Post to Twitter
We invited all of Citrix Ready thin client vendor partners to demonstrate to the Citrix community what makes their solutions unique in our first-ever Citrix Ready Challenge. In order to participate in this challenge, vendors had to create a short video up to three minutes long that highlights the compelling advantages for their product line with XenDesktop.
The winners will be decided based on several categories by our team of judges ( Sumit Dhawan, Chris Fleck, Doug Brown)
On of the important categories is "Best overall offering (User Community Vote)". We want you to rate videos on Citrix TV and choose the winner in this category. The Winners will be announced in the first week of August. I will have more details in subsequent blogs.
We have created a page where you can easily view and rate all the videos.
http://www.citrix.com/citrixreadychallenge
Here are direct links to all the videos on Citrix TV by participating thin client partners (list alphabetically)
10Zig 
Devon IT 
IGEL 
HP 
- HP Thin Clients with XenDesktop
- Management with HP Thin Clients
- HP Protects Your Business
- Experience the HP Difference
Wyse 
If you have any questions regarding the contest, please let me know via comments.
Visit Citrix Ready Catalog for more partner products.
I have been working with lot of ISV vendors who looking to become Citrix Ready and get their product listed on the Citrix Ready Catalog.
One common problem they sometimes face is how to verify their application works with Citrix/Terminal Server. Microsoft Terminal services team has written really good blog post and posted a tool.
Here are some short cut links which you will find useful regarding Terminal Server Application compatibility
1 How to develop Applications for the TS and Citrix Platform
While most 32-bit and 64-bit applications run "as is" on Windows Terminal Services, some do not perform as expected due to differences in the platform between Vista and Windows 2008 Terminal Service
2 TS Application Analyzer
TS Application Analyzer is a runtime program analysis tool to enable administrators/users to determine if they can deploy an application on TS with confidence
3 TS Programming Guidelines
The TS Programming Guidelines provide information on how to design your application to ensure that it runs smoothly on Terminal Services and provides a rich, seamless, and integrated experience to your end users.
4 White paper: Application Readiness for TS
The TS Application Compatibility Connect program is aimed at providing content and tools to address application compatibility issues and to enable you to readily deploy your applications on TS. Anyone can join the Connect program to learn about ensuring
Please contact CitrixReady at citrix dot com if you are interested in becoming a Citrix Ready Partner.
Do you know of any other links or tools which can help with TS application compatibility issues?
UPDATE
check out blog by Vinny Sosa on Citrix application compatibility toolkit and and other resources
UPDATE 2
How to Effectively Troubleshoot Citrix Application Integration and Compatibility Issues?
*http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX101709*
UPDATE 3
Best practices for windows developers writing Seamless Application for Citrix
Gourami presents a free tool to uninstall every version of a ICA client from a Windows 2000 or Windows XP Workstation. It's given the name UNICA!
How it works:
When started with the correct command line options, UNICA searches the uninstall information of a workstation for every product which was released by Citrix and uninstalls it. UNICA waits till everything is finished uninstalling, and then launches the installation command line for deploying the new client.
This is a ideal tool when you have several different versions of the ICA client installed over several different workstations. This is also a great help if you have 2 or even 3 versions installed on the same workstation. UNICA automatically detects and uninstalls them.
Because UNICA uninstalls every product that is released by Citrix, it also uninstalls the presentation server console, or even presentation server itself. Therefore a safety is build in, UNICA is made not to run on Windows Server. But it is still recommended to not run UNICA on windows XenApp/Presenation servers.
UNICA does not require .NET framework or a new version of Windows Scripting Host to run. In some occasions when a computer is not equipped with Microsoft Common Controls, the MSCOMCTL.OCX needs to be next to UNICA.EXE.
Gourami is also has product which are Citrix Ready.
Not-For-Resale products are offered to our Citrix Ready Technology and Citrix Ready members for testing, development, and demonstration purposes. As an added value, members are eligible to receive free and/or discounted NFRs.
| Citrix Technology Member |
Citrix Ready Core Members |
Citrix Ready Leaderships |
| 1 NFR allotment | 5 NFR allotments | 10 NFR allotments |
Additional Citrix Software NFRs are also available for purchase at a discounted rate.
Members are entitled to purchase discounted Citrix Hardware NFRs. Partners are eligible to order one (1) Hardware NFR product version per partner. Orders exceeding one (1) Hardware NFR product version per partner, or partners ordering additional Hardware NFR products who have received
previous Hardware NFR products, will follow an exception process and be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
Accessing Allotted Software NFRs on MyCitrix.com site
To obtain NFR products please follow these steps:
1. Log in to http://www.citrix.com/MyCitrix
2. Go to My Tools and Choose a Toolbox
3. Select Partner Use Licenses from the menu
4. Click on the button "Get Software"
5. Select the product from the drop-down list
6. Select the Language
7. Click on Retrieve New Serial Numbers
- Click on the name of the product and this will reveal the serial numbers
- Copy the serial numbers and go to Choose a Toolbox
8. Select Activation System/Manage Licenses
9. From the drop-down select Activate/Allocate and paste the copied serial number in the space provided
10.Follow the instructions on the screen.
If you are not a Citrix Ready Partner and if you want to get more information about the program then you can learn more on how to become a partner at following URL
http://www.citrix.com/Citrixreadyinfo
If you are a developer just looking to try out XenApp/XenDesktop for developement/integration purpose you can download developer/eval licenses from following URL
Citrix and Wyse are working together to meet end-user demands. The Wyse Viance desktop appliance is purpose-built to work in concert with the delivery capabilities of Citrix XenDesktop. Together, this joint solution provides a virtual desktop that offers the best user experience, simplest administration, lowest cost of ownership, as well as a significantly lower environmental impact.
To learn more, attend the upcoming live webinar with Citrix, Wyse, and ESG. Join ESG's leading virtualization analyst Mark Bowker as he discusses desktop virtualization's impact on the endpoint device and how user experience is closely tied to the success of desktop virtualization deployments.
By attending this webinar you will discover how you can benefit from XenDesktop and the out-of-the box Wyse Viance solution by:
• Reducing hardware and software costs by 40%
• Reducing IT operations costs by 30%
• Reducing worker downtime by almost 90%
• Increasing staff productivity up to 80%
Webinar Details:
Deliver Desktop Virtualization with Thin Clients
Date: March 25, 2009
Time: 8:00 am PST, 11:00 am EST, 4:00 pm GMT
Duration: 60 minutes
Speakers: Mark Bowker, Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group
Calvin Hsu, Director, XenDesktop Product Marketing, Citrix Systems
Hector Angulo, Product Manager, Wyse Viance Series, Wyse Technology
Register now at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/747643175.
Citrix Ready Members,
Do you want your solution to get highlighted during Citrix Synergy? The Citrix Ready Solution of the Year Nomination form is NOW available.
The annual Citrix Ready Solution of the Year Award recognizes the Citrix Ready member that best excels in delivering solutions complementary to Citrix. This exclusive award is a unique opportunity for Citrix Ready members to showcase their solutions and to benefit from increased recognition within the Citrix channel eco-systems. This year the winner will be announced at our upcoming Synergy event May 3-7, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The deadline for nominations is April 6, 2009. If you have any questions related to the nomination process please email us at citrixready AT citrix.com.
Here is the list of partner who have won the award in the past
Enteo (now called FrontRange Solutions Inc.) (The award was know as Solution of the Year Award at that time)
Browse all Citrix Ready Product by Enteo
Browse all Citrix Ready Product by Wyse
Browse all Citrix Ready Product by NetApp
Thank you,
Citrix Ready Team
http://www.citrix.com/citrixready
How can you get an even better return on your XenApp investment? Virtualize it with Citrix XenServerTM. Then fortify it with Marathon everRun®. Fault tolerance for XenServer virtualization is the most cost-effective way to introduce the highest degree of application resiliency for your most mission-critical XenApp deployments.
Attend the upcoming Citrix and Marathon live webinar to learn how virtualizing Citrix XenApp with Citrix XenServer helps you:
• Lower operating expenses by consolidating XenApp servers
• Increase IT flexibility by provisioning XenApp across physical and virtual servers
• Enable zero-downtime maintenance with XenMotion live migration
You'll also discover how fortifying XenApp and XenServer with Marathon Technologies' everRun software give you the confidence to:
• Increase your SLAs for your most critical XenApp deployments
• Protect your Citrix License Server and Data Store from downtime with automated availability
Webinar Details:
Virtualize and Fortify XenApp for Lower Costs & Higher SLAs
Date: March 18, 2009
Time: 8:30 am PST, 11:30 am EST, 4:30 pm GMT
Duration: 60 minutes
Speakers: Sridhar Mullapudi, XenApp Sr. Product Manager, Citrix Systems
Peter Blum, XenServer Principal Technical Marketing Manager, Citrix Systems
Tom Reed, Sr. Solutions Architect, Marathon Technologies
Register now at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/587322586
For those of you looking to try something new and powerful for Citrix XenApp, I suggest you check out the new Extentrix Turbo Access Toolbar. A 30 day trial of this Citrix Ready™ verified product is available at here.
The toolbar integrates with Microsoft Internet Explorer and easily connects to your PNAgent
URL for complete secure and transparent published application launching. The toolbar provides
the following features:
• 3-D look and feel of icons
• 3-D adjustable icons
• Customization of toolbar content
o Show icons only
o Show text only
o Show text and icons
o Show and hide applications
• Single-sign on
• Always on demand
Extentrix ships two versions of this toolbar for personal use or enterprise use. The enterprise
edition requires Extentrix Web Services Application Edition 3.0 which is introduced by Chris
Fleck in an earlier blog posting here.
The personal edition allows anyone to leverage this tool independent of your organizations
published application entry point - the user simply points the toolbar to the company PNAgent URL and the tool takes care of the rest.
Download your free trial today!
Two years ago Citrix released developer licenses for Citrix XenApp. However I still see tons of requests for an eval license for trying out XenApp in support forums and community in general. The XenApp developer license gives a 2CCU license to evaluate XenApp for 12 months. It is a really good option to deploy a small lab for testing or build a XenApp environment for SDK development or testing but as Brian Madden mentioned in his blog while back this free edition of XenApp is not sufficient for "real" testing, but serious Citrix customers can still contact a reseller to get a 99-user, 90-day eval license. The 1 year developer license is also a good option for trying out XenApp in personal lab and getting Citrix certified. The developer licenses will work on XenApp 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0 servers.
Here is step by step process to get your own developer license.
Step 1: Sign up for a Free MyCitrix account
Step 2: Login to MyCitrix and select "Product Previews / Beta Releases - License Retrieval" from the "My Tools" widget.
Step 3: Select "Presentation Server Dev. Edition"
Step 4: Verify that you are assigned a license code and then Click Continue
Step 5: Search for a solution advisor or select "I cannot find my reseller" and continue.
Step 6: Verify the contact and address information
Step 7: Determine the hostname of License Server and click continue (Tip hostname is case sensitive)
Step 8: Retrieve and save your XenApp license.
If you are a hobbyist or geek like me who wants to try out XenApp server but don't want to install XenApp from scratch but want something quick. I have created XenApp Demo AMI (Amazon Machine Image) with a developer license and Chris Fleck has a video where he explains how to get your own XenApp Server in Amazon EC2 cloud in 15 minutes using the XenApp Demo AMI.
Nick has recently released a really cool Vista Gadget for XenApp. It is yet another use case of building innovative tools using MFCOM SDK. If you are a XenApp Admin check this tool directly at his blog
According to a recent Forrester report, available here at no cost, new server virtualization technologies make high availability and disaster recovery much more affordable and practical than traditional HA and DR approaches. These new technologies can help more companies (especially small and midsized ones) protect a much broader range of applications. Our partner, Marathon Technologies, is hosting a webinar with Forrester Research to explain how you can use Citrix XenServer and everRun VM to reduce the costs and complexity of HA and DR.
Live Webinar: Practical, Affordable High Availability and Disaster Recovery for a Tough Economy – Featuring Forrester Research
Date: February 24, 2009 Time: 8:30 am PDT, 11:30 am EDT, 4:30 pm GMT
Duration: 60 minutes
Speaker: Stephanie Balaouras, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Michael Bilancieri, Product Manager, Marathon Technologies
Did that grab your attention? It sure grabbed ours!
As highlighted in a recent announcement the Sullivan Group selected a joint solution of Citrix XenServer and Marathon everRun VM over their existing VMware infrastructure to virtualize and protect their SamWare application suite from fault tolerance issues.
"We considered VMware, but for the cost and what we needed, a XenServer Enterprise license plus everRunVM were fine." Plus, earlier this year, "when we looked at VMware High Availability (HA), it was not at the same level as everRun VM; there wasn't an automatic failover feature to prevent downtime," Rob Jones, Director of IT, The Sullivan Group said. "Since we liked Xen and Linux, instead of investing in VMware we decided to go with XenServer and use Marathon (everRun VM) for fault tolerance."
Marathon is hosting a webinar with the Sullivan group this Wednesday, January 28th to discuss their selection and experiences with our joint solution. Join this webinar to learn more:
Customer Spotlight Webinar: How the Sullivan Group Got Reliable High Availability without Breaking the Bank
Date: January 28, 2009 Time: 8:30 am PST, 11:30 am EST, 4:30 pm GMT
Duration: 60 minutes
Speakers: Rob Jones, Director of IT, The Sullivan Group
Erika Simpson, Network Administrator, The Sullivan Group
Michael Bilancieri, Sr. Director, Products, Marathon Technologies
Daniel Feller just pointed me out to these new Consulting Whitepapers for XenApp 5.0 for Windows Server 2008. If you are working on XenApp 5.0 for Windows 2008 these are great bookmark links. They are all available for download via Citrix Support site.
Simplifying the Migration to XenApp 5 with XenServer - Getting Started Guide
Simplifying the Migration to XenApp 5 with XenServer - Reference Architecture
Simplifying the Migration to XenApp 5 with XenServer - Implementation Guide
You can get a list of all XenApp 5.0 whitepapers here
Consulting Whitepapers for XenApp 5.0 for Windows Server2003
Consulting Whitepapers for XenApp 5.0 for Windows Server 2008
Brandon Shell (MVP PowerShell) and I are planning a more advanced level MFCOM and PowerShell Webinar to manage XenApp. We are looking for some input for the webinar content. Tell us what particular script or sample code you would like to see via comments. If you would like us to demo a particular method or a call then please leave us a comment. We would try our best to include it in the webinar.
Follow the link provided to view the previous webinar where Brandon explained how to write MFCOM scripts using PowerShell to manage XenApp.
Join Citrix and Egenera on November 11th at 1:30pm EDT, as Dee Cantrell, CIO of Emory Healthcare (EHC), shares her award-winning experience leading The Virtualization Project. Learn how, by implementing technology from Egenera and Citrix, Cantrell and her focused team:
- Improved TCO by 60 percent
- Streamlined administration requirements by 80 percent
- Created an affordable, scalable and highly available IT infrastructure.
- Provided secure access under HIPAA Privacy and Security Regulations
Register today at http://www.egenera.com/ehc
Moving your Microsoft® Exchange servers to the latest server virtualization technologies offers compelling benefits:
- Flexibility to dynamically adjust to growth or peak work loads
- High availability protection from common outages allowing users to stay connected
- Disaster recovery that's simpler, cheaper and more reliable
Join Marathon and Citrix on November 11th at 11:30am EDT for a live webcast and learn how benchmark testing proves the best virtualization platform for Exchange is Citrix XenServer 5 coupled with everRun VM.
Register today at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/728234051
Citrix Project Kensho provides administrators with highly usable tools that facilitate the export and import of virtual machines and virtual machine based workloads (virtual appliances) using the Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) and Common Information Model (CIM) industry standards developed by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF).
Project Kensho provides administrators with two utilities:
1 ) A management utility to import and export VHD based XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines whose metadata is compliant with the Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF).
2) An interface to allow access to XenServer management functions through Common Information Model (CIM).
You can download, discuss and watch videos for the Kensho tool at Citrix Developer Network.
Here is a code sample which will clone a virtual machine from a given template. I have also shown how to get the "MAC Address" of the newly created VM. Here is sample usage of the code
CreateClone <IP Address of XenServer> <UserName> <Password> <Template>
/// <summary> /// Clone a Virtual machine from a template and determine virtual machines mac address. /// </summary> public class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { // Host information necessary to get started string hostname = args[0]; int port = 80; // default string username = args[1]; ; string password = args[2]; string template = args[3]; // Establish a session Session session = new Session(hostname, port); // Authenticate with username and password. //The third parameter tells the server which API //version we support. session.login_with_password(username, password, API_Version.API_1_3); List<XenRef<VM>> vmRefs = VM.get_by_name_label(session, template); if (vmRefs.Count == 0) System.Console.WriteLine("Template not found"); foreach (XenRef<VM> vmRef in vmRefs) { if (vmRefs.Count == 1) { VM vm = VM.get_record(session, vmRef); System.Console.WriteLine("Cloning VM '{0}'...", vm.name_label); XenRef<VM> cloneVMref = VM.clone(session, vmRef, string.Format("Cloned VM (from '{0}')",vm.name_label)); System.Console.WriteLine("Cloning VM '{0}'... Done", cloneVMref.ToString()); VM.provision(session, cloneVMref); VM CloneVM = VM.get_record(session, cloneVMref); foreach (XenRef<VIF> vifref in CloneVM.VIFs) { System.Console.WriteLine(VIF.get_MAC(session, vifref)); } } else { System.Console.WriteLine("More then one VM Template found with same name"); } } } }
On the other note XenServer 5.0 SDK has been released on the CDN and you can download the sample codes here
Please let me know what other samples would you like to see on the CDN regarding XenServer. If we had to do a webinar on XenServer API what would you like to hear about?
| Which is your preferred language while writing XenServer API samples? | Choose |
|---|---|
| Microsoft C# |  |
| PowerShell | |
| Python | |
| Java | |
| Other | |
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.
Here is the direct link to the video
http://citrix.utipu.com/app/tip/id/3267
