Task Nanny: A locked down task manager alternative

 Applications, Citrix, Microsoft, VMware, XenApp, XenDesktop  5 Responses »
Jul 092012
 

Task Nanny is a locked down task manager for Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop, VMware View, RDS, Terminal Services or any other locked down desktop environments in which you do not want to expose the Microsoft Windows task manager to the end user.

Unlike other free alternative task managers, Task Nanny does not show the user a (for an end user hard to understand) list of his running processes. Instead, Task Nanny shows the user the actual tasks which the Microsoft Windows task manager application tab shows, which is a lot easier and more understandable for the user.
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Farm Nanny 2.0 available: A new look and many new features added!

 Applications, Citrix, Printing, XenApp  2 Responses »
Jun 202012
 

Farm Nanny 2.0 is available now and has many new features added!

The XenApp resource manager / farm monitor now shows the status of the print spooler and citrix print manager service, installed printer drivers and installed hotfixes.

Farm Nanny’s new features include:
- Printer Driver Replicator, a GUI for XenApp printer driver replication.
- Health Checker, an easy interface for checking your farm and XenApp server health and availability.
- Hotfix Browser, shows all available hotfixes and information from Citrix.com.
- Technote Browsers, showing you all the latest technotes directly from within Farm Nanny.

On top of all the new features, Farm Nanny also has a brand new clean and easy interface, based on WPF technology.
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Farm Nanny, a Citrix XenApp farm monitor application

 Applications, Citrix, XenApp  37 Responses »
May 012012
 

Although Citrix EdgeSight is completely packed with features, it is a little top-heavy and personally I still miss the good old Citrix resource manager because it was a quick and easy way to get an overview of what’s going on with your farm and servers.
Sure there are a lot of PowerShell scripts to be found which give you an overview of your farm, but those scripts are just snap-shots of your environment.
What you really need is something that monitors your Citrix XenApp farm in real-time

After some digging around in the Citrix XenApp SDK, I decided to make my own Citrix XenApp farm monitor: Farm Nanny!

Farm Nanny is a Citrix XenApp farm monitoring application for XenApp 6 and XenApp 6.5 which will help you with troubleshooting, health checks and resource monitoring.
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Multiple languages, regional options and keyboard layouts with Citrix and AppSense

 AppSense, Citrix, Microsoft, XenApp  11 Responses »
Jan 302012
 

Lately I’ve been implementing a new Citrix XenApp 6.5 environment for a large international customer.
Because the environment will be used by people from all over the world, the customer requested to have multiple language packs installed and all users should get their correct language settings, regional options and keyboards at logon according to their active directory security group memberships.
I remember from back in the days on windows 2003 this could be a nightmare, but on windows 2008 R2 with a few registry keys in AppSense and some GPO’s it’s quite easy to get this right. Continue reading »

AppSense Personalization additional registry keys overview

 AppSense  11 Responses »
Nov 292011
 

Although AppSense Personalization works almost “out of the box”, there are still a couple of user settings which do not persist after a log off.

I revisited my old list of registry keys and hiving actions and tested them out with AppSense Environment Manager 8.2 on a Windows 7 client machine.
The list below is an overview of the settings that did not persist. Add the registry keys you need to your session data (or desktop settings, if you have an older version of AppSense) to make the setting persist. Continue reading »

AppSense Environment Manager Browser Interface – Personalization administration through a web browser

 AppSense  No Responses »
Nov 212011
 

With the release of AppSense environment manager 8.2, AppSense introduced the AppSense environment manager browser interface.
The environment manager browser interface lets you do the basic AppSense personalization administration tasks (for example application archive rollback and deletion of the application settings) through a web browser without having to install the full environment manager console. This allows you to delegate personalization administration to your helpdesk staff because the environment manager browser interface does not have all the advanced features the full environment manager console does.

Let’s start with setting up the AppSense environment manager browser interface. Continue reading »

Local profiles with AppSense Personalization and PowerShell

 AppSense, Citrix, Powershell, Profiles, XenApp, XenDesktop  28 Responses »
Sep 022011
 

In almost all XenApp and XenDesktop environments I build, I solve user virtualization with AppSense Personalization and local profiles.
AppSense Personalization allows you to virtualize and personalize the user desktop without the need of a roaming profile, and by using  AppSense Personalization together with local profiles you get some big advantages over roaming and mandatory profiles:

  • Fast logon and logoff times (no profile has to be loaded over the network)
  • No profile corruption
  • No manual mandatory profile creation
  • No “hung” profiles

The only drawback of using local profiles is that they are not automatically deleted from the server or desktop when the user logs off, but this is where spoofing the state of the local profile with PowerShell comes in. Continue reading »