Citrix Archives - Icenlemon.co.uk

July 30, 2015July 31, 2015

Citrix Networking for Data Center Specialist Practicum Passed

A few weeks ago I took the Citrix Networking for Data Center Specialist Practicum (1Y0-A36) exam, as part of the Citrix Partner Specialist program. Happy to say the I found out this week that I passed!

The exam didn’t feel too challenging on the whole, however I have been working with the Citrix NetScaler and CloudBridge product stack regularly for a number of years now.

What is the Citrix practicum?

The practicum provides partners the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge in one of the solution competency areas by simulating a Citrix engagement. Engineers will be provided a sample Statement of Work containing specific business and user requirements. Each person will then be given access to a lab environment to develop a solution to meet the needs outlined in order to validate their skills in a meaningful way.

April 16, 2014April 16, 2014

Adding a Published Application to multiple Delivery Groups in XenDesktop 7.x

Although assigning a Published Application to multiple Worker Groups in XenApp 6.x was a fairly straightforward task, the same activity is not as intuitive in XenDesktop 7.x. The Citrix Product Documentation isn’t exactly crystal clear on the process either. As such, I thought I would take the opportunity to document the process here.

Firstly, I am using XenDesktop 7.1 in my example below and I haven’t found a way to do this using the GUI, so we have to use PowerShell. I haven’t validated this for 7.0 or 7.5, although I assume the process will be the same.

After creating the target Delivery Groups, the first thing to do is discover and publish the required application(s) to the first Delivery Group using the Citrix Studio Console. I suggest using this method as it is quick and easy. Alternatively PowerShell can be used to create the application. I will detail at the end of the article.

Once you have a Published Application you will need to launch PowerShell, again I find this easiest to do from the Citrix Studio Console. The following command will assign the named Published Application to the Delivery Group specified, much like you would do with XenApp 6.x and Worker Groups. This can be repeated as required.

Note: Published Applications can only be assigned to Delivery Group with a type of ‘Applications Only’ or ‘Desktops and Applications’

Add-BrokerApplication -Name "Publised App Name" -DesktopGroup "Delivery Group 1"

In addition to this a priority can also be assigned. By default the priority is 0. 0 is the highest priority. To assign a priority, use the -priority attribute as seen below. The priority can be used to either load balance the group, when both Delivery Groups have the same priority, or in failover order as the priority descends.

Add-BrokerApplication -Name "Publised App Name" -DesktopGroup "Delivery Group 1" -priority 1

To add a Published Application using PowerShell use the following Cmdlet:

Add-BrokerApplication -BrowserName "Publised App Name" -DesktopGroup "Delivery Group 1"

I hope this helps.

June 2, 2013June 2, 2013

Custom Condition Using PowerShell to Check if an ICA Session is a Published Destkop

Recently I had a specific need to identify if a Citrix XenApp session was a published desktop using AppSense Environment Manager. AppSense Environment Manager has built-in conditions to apply to a particular published application, however I needed to know if the session was just a published desktop so this wasn’t going to work. To do this I created the following PowerShell script to be used as a custom condition. I hope this helps anyone else in a similar position.

$sessionid = query session | Select-String -Pattern ">"
$sessionid = $sessionid.ToString()
$sessionid = $sessionid.Substring(9,9)
$sessionid = $sessionid.trim()
$publishedapp = (Get-ItemProperty  HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Citrix\Ica\Session\$sessionid\connection).InitialProgram
If ($publishedapp) {exit (0)} else {exit(1)}

June 2, 2013June 3, 2013

Customising the Citrix NetScaler Access Gateway Caxton Style Logon Page

In the Citrix world you often have to customise the default NetScaler Access Gateway Caxton style logon page. So to make life easier I have broken down the page and its components into the following sections (I’m sure other people will have already done this). I have purposefully used the same style as Andrew Morgan’s excellent article titled “Decrapifying the Citrix Web Interface (5.4)“.

Please note, this applies to the standard Citrix NetScaler theme, those using the Green Bubble theme for example will need different customisations.

1. The Header Logo

To remove the logo, find the css class .header_left in /images/caxtonstyle.css on lines 92-98 and add the highlighed line.

.header_left
{
width: 265px;
height: 62px;
background-image: url(/vpn/images/ctxHeader01.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
display: none;
}

To change the logo to a custom one, modify the following file:

/images/ctxHeader01.gif)

Should you need to change the size of the image, don’t forget to change the width and height in the header_left style above.

2. The Header Banner

To remove the banner to the right of the logo, find the css class .header_middle in /images/caxtonstyle.css on lines 100-105 and add the highlighed line.

.header_middle
{
height: 62px;
background-image: url(/vpn/images/ctxHeader02.gif);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
display: none;
}

To change the background to a custom one, modify the following file:

/images/ctxHeader02.gif)

Should you have changed the logo height, don’t forget to change the height in the header_middle style above.

3. The Separating Banner

To remove the separating banner, find the css class .navbar in /images/caxtonstyle.css on lines 148-153 and add the highlighed line.

.navbar
{
height: 26px;
background-image: url(/vpn/images/NavBarLink.gif);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
display: none;

To change the seperating banner replace the image file below:

images/NavBarLink.gif

4. The Glow Box Top Left Corner

To change the glow box image replace the image files below:

images/LoginPaneTopLeftBorderGlow.png
images/LoginPaneTopLeftBorderGlow.gif