Yesterday I discovered a company called "The App Factory" based in the UK who is offering a fixed price service for (re-)packaging applications for Citrix Application Streaming (part of XenApp) or Microsoft App-V starting at £149 / app. This is great, as migrating apps into a virtualized format can be very time and / or cost intensive - depending on the particular knowledge a customer / partner has. Furthermore it allows including application packaging efforts into the business case calculations without the usual guesswork, additional time for "unforeseen incidents" and possibly at a cheaper rate than doing it inhouse.

Check out their website: http://www.theappfactory.net
..and their very professional approach: http://www.theappfactory.net/home/?page_id=16

When doing Infrastructure Assessments of customer XenApp environments it happens very often that we find out that the servers are not consistent in terms of XenApp Hotfixes and / or Printer Drivers. This is, as everybody can guess, definitively not Best Practice. It can make supporting the farm(s) very hard and can annoy the users as their published desktop / published applications behave differently every day.

Our task here is to document the differences, to enable the customer to homogenize their environment. Documenting this is sometimes very time intensive so I've used the spare time between two projects to build two "documentation" tools.

1. HotfixLister: Nothing really new, but it gives you a comma separated file which can be imported into Excel and shows a matrix of the distribution of hotfixes among the farm. The matrix looks like this:

2. PrinterDriverLister: Again nothing really new, but it gives you a similar matrix like the HotfixLister does:

I've tested the functionality within my test farm but unfortunately it is very small (as you can see), so I cannot test how it performs in larger farms.
So please be careful when running it in larger environments, and if possible drop me a note about how it has performed.

The usage is very simple:

1. Copy all files locally to one of the farm member servers.
2. Execute the tools from there.
3. Import the txt file into Excel.
4. Done.

This zip contains the tools (Download here).

Cheers,

Thomas

To satisfy the legal guys:

Disclaimer Notice

This software / sample code is provided to you "AS IS" with no representations, warranties or conditions of any kind. You may use, modify and distribute it at your own risk. CITRIX DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, WRITTEN, ORAL OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, you acknowledge and agree that (a) the software / sample code may exhibit errors, design flaws or other problems, possibly resulting in loss of data or damage to property; (b) it may not be possible to make the software / sample code fully functional; and (c) Citrix may, without notice or liability to you, cease to make available the current version and/or any future versions of the software / sample code.  In no event should the software / code be used to support of ultra-hazardous activities, including but not limited to life support or blasting activities.  NEITHER CITRIX NOR ITS AFFILIATES OR AGENTS WILL BE LIABLE, UNDER BREACH OF CONTRACT OR ANY OTHER THEORY OF LIABILITY, FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER ARISING FROM USE OF THE software / SAMPLE CODE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION DIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, CONSEQUENTIAL OR OTHER DAMAGES, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.  Although the copyright in the software / code belongs to Citrix, any distribution of the code should include only your own standard copyright attribution, and not that of Citrix.  You agree to indemnify and defend Citrix against any and all claims arising from your use, modification or distribution of the code.

I've used the spare time between two projects to create version 2.0 of the XenDesktop VDA Configurator.
This version has a better Active Directory browsing mechanism (faster & more reliable), checks for GPO configurations of the Virtual Desktop Agent (VDA) and shows you all XenDesktop Farms (Name, GUID, AD location) which can be discovered.

The tool itself:

The show farms dialog:

 

Download here

I hope you find it as helpful as I do...

Cheers,
Thomas

PS: If you feel the need for any other tool related to XenDesktop, just drop a comment here and I'll see what I can do for you.

To satisfy the legal guys:

Disclaimer Notice

This software / sample code is provided to you "AS IS" with no representations, warranties or conditions of any kind. You may use, modify and distribute it at your own risk. CITRIX DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, WRITTEN, ORAL OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, you acknowledge and agree that (a) the software / sample code may exhibit errors, design flaws or other problems, possibly resulting in loss of data or damage to property; (b) it may not be possible to make the software / sample code fully functional; and (c) Citrix may, without notice or liability to you, cease to make available the current version and/or any future versions of the software / sample code.  In no event should the software / code be used to support of ultra-hazardous activities, including but not limited to life support or blasting activities.  NEITHER CITRIX NOR ITS AFFILIATES OR AGENTS WILL BE LIABLE, UNDER BREACH OF CONTRACT OR ANY OTHER THEORY OF LIABILITY, FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER ARISING FROM USE OF THE software / SAMPLE CODE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION DIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, CONSEQUENTIAL OR OTHER DAMAGES, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.  Although the copyright in the software / code belongs to Citrix, any distribution of the code should include only your own standard copyright attribution, and not that of Citrix.  You agree to indemnify and defend Citrix against any and all claims arising from your use, modification or distribution of the code.

You all might have come across the situation were you selected "Configure the farm later" while installing the Virtual Desktop Agent (PortICA) or during testing of XenDesktop, you have reinstalled your DDC and now the client is not associated with the XD farm anymore.

In general it is not that difficult to change / configure the Farm Identifier (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent\FarmGUID) manually on a client, but to do this, you have to logon to the XD AMC and sort out the Farm GUID in the (read only) farm information, copy it, paste it to the client and write it to the registry, which might take a minute or two...

To cut a long story short, I've written a small tool which browses the AD for XenDesktop Farms, shows you the human readable names of the farms and writes (after your selection) the GUID to the registry. After a reboot or restarting the Citrix Desktop Service you can (re)publish the desktop within the XD Farm.

Download here <-- Version 2.0 has been published. Please download from here: http://community.citrix.com/x/uoQNAg

I hope you find it as helpful as I do...

Cheers,
Thomas

PS: If you feel the need for any other tool related to XenDesktop, just drop a comment here and I'll see what I can do for you.

To satisfy the legal guys:

Disclaimer Notice

This software / sample code is provided to you "AS IS" with no representations, warranties or conditions of any kind. You may use, modify and distribute it at your own risk. CITRIX DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, WRITTEN, ORAL OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, you acknowledge and agree that (a) the software / sample code may exhibit errors, design flaws or other problems, possibly resulting in loss of data or damage to property; (b) it may not be possible to make the software / sample code fully functional; and (c) Citrix may, without notice or liability to you, cease to make available the current version and/or any future versions of the software / sample code.  In no event should the software / code be used to support of ultra-hazardous activities, including but not limited to life support or blasting activities.  NEITHER CITRIX NOR ITS AFFILIATES OR AGENTS WILL BE LIABLE, UNDER BREACH OF CONTRACT OR ANY OTHER THEORY OF LIABILITY, FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER ARISING FROM USE OF THE software / SAMPLE CODE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION DIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, CONSEQUENTIAL OR OTHER DAMAGES, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.  Although the copyright in the software / code belongs to Citrix, any distribution of the code should include only your own standard copyright attribution, and not that of Citrix.  You agree to indemnify and defend Citrix against any and all claims arising from your use, modification or distribution of the code.