virtuEs.IT

… sharing my IT Quests

How To ...

When you are setting up a Proof of Concept or a test environment, you often have to setup up de default environment, including setting up Domain Controllers, DNS and DHCP Services and more ...

This page shows a collection of short postings with those how-to answers to regular admin tasks of which the syntax might just have slipped you mind. This personal KnowledgeBase contains articles on the different tools and configuration settings I've used in scripts to automate the configuration and installation of Windows Servers, XenApp applications and Test tools.

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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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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Out with the old, in with … AGEE VPX (part 3)

Feb 6

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


In the previous parts of this series I showed you the basic configurations of the new Access Gateway Enterprise Edition VPX (AGEE VPX) based upon the NetScaler code.
In the first part I explained the initial network configuration, the installation of the license and the automatic Access Gateway Setup Wizard that is run after the licenses are loaded.
In the second part I continued with some configuration checks, as I don’t want to blindly trust that setup wizard.

And now we are ready for the real fun part of the configuration … so let’s continu the saga with the configuration of the required Virtual Servers for our setup and deliver a working implementation for our two-legged design.

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Out with the old, in with … AGEE VPX (part 2)

Jan 27

Posted by virtuEs in HowTo, Network Appliances | 2 Comments


In part 1 of this series on the new Access Gateway Enterprise Edition VPX appliance I explained the steps to configure the basis settings to set up the AGEE VPX. In order to use the AGEE VPX in a two-legged implementation I needed to implement some additional settings to make it work in the customer’s production environment and in my homelab as well with the right certificate settings (using self-signed certificates).

 

I like to implement the Access Gateway with a least two network interfaces so I can separate the internal and external network traffic and apply different firewall rules if required. You can read more on the different options and motivations in this blog from The Generation V.
 

 

So let’s further explain the configuration I used to have my AGEE VPX fully functional, serving both external and internal requests.

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Out with the old, in with … AGEE VPX (part 1)

Jan 22

Posted by virtuEs in HomeLab, HowTo, Network Appliances | 3 Comments


In a previous blogpost I wrote about the announcement from Citrix regarding the Citrix Access Gateway Product Line Simplification. At the same time I just finished building a Proof of Concept for a customer of one of our consultancy partners that included the (soon to be End of Sales) Access Gateway VPX. So I quickly informed our partner of the announcement and we decided to implement the new AGEE VPX into the production environment for the customer.

Of course I was very excited to be working with the new appliance and become more familiar with the NetScaler productline, as the AGEE VPX shares the same code as the NetScalers do.

 

I did have the chance to get some hands on practice with the NetScaler during one of the attended Hands-on labs at Citrix Synergy, so I felt brave enough to take on this new challenge.
 

 

… And a challenge it would prove to be …

 
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