I moved to California from London just over 11 months ago. Obviously there is a significant cultural and climatic shift involved and a settling in period is a necessity to find your feet. Having travelled all over the world I have embraced as many aspects of different cultures and enjoyed experimenting.

One such aspect I have noticed here in California and in fact right throughout the US is the love of cheese.  A meal  smothered in cheese is normally accompanied by a side dish of, guess what, MORE cheese. Normally I reserve this dairy delight for a cracker or with some wine but 'Here' it is on everything.

Ordering a Cheeseburger with no cheese always raises a quizzical look from the waitress and a thought process which starts with "You are weird" and progresses to "Is he a serial killer?". Even the lactose intolerant demand that their lunch, dinners and daily snacks have heavy cheese content. Asking colleagues, "why do they have so much cheese on their food?" the simple answer was, "it tastes so good with cheese".

One technically gifted colleague decided to explain this using the analogy that Citrix XenApp and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services(the technology formerly known as Terminal Services) have the same relationship as cheese and hot meals(zzzz). The hot meal is the platform, Microsoft, and the cheese is the value-add, XenApp, which brings the  meal to life. Beating this analogy to a quick death, then Citrix has a number of cheeses, Citrix XenDesktop, Essentials for Hyper-V and Branch Repeater which embrace and extend the Microsoft Platform to supply a sumptuous meal.

All of these great combos can be found here at the New Microsoft/Citrix Community Portal where we've consolidated all related news, blogs, articles, videos, etc... into the feeds section of this page. We've also created an area that highlights all related forum threads and postings. Look for answers to your burning questions, participate in an existing discussion, or you can tell us if our cheese is good or if it stinks - let me remind you that all the best cheeses stink  

PS Does eating cheese in the evening give you nightmares? 

A couple of months back we released a Presentation Server Configuration Pack for Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007. You can use this tool to evaluate each Presentation Server's configuration against predefined security and best practice guidelines. Our Configuration Pack is designed to be used in conjunction with the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 Desired Configuration Management (DCM) 2.0 module.

The DCM can generate reports containing detailed information about which Presentation Servers are out of compliance and how to correct each configuration setting. Using this information, Citrix administrators can rectify the configuration issues on each reported Presentation Server, thus bringing the entire PS farm back into compliance with Citrix Best Practices. The security and best practice guidelines are a collection of configuration settings assembled from sources such as the Citrix Presentation Server Administrator's Guide, Citrix Presentation Server Advanced Concepts Guide, Citrix Best Practices Webinar, and Citrix Access Security for IT Administrators. The pack has tons of settings for locking down desktops (computer and user configuration) and other PS best practice settings. There is also an option for creating custom configuration items.

The pack supports Presentation Server 4.0 (32-bit & 64-bit) & Presentation Server 4.5 (32-bit & 64-bit) product versions. For details, download the zip file that has the pack and the administrators guide. Also, Christopher Fife from our advanced products team created a dedicated support forum for this pack. Don't forget to leave your blog comments to help us improve this pack in the future.

Do you know we also have a Presentation Server management pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 (the link needs mycitrix login)?