virtuEs.IT

… sharing my IT Quests

Writing my first XenApp book: calling out to the community

Jun 12

Posted by virtuEs in Book Reviews, HowTo | 4 Comments


A couple of week ago I was contacted by a book publisher and asked if I wanted to write a XenApp book. A challenge I enthusiastically take upon me.

I strongly believe in the power of sharing knowledge and how it enables communities to grow strong and great ideas to blossom. And I do think the Citrix community shows that every day.

After visiting my first E2EVC in Copenhagen I got to see the power of the Virtualization community in action and felt greatly inspired to take that community and E22VC spirit with me a try to put some of it in my book.

The XenApp book will be about XenApp Best Practices, technical tips and tricks to improve your XenApp infrastructure and useful tools to manage it. It will be a collection of how-to articles on all XenApp infrastructure components.

 

Power of the community

… So what better way to get some of that community spirit in my book than by asking the community for a little help …

 

So I hereby call out to the Citrix community for help:
What how-to articles, best practices and tools should be included and promoted in my XenApp book?

 

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Citrix Synergy 2013 – Los Angeles

May 22

Posted by virtuEs in Citrix Synergy 2013 - Los Angeles | 2 Comments


Citrix Synergy 2013

 

YES!!! It’s that time of the year again. The buzz is zooming loudly. The talk of the town is all about Citrix, great visions, new strategies and great new product announcements.

 

I’ve locked myself in my room, barricaded the door and keep checking news and live feeds and social media trending topics to join the excitement on the latest announcements, key notes and some in-dept sessions to get a glimpse of what Citrix has in store for us for this year.

 

So what did I discover yesterday from the buzz so far:

Citrix Excalibur learning yourney

 

… But more importantly: what would Mark Templeton share with us during today’s keynote?

Hiding in my room did not make me skip my running practice, which unfortunately was planned at the same time as the keynote. So armed with a fully charged phone and earplugs I settled for the next best thing: multi-tasking. Which meant I followed the live feed on my mobile phone, while trying to keep up with all the training exercises. How’s that for making modern technology work for ya and getting all pumped up during the keynote ;-)

So here’s a short list of the biggest announcements from the keynote and the corresponding blogs and news articles to provide you with some additional information:

  • The first release of Project Avalon will go live as XenDesktop 7 (f.k.a. project Excalibur) and will have XenApp integrated in it.
    Read all about it in this Citrix Blog. Release date is June 2013
  • Check out the XenDesktop 7 features here (Citrix Login required).
  • Free Introduction to XenDesktop 7 training
  • New ShareFile StorageZone Connectors, StorageZone options for Windows Azure and integration with XenMobile. Read more in this Citrix announcement
  • XenMobile Enterprise (and the MDM and App editions): Citrix announcement
  • New Mobile Apps to accompany XenMobile and the Worx App SDK to create your own mobile apps: Citrix announcement
  • DesktopPlayer for Mac, Windows virtual desktops to go: Citrix Blog
  • NVIDIA’s next generation NVIDIA GRID vGPU integrates with XenDesktop and allows the usage of virtual GPU’s: NVIDIA site

Update: The keynote is online and can be watched on Citrix TV here.

 

And finally some links to other blogs posted on today’s keynote from the community:

Book review: Citrix XenDesktop 5 Starter from Packt Publishing

Apr 21

Posted by virtuEs in Book Reviews | Comments off


Citrix XenDesktop 5 Starter Instant by Packt Publishing

Citrix XenDesktop 5 Starter Instant

When I was asked last year to review a Citrix XenServer administration book by Packt Publishing I immediately accepted the offer with great enthusiasm.
Not only because I was asked for my knowledge on the subject, but also because it meant a publishing company was making an effort to produce a line of books on Citrix products and offering a way for new administrators to get insights into the products and practical instructions on the best implementation from experts that wanted to share their knowledge and experiences.
After all, how many books are out their to support administrators for Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop and even Citrix XenServer? Other than the provided books from the official training courses?

It was my pleasure to provide the author with my feedback and technical insights to improve the technical quality and consistency of the book and share my knowledge and experience. It also made me realize Packt Publishing was very serious on providing technical books on a great variety of current day solutions. And were eager to publish even more Citrix books.
As I take each and every job or assignment very seriously I also take working for Packt Publishing as a book reviewer very seriously, which means I needed a lot of spare hours to read each chapter, write many lines of feedback and share my own knowledge on the subject. And as I keep a very high standard on how to professionally do my job, that spare time isn’t always available. so I even had to stop my review work on another book as I could not find enough spare time to spent on that book.


Fortunately for me, I did get a new request from Packt Publishing, this time to write a book review on my blog and share my thoughts on a new release, the Citrix XenDesktop 5 Starter book from their Instant series. A series that offers readers a way to “Learn something new in an Instant! A short, fast, focused guide delivering immediate results.” as Packt describes it and for a very affordable price if I may say so myself.

With only 66 pages to read, I did find the time to read it and share my thoughts on it with you.

So here’s my review …

Read the rest of this entry »

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Changing the NetScaler Access Gateway theme

Feb 27

Posted by virtuEs in HomeLab, HowTo, Network Appliances | Comments off


AGEE black theme

AGEE black theme

With the Citrix NetScaler it is possible to change the theme of the Access Gateway Enterprise Edition (AGEE) default logon page so it fits better with the new Citrix Receiver and StoreFront theme. The default theme that runs on the NetScaler is the Black theme. In order to have the same look and feel between the AGEE logon page, the StoreFront site and the Citrix Receiver, we need to implement the Citrix Receiver or Green Bubble theme on the NetScaler AGEE.

As of the 10.0.71.6014.e release the NetScaler comes with a great UI Customization process. You can read all about this process in this Citrix blogpost.

For the older versions, like the one I run in my homelab (which runs version 10.0.71.6.nc), you can follow the steps described below to change the default theme on your NetScaler.

The described steps are mostly based upon this blogpost from Jarian Gibson that I found, which describes all the performed steps to take in great detail. So all the credits go to Jarian!

 
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Citrix Certified Administrator for NetScaler

Feb 8

Posted by virtuEs in * News *, Favorites | Comments off


YES! Results are in for the A28 beta NetScaler 10 exam:

 

I passed!

 

The NetScaler certification was the only product certification that I did not have, so when I discovered the beta was available in December 2012 I could not resist and took on the challenge, knowing it would require a very different skillset than the VDI product range covers.

With a strong background in VDI solutions, covering OSI layer 7 mostly, it does not only take a different skillset but a different mindset as well to uncover the wonders and features of the NetScaler.

Fortunately, I still remembered network basics from my CCNA exam period over 10 years ago (that OSI model sticks with ya) and was able to map those basics to the many features this great appliance has to offer. So yeah, I’m very happy to be fully certified and ready to design and implement a lot more NetScaler infrastructures :-)

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