I was onsite recently with a client working on some issues they were having trying to run homegrown applications in their new XenApp 6.5 farm. After spending some time digging in we found they were Microsoft ClickOnce applications, Oy Vey! Per Citrix Knowledge Center document CTX125453 ClickOnce technology installation is not a supported technology on XenApp but the KB also covers some possible workarounds. Having gone through the workarounds we were unable to get either of the applications working successfully in the XenApp farm. The other thing that didn’t help out was that the client’s original in-house developer was no longer around and the new developer had no background with Citrix XenApp. After spending time with the developer reviewing the application and the installation we were able to confirm the installation location of the .deploy files in a randomly generated directory under the user’s AppData folder.
“Ring” around the desktop = Citrix “Cube”
Last week there were a few rumors going around about this possibility and now it’s confirmed Citrix announced the acquisition of RingCube. RingCube is the maker of vDesk a workspace virtualization solution providing virtual desktop users true isolation from the operating system. vDesk enables VDI deployments running shared desktops the ability for users to personalize and preserve their custom settings. vDesk captures these user requests for resources, files, and registry settings through management/isolation of the operating system. vDesk will handle the users’ session changes, the admin’s changes to the base VM, and will also addresses user changes that may conflict with the admin’s based on configured rules. vDesk is not profile management, vDesk enables the corporate user to maintain already learned computing experience once transitioned to virtual desktops and will ultimately assist in a successful VDI implementation.
There are more questions left to be answered over the next couple weeks during this time of merging solutions. With VMware just now adding profile management to View 5, dare I ask what becomes of “vDesk VDI Edition” support for VMware View? We can only begin to image where and how this will fit into the Citrix FlexCast model, so many unknowns around XenDesktop, XenClient, Kaviza, XenApp, and Citrix Cloud scenarios. For now Citrix already has their user Profile Management and now with RingCube have they taken a step forward towards “user installed applications”?
Citrix’s TaaS-manian Devil is coming…
At Synergy this year I was introduced to one of Citrix’s new initiatives to streamline and enhance product support, support tools and the plan to provide this as a cloud service. Tools as a Service (TaaS) brings the Citrix technical “Tribal Knowledge” (a term Mike Stringer uses) to an IE browser accessible with your MyCitrix account. TaaS, your tailored online auto analysis will have the ability to maintain the Service Request (SR) with Citrix Diagnostic Facility (CDF) and configurations centralized. TaaS will analyze the Citrix Product and present you with “Know Issues” in three (3) different notification modules:
-
Critical Errors
- These notifications require immediate action, and will provide the remediation recommendations including any associated Knowledge Base (KB) article(s)
-
Warnings
- These notifications show potential issues and provide any remediation recommendations including any associated KB article(s)
-
Informational
- These notifications will show simply that information only regarding the Citrix Product and may not require and actions or remediation
TaaS can maintain the uploaded data as a historical record of the Citrix Product; offering the ability to compare current state configuration with the pervious configuration answering the question “What’s Changed since last time?“. If a historical repository is not what you’re looking for well just delete your uploaded data once you’re done, TaaS is many things to all. Look for TaaS’s go-live date later this year with XenServer, followed by XenDesktop, NetScaler, and XenApp.
Thanks to Mike Stringer and David McGeough for the TaaS Preview
See Mike Stringer cover Citrix Support and TaaS further in the following video
Follow Citrix Support on…..
Twitter:http://twitter.com/citrixsupport
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/citrixsupport
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3139565
