If you looking to get started with Password manager provisioning server SDK then don't miss this video. Michol Monaghan and George Prado from Citrix explain how to install the Citrix Password Manager Provisioning SDK and run out of the box samples.

This is a great video from Ashish (Principal Design Engineer at Citrix Systems) explaining how does XenApp application delivery process work. Ashish explains different servers involved in the process and then he dives into health recovery and monitoring feature. If you want to understand how HMR prevents blackhole problem then this is a great video to watch.

If you are interested in writing custom HMR test then visit CDN page here

CSEIT is an event presented by Citrix Escalation engineers and is mostly focused on troubleshooting of Citrix products. They had some really good sessions this year and the sessions are now posted on support site for download.

I highly recommend you to watch these free Citrix training videos/webcasts on NetScaler, XenServer and XenApp.

CSEIT 2008 Presentations

To view the CSEIT presentations and webcast recordings from the XenApp and NetScaler sessions, click the appropriate presentation title.

Note: A codec might be necessary to view some of the presentations. The codec is available at http://www.gotomeeting.com/codec

Here is a list of presentation I watched

XenApp presentations:

CTX117363 - CSEIT 2008 - Citrix XenApp Health Monitoring

CTX117380 - CSEIT 2008 - Troubleshooting Tools for XenApp Environments

CTX117386 - CSEIT 2008 - Understanding and Troubleshooting Citrix XenServer

We had a blast with the Citrix Synergy Flip Video Contest. I have posted all the videos at the YouTube site. You can watch videos via searching on YouTube with "Citrix Synergy" as the keyword or directly going to this link

http://www.youtube.com/profile_video_blog?user=citrixcdn

The contest will end on July 1st 12 PM EST. The top 3 most viewed videos at that date and time will win a Flip Video each.

To learn more about the Flip Video contest click here.

I blogged about the Flip Video contest on Wednesday you can read all the about the contest here.

Here is a list of questions I have received via email

• Can I record the demos at the exhibit hall?
  Yes go ahead record any interesting demos you see at the exhibit hall. We will be having some very interesting demos around XenApp, XenServer, NetScaler in Techlab.

• Can I record sessions at the Geek Speak Bar camp event?
  Absolutely, You can interview geeks and record their sessions.

• What color of Flip Video will I win?
  You will a white color Flip Video.

• How will I get the Flip Video after my Video wins the contest by having most views on YouTube?
  We will contact you via email and then ship the Flip Video to your office address.

here are some reviews and fun to watch videos of Flip Video

• http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m19O7AGT0BP8PR:m7KZHLZBM4RWC  (As easy as making a peanut butter and Jelly Sandwitch)
• http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=71d05f5c938be70c6e84e4b5ea8dcd0e2be70830 ( Review by David pogue NY Times)
  
  

What are the rules for the contest?-         

• No video from the keynote.

• No video from any breakout sessions.

• Ask customers/friends/colleagues to withhold their last name and company to protect them from legal liability.

• Do not Interview any Press or Analysts.

• The video clips have to be less than or around 5 minutes.

• Citrix may use these videos for promotion purposes and can decide not post a video if we find the content inappropriate.

Can you give me few examples of video clips to record?
You can record interesting XenApp or XenServer demos or partner product demonstration at the exhibit hall. You can interview your friends, colleagues or vendors and capture their view about the Synergy. Just be innovative and record fun, cool and informative videos. Show us Synergy through your eyes.

How will I recognize you at the registration desk?
Here is my picture. Click to enlarge.

How will I win a Flip Video?
I will upload all the videos to YouTube and tag them Citrix_Synergy08_flipcontest. The top 3 most viewed videos on YouTube will win the Flip Video. The contest will end on 6^th of June 2008 at 6 PM EST.

I have a question not answered above where do I ask it?
Just post a comment on this blog post and I will get back to you

If you are attending IT professionals TechMentor event this week in Orlando then I would recommend you go and check out Bradon Shell's session on "Automating Citrix Server Administration with Windows PowerShell"

"In this session you'll learn how to use Powershell to make Citrix server management easier. We'll also walk through the Citrix road map and how Powershell fits in. We will cover several different common administrative tasks and show how Powershell can make these tasks faster and easier to perform, including publishing applications, unpublishing applications, getting application information, and getting servers online. We'll look at using the PowerShell pipeline, and see how to make your scripts output information that can be piped to other scripts. Finally, you'll learn how to use MFCOM, get information from it, and look at some of the gotchas you'll need to be aware of when dealing with it"

Brandon and I have recently done a webinar on PowerShell and Citrix MFCOM. You can view the Webinar at this URL
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/114744868

UPDATE:
I have got several emails asking me if there will be any session on PowerShell and MFCOM during Citrix Synergy event . There is no specific session on PowerShell and MFCOM but we have speakers giving advance classes on MFCOM SDK and Hands on training with MFCOM SDK during Synergy. If you still have questions regarding PowerShell and MFCOM then come by during my Geek Speak session and I will try my best to answer them

After reading Gus Pinto's blog on Citrix being one of the top places to work at silicon valley. I found this video on http://www.bestplacestowork.tv/main.

You can also read more at Yahoo Finance

Vishal Ganeriwala
Do you sp34k G33k?

I am sure you all must have heard about the GeekSpeak Live event during synergy. Barry Flanagan and I are also doing GeekSpeak BarCamp on Wednesday May, 21st.

The goal for this is to give the technical audience at Synergy a chance to get together to discuss technical content most interests you. No marketing slides, no features and benefits, just hard core technical discussions about any IT topic that interests you and the attendees. You can run a white board discussion, present a technical presentation on your latest project, or show a demo of your newest creation with an SDK. Anyone can sign up for a slot. You may be an IT admin, a technology consultant, a Citrix technical employee, a technical employee of a Citrix partner (or competitor), or a student who loves technology and wants to share it.

We have 12 slots filled up so far. Read Barry's Blogs for more info here and here.

If you want to sign up then please comment on my blog or go directly to the GeekSpeak BarCamp page or comment on this blog.

Are you planning to attend the GeekSpeak Live and the GeekSpeak BarCamp?	Choose
Won't miss it for anything. Looking forward to meet all the geeks
No. I will miss all the fun

Mark Templeton took the center stage at Ineterop Las Vegas 2008 and challenged the global IT community to do something different by optimizing networking services, virtualization, and application acceleration to create a dynamic application delivery infrastructure that enables a more flexible way of providing applications to users.
watch his keynote on "how Citrix has moved its business in new directions"

Watch Mark Templeton Ineterop 2008 keynote

Last week Dr. SDK completed his ultimate guide to MFCOM (101 pages). This is the only guide you will ever need to understand and learn about MFCOM SDK. It covers everything up to SDK version 4.5.

It covers all the advance MFCOM topics such as multifarm management, publishing different type of Applications, policies, load evaluators and more.

Hope you enjoy reading it.

Download the ultimate guide to MFCOM SDK

I want to thanks everyone who attended the webinar yesterday. If you missed the webinar then you can watch the recording at the following URL https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/114744868

You can also download the slide deck here Dowload link
If you are interested in learning PowerShell then subscribe to Brandon Shell rss feed. I totally love the way he explains PowerShell concepts.

I am going to send out a more detailed survey to everyone who attended the webinar. Your feedback will help us determine future webinars and chats.

Would you like to see an advance PowerShell and MFCOM webinar?	Choose
Yes
No

How would you rate yesterday's webinar on a scale to 1 to 5 with 5 being Awesome?	Choose
1 Totally sucked
2 Just OK
3 Good stuff
4 Great.
5 Awesome

Please let me know via comments what SDK and technology webinar you would like to see in future. I will try my best to get the experts do it for CDN members.

If you have missed these presentations and videos from CSEIT 2007 then take a look at them. These presentation are really technical and given mostly by Citrix escalation engineers.

http://support.citrix.com/article/ctx115136

To view the CSEIT presentations and webcast recordings from the Citrix Presentation Server and Citrix NetScaler sessions, please click the appropriate presentation title.

Note: A codec may be necessary to view some of the presentations. The codec is available at http://www.gotomeeting.com/codec.

Citrix Presentation Server

• CTX115207 - CSEIT 2007 - Printer Driver Management

• CTX115208 - CSEIT 2007 - Citrix Presentation Server Health Monitoring

• CTX115192 - CSEIT 2007 - Troubleshooting Tools for a Citrix Presentation Server Environment

• CTX115204 - CSEIT 2007 - Understanding and Troubleshooting the Application Streaming in Citrix Presentation Server 4.5

• CTX115202 - CSEIT 2007 - Brief Troubleshooting Guide

• CTX115225 - CSEIT 2007 - Citrix MFCOM Programming for Administrators

• CTX115228 - CSEIT 2007 - Using and Understanding Citrix EdgeSight 4.5

• CTX115206 - CSEIT 2007 - Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 / Feature Pack 1

Citrix NetScaler

• CTX115222 - CSEIT 2007 - NetScaler Architecture, Concepts and Networking

• CTX115226 - CSEIT 2007 - Monitoring the Citrix NetScaler Application Switch

• CTX115221 - CSEIT 2007 - Command Center 3.0

• CTX115227 - CSEIT 2007 - Printer Driver Management

If you are a Citrix administrator then you should definitely bookmark this link. Whenever I get stuck there is always a utility here which can help get out of my problem.

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107572

My favorite tools are

Tool	Description
Repair Clipboard Chain 2.0.1	The RepairCBDChain utility temporarily restores clipboard functionality.Run the RepairCBDChain utility on your workstation and/or inside the session desktop
Project MedEvac 2.11	The MedEvac tool is utilized to run checks against a Presentation Server farm to verify environment health.  CTX108311
FarmAppUtil Tool	The FarmAppUtil tool saves all the application properties with users and servers assigned to those applications in an XML file. The tool also creates a text file with a folder structure. The XML file created from the application can be modified and used for republishing all the applications and also recreate the folder structure in the new farm. The other reason I like this  tool is because I wrote it

<a href="http://technorati.com/claim/fjb6bznrzw" rel="me">Technorati Profile</a>

Brandon Shell (http://bsonposh.com) and I are going to do a free webinar on PowerShell and Citrix

UPDATE : Tuesday 29th April 1PM - 2PM EST.

UPDATE 28th April : International direct dial + 1 617 801 6700

We are targeting audiences with following skill.
Basic Powershell, Basic Citrix Admin Skills and Basic MFCOM experience in VB script.

Here is the rough agenda for the webinar

Powershell Basics (about 20 mins)

Object Based
Self Teaching Get-Help , Get-Command, Get-Member

• Properties
• Methods
  New-Object
• ComObject
• .NET Class

Managing Citrix Servers via PowerShell and MFCOM (about 20 mins)

Most Properties Return Objects (like Servers, Applications, Sessions)
Creating MFCOM object in Powershell
$variable = New-Object -com <MFCOM COM Name>
Examples
$mfobject = New-object -com 'MetaframeCOM.MetaFrameFarm'
$mfobject.Initialize(<int parameters>)
With just these two lines you can start exploring you Citrix Environment
$mfFarm = New-object -com 'MetaframeCOM.MetaFrameFarm'
$mfFarm.Initialize(1)
Getting Key Info To get From Farm Object
$mfFarm | Get-Member -MemberType Property # Gets just Properties
Admins
Applications
FarmName
Servers
Sessions
LicenseServer
Printers
Zones

Space is limited
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/114744868

Citrix SDK guru's have converted more top downloaded MFCOM VB scripts to PowerShell-MFCOM Scripts. Bradon Shell has created 3 more PowerShell Scripts which are really useful.

*[Get-CitrixApplication.ps1 (Powershell)]
Returns Citrix Application Objects for AppName passed or RegEx

*[Set-CitrixServerLogon.ps1 (Powershell)]
Sets the Server to Enable or Disable Logons

*[Get-CitrixAppServer.ps1 (Powershell)]
Gets All the Servers for Specific App

If you are learning PowerShell then I highly recommend subscribing to his blog at http://bsonposh.com/.

Jason Conger one of the Citrix SDK guru's has also contributed a really cool MFCOM-PowerShell script.

Find-App.ps1

Here is a description of the script
"If you have a lot of published applications in several nested folders, it can be a challenge to locate exactly which particular folder contains a particular application. This script takes a parameter as a search pattern. The script then searches the published application directory structure and returns the full path to all applications that match the search pattern parameter. This saves time clicking through all the folders trying to find a published application."

If you are a Citrix SDK guru then feel free to contact me via comments or email. I would love to hear your experiences with our SDKs.

Vishal G
http://community.citrix.com/cdn/script-exchange/

Brandon Shell (MVP) has done an awesome job and converted top 5 MFCOM VB Scripts to PowerShell. Here is a list of scripts he has contributed

• [Find-CitrixUser.ps1 (Powershell)]
• [Get-CitrixPrinterInfo.ps1 (Powershell)]
• [Find-CitrixIdleUser.ps1 (Powershell)]
• [Get-CitrixSessionUser.ps1 (Powershell)]
• [Set-CitrixPSVersion.ps1 (Powershell)]

If you are new to PowerShell then I would highly recommend visiting his site and learning more about Citrix and PowerShell samples. You can visit him at http://bsonposh.com/

Brandon and I are also planning to do a series of Webinar on MFCOM and PowerShell. I will post more information on signup and date tomorrow.

please let us know via comments what PowerShell scripts you would like to see on Script Exchange and we will try our best to get those samples out there.

UPDATE: I had couple of emails asking me on how to contribute to Script Exchange and share with the community. Watch this video to see how easy and simple it is to contribute.

Stay tuned
Vishal Ganeriwala
http://community.citrix.com/cdn

If you are a Web developer or an IT administrator then AppFirewall feature of NetScaler can give you sound sleep at night and save you from some redundant implementation security within each application. Application Firewall by default provides following security features

• Start URL check. Examines the URLs to which incoming requests are directed, and blocks connections to URLs that are not listed in the Start URLs list, or that a user has not reached by navigating to them from listed start URLs.

• Cookie Consistency check. Examines cookies returned with user requests to see that they match the cookies your web servervset for that user. If a modified cookie is found, the cookie is stripped from the request before the request is forwarded to the web server.

• Form Field Consistency check. Examines the structure of the web forms returned by users to your web server, and verifies that the structure of the web form and any default data are unchanged.

• Buffer Overflow check. Examines requests to detect attempts to cause a buffer overflow on the web server.

• Field Formats check. Examines the data a user returns using a web form on your web site and verifies that the data being returned for each field is valid for that field.

• Deny URL check. Examines the URLs to which requests are directed, and blocks connections to all URLs specified in this list.

• Cross-Site Scripting check. Examines requests and responses for scripts that attempt to access or modify content on a different web site than the web site where the script is located. When it finds such a script, it either renders the script harmless before forwarding it to its destination, or blocks
  the connection.

• SQL Injection check. Examines requests that contain form field data for attempts to inject SQL commands into a back-end SQL database, and when it detects injected SQL code, either renders the injected SQL code harmless before forwarding it to the web server, or blocks the request.

• Credit Card check. Examines web server responses, including headers, for credit card numbers. If it finds a credit card number in a response, it either removes the credit card number from the response before sending it, or blocks the response.

• Safe Object check. Allows you to create classes of protected content, such as social security numbers, and protects them in much the same manner as it does credit cards.

Here is great summary and videos on how to integrate with GoToAssist/GoToMeeting/GoToMyPC SDKs from Terry Holland (Sr. Manager of Integration Services, Citrix Online division).

GoToAssist Integration Presentation Available for Viewing:
The following recorded presentation describes all the techniques for integrating GoToAssist. Topics include how to automate the launch of a GoToAssist session for end users, how to streamline support agents' tasks and how to integrate and locally save session data. After the general overview (20 min), there is a section on how to approach integration with a CRM system (10 min) and a final section on the out-of-box Database Integration (10 min). Total viewing time is 40 min.
https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/334585120

GoToAssist Integration Services Website:
http://www.gotoassist.com/intServices.html

GoToMeeting Corporate Integration Presentation Available for Viewing:
The following recorded presentation describes all the techniques for integrating GoToMeeting Corporate. Topics include an overview of integration options, the Organizer API and the Administrator/Reporting API. The presentation also includes some examples. Total viewing time is 20 mins.
https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/605056742

GoToMeeting Corporate Integration Services Website:
https://www.gotomeeting.com/pre/corp/integration.tmpl

GoToMyPC Corporate Integration Presentation Available for Viewing:
The following recorded presentation describes all the techniques for integrating GoToMyPC Corporate. Topics include an overview of integration options, the out-of-box Provisioning Tool, the Administrator API and the Reporting API. Total viewing time is 20 mins.
https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/295522528

GoToMyPC Corporate Integration Services Website:
https://www.gotomypc.com/corp/integration.html

Please leave us feedback on our Citrix online SDKs.
Thanks

Gus Pinto and I caught Derek Slayton Product manager for Citrix Workflow Studio who just came down to Ft Lauderdale and we couldn't pass the opportunity to learn more about WFS and share with CDN members.

Watch this short video on Frameworkx site.

http://frameworkx.com/blogpost.aspx?id=1&c=1389