz': User account does not have permission required to open attachment '\\Mxyz\DataStore\ISO\XenApp_and_XenDesktop7_6.iso'. Error: 'General access denied error' (0x80070005). (Virtual machine ID 86AF5EBE-0B3D-4075-8BF2-DA7117C54322)
Unknown error (0x8001)

Recommended Action
Resolve the host issue and then try the operation again.”

We need to give access to VMM server for all the node. Select the Hyper V node and then choose “Use any authentication protocol” and add services.

Select VMM server as computer name. This will list CIFS share.

We need to repeat this step for all the node

Configure HP Quality Center for Streamed XenDesktop 7.6

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 20:11:00 +0000

HP Quality Center is web based tool used by tester and developer (Don’t ask me more detail beyond this : ) )

While working with HP QC we must know it requires:

Requirements for QC to work is to have MS office 32 bit for now in base image, early next year TCOE/HP will update UFT after that we will be able to use MS office 64 bit.
HP QC will work only in IE 32 bit version
HP Quality Center download 280 MB of plugin and store under c:\users\APPDATA\LOCAL\HP

Now with above requirement if we are planning to deploy desktop class OS then you have multiple choice to choose from Flexcast model

Challenge : We have tried using UPM to synch around c:\users\APPDATA\LOCAL\HP but couldn’t succeeded. So we tried PVD (Personal vDisk ) route but PVD does require minimum space and spending space just for 280MB file is waste of valuable storage space.

Solution: How about using Streamed static non persistent desktop. Once users logged in, desktop will be assigned to the users at the same time image can be streamed. We need to find out the way to redirect APPDATA\LOCAL\HP . Remember this is not straight forward and that’s why we are discussing here.

User profile SID sits in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Currentversion\ProfileList which is non-persistent since the C:\ drive is streamed in read-only mode.

So first redirect : HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

When running Quality Center for the first time it loads ALM-Platform-Loader.msi, a copy and associated files are copied to AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temprorary Internet Files\Content.IE5 folder. Because of the read-only nature of the images and the UPM is not synchronizing AppData\Local contents when a VM is rebooted and re-logged. It also creates a folder under AppData\Local\Temp called TD_80; this folder disappear when a user reboots the VM.

To fix this we have to do two more redirection

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

CACHE

Tem and Temp here to be redirected:

All the registry changes can be pushed via GPO along with UPM .

Credit : Thanks for sharing this inputs my friend, you know whom I mean

Load balancing users across datacenter using XenDesktop 7.6

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 12:24:00 +0000

We get requirement quite often to load balance users across datacenter and provide DR with XenDesktop. There are tons of article which will help you to design so. But what we are discussing here is load balancing users within delivery group.

Requirement : Load balance users delivery group across datacenter. If there are 100 users in a particular use case then 50 users should be directed to datacenter A and 50 users should be redirected to datacenter B.

Challenge: It would have been easy if we had to just load balance users. We could have used GSLB and distribute users in round robin fashion. But when it comes to delivery group this has its own challenge. To achieve this we do require single farm architecture. To build single farm architecture we do require SQL availability across the location. Challenge is with the amount of require bandwidth and latency within India. In general latency across two cities in India is around 60ms.

Gotchas: Profiles availability across datacenter. Microsoft does not support profile replication. So if we need profiles with the users then we must use two separate store at each datacenter.

How to achieve this: To start with I will put some drawing to make it simple.

Component configuration:

Two Delivery Controller at both datacenter: Total of four Delivery Controller will be part of the single XenApp/XenDesktop Site. But here is the catch, VMS at respective DC will be pointing to respective Delivery Controller . So VMS will be register with only with respective site delivery controller.

Two StoreFront at both the datacenter: Two storefront will be in cluster at each of the datacenter. NetScaler will be used to load balance each of the storefront farm across datacenter.

Separate PVS farm at each of the datacenter: Each of the farm will be streaming VM’s in their respective datacenter.

Now coming to the important part is SQL setup. There are many ways we can setup SQL for database replication and I am not going to explain those. You can refer to article like this to get that configure. What I will explain you is how we did the setup in our environment. Two SQL has been setup with Multi Subnet fail over cluster and something similar explained here

In our case we have one node at each of the site. WFC has been setup with the following roles

Under the server name there are two IP’s and this is used for Availability Group Listeners under SQL

WFC resource property is important to understand for failover .

This is how listener group looks like

We are replicating three database a)Site b)Logging c)Monitoring using AlwaysOn High Availability. During site creation we pointed it to listener database and allow Studio to create database. Once database were setup, It was then moved to Always ON group.

Then we separated all the database and moved separately. Now time for testing? No before we start testing we have to follow few more steps to ensure Delivery Controller is MultiSubnet aware and logins are replicated. To do so I followed Citrix blog and download the script listed here. Now its time for powershell magic. Open powershell from desktop studio and check if you have all the scripts. We need to run Change_XD_TO_MultiSubnetFailover.ps1

Once script executed then it will be upload

Post this when we run get-brokerDBConnection it will showing multisubnetfailover=true.

Now make sure logins for all the DDC is created on replica database .

DDC is ready for fail over testing. Now we need to create delivery group for datacenter A and map catalog corresponding catalog. Separate delivery group for datacenter B mapped to catalog for respective dc.

Now we need to publish desktop to this both deliver group.

Add-BrokerApplication -Name "Publised App Name" -DesktopGroup "Delivery Group A"

Add-BrokerApplication -Name "Publised App Name" -DesktopGroup "Delivery Group B"

So what will be the end result: Users will hit GSLB which will deploy users in round robin fashion across datacenter. Users will land on one the LB Store Front server and will get access to application. Users will be load balanced in round robin fashion but will land on same delivery group. Delivery group which doesn’t have priority (Fail over priority can be defined for delivery group) defined. Delivery group is going to distribute users across the VM . Incase of one of datacenter goes down SQL connection will failover to other site. This will have to wait till DNS update happen and listner group IP is changed to other site. Then we will be using connection leasing feature of XD 7.6 which is similar to LHC of XenApp 7.6 .

Drop a note incase you have question.

Prepopulating Citrix Receiver within ICA session.

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 06:34:00 +0000

We get the requirement quite often that once users logged into virtual desktop application should launch via seamlessly. Here seamlessly have many meaning and it varies from customer to customer. For example one customer would like the application to be present as a shortcut in the start menu and when users click the application it must do single sign on. There are various way to achieve this. Once can import receiver ADM template using gpedit.msc

To prepopulate the receiver with the URL

To prepopulate url , one can do it via adm template or via Citrix HDX policy . To do it via adm template, import it into local policy and then perform following settings

]

Once storefront url is selected value must be entered in following format “

SalesStore;https://sales.mycompany.com/Citix/Store/discovery;On;Store for Sales staff” and even one doesn’t want to wish to have it. So once this is done it will prepopulate the URL.

Once url is prepopulated, SSO has to be done. To do the so , we must choose “local user name and password” and then choose Enable pass-through authentication.

This will allow single sign on and allow users to launch application seamlessly.

Failed to add a Failover Cluster Node because “SQL Server Agent” account name empty

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 18:06:00 +0000

I came across interesting issue on two occasion when I tried adding second node to the SQL 2012 cluster node. After it detecting the second server detail, account name for “SQL Server Agent” is blank. After we typed password this still fail with error message “There are validation error on this page”

We tried rebooting boxes but that didn’t help. Finally to fix this we need to create

1. SQL Server agent 2. Add the same agent as fail over cluster resources.

You can do this steps on any of the fail over cluster node. Use following PS editor to run the command

$ClusterName = "YourClusterName"
$FciClusterGroupName = "SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)" # may need to modify to reflect your environment

Add-ClusterResourceType -Name "SQL Server Agent" -Dll "sqagtres.dll"

Output of command will be like this

Once this is done,select role –>Add Resource –> More Resources –>

More Resources –> SQL Server Agent

Select “New SQL Server Agent” and --->properties –>Dependencies select resource as “SQL Server”

Now select properties tab and type InstanceName = <Name of the SQL server Instance name> VirtualServerName =<Name of the SQLCluster>

Now the “New SQL Server agent” will start

Make sure the registry on primary server is set to 1

After above steps when setup is run again , it was able to see SQL Server Agent users name.

Yeah I am also a SQL expert

Source here

Citrix Profile and folder redirection without Microsoft GPO

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Thu, 22 May 2014 14:19:00 +0000

Sometimes you have a situation where profile and folder redirection can not be done via Windows GPMC. Citrix provide you an option to do so via HDX policy. Citrix have inbuild policy which can used to achieve this. This way we may not require help from AD team and can be managed at our own. I am not going to explain what all we can apply as part of UPM because everything is available here , here and here. Profile and redirected folder path must be different .

1. To get this first make sure path is define in this way for each of the folder redirection highlighted in red

Along with each of the folder redirection make sure that “Redirect settings for <folder name>” is selected to “Redirect to the following UNC path”.

2. Make sure policy is applied to the users group

3. For UPM alone path should be set to \\path to folder\#SAMaccountname#or %username% also make sure following should be defined

For rest of the settings and best practices please follow the above mention 3 link .

Gud luck for not using Microsoft GPO :)

Expand vDisk for PVS 7.1 on Hyper-V

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 18:18:00 +0000

There are many article which talks about vDisk expansion on different version of PVS but couldn’t find one for PVS 7.1 using windows 2012R2. Here I am sharing what I have done. Download vhdtool.exe from here. After downloading the tool follow this command as shown below

Now open disk management on any machine and attach the vhd

Once disk is attached it will showup as expanded volume . Select the disk and then choose extend volume.

Select the entire size and then next

Detach the hard disk post expansion

PVS streamed Win2012R2 /Win7 and NIC fail over.

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 19:49:00 +0000

In this video I am trying to show how NIC speed varies for windows 2012R2 vs Win7. As you know , HyperV support PXE on legacy nic at the speed of 100MB. Streaming VM’s over 100MB would be really challenging . Windows 2012R2 VM does fail over the network from legacy NIC to Synthetic NIC as shown over the video whereas Windows7 only use synthetic nic for VM traffic and streaming continue over legacy network. In this video, I tried copying file to PVS streamed windows 7 and all the activity happening over synthetic NIC whereas streaming continue over legacy NIC.

PVS streamed machine showing error: Network_Boot_Duplicate_Address

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 14:29:00 +0000

PVS environment has been setup using following post . When windows 2012R2 targets where booted it throws error “NETWORK_BOOT_DUPLICATAE_ADDRESS”

Since we had two DHCP server, we thought this may be the reason why it is having duplicate IP issue. But found CTX132133 explain similar issue with PVS 6.1. Decided to try the work around mention in CTX.

This worked.

Reviewed by me: Getting Started with Citrix® Provisioning Services 7.0

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 19:34:00 +0000

I had been approached by Packt Publishing to review the book “Getting Started with Citrix® Provisioning Services 7.0” . The book explain each and every feature of PVS 7.0 which is most exciting product from Citrix. Author Puthiyavan Udayakumar has done justice to the interesting product from Citrix .

About me mention in this box by publisher

So what all you are going to learn from the book :

Install Citrix Provisioning Services
Configure Citrix Provisioning Services
Create and manage Vdisks
Prepare a Master Target device
Manage farms, stores, sites, and the Provisioning server
Upgrade farms and Vdisks

You can download the book in various format including PDF and kindle

Post reading please do provide your review at Amazon.

Thanks for reading

DHCP failover scope : Please delete the scope from the relationship

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 19:01:00 +0000

I was trying to remove scope and it was throwing error “Scope is part of failover relationship . Please delete the scope from the relationship”

I tried removing from the scope but there were no option to do so.

If one has to remove the failover scope, it has to be done from IPV4 properties and Failover

After removing the relationship , I also have to do the same from secondary server as well. Post which I was able to remove the scope without any issue.

Build high availability PVS 7.1 server using windows 2012R2 & NetScaler

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 18:30:00 +0000

While we had been creating HA for PVS for a while. Here I am going to discuss HA for PVS 7.1 at every level. For that I have consider new feature of DHCP 2012 called scope level fail over . I am also explaining new inbuilt feature of NetScaler to load balance TFTP. For PVS data store we have used CIFS share directly from storage. When we have two DHCP server ensure that both the IP address is added as an IP helper in the targets VLAN or else target won’t get IP address. I have created multi-homed PVS , one dedicated for TFTP and other for DHCP traffic. PVS is virtual with 16GB of memory.

To start with we have used two PVS server and install TFTP/DHCP role on it. After creation of scope we configure it for failover. Right click on DHCP scope and then you will get an option to configure failover.

This will bring info about scope

This will prompt for other DHCP server we need to create scope level fail over. Do remind you scope is created on first server and its get replicated to second server. While adding it will list all the authorized DHCP server. In our case we will choose second PVS server.

Once partner is selected

It will prompt for using existing relationship. In my case I wanted to configure DHCP in “Load Balance ” mode rather than “Hot Standby “ mode. This way I want to direct traffic to both the DHCP (PVS ) server.

Once this done it will present summary of what its going to configure

Post finishing config it will congratulate you

Make changes on one DHCP scope its get replicated by itself or you have an option to replicate the change manually

Now take a route to load balance NetScaler . There are ton’s of method exist and has been documented like this or CTX116337 or wonderful blog from Nick . But with version 10.1 TFTP load balancing had became damn easy. Few click and all done. How about Citrix providing some wizard for this as well…you lazy guys.

To start with create server under Traffic management . Here give IP address of PVS server. Incase PVS is multi homed then we need to supply IP of streaming network. Both the PVS server has been added and green shows SNIP is able to communicate with PVS server.

Now configure service for those PVS server and here don’t forget to choose protocol as TFTP . Under server both the PVS server will be listed which has been created in previous step. Rest all are default. Here green shows all well with service.

Now create vServer and map both the services which we have created in previous step. IP address mention here will be used in DHCP option 66. Rest all setting will be default. I love Round Robin so I have chosen that. That’s it , IP will be ready to be configured under DHCP scope.

Modify the 66 option under scope and you will be ready to test TFTP HA

In the last part I will show how we configure CIFS share to be used as datastore for PVS. On a storage create CIFS share and then create folder as per store create folder. I have create folder by name CTX_ADMIN and mapped it store with same name. Once this is mapped to both the PVS end to end HA can be tested.

When I boot my target its boot fine.

Set default website for StoreFront

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 19:26:00 +0000

With webinterface you can set default website while creating website

But with StoreFront you either have to follow CTX133903 or just set it using IIS

StoreFront error : No certificate associated with this site

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 18:15:00 +0000

I was adding second server in the server group but it was throwing error while replicating configuration

Log Name:      Citrix Delivery Services
Source:        Citrix Configuration Replication Service
Date:          2/17/2014 6:13:06 PM
Event ID:      31
Task Category: (2801)
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      XXXX
Description:
An error has occured during the all server configuration update process.
Citrix.DeliveryServices.ConfigurationReplication.Exceptions.ServerUpdateConfigurationException, Citrix.DeliveryServices.ConfigurationReplication, Version=2.4.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=e8b77d454fa2a856
An error occured running the command: 'Add-DSFeatureInstances'
RemoteEndpoint: net.tcp://XXX/Citrix/ConfigurationReplication

Then we also saw following message “No certificate associated with this site” though site was https. I tried several thing like renaming url but looks like it something else

Finally found that certificate was saved under “Web hosting Certificate ” whereas it must be under “Personal – Certificate “

Once it was placed and binding were configured

All the sites were green

After we fixed this error replication went successfully

Autoconfiguration IPv4 on Hyper V VM

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 17:49:00 +0000

I configured on hyperV VM on SCVMM2012R2 and it was not able to communicate over the LAN. When I checked network property it had Autoconfiguration IPv4 enabled with APIPA ( Automatic Private Internet Protocol Addressing ) .

Not sure what was causing it, tried googling but couldn’t find anything relevant. Checked for hidden nic but couldn’t find any. Finally changed IP address and that worked. Looks like above IP was somewhere on the network and this is enabling Autoconfiguration IPv4

Adding second node to the virtual SQL cluster 2012 on Windows 2012R2 using VMM–Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 17:54:00 +0000

In my previous blog I explained how to install the first node in this blog I will explain how to add the second node to the existing cluster. Run the SQL setup and choose “Add node to a SQL Serverfailover cluster ”

This will run the check for prerequisite and validate it

Don’t run the check for updates and then exist the steps. It will run again SQL cluster install rule

Next it will check for product key and then license term. Post which it will identify SQL cluster node and will populate the info

Then it will validate the network for fail over cluster

Next it will pick account for which you must retype the password

Then it will prompt for error reporting which you can choose as per wish. Click next and proceed further where it will check for node rules

It will give beautiful summary to add the node.

Finally installation of SQL second node will be done

Finally node has been added and here is the summary

Thanks for reading my blog, today I configured DDC on fail over cluster

How to setup virtual SQL 2012 cluster on windows 2012R2 VM using SCVMM2012R2 Part-2

noreply@blogger.com (Vikash Kumar Roy) — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 16:32:00 +0000

Post windows cluster validation describe in part1, prerequisite like .Net3.5 feature must be installed on all the SQL server. Other than it will be normal windows fail over cluster and then start SQL setup as follows.

It will check for necessary support files and then validated it by running test

Next it will check for the latest update , uncheck it and click next

This will check install file post which it will run the validation for setup support rules

Setup rules will finish with some warning which can be ignored

Now this will ask for product key and if this has already downloaded with key then it will appear

For my Citrix XenDesktop deployment I just need following feature

Feature rules will test for cluster support

Here I am using network name as CitrixSQL. It does not accept special character

Next it will check validate the space

Don’t worry about qualified as red . I spend lots of time figuring that out but next will explain why it was . So hit next here

Once hit next make sure select both the cluster disk. If you recall in my previous post, I did mention why labeling of disk is mandatory. This was the reason. Update the message with correct reference.

This cluster IP is for SQL cluster node name.

I usually run SQL service using specific account

Next we have server config where I specify SA password

On the same option Data Directories tab is important. This will insure that database and logs stored separately. After changing click on next.

I don’t want to do error reporting to MS so I hit next where it check for cluster installation rules.

With this we are ready to install and keep our finger crossed

For me SQL installation finish with the following error message

I followed article and manually created the cluster resource under AD and then gave full control to windows cluster name. Post which all the resource came online.