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Xenapp and Desktop

Patel, Azharuddin (CORP)

Delivery controlsql databaseStore frontVirtual delivery agentDirectorStudioLicense serverHypervisor / host infrastructureBroker agent/serviceXml serviceMCSPVSnet scalar gatewayCloud bridgeMachine catalogworker groupconfig loggingdelivery groupDelivery siteWorker machineLoad balanceIMA/ICA/FMAReceiverWeb Interfaceprofile mgmtSCCMSCVMMPersonal vdiskDifferential diskIdentity diskUser LayerAccess layerResource layercontrol layerHardwareHosted server appMaster Image Installed/stream/hostedunfilteredRemote acess

resource enumeration, Secure ticket authoritySite PolicySite Access policyLocal Hosted CacheXenapp/server/desktopshadowing usersecure gatewaycutom ICA fileCnameHOstDelegate admin

http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/xenapp-and-xendesktop/7-6/xad-sessions-maintain.html?_ga=1.48620582.1006145380.1443364831

http://www.thomaskoetzing.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=304&Itemid=301

http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/xenapp-and-xendesktop/7-6/xad-build-new-enviroment/xad-install-prepare.html

http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/xenapp-and-xendesktop/7-6/xad-architecture-article.html

 The components in this illustration are:

Delivery Controller —- The Delivery Controller is the central management component of any XenApp or XenDesktop Site. - Each Site has one or more Delivery Controllers. It is installed on at least one server in the data center. (For Site reliability and availability, install the Controller on more than one server.).- The Controller consists of services that communicate with the hypervisor to distribute applications and desktops, authenticate and

manage user access, broker connections between users and their virtual desktops and applications, optimize use connections, and load-balance these connections.- Each service’s data is stored in the Site database.

- The Controller manages the state of the desktops, starting and stopping them based on demand and administrative configuration.

- In some editions, the Controller allows you to install Profile management to manage user personalization settings in virtualized or physical Windows environments.

SQL Database —It is central (SQl) site database. - This is where all the dynamic and static information is stored. It stores all site configuration information with regards to policies and delivery groups, machive catalogs etc.- it stores all dynamic session information. At least one Microsoft SQL Server database is required for every XenApp or XenDesktop Site to store all configuration and session information.- SQl database stores the data, collected and managed by the services that make up the Controller. Install the database within your data center, and ensure it has a persistent connection to the Controller.If Delivery controller needs to broker new connection or reconnect old, It collects all the information from SQL database.

Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) — The VDA is installed on each physical or virtual machine in your Site that you want to make available to users. It enables the machine to register with the Controller, which in turn allows the machine and the resources it is hosting to be made available to users. VDAs establish and manage the connection between the machine and the user device, verify that a Citrix license is available for the user or session, and apply whatever policies have been configured for the session. The VDA communicates session information to the Broker Service in the Controller through the broker agent included in the VDA.

XenApp and XenDesktop include VDAs for Windows server and desktop operating systems. VDAs for Windows server operating systems allow multiple users to connect to the server at one time. VDAs for Windows desktops allow only one user to connect to the desktop at a time.

StoreFront — - StoreFront authenticates users to Sites hosting resources.- manages stores of desktops and applications that users access. - It hosts enterprise application store, which lets you give users self-

service access to virtual desktops and applications you make available to them.

- It also keeps track of users’ application subscriptions, shortcut names, and other data to ensure they have a consistent experience across multiple devices.

Receiver — installed on user devices and other endpoints, such as virtual desktops, Citrix Receiver provides users with quick, secure, self-service access to documents, applications, and desktops from any of the user's devices, including smartphones, tablets, and PCs. Receiver provides on-demand access to Windows, Web, and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. For devices that cannot install Receiver software, Receiver for HTML5 provides a connection through a HTML5-compatible web browser.

Studio — Studio is the management console that enables you to configure and manage your deployment, eliminating the need for separate management consoles for managing delivery of applications and desktops. Studio provides various wizards to guide you through the process of setting up your environment, creating your workloads to host applications and desktops, and assigning applications and desktops to users. You can also use Studio to allocate and track Citrix licenses for your Site.

Studio gets the information it displays from the Broker Service in the Controller.

Director — Director is a web-based tool that enables IT support and help desk teams to monitor an environment, troubleshoot issues before they become system-critical, and perform support tasks for end users. Director can be installed outside your trusted network. You can use one Director Deployment to connect to and monitor multiple XenApp or XenDesktop Sites.Director shows session and Site information from these sources:

o Real-time session data from the Broker Service in the Controller, which include data the Broker Service gets from the broker agent in the VDA.

o Historical Site data from Monitor Service in the Controller.

o Data about HDX traffic (also known as ICA traffic) captured by HDX Insight from the NetScaler, if your deployment includes a NetScaler and your XenApp or XenDesktop edition includes HDX Insights.

You can also view and interact with a user's sessions using Microsoft Remote Assistance.

License server — License server manages your product licenses. It communicates with the delivery Controller to manage licensing for each user's session and with Studio to allocate license files. You must create at least one license server to store and manage your license files.

Hypervisor / Host infrastructure— Host infrastructure is underlying hypervisor that hosts the virtual machines in your Site. These can be the virtual machines you use to host applications and desktops as well as virtual machines you use to host the XenApp and XenDesktop components.

- A hypervisor is installed on a host computer dedicated entirely to running the hypervisor and hosting virtual machines. Citrix XenServer hypervisor is included with XenApp and XenDesktop, but you can use other supported hypervisors, such as Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere,

The host connection is configured in studio and basically connects to delivery controller to hyper visor, linking them together..

Although most implementations of XenApp and XenDesktop require a hypervisor, you don’t need one to provide remote PC access or when you are using Provisioning Services (included with some editions of XenApp and XenDesktop) instead of MCS to provision virtual machine.

These additional components, not shown in the illustration above, may also be included in typical XenApp or XenDesktop deployments:

Provisioning Services — Provisioning Services is an optional component of XenApp and XenDesktop available with some editions. It provides an alternative to MCS for provisioning virtual machines. Whereas MCS creates copies of a master image, Provisioning Services streams the master image to user device. Provisioning Services doesn’t require a hypervisor to do this, so you can use it to host physical machines. When Provisioning Services is included in a Site, it communicates with the Controller to provide users with resources.

NetScaler Gateway — When users connect from outside the corporate firewall, this release can use Citrix NetScaler Gateway (formerly Access Gateway) technology to secure these connections with SSL. NetScaler Gateway or NetScaler VPX virtual appliance is an SSL VPN appliance that is deployed in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) to provide a single secure point of access through the corporate firewall.

Citrix CloudBridge — In deployments where virtual desktops are delivered to users at remote locations such as branch offices, Citrix CloudBridge (formerly Citrix Branch Repeater or WANScaler) technology can be employed to optimize performance. Repeaters accelerate performance across wide-area networks, so with Repeaters in the network, users in the branch office experience LAN-like performance over the WAN. CloudBridge can prioritize different parts of the user experience so that, for example, the user experience does not degrade in the branch location when a large file or print job is sent over the network. HDX WAN Optimization with CloudBridge provides tokenized compression and data deduplication, dramatically reducing bandwidth requirements and improving performance. For more information, see the Citrix CloudBridge documentation.

Setting up and assigning resources: machine catalogs and Delivery Groups

With XenApp and XenDesktop, you set up the resources you want to provide to users with machine catalogs, but you designate which users have access to these resources with Delivery Groups.

Machine catalogsMachine catalogs are collections of virtual or physical machines that you manage as a single entity. These machines, the application or virtual desktops on them, are the resources you want to provide to your users. All the machines in a machine catalog have the same operating system and the same VDA installed. They also have the same applications or virtual desktops available on them. Typically, you create a master image and use it to create identical virtual machines in the catalog.When you create a machine catalog, you specify the type of machine and provisioning method for the machines in that catalog.

Machine types Windows Server OS machines — Virtual or physical machines

based on a Windows server operating system used for delivering XenApp published apps, also known as server-based hosted applications, and XenApp published desktops, also known as server-hosted desktops. These machines allow multiple users to connect to them at one time.

Desktop OS machines — Virtual or physical machines based on a Windows desktop operating system used for delivering VDI desktops (desktops running Window desktop operating systems that can be fully personalized, depending on the options you choose), and VM-hosted apps (applications from desktop operating systems) and hosted physical desktops. Only one user at a time can connect each of these desktops.

Remote PC Access — User devices that are included on a whitelist, enabling users to access resources on their office PCs remotely, from any device running Citrix Receiver. Remote PC

Access enables you to manage access to office PCs through you XenDesktop deployment.

Provisioning methods Machine Creation Services (MCS) — A collection of services

that create virtual servers and desktops from a master image on demand, optimizing storage utilization and providing a virtual machine to users every time they log on. Machine Creation Services is fully integrated and administered in Citrix Studio.

Provisioning Services — Enables computers to be provisioned and reprovisioned in real-time from a single shared-disk image. Provisioning Services manages target devices as a device collection. The desktop and applications are delivered from a Provisioning Services vDisk that is imaged from a master target device, which enables you to leverage the processing power of physical hardware or virtual machines. Provisioning Services is managed through its own console.

Existing images — Applies to desktops and applications that you have already migrated to virtual machines in the data center. You must manage target devices on an individual basis or collectively using third-party electronic software distribution (ESD) tools.

Delivery GroupsDelivery Groups: collections of users given to access a common group of resources. Delivery Groups contain machines from your machine catalogs and Active Directory users who have access to your Site. Often it makes sense to assign users to your Delivery Groups by their Active Directory group because both Active Directory groups and Delivery Groups are ways of grouping together users with similar requirements.A Delivery Group is a collection of servers that specify who can use a set of applications. A single Delivery Group can contain applications from a number of machine catalogs rather than a single hypervisor pool. Also, a single Delivery Group can be published to users so that a single user can access multiple applications in the group.

Each Delivery Group can contain machines from more than one machine catalog, and each machine catalog can contribute machines to more than one Delivery Group, but each individual machine can only belong to one Delivery Group at a time. You can set up a Delivery Group to deliver applications, desktops, or both.You define which resources users in the Delivery Group can access. For example, if you want to deliver different applications to different users, one way to do this is to install all the applications you want to deliver on the master image for one machine catalog and create enough machines in that catalog to distribute among several Delivery Groups. Then you configure each Delivery Group to deliver a different subset of the applications installed on the machines.

XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6 are based on FlexCast Management Architecture (FMA). FMA is a service-oriented architecture that allows interoperability and management modularity across Citrix technologies. FMA provides a platform for application delivery, mobility, services, flexible provisioning, and cloud management.

FMA replaces the Independent Management Architecture (IMA) used in XenApp 6.5 and previous versions.

These are the key elements of FMA in terms of how they relate to elements of XenApp 6.5 and previous versions:

Delivery SitesFarms were the top-level objects in XenApp 6.5 and previous versions. In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, the Delivery Site is the highest level item. Sites offer applications and desktops to groups of users.FMA requires that you must be in a domain to deploy a site. For example, to install the servers, your account must have local administrator privileges and be a domain user in the Active Directory.

Machine catalogs and Delivery GroupsMachines hosting applications in XenApp 6.5 and previous versions belonged to Worker Groups for efficient management of the

applications and server software. Administrators could manage all machines in a Worker Group as a single unit for their application management and load-balancing needs. Folders were used to organize applications and machines.In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, you use a combination of machine catalogs and Delivery Groups to manage machines, load balancing, and hosted applications or desktops.

Virtual Delivery AgentsIn XenApp 6.5 and previous versions, worker machines in Worker Groups ran applications for the user and communicated with data collectors. In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, the VDA communicates with Delivery Controllers that manage the user connections.

Delivery ControllersIn XenApp 6.5 and previous versions there was a zone master responsible for user connection requests and communication with hypervisors. In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, Controllers in the Site distribute and handle connection requests.XenApp 6.5 and previous versions, zones provided a way to aggregate servers and replicate data across WAN connections. Although zones have no exact equivalent in XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, you can provide users with applications that cross WANs and locations. You can design Delivery Sites for a specific geographical location or data center and then allow your users access to multiple Delivery Sites. App Orchestration with XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6 provides capabilities for managing multiple Sites in multiple geographies.

Citrix Studio and Citrix DirectorUse the Studio console to configure your environments and provide users with access to applications and desktops. Studio replaces the Delivery Services Console in XenApp 6.5 and previous versions.Administrators use Director to monitor the environment, shadow user devices, and troubleshoot IT issues. To shadow users, Microsoft

Remote Assistance must be enabled; it is enabled by default when the VDA is installed.

Delivering applicationsXenApp 6.5 and previous versions used the Publish Application wizard to prepare applications and deliver them to users. In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, you use Studio to create and add applications to make them available to users who are included in a Delivery Group. Using Studio, you first configure a Site, create and specify machine catalogs, and then create Delivery Groups within those machine catalogs. The Delivery Groups determine which users have access to the applications you deliver.

DatabaseXenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6 do not use the IMA data store for configuration information. They use a Microsoft SQL Server database to store configuration and session information.

Load Management PolicyIn XenApp 6.5 and previous versions, load evaluators use predefined measurements to determine the load on a machine. User connections can be matched to the machines with less load.In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, use load management policies for balancing loads across machines.

Delegated AdministratorsIn XenApp 6.5 and previous versions, you created custom administrators and assigned them permissions based on folders and objects. In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, custom administrators are based on role and scope pairs. A role represents a job function and has defined permissions associated with it to allow delegation. A scope represents a collection of objects. Built-in administrator roles have specific permissions sets, such as help desk, applications, hosting, and catalog. For example, help desk administrators can work only with individual users on specified sites, while full administrators can monitor the entire deployment and resolve systemwide IT issues.

The transition to FMA also means some features available in XenApp 6.5 and previous versions may be implemented differently or may require you to substitute other features, components, or tools to achieve the same goals.

The XenDesktop 7 Configuration Logging feature allows the administrator to record and control administrative changes made to the XenDesktop site. All Site configuration changes and administrative activities are captured to the Database and are available for reporting.

Configuration logging is one of the key features of XenDesktop 7 and administrators can use this logged content to:

Diagnose and troubleshoot problems after configuration changes are made; the log provides a breadcrumb trail

Assist change management and track configurations Report administration activity

What is logged ?

Configuration changes and administrative activities (operations and activities such as power operations, session control, and messaging) initiated by an administrator from Studio, Director, and PowerShell scripts are logged. Changes initiated via the UI or SDK are logged regardless of successful completion and not batched so service crashes will not affect the log. Examples of logged configuration changes include working with (creating, editing, deleting, assigning):

Machine Catalogs Delivery Groups (including changing power management settings) Administrator roles and scopes Host resources and connections Citrix policies through Studio

What is not logged ?

Autonomic operations such as pool management power-on of virtual machines.

Policy actions implemented through the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC); use Microsoft tools to view logs of those actions.

Changes made through the registry, direct access of the Database, or from sources other than Studio, Director, or PowerShell.

When the deployment is initialized, Configuration Logging becomes available when the first Configuration Logging Service instance registers with the Configuration Service. Therefore, the very early stages of configuration are not logged (for example, when the Database schema is obtained and applied, when a hypervisor is initialized).

How it works ?

Configuration Logging uses a PowerShell 2.0 SDK and the Configuration Logging Service. The Configuration Logging Service runs on every Controller in the Site. If one Controller fails, the service on another Controller automatically handles logging requests. Access to Configuration Logging is controlled through Delegated Administration, with the Edit Logging Preferences and View Configuration Logs permissions. Configuration logs are localized when they are created, it means that a log created in English will be read in English, regardless of the locale of the reader.

Reporting

You set Configuration Logging preferences, display configuration logs, and generate HTML and CSV reports from Citrix Studio. You can filter configuration log displays by date ranges and by full text search results. Mandatory logging, when enabled, prevents configuration changes from being made unless they can be logged. With appropriate permission, you can delete entries from the configuration log. You cannot use the Configuration Logging feature to edit log content.

The Configuration Logging feature is also used by XenDesktop Director that provides UI notifications of configuration change events to the administrator without needing to access XenDesktop Studio.

Manage Configuration Logging

By default, Configuration Logging is enabled, and mandatory logging is disabled. Configuration Logging and mandatory logging settings can be changed in XenDesktop Studio in Logging node (XenDesktop Studio -> Logging). To display the current settings click Preferences in the Actions pane as displayed in Figure 1.

Figure 1

To enable or disable Configuration Logging:

To enable Configuration Logging, select the Enable logging radio button. This is the default setting. If the database cannot be written to, the logging information is discarded, but the operation continues.

To disable Configuration Logging, select the Disable logging radio button. If logging was previously enabled, existing logs remain readable with the PowerShell SDK.

To enable or disable mandatory logging:

To enable mandatory logging, clear the Allow changes when the database is disconnected checkbox. No configuration change or administrative activity that would normally be logged will be allowed unless it can be written in the database used for Configuration Logging.

To disable mandatory logging, select the Allow changes when the database is disconnected checkbox. Configuration changes and administrative activities are allowed, even if the database used for Configuration Logging cannot be accessed. This is the default setting.

The mandatory logging option is available only when Configuration Logging is enabled, that is, when the Enable Configuration Logging radio button is selected. If the Configuration Logging Service fails, and high vailability is not in use, mandatory logging is assumed. In such cases, operations that would normally be logged are not performed.

Database location

Citrix recommends to change the location of the database used for Configuration Logging after creating a Site (and the database used for the Monitoring Service, which also uses the Site Configuration Database by default).

The location should be changed for the following reasons:

The backup strategy for the Configuration Logging Database is likely to differ from the backup strategy for the Site Configuration Database.

The volume of data collected for Configuration Logging and the Monitoring Service could adversely affect the space available to the Site Configuration database.

It splits the single point of failure for the three databases.

When location is changed the Configuration Logging data in the previous database is not imported to the new database. Logs cannot be aggregated from both databases when retrieving logs. The first log entry in the new Configuration Logging Database will indicate that a database change occurred, but it does not identify the previous database.

To change Configuration Logging database location:

1. Create a new SQL database which will be used to store configuration logging data. Make sure that database is configured with proper collation sequence. The required collation ends with “_CI_AS_KS”. In general, it is best to use a collation which ends with “_100_CI_AS_KS”

2. Click XenDesktop Studio -> Logging -> Preferences as it is shown in Figure 1 and click Change Logging Database button. Type new database name as it is shown in Figure 2 and press OK.

Figure 2

2. Click OK

Figure 3

4. When database transfer is completed verify the location of Configuration Logging database used by XenDesktop site in XenDesktop Studio -> Logging -> Configuration as it is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4

The alternate method of changing the location of Configuration Logging database (as well as all other used databases ) is to use XenDesktop Studio -> Configuration -> Change Database option as it is shown in Figure 5

What is Citrix Configuration Logging?According to the Citrix XenApp Administrator’s guide, “the Configuration Logging feature allows you tokeep track of administrative changes made to your server farm environment. By generating the reports that this feature makes available, you can determine what changes were made to your server farm, when they were made, and which administrators made them. This is especially useful when multiple administrators are modifying the configuration of your server farm. It also facilitates the identification and, if necessary, reversion of administrative changes that may be causing problems for the server farm.” (emphasis added)

When I worked for Citrix, we had a load evaluator that had no available login times.  If a server was acting up, we could apply this “unavailable” load evaluator to it and figure out what was going on.  Oftentimes, we

would discover that the “unavailable” load evaluator was applied to a new server and not know who did it or why they did it. So, we would have to resort to sending out an email asking why this server was assigned to the load evaluator.  Now, Citrix XenApp Configuration Logging tells you who did what and when.  That should be enough information to find out why.

Where are Changes Logged?

Changes that you make to the Citrix XenApp farm are logged to a database.  The back end database can be:

o Microsoft SQL 2000 or Microsoft SQL 2005 (Microsoft SQL Express works too)

o Oracle 9.2 or 10.2 We will explore the details of the database schema in depth later on.

How are Changes Logged?

There are several ways to make changes to a Citrix XenApp Farm:

o Management Consoleso Command Line Utilitieso MFCOM o PowerShell o Etc.

In order to facilitate logging changes made by any of these methods, Citrix introduced an IMA hook called CitrixLogServer.dll.  As you know, any change made to the data store has to go through IMA first. So, introducing an IMA hook makes sense.

Here are the facts about CitrixLogServer.dll:

o Located in %ProgramFiles%\Citrix\System32o it is a Microsoft .Net assembly

o it uses ADO.NET to write changes to the database.  Once a connection is made to the database, it will automatically disconnect after 5 minutes of inactivity.

o Uses a XSD schema that is optimized for writes 

Citrix XenApp Configuration Logging Architecture

When a change is submitted to IMA, the change is written via a transaction to the configuration logging database and data store.  It is possible to require all changes be written to the configuration logging database before they are allowed to be written to the data store.  This ensures all changes are logged.  Since the change is written via a transaction, a failure writing to the logging database or data store rolls back the transaction and no change is made or logged.

Bonus tip: if you clone servers in your Citrix XenApp farm and cannot join the cloned server to the farm, you may have to disable configuration logging.  Once the server joins the farm, you can re-enable configuration logging.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

these new Citrix and Microsoft releases can be used with this release:

Citrix AppDNA (see the AppDNA documentation). Accelerates the migration and transformation of desktop and web applications for new environments and helps manage application change on a day-to-day basis. AppDNA provides automated analysis of applications for different Windows platforms and suitability for application virtualization through App-V, XenApp, or XenDesktop. Using AppDNA, you can model complex mixes of new technologies to determine the best plan of action and then automate the transformations.

Citrix StoreFront (see the Technologies > StoreFront documentation). This feature replaces Web Interface and provides authentication and resource delivery services for Citrix Receiver.

Citrix Receiver (see the Receiver documentation for user devices and platforms). Receiver is a universal software client that provides secure, high-performance delivery of virtual desktops and applications.

Citrix Personal vDisk improvements (see Personal vDisks in the XenDesktop documentation). This feature retains the single image management of pooled and streamed desktops while allowing people to install applications and change their desktop settings.

Citrix Provisioning Services (see the Technologies > Provisioning Services documentation). This feature allows computers to be provisioned and re-provisioned in real-time from a single shared-disk image.

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2012 SP1. This Microsoft application deployment tool is supported by Citrix Machine Creation Services and Provisioning Services for virtual machines. This feature replaces the XenApp Power and Capacity Management feature to help reduce power consumption and manage server capacity.

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012 and 2012 SP1. These hypervisor versions are supported by Provisioning Services and provide improved performance and

scalability with Hyper-V. This release also provides performance improvements for Machine Creation Services when using Server Message Block (SMB) 3.0 on file servers with clustered shared volumes and Storage Area Networks (SANs).

For information about supported languages, see CTX119253.

What's new in XenDesktop 7

Machine Catalog Desktops and Applicationso Desktops — Deliver managed desktops to multiple,

simultaneously connected remote users. Server OS machine and Desktop OS machine desktops provide features such as SmoothRoaming, session reliability, license consumption, Receiver and Delivery Services authentication, and Desktop Viewer. This release introduces Windows Server OS machine catalogs and desktops as a cost-effective virtualization delivery solution because they provide a significant number of remote users per server and storage resource. This release also provides Remote PC desktops that let users access resources on their office PCs remotely, from any device running Citrix Receiver.

o Applications — Integrate XenApp publishing capabilities within a deployment. Use this feature to deliver shared hosted applications to multiple, simultaneously-connected remote users.

HDX enhancementso Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 support — Deliver a

high-definition user experience on Windows 8 virtual desktops and physical machines. HDX 3D Pro has also been upgraded to support Windows 8.

o Desktop Composition Redirection — Extend the Aero Redirection feature introduced in XenDesktop 5.5 to provide users with a more fluid Windows 7 Aero or Windows 8 desktop experience by leveraging the graphics processing unit (GPU) or integrated graphics processor (IGP) on supported Windows user devices for local DirectX graphics rendering. This feature delivers rich multimedia applications to user devices, while maintaining high scalability on the server.

o Windows Media client-side content fetching — Enable a user device to stream multimedia files directly from the source provider on the Internet or Intranet to improve network utilization and server scalability.

o Multicast support — Reduce bandwidth consumption when streaming live video to branch offices. Multicast support enables a single Windows Media source transmission to support multiple users.

o Real-time multimedia transcoding — Enable audio and video streaming to mobile devices, improving the way that Windows Media content is delivered. Host-based transcoding provides a seamless user experience, even in extreme network conditions. To improve server scalability, if the Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) has a supported graphics processing unit (GPU) for hardware acceleration, transcoding is done in the GPU.

o User Datagram Protocol (UDP) audio for Server OS machines — Extend support for audio delivery over UDP/RTP to Server OS machines. This feature delivers superior audio quality for real-time applications like video conferencing and streaming media, even in environments when there is packet loss or congestion.

o Webcam video compression — Reduce bandwidth consumption to improve performance when using supported video conferencing applications.

o HDX 3D Pro — Deliver applications with graphics processing units (GPUs) for hardware acceleration to the desktop. This includes 3D professional graphics applications based on OpenGL and DirectX.

o Server-rendered Rich Graphics and Video — Deliver rich graphics (including Windows 8 or Windows Aero) to virtual desktop users on any client, platform, and bandwidth condition by rendering the content on the server. When users have the latest Citrix Receiver, they will also notice improved performance for server-rendered video.

o Improved Flash Redirection — Determine when to redirect Adobe Flash content to the user device for local rendering based on the user's network type and environment. Flash Redirection helps reduce server and network load, resulting in

greater scalability while ensuring a high-definition user experience.

New installer — Use a single, streamlined installer to guide you through installing the core components (Delivery Controller, Studio, Director, StoreFront, and License Server) and VDAs.

Profile management — By default, Citrix Profile management 5.0 is installed silently on master images when you install the Virtual Delivery Agent, but you do not have to use Profile management as a profile solution.

Configuration Logging — Capture Site configuration changes and administrative activities to a Configuration Logging Database. You can view the log in Studio using a variety of filters and generate HTML and CSV reports.

Director — Monitor and troubleshoot deployments using Director's redesigned user interface with integrated EdgeSight features:

o A new help desk view offers an improved troubleshooting experience for help desk administrators, allowing user, machine, and application issues to be resolved quickly.

o Full administrators have access to other views, including a newly designed Dashboard to provide a graphical summary of your deployment in a central location, and a Trends page to provide improved, in-depth, graphical monitoring and troubleshooting of the entire deployment with various time ranges.

o EdgeSight performance management provides the historical retention and trend reporting. With historical retention of data versus the real-time assessment, administrators are able to create Trend reports, including capacity and health trending.

o EdgeSight network analysis leverages HDX Insight to provide an application and desktop contextual view of the network. With this feature, Director provides advanced analytics of ICA traffic in their XenDesktop deployment.

Delegated Administration — Group objects into administrative scopes. This feature provides an enterprise-class administration model with role-based access control, custom roles with configurable permissions, and fine-grained, object-based control.

StoreFront replaces Web Interface — Create centralized enterprise stores to deliver desktops, applications, and other resources to users on any device. This feature provides authentication and resource delivery services for Citrix Receiver.

Delivery Controller auto-update — Automatically notify Virtual Delivery Agents (VDAs) when Controllers are added to and removed from the Site. This feature helps prevent VDA rejection of sessions that are launched by unknown Controllers, and VDA startup delays or errors caused by invalid Controller information. For information about how to preserve the CNAME functionality, see CTX137960.

Client Folder Redirection — Change the way client-side files are accessible on the host-side session. When you enable only client drive mapping on the server, client-side full volumes are automatically mapped to host drive letters. When you enable client folder redirection on the server and then the user configures it on the user device, only the portion of the local volume that is specified by the user is redirected.

Improved Virtual Desktop Access Control Settings – Control user access to both Server OS Machines and Desktop OS Machines in a simple and unified way with a new, streamlined group of security settings.

Improved and integrated error reporting — Studio error reporting links directly to the Citrix Support website. When users encounter an error situation, choosing the Get Advice option submits information about the error to the Citrix website. The information is analyzed and the user is redirected to a Website containing remedial advice.

StoreFront enhancementso Desktop Appliance sites — Access Desktop Appliance sites

through a website on the StoreFront store. The site is created automatically when a store is created. If, for example, the store has a path of path/Citrix/Store, the Desktop Appliance site path is path/Citrix/StoreDesktopAppliance. Users can restart their virtual machine-hosted desktops on Desktop Appliance sites.

o Database as a service — Write user subscription data for each store to the local disk on the StoreFront server by using the new subscription store service. The data is then propagated across the server group.

IPv6 support — Connect to clients and core components on IPv4, IPv6, or dual-stack (IPv4/IPv6) environments.

Personal vDisk — Personalize your virtual desktops. In addition, a dedicated storage disk is created, before logon, so that users can store their data on the desktop, including any applications they install.

Machine Creation Services (MCS) support for Microsoft Key Management System (KMS) activation — Each virtual machine (VM) created with MCS provides a unique activation for the Windows operating system and Office 2010, which enables the KMS system to record each VM as a separate machine.

Support for group policies configured in Citrix Mobility Pack — These policies for Citrix Receiver for mobile devices include Start menu redirection and removing common programs from the Start menu. For details, see Configure policies for mobility features.

Multi-touch support — Touch functionality is supported on multi-touch computers, including Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows 8 workstations and Windows Server 2012 for VDAs.

Remote PC Access — Automated administration of Remote PC Access is fully integrated into the core functionality of the XenDesktop Delivery Controller and Studio. One Remote PC machine catalog and one Remote PC Delivery Group are created automatically when you set up a Remote PC deployment; you can add more machine catalogs or Delivery Groups later using Studio. This process replaces the XML configuration file and PowerShell scripts used by Remote PC Access in XenDesktop 5.6 FP1. The current release also adds the ability to remotely access office PCs running Windows 8.

Support for Fast User Switching using RDP connections — This Microsoft Windows feature makes it possible for multiple users to share a desktop without closing programs or logging off existing users. Administrators can take advantage of this feature to troubleshoot problems and install updates, without interrupting tasks or programs in use by the logged on user, by initiating an RDP connection to the VDA.

Compatibility with AhnLab keyboard encryption used in Korea — This release is compatible with keyboard encryption that is installed on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) hosts.

Universal Print Server — The Delivery Controller now includes the Universal Print Server functionality. You need only install the

Universal Print Server on your print servers. The Universal Print Server includes support for Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8.

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No IMA data store — This release does not use the IMA data store as the centraldatabase in which to store configuration information. Instead, it uses a Microsoft SQLServer database as the data store for both configuration and session information. Thismeans:• Database requirements are different. Microsoft Access and Oracle are no longersupported databases.• Remote Desktop Services Client Access Licenses (RDS CALs) are no longer needed onthe servers where Controllers are running. You still need RDS CALs on the serversthat are hosting and delivering your applications and desktops.• There is no dedicated zone master. In XenApp, there is a zone master or datacollector responsible for user connection requests and communication withhypervisors. In this release, this function is distributed evenly across all Controllersin the site.• If you require high availability or disaster recovery for Microsoft SQL Server you canconfigure clustering or mirroring, or deploy the database as a virtual machine and

use your hypervisor's high availability features instead. For more information, seeEnsure database fault tolerance.• FlexCast Management Architecture (FMA) — FMA requires that you must be in adomain to deploy a site. For example, to install the servers, your account must havelocal administrator privileges and be a domain user in the Active Directory.

Web Interface

StoreFront

1 User enters username and password. This is sent to the Web Interface server.

User enters username and password. This is sent to the StoreFront server.

2 The authentication service of StoreFront fetches the user credentials and validates them with a domain controller. StoreFront servers must reside either within the Active Directory domain containing the user accounts or within a domain that has a trust relationship with the user accounts domain. All the StoreFront servers in a group must reside within the same domain.

3 StoreFront checks the data store for existing user subscriptions and stores them in memory.

4 Web Interface forwards the user credentials as part of a XML query to XenApp or XenDesktop sequentially. In this case, the credentials are sent to the XenDesktop Controller which is the sole resource configured.

StoreFront forwards the user credentials as part of a XML query to the backend systems, such as XenApp, XenDesktop, App Controller or VDI-in-a-Box sequentially. In this case the credentials are sent to the XenDesktop Controller which is the sole resource configured.

5 The XenDesktop Controller validates the user credentials with a domain controller.

6 After a successful validation the XenDesktop Controller checks which resources have been published to this user within its database.

Web Interface

StoreFront

7 The XenDesktop Controller sends an XML response to Web Interface / StoreFront which contains all resources available for the user from the XenDesktop site.

8 Web Interface displays the available resources.

StoreFront sends the list of available resources including the existing subscriptions to the Citrix Receiver installed locally or displays them in Receiver for Web.

9 Now the user can start a resource.