Upgrading to Provisioning Services 5.1 Service Pack 1

September 30, 2009 by Jarian Gibson 2 Comments

Now that Provisioning Services 5.1 Service Pack 1 has been released, I am going to go over the upgrade process.  Provisioning Services 5.1 Service Pack 1 has added some new features, fixes, and removed some features.  For a complete overview of the changes in Provisioning Services 5.1 Service Pack 1 see one of my previous blog posts – Provisioning Services 5.1 Service Pack 1 Overview.  In this blog post I am going to focus on upgrading Provisioning Services 5.1 to Service Pack 1.
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Provisioning Services 5.1 SP1 Licensing and XenApp 5 FP2

September 29, 2009 by Jarian Gibson Leave a Comment

Citrix has changed licensing for Provisioning Services with the release of Provisioning Services 5.1 Service Pack 1 and XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2.  The license change comes from the new VM Hosted Applications feature in XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2.  With this change I can see how XenApp Enterprise and Platinum Edition licensed customers can be confused on Provisioning Services licensing and what XenApp workloads they can provision.  In this post I will go over the differences in Provisioning Services licensing for XenApp Enterprise and Platinum Editions.
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Provisioning Services High Availability with a Read-Only vDisk Store

September 21, 2009 by Jarian Gibson 8 Comments

Provisioning Services 5.1 introduced another storage option for a vDisk store.  The ability to use a read-only vDisk store.  Provisioning Services 5.1 has added some nice new features to the product and the ability to use a read-only vDisk store is another one of those features.  For more information on the new features in Provisioning Services 5.1 you can read one of my previous blogs Have you upgraded to Provisioning Services 5.1 yet? Why Not?.  A read-only vDisk store is only required when you want to give direct read/write access to a SAN volume without a shared/clustered file system to all of your Provisioning Servers for high availability and load balancing in your Provisioning Services environment.  In this post I am going to go over why you would use a read-only vDisk store, the limitations, the requirements, the steps involved for setting up, and the steps involved for updating a read-only vDisk store.
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NetScaler VPX Express is a must for all XenServer Environments

September 18, 2009 by Jarian Gibson 12 Comments

Citrix has recently released NetScaler VPX.  NetScaler VPX is the XenServer virtual appliance version of a NetScaler hardware appliance that is installed on the XenServer platform.  With the release of this XenServer virtual appliance, NetScaler VPX Express is must for all XenServer environments.  In the following post I will go over NetScaler VPX and why the Express edition is a must for all XenServer environments.
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Provisioning Services 5.1 Service Pack 1 Overview

September 18, 2009 by Jarian Gibson 4 Comments

Citrix is getting ready to release Provisioning Services 5.1 Service Pack 1 in the next few weeks.  A Citrix knowledgebase article has been released detailing the release notes of the Provisioning Services 5.1 Service Pack 1.  Let’s go over what is new, what has been removed, and what has been fixed in Provisioning Services 5.1 Serivce Pack 1.
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XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Features and Release Date Announced!

September 16, 2009 by Jarian Gibson Leave a Comment

Citrix has finally announced that XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 will be released on September 29th.  XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 will be bring new features such as VM Hosted Apps, Power and Capacity Management, and HDX to XenApp 5. Read more to see what all new features are included in XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2. 
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Provisioning Services High Availability with a Local vDisk Store

September 4, 2009 by Jarian Gibson 20 Comments

When setting up high availability in a Provisioning Services environment there is always the question of where to put the vDisk store.  You have several different options for the location of the vDisk store.  You can place it on the local system, on a Windows CIFS share, Network Attached Storage, iSCSI SAN, or Fibre Channel SAN.  Each option has both its pros and cons.  For more information on the pros and cons of different vDisk store options see Citrix support article CTX119286 – Provisioning Server High Availability Considerations.  In this post we are going to focus on high availability with a local vDisk store. 
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Give Precedence to Session Sharing Over Load Balancing

September 1, 2009 by Jarian Gibson Leave a Comment

Citrix XenApp 5.0 Windows 2003 Hotfix Rollup 4 has new feature enhancement that allows you to give precedence to session sharing over load balancing. Now with this enhancement you can decide to have session sharing override load balancing in your XenApp farm.
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Hosted Apps, Streamed Apps, Seamless Sessions, and Content Redirection

September 1, 2009 by Jarian Gibson 15 Comments

When having a mixed environment of seamless sessions using hosted applications and streamed applications, file type associations (FTA) and content redirection won’t work for streamed applications.  The FTA isn’t recognized and prompts you to select an application to open it with when you click on the streamed application FTA.  In full desktop session that have the XenApp Plugin for Hosted Apps (formerly known as the PNAgent) installed, FTAs and content redirection work properly and the correct streamed application launches fine.  So how do you get around this in a seamless session?  Have the XenApp Plugin for Hosted Apps run within the seamless session.  Below are the steps for setting this up.
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