The Citrix NetScaler can be configured to authenticate users against a variety of sources including RADIUS, LDAP, TACACS, and PKI certificates. If you are going to use the NetScaler as an Access Gateway (proxy) between and untrusted network such as the internet and your corporate network, you will probably want...
When using a load balancer in an enterprise environment it opens up the possibilities for service level redundancy that you may not have thought of before. For example, maybe you have appliance devices on the network that can be Active Directory integrated, but only allow you to specify one LDAP...
When you install the Citrix NetScaler it comes with a self-signed certificate which is bound to the management IP interface for the purposes of encrypting management traffic. However, using self-signed certificates are not recommended in anything but a lab environment. So that means you need to install and configure the...
As I mentioned in yesterday's blog post, any enterprise VDI deployment needs redundant broker services for high availability. Other enterprise applications such as Exchange, Lync, and SharePoint can all benefit from a load balancer, be it virtual or physical. Building on yesterday's post about configuring SSL on the NetScaler, it's...
A high availability VDI deployment, such as XenDesktop 5, demands that you use multiple servers to provide broker redundancy. As such, a load balancer such as the Citrix Netscaler comes in mighty handy. The NetScaler can also act as an ICA proxy between a trusted and untrusted network, such as the internet...
Wow this is pretty darn cool..in the latest leaked build of Windows 8 x64, a blogger found Hyper-V 3.0 is baked in and is sporting a number of new features. This is the first time MS has baked in a hypervisor to a client operating system. While some of the...
When migrating towards a VDI environment you really have to re-think your entire architecture. Servers, hypervisor, storage, application delivery, network, and everything in between. Simple things like anti-virus can wreck havoc and cause massive I/O storms that bring your VDI environment to its knees. One aspect that I hadn't thought...
Update: VMware released the GA version of 5.0Â and you can download it here.A few days ago VMware released a significant update to their standalone converter utility, Converter 5.0 beta (download here). One of the cool new features is the ability to re-align partitions. By default Windows Server 2003 and Windows...
During a VDI pilot you really need to gather some real-world stats on how your client VMs are performing. People generally underestimate the workload VDI can put on a SAN. Thankfully if you are using vSphere 4.x, you can easily pull the stats with a short PowerShell script. I took...
According to Citrix, the number one mistake people make when deploying VDI is not sizing their storage properly for performance. However, calculating a target IOPS for your environment is far from easy and you really need to understand VDI, its unique workloads, and your storage subsystem. There are many blogs...
Finally, Microsoft has released their Threats and Countermeasures guide for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2. It is a very lengthy document going into gory details on hundreds of security settings, mostly covered by GPOs. It's a great resource for understanding WHY Microsoft recommends a certain setting, and understanding implications...
During the testing process of Citrix XenDesktop 5, we were using the built-in SQL express database so we can do a quick lab setup. Of course a production deployment would use a full blown SQL 2008 R2 enterprise edition instance with database mirroring. During the XenDesktop 5 SP1 upgrade process,...