Blog Posts

Display Maintenance Message for a XenApp Published Application

Posted on August 19, 2014

Intro For years, management of Citrix Published Applications has been pretty heavy-handed. You had the following options: You had enough servers to ensure your users always had access to their apps. You established a regular maintenance period that everyone knew about (I’m trying not to burst out laughing) that allowed... [Read More]

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The Ultimate User Deletion Script?

Posted on July 25, 2014

Intro I’ve spent the better part of 4 days working on a monster script. I needed this script to perform the following actions: Take a list of usernames and ensure they exist in Active Directory (AD). Take a list of usernames and disable their AD accounts Take a list of... [Read More]

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Tricerat Simplify Monitoring

The Cloud is Blind

Posted on July 17, 2014

NOTE: I was not asked by Tricerat to review their product, but I am taking a look at it to see if it would provide better visibility to my current XenDesktop/XenApp environment. Intro Citrix is a blessing and a curse for any virtualization admin. A blessing, because it allows you... [Read More]

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Runbooks or How to Make Documentation As Painful As Possible

Posted on June 20, 2014

Intro I’ve begun the process of creating a Runbook from scratch to document a XenDesktop/XenApp environment that is completely new to me. Runbooks are useful…right? I certainly hope so, as I’m committing a lot of time to creating an exhaustive document. Having all your infrastructure and operations detailed in one... [Read More]

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Installed Software Versions

Using PowerShell

Posted on June 12, 2014

Intro When you take over an existing environment, there are always surprises that keep one up at night. One of the most important applications that I deliver with my cloud environment was developed in-house. It was never designed to run in a multi-user environment and each installation is specific to... [Read More]

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Automating User Creation

Using PowerShell

Posted on June 10, 2014

Intro I recently began a new job and it is unique for me. The organization I work for actually helps to generate revenue, and we are a customer of corporate IT. This is a first for me where I’m not working directly for IT. I had just left a job... [Read More]

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Timezone offsets

EdgeSight

Posted on May 7, 2012

Intro If you have implemented any of the ad hoc SQL queries available on this site, you may have noticed that most time queries are offset by –4 or –5 hours. This is because the EdgeSight database uses GMT to record time and I am located in the U.S. Eastern... [Read More]

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Are You There EdgeSight? It's me Worker

Posted on April 24, 2012

Intro If you rely on EdgeSight to provide accurate and timely information about your farm you have to assume that all your EdgeSight Worker Agents are functioning as expected. Or do you? In this post, we will review the information that the EdgeSight console provides you as well as creating... [Read More]

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