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VUEM Bêta 2 test

For all the lucky ones who have been attending Citrix Synergy 2012 in Barcelona, have you passed in front of the Norskale’s booth (the guys who were giving away bunch of T-shirts)? And at the same time get a demo of the VUEM v2.0 Beta?

Well, here at Ctxblog.fr we are helping the ones who have not been that lucky and give you a full review of VUEM v2.0 in this post.

Thru this article we are going to put forward some of the new features that have been added since v1.0. During our test we have reported two bugs (a 32 bits display issue and a formatting error for the numbers of days left in the license). Both have been corrected within 24h, Norskale does not like bugs (even in a Beta version 😉 ).

Our test platform is composed of two VM:

Windows 2008 R2 SP1 FR for the Admin Console and the broker (we’ll come back to this new VUEM element) (2 Vcpu – 4 Go of RAM – 30Go storage)
Windows Seven SP1 FR (1 Vcpu – 2 Go of RAM – 30 Go Storage)

VUEM v2.0 architecture has been improved by the addition of a Broker. This Broker will allow for multi-sites implementations and eliminate the need for the Agents to connect directly to the SQL server.

Once the broker is configured (Page 25 of the Quick Start Guide), you only have to start the Administration Console then connect to the Broker.

The Admin Console looks radically different from the v1.0 but is still as intuitive and functional. The possibility to import/export Actions as well as to create Sites from the main Console is very helpful.

We will skip the “actions” part of the Console which has been already tested in our v1.0 review, even if many new options have been added. Such as the possibility to define a shortcut location on the desktop (and this is only one example).

The Filter section has been increased with a lot of new conditions:

Check out the drop down list… only goodness here 🙂

The “System Utilities” section allows you to activate the Fast Logoff capability, to set a maximum level of CPU consumption per process, to turn on the RAM optimization, to play around with processes Black and White Listing.

Cool, no ?

In the “policies and profiles” section it is possible to tune the Start Menu, enforce a Theme/Style, hide drives letters, restrict access to known folders, configure UPM, etc…

Start menu restrictions

Setting up UPM exclusions (following best practices) for files and directories. Check out the “Profile Cleansing” button.

Possibility to clean up existing UPM profiles 🙂 .

Drive letters restrictions as well as the possibility to hide various properties, restrict access to the registry and command line.

The “Advanced Settings” section covers VUEM and its Agents configuration.

New features in the Agent (available in multiple languages multilingual, in French here as our test environment is FR).

It is now possible to manage one’s own applications (BTW, you can also add published apps) and printers thru the agent (if the authorization is set in VUEM’s console).

In case of any issue, a user can now send a screenshot to support 😉 .

During our test, login times were constantly between 8 and 12 seconds, the v2.0 has more features and still remains easy to implement and manage (and this is the big positive point for VUEM, aside from its price point 🙂 ) .

Among the features we have tested, we have really liked:

UPM management
CPU/RAM optimization
Broker
Printers and apps management via the VUEM Agent
Fast login times
Clean up possibility for UPM profiles
Possibility for users to send a screenshot to support

Interview with Pierre Marmignon about VUEM

Pierre Marmignon (CTP) aka CitrixTools.net,VirtuAll Solutions and father of VUEM is giving us the pleasure of a quick interview at CTXBLOG.FR . Pierre gives us the headlines on what’s new with him, VirtuALL Solutions and the new VUEM version. Note that we had reviewed an earlier version of VUEM in a previous post : Test de VUEM 1.1.15 bêta – Post 1/2 and Test de VUEM 1.1.15 bêta – Post 2/2.

What is VUEM? VirtuAll User Environent Manager (VUEM) is a no non-sense workspace and performance management solution for all physical and virtual desktops as well as XenApp published applications

What are the main VUEM evolutions since its last version?

Big question 🙂 During your testing, you might have noticed that the solution have gained in functionalities and performance.

The new user interface is much sexier (goodbye the raw and ugly look of the initial version). It is intuitive and still manages to integrates all the new features

But the GUI side of things is only the tip of the iceberg: Internal architecture has evolved to provide ever more capabilities while maintaining one of the key success factors for us: performance!

The last version brings so many major changes that the tool is barely recognizable for the guys who used it previously: elimination of GPO, performance management, context awareness, Enterprise grade scalability, very very very fast, etc…

We unlock a ton of benefits:

Around 10 seconds consistent login time on any type of desktop/workspace. Physical ones (good old and true Win 7, Win 8 and even XP locally installed) or virtual (XenApp published apps, published hosted desktop or VDI)

A drastic reduction of the system administration effort thru a simple solution that even totally beginners admins can master in a few hours

Almost instantaneous reaction time for your applications

And… 20-25% more users per servers in XenApp, RDS or VDI

So you get the best possible user experience with a large and immediate cost reduction.

All that goodness for €28 per user and fully implemented in a few days. Can’ beat that.

What are the future evolutions for VUEM?

Profile management remains an issue in fat desktops environments. So we are going to bring a simple and pragmatic solution to our customer. And we will avoid the mistakes that plagued the solutions you could find so far on the market.

VUEM will also extend its self service capabilities to further strengthen the user experience and reduce support costs.

We are also bringing in line a server side capability, etc…

Dev teams are working on all these right now and as you can guess we have a bit of work ahead of us.

Which customers have already chose VUEM?

Large accounts to small and medium business bought VUEM: from 27,000 seats to 10 users… The 27,000 users are from Leroy Merlin (leading French retailer) with 20,000 hosted desktops and 7,000 fat Windows 7.

VUEM is running in production on tenth of sites. Present and older versions are delivering the goods daily, sometime since many years before the current release. This large initial adoption by the Citrix community definitely led the way to the current simple and Enterprise grade software.

Is VUEM still free and is it staying this way? What about your licensing modes?

We are keeping a free version but limited to the organizations that had difficulty to get equipped in the first place. And we will continue to actively contribute to the community. But this time with more resources than me-myself-and-I coding alone in my basement J

Now, it is also obvious that the current situation is different from the previous 10 years I spent writing tools for the community. Today we are a full blown software house and our objective is to grow and ensure the future of our company, team and solutions.

And we do that by selling software that are simple to use, highly performing and well-priced. Software that makes every infrastructures perform like world champions and reduce their TCO, without the need of top experts at your side.

Software that brings clear and immediate value to all our customers.

What will become Citrixtols.net? and the tools suite like XenApp cloning tools, session cleaner,…? While that remain free?

Yes all these remain free. Everybody loves them and I am very proud of that.

Do you have more projects coming up in the near future?

More super powerful infrastructure software, dead easy to implement and manage on a daily basis, at price points that makes them no-brainers for every type of organizations. And we are preparing something that is simply going to blow your minds toward the end of the year 🙂 .

One last word for the Community?

The Community is really great and gives backs enormously to all the guys like me who invest their time and energy into making things better.

We want to keep contributing!

We are all passionate and I would like to invite everyone to raise their fists with me and say NO to not-so-great environments! Say NO to infrastructures witch are not at the top of their game! Say NO to useless complexity!

Send us an email if you are stuck with a critical issue or if your user experience is not as good as it should be! Drop us a mail to discuss your next generation desktop projects! We can help you achieve spectacular results, easily, super-fast and for small budgets.

We are looking forward to see you all guys at Synergy Barcelona!

Thanks Pierre!

Erreur Dscheck : HostID xxxx has no corresponding MfServer node entry

Following a dscheck (dscheck /full servers) on one of our farms (XenApp 5 R06 of 400 servers with DataStore sql 2005 on Windows 2003 sp2), we noticed the following error :

HostID xxxx has no corresponding MfServer node entryHostID xxxx has no corresponding MfServer node entry

After several dscheck /full servers /clean the error was always present.
We launched Dsview in order to see whether WE could solve HostID 5C80 BY seeking in the part ServerNeighborhoods-YouFarm-MFServers.

As we did not find anything in the ServerNeighborhoods-YouFarm-MFServers part, we directed our search towards the ServerNeighborhoods-VotreFerme-HostIds part.
We find and notice that HostId 5C80 on the way has links with other HostId (one did not see it at first glance)

Back in the ServerNeighborhoods-YourFarm-MFServers part, and there we find the hostId with Hostnames associated.

After having left the 4 servers the farm (although these servers did not present obviously any issue), the command dscheck /full servers /clean has this time deleted well recalcitrant HostId (5C80 in our case).

Once Host Id deleted we could reinstate the four servers in the farm then to pass a dscheck /full servers which did not show up any error.

Not mentionning to you the various stages of troubleshooting, dsview (but with the closed eyes first times), attempt at reading of DataStore (but good considering the foundation is not of relational type one party knew badly), importation of the DS in a series of tests and deletion of the objects, etc .etc. In short a “moumoutage” (french expression) in due form.

Update TestPort : Scripting allowing to test ports TCP

Some time ago we had put in line test_port which made it possible to test port TCP Xenapp in order to check the openings network on the ICA for example.

After a little more than two years, we updated test_port.

In addition to the correction of various bugs and the simplification of the code, it is possible from now on to test the ports on several servers.

Click on the button “Ouvrir le fichier serveur cible” (the file is created automatically)
Enter the IP of the servers to be tested and save the file
Click on the button “lancer le test ” (french button only 🙂 )

Test_Port V1.3

UPDATE : 03/04/2012
Correction bug: when clicking Click on the button “To open the file server target” , the .txt file did not keep recorded information.

RecreateLHC on multiple servers

MAJ : 04/03/2012
Version 1.1
Adding 64 bits compatibility

—————————————

In this post a small script which makes it possible to make of RecreateLhc on several waiters with a file of log, allowing to check each stage of RecreateLhc on each server.

Using Ctx_RecreateLHC.vbs :

Create in the folder where is located Ctx_RecreateLHC.vbs a file named “servers.txt” and enter the name of the servers where will be recreated the LHC.
Double to click on Ctx_RecreateLHC.vbs
A file of log to format HTML will be created in the folder of execution of Ctx_RecreateLHC.vbs

The details of the actions of script is contained in the file log (stop service IMA and of its dépendences, checking of the size of the base LHC, dsmaint recreatelhc, checking of the size of base LHC (after RecreateLhc), starting of the dependences of service IMA and service IMA)

Le détails des actions du script est contenu dans le fichier log (arrêt service IMA et de ses dépendences, vérification de la taille de la base LHC, dsmaint recreatelhc, vérification de la taille de la base LHC (après RecreateLhc), démarrage des dépendances du service IMA et du service IMA)

This Script works on XenApp farms 5/6 under Windows 2003/2008 (32/64 bits).

The CTX759510 recommends on its side, to make a recreatelhc on all the servers member of a farm after a DSCHECK /clean (on our side we proceed by wave on servers).

If you must clean the farm data store, using the DSCHECK utility, you should then rebuild the LHC on each of the servers in your farm, once the data store has been cleaned.

Ctx_RecreateLHC.vbs

XenApp_Check supports XenApp 6

XenApp_Check is now available for XenApp 6 🙂 here.

The code is functional but is not optimized yet .
Operation remains identical to XenApp_check for XA5, with the difference which should be configured the policy mode via rows 58 and 64 of the XenApp_CheckXA6.ps1 script.

EdgeSight Agent 5.3 : missing tab «mode»

On a XenApp 2008 R2 Fr Server, we moved from the Enterprise version to the Platinum version. At the conclusion of this update the tab “Mode” of the agent EdgeSight (5.3) had disappeared.

A google later and we arrive on CTX129029.

After upgrading from XenApp Enterprise to XenApp Platinum Edition, the EdgeSight Agent remains in “Basic” mode instead if being upgraded to “Advanced” mode automatically. The upgrade also removes the Mode tab, making it impossible to upgrade the agent manually. This fix restores the Mode tab, allowing for the agent mode to be set manually.

Once the last hotfix we found the tab mode.

Problem of freeze during the installation (or update) of a licence server in 11.9

At the time of the update of our server of licence (update of 11.6.1 to 11.9 out of Windows 2003 Fr Sp2) in order to be compatible XenApp 6.5, we were confronted with a freeze during the installation.

Going to Citrix edocs (here), we have been advised to update our server for the Fix MS part.

Right, we would like to know what the fix we are missing. After some search, we get to the following thread : “11.9 License Server Installation Hangs“, and we also find at the same time the welknown KB missing « KB956572» ( which corrects an interpretation for the sidtype parameter in the sc.exe).

Once the KB956572 installed on the server and after reboot, the update of the licence server passed without problem.

At the end of the installation of the version 11.9 (as well as the version 11.6), it should be waited until the LSPostConfigTool.exe process finishes being carried out within the framework of an update (to avoid the reboot).

On the way, the inferface of management of the licences citrix on the site of citrix.com is really nicer now

Exclude the SmcGui.exe (sep11) process in your TS/RDS/XenApp servers

If like us, you are lucky to have SEP11 (Symantec Endpoint Protection) in your architecture, so you probably noticed that the SmcGui.exe process is launched along with each session of your server XenApp or TS/RDS.

In order to get off the SmcGui.exe process, you just have to follow the TECH105060 article from Symantec.

To wrap up, create the value DWORD : HKLM\SOFTWARE\Symantec\Symantec Endpoint Protection\SMC\LaunchSmcGui = 0

And if you wish to save some RAM on your server, then suppress the value ccApp, in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run (32 bits) or HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run (64 bits), afin de ne pas charger ccApp.exe.

Dans notre cas un serveur 2008 R2

If your AD is in 2008, so the best, of course, is to implement a prefered GPO, with a WMI filter (example : Select * from Win32_Processor where DeviceID=”CPU0″ and AddressWidth=”32″ or Select * from Win32_Processor where DeviceID=”CPU0″ and AddressWidth=”64″)

If you want to use your preferred GPOs, on a 2003 server, so, you will have to install KB943729 in order to have preferred GPO applied

Windows Server 2003, Édition 64 bits
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=29E83503-7686-49F3-B42D-8E5ED23D5D79
Windows Server 2003, Édition 32 bits
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BFE775F9-5C34-44D0-8A94-44E47DB35ADD

And for AD2003, there is also the option to go through a RegToAdm for the creation of the value LaunchSmcGui

SEP11-Exclude_SmcGui.reg

SEP11-Delete_SmcGui_Run_ccApp_64_Bits.reg

SEP11-Delete_SmcGui_Run_ccApp_32_Bits.reg

Error 0 received while obtaining a license for a XenApp client connection. A grace license has been granted

On one of our XenApp server(2008 R2 Fr en XenApp 6), it was not possible to connect by ICA.

In the server logs, we found out the following error :

Source: MetaFrame
Event ID: 9026
Description:
Error 0 received while obtaining a license for a XenApp client connection. A grace license has been granted.

On the other hand, regarding the grace licence we don’t have anything, which would confirm that the server could not accept any ICA connections (the licence server was reachable).

Based on that, we direct to our licence server ( (Windows 2003 sp2 Fr et en version 11.6.1 build 10007, uptade to 11.9 scheduled quickly for xenapp 6.5), and then after checking we noticed that the above server did not have the Host licence.

While looking at the licence server logs, we found out the following error :

Source de l’événement : CITRIX_LicenseServer
ID de l’événement : 749
Description :
(8608) Client/server comm version mismatch (client: 1.3, server: 1.4). The client and server programs are running potentially incompatible versions of FLEXnet comm software.

The only solution in our case, was to restart the service ” systeme de licence Citrix”, in order to have the server benefiting the Host licence.

The CTX111775 takes care of the error ID 749, and indicates that this error is not a stopper, in our case since the restart of the service “système de licence Citrix”, the error disappeared and the server did obtain a Host licence.