Blocking Inline Images

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

Assume you have under http://www.quux-corp.de/~quux/ some pages with in lined GIF graphics. These graphics are nice, so others directly incorporate them via hyperlinks to their pages. you don't like this practice because it adds useless traffic to your server.

Example : You can restrict the cases where the browser sends a HTTP Referer header.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$                                  
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.quux-corp.de/~quux/.*$ 
RewriteRule .*\.gif$        -                 [F]

AppExpert rewrite:

Add patset pat1
Bind patset pat1 .gif
Bind patset pat1 .jpeg
add responder action act1 respondwith '"HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden\r\n\r\n"'
add responder policy pol1 '!HTTP.REQ.HEADER("Referer").EQ("") && !HTTP.REQ.HEADER("Referer").STARTSWITH("http://www.quux-corp.de/~quux/")&&HTTP.REQ.URL.ENDSWITH_ANY("pat1")' act1
bind responder global pol1 100

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Blocking Robots

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

You can block a really annoying robot from retrieving pages of a specific webarea. This way you can ease up the traffic at some directories.

Example : This could be done by using a rule set which forbids the URLs of the web area /~quux/foo/arc/. This could also be accomplished by matching the User-Agent HTTP header information. In this example, the ip address to be blocked is 123.45.67.8 & 123.45.67.9.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}   ^NameOfBadRobot.*      
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR}       ^123\.45\.67\.[8-9]$
RewriteRule ^/~quux/foo/arc/.+   -   [F]

AppExpert rewrite:

add responder action act1 respondwith '"HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden\r\n\r\n"'
add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.HEADER("User_Agent").STARTSWITH("NameOfBadRobot")&&CLIENT.IP.SRC.EQ(123.45.67.8)&&CLIENT.IP.SRC.EQ(123.45.67.9) && HTTP.REQ.URL.STARTSWITH("/~quux/foo/arc")' act1
bind responder global pol1 100

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Browser Dependent Content

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

At least for important top-level pages it is sometimes necessary to provide the optimum of browser dependent content, i.e. one has to provide a maximum version for the latest Netscape variants, a minimum version for the Lynx browsers and an average feature version for all others.

Example : We will act on the HTTP header "User-Agent". The following config does the following: If the HTTP header "User-Agent" begins with "Mozilla/3", the page foo.html is rewritten to foo.NS.html and the rewriting stops. If the browser is "Lynx" or "Mozilla" of version 1 or 2 the URL becomes foo.20.html. All other browsers receive page foo.32.html. This is done by the following rule set:

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  ^Mozilla/3.*
RewriteRule ^foo\.html$         foo.NS.html          [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  ^Lynx/.*         [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  ^Mozilla/[12].*
RewriteRule ^foo\.html$         foo.20.html          [L]
RewriteRule ^foo\.html$         foo.32.html          [L]

AppExpert rewrite:

Add patset pat1
Bind patset pat1 Mozilla/1
Bind Patset pat1 Mozilla/2
Bind patset pat1 Lynx
Bind Patset pat1 Mozilla/3

add rewrite action act1 insert_before 'HTTP.REQ.URL.SUFFIX' '"NS."'

add rewrite action act2 insert_before 'HTTP.REQ.URL.SUFFIX' '"20."'

add rewrite action act3 insert_before 'HTTP.REQ.URL.SUFFIX' '"32."'


add rewrite policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.HEADER("User-Agent").STARTSWITH_INDEX("pat1").EQ(4)' act1

add rewrite policy pol2 'HTTP.REQ.HEADER("User-Agent").STARTSWITH_INDEX("pat1").BETWEEN(1,3)' act2

add rewrite policy pol3 '!HTTP.REQ.HEADER("User-Agent").STARTSWITH_ANY("pat1")' act3

bind rewrite global pol1 101 END
bind rewrite global pol2 102 END
bind rewrite global pol3 103 END

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Old to New External URL Rewrite

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

Assume that you have recently renamed the page foo.html to bar.html and now want to provide the old URL for backward compatibility. But this time you want the users of the old URL to see new one, i.e. their browsers Location field should change too.

Example : The following rules can force an HTTP redirect to the new URL which leads to a change of the URL in the users browser:

Apache rewrite:

RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^foo\.html$  bar.html  [R]

AppExpert rewrite: (There are two ways to do this)

add responder action act1 redirect 'HTTP.REQ.URL.BEFORE_STR("foo.html")+"bar.html"' -bypassSafetyCheck yes

add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.ENDSWITH("/~quux/foo.html")' act1

bind responder global pol1 100

add responder action act1 redirect 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.BEFORE_STR("foo.html")+"bar.html"+HTTP.REQ.URL.AFTER_STR("foo.html")' -bypassSafetyCheck yes

add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.CONTAINS("foo.html")' act1

bind responder global pol1 100

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Old to New Internal URL Rewrite

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

Assume you have recently renamed the page foo.html to bar.html and now want to provide the old URL for backward compatibility. Actually you want users of the old URL to not recognize that the pages were renamed.

Example : Rewrite the old URL to the new one internally via the following rule, let the base directory be /~quux/.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^foo\.html$  bar.html

AppExpert rewrite: (There are two ways to do this)

add rewrite action act1 replace 'HTTP.REQ.URL.AFTER_STR("/~quux").SUBSTR("foo.html")' '"bar.html"'

add rewrite policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.ENDSWITH("/~quux/foo.html")' act1

bind rewrite global pol1 100

Add rewrite action act1 replace 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.SUFFIX(\'/\',0)' '"bar.html"'

Add rewrite policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.CONTAINS("foo.html")' act1

Bind rewrite global pol1 100

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Time Dependent Rewriting

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

We can rewrite a URL based on time.

Example : Changing the request foo.html to foo.day.html or foo.night.html according to time.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond   %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} >0700
RewriteCond   %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} <1900
RewriteRule   ^foo\.html$             foo.day.html [L]
RewriteRule   ^foo\.html$             foo.night.html

AppExpert rewrite:

Add rewrite action act1 insert_before 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.SUFFIX(\'.\',0)' '"day."'

Add rewrite action act2  insert_before 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.SUFFIX(\'.\',0)' '"night."'

add rewrite  policy pol1 'SYS.TIME.WITHIN(LOCAL 07h 00m,LOCAL 18h 59m)' act1

add rewrite policy pol2 'true'  act2

bind rewrite global pol1 101

bind rewrite global pol2 102

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Failed URL Redirect

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

In case the current url is not valid & the request needs to be redirected to another web server, the following steps could be taken.

Example : We will check weather the request filename exists on the server or not, in case it fails then redirection is done to another webserver (for example, webServerB.com). In the case of AppExpert, HTTPCallout is used to check the presence of the file on the server by running a script file_check.cgi on the server. The returned value from HTTPCallout is used to validate the policy.

The Script file_check.cgi takes the url as the argument, checks for its presence on the server & returns True or False accordingly.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond   /your/docroot/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule   ^(.+)      http://webserverB.com/$1 [R]

AppExpert rewrite: (There are two ways to do this)

add HTTPCallout Call

set policy httpCallout Call -IPAddress 10.102.59.101 -port 80 -hostExpr '"10.102.59.101"' -returnType BOOL -ResultExpr 'HTTP.RES.BODY(100).CONTAINS("True")'  -urlStemExpr '"/cgi-bin/file_check.cgi"'   -parameters query=http.req.url.path -headers Name("ddd")

add responder action act1 redirect '"http://webserverB.com"+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes

add responder policy pol1 '!HTTP.REQ.HEADER("Name").EXISTS  &&  !SYS.HTTP_CALLOUT(call)' act1

bind responder global pol1 100

add HTTPCallout Call

set policy httpCallout Call -IPAddress 10.102.59.101 -port 80 -hostExpr '"10.102.59.101"' -returnType BOOL -ResultExpr 'HTTP.RES.BODY(100).CONTAINS("True")'  -urlStemExpr '"/cgi-bin/file_check.cgi"'   -parameters query=http.req.url.path -headers Name("ddd")

add responder  action act1 respondwith  '"HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily\r\nLocation: http://webserverB.com"+HTTP.REQ.URL+"\r\n\r\nHTTPCallout Used"' -bypassSafetyCheck yes

add responder policy pol1 '!HTTP.REQ.HEADER("Name").EXISTS  &&  !SYS.HTTP_CALLOUT(call)' act1

bind responder global pol1 100

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Structured Homedirs

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

Some sites with thousands of users usually use a structured homedir layout, i.e. each homedir is in a subdirectory which begins for instance with the first character of the username. So, /~foo/anypath is /home/f/foo/.www/anypath while /~bar/anypath is /home/b/bar/.www/anypath.Following rules could be used to implement this.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteRule   ^/~(([a-z])[a-z0-9]+)(.*)  /home/$2/$1/.www$3

AppExpert rewrite:

Add rewrite action act1 replace 'HTTP.REQ.URL'  '"/home/"+ HTTP.REQ.URL.AFTER_STR("~").PREFIX(1)+"/"+ HTTP.REQ.URL.AFTER_STR("~").BEFORE_STR("/")+"/.www"+HTTP.REQ.URL.SKIP(\'/\',1)'  -bypassSafetyCheck yes

Add rewrite policy pol1  'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.STARTSWITH("/~")' act1

Bind rewrite global pol1 100

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Move Homedirs to Different Web Server

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

There are cases when you want to redirect requests for homedirs on one web server to another web server. The typical use case for this arises when establishing a newer web server which will replace the old one over time. i.e. you need to redirect all the requests for a particular homedir to another web server.

Example : Let the hostname for new webserver be newserver.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteRule   ^/(.+)  http://newserver/$1     [R,L]

AppExpert rewrite: (There are two ways to do this)

Add responder  action act1 redirect '"http://newserver"+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
Add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.REGEX_MATCH(re#^/(.+)#)'   act1
Bind responder global pol1 100 END

Add responder  action act1 redirect '"http://newserver"+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
Add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.LENGTH.GT(1)'   act1
Bind responder global pol1 100 END

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Load Balancing Auto-Configuration for SAP using Workflow Studio and NetScaler

At the tail end of our certification process at SAP, Citrix engaged in a unique opportunity to make use of the SAP APIs, using Workflow Studio to auto-configure the Citrix NetScaler for Load Balancing. The way it works is, Workflow Studio polls the SAP API, reads the response, and then based on the results in the response, configures the NetScaler Load Balancing groups that map directly to the SAP servers running in the server farm.

SAP has a community group dedicated to the development of their APIs, please reference the latest blog post Catching Up with Deployment and Operations Automation, describes the SAP APIs.

The SAP Community Definition Group (CDG) - titled "PCDG 97 NetWeaver Infrastructure APIs for Network Solutions" - is focused on automation of network-application integrated configuration and operation. As the group title implies, the SAP NetWeaver technology platform includes APIs, which are used by the NetScaler ADCs (load balancers) to auto-configure themselves as proxies for multi-instance SAP application systems. Using Citrix Workflow Studio, the SAP APIs are polled on a regular basis so that the NetScaler ADCs can react to SAP application instance changes during production runtime.

If another application instance is brought up, let's say for providing more computing capacity for an increasing end-user load, or if an instance is brought down temporarily for maintenance, Workflow Studio communicates with the NetScaler ADC to adjust load balancing automatically without any manual administrator intervention. There is no more wait, or lengthy change management required to provision applications.

Workflow Studio, NetScaler and SAP API Use Cases:

Use Case 1: (auto-configure new SAP services).

Workflow Studio sends a URL request to the SAP Message Server, and receives a response. Workflow Studio parse's the response, looking for specific SAP generated patterns. WFS then uses this information to configure a Load Balancing Virtual Server inside of the Citrix NetScaler.

Use Case 2: (dynamic configuration).

Workflow Studio repeatedly queries the SAP API. WFS studio can determine hostnames, ip addresses, port numbers, and whether an SAP server is coming online or going down. When a SAP server comes online/goes down - WFS detects this change, and then takes action on the Citrix NetScaler, to add/remove the SAP service from the Load Balancing group - automatically.

Use Case 3: (graceful shutdown).

Workflow Studio queries the SAP API, determines a SAP server is going down, and based on the response, waits until all existing sessions have been retired, before removing the server from the Load Balancing group . During the shutdown period, no new sessions are added to that SAP server, providing a graceful shutdown of the SAP service. This way, there are no TCP resets sent to existing sessions. New logins are routed to a different server.

Read the SAP article here.

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Canonical Hostnames

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

The goal of the following rule is to force the use of a particular hostname, in preference to other hostnames which may be used to reach the same site. For example, if you wish to force the use of www.example.com instead of example.com, you might use a variant of the following rules.

Example : changing example.com to www.example.com

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^www.example.com 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^$
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^80$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)         http://www.example.com:%{SERVER_PORT}/$1 [L,R]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^www.example.com 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)         http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R]

AppExpert rewrite:

add responder action act1 redirect '"http://www.example.com:"+CLIENT.TCP.DSTPORT+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
add responder policy pol1 '!HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.CONTAINS("www.example.com")&&!HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.EQ("")&&!HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.PORT.EQ(80)&&HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.CONTAINS("example.com")' act1
bind responder global pol1 100 END

add responder action act1 redirect '"http://www.example.com"+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
add responder policy pol1  '!HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.CONTAINS("www.example.com")&&!HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.EQ("")&&HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.PORT.EQ(80)&&HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.CONTAINS("example.com")' act1
bind responder global  pol1 100 END

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Canonical URLs

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler. On some Apache web servers there is more than one URL for a resource. Usually there are canonical URLs (which should be used and distributed as a best practive) and those which are just shortcuts, internal ones, etc. Independent of which URL was supplied with the request, the user should only see the canonical one URL in the response.

Example : converting URL /~user to /u/user.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteRule   ^/~([^/]+)/?(.*)    /u/$1/$2[R]

AppExpert rewrite:

Add responder action act1 redirect  '"/u/"+HTTP.REQ.URL.AFTER_STR("/~")' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
Add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.STARTSWITH("/~") && HTTP.REQ.URL.LENGTH.GT(2)' act1    
Bind responder global pol1 100

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SAP certifies NetScaler v9.0 and Branch Repeater/WANScaler v4.5 solution

On 3/31/2009, SAP certified Citrix NetScaler v9.0 and Citrix Branch Repeater/WANScaler v4.5 as an integral solution to improve the delivery of the SAP applications. For SAP Portal, the Citrix NetScaler & Branch Repeater/WANScaler solution improved response time to clients. For downloads and backend operations from SAP Composite and ERP servers, response time was also improved.

SAP customers have hundreds of branch offices with a mixture of small and large offices, and a global distribution. It is important to have a solution which optimizes, simplifies and accelerates the delivery of the SAP applications. During certification testing it was proven that the NetScaler and Branch Repeater/WANScaler products improve performance of SAP applications through acceleration, provide security through HTTPS connections, and provide reliability & high availability through load balancing.

Read more about NetScaler here.

Read more about Branch Repeater/WANScaler here.

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Every organization is cutting costs, looking for ways to save money - 'doing more with less' CIOs  are making it clear to their IT organization - find cost savings, in one meeting the CIO said we need to find projects that will save us $2M+ and we need a few of these now!

In all the meetings I have had, Citrix has been at the top end of possible projects that can really save money now! Citrix champions within the IT organization are being called on to expand and accelerate their projects. For a long time these Citrix champions were seen as a niche group within IT, now they are being called upon to lead larger projects as their work has been at the core of saving organizations real dollars as they centralize and virtualize their application environments.

Often,  projects around Citrix technology have not been specifically about cost savings, it's usually solving other problems, such as application delivery for challenging apps, providing remote and secure access to applications or giving access to new locations/branches or home users. All these scenarios also include an element of cost saving, using Citrix was always the lowest cost option.

What is not so obvious is that these Citrix projects where not just the best/lowest cost option but also they provided real cost savings to the organization, reducing the TCO for the IT team, and providing best in class ROI. Gartner did some studies that showed Citrix XenApp ROI was less than 9 months. (To get a TCO and ROI calculator done for your organization ask your Citrix partner contact to build one for you.)

Delivering all your Windows apps with Citrix XenApp is at the heart of the real cost savings, Check out the compatibility tool,  http://community.citrix.com/citrixready if your app is not listed it you can add it. Saving of over 40% on your desktop management costs can be realized by running all your apps via XenApp.

Whether it's about TCO or ROI, Citrix have always shown excellent results and now that cost savings are the priority, Citrix champions are shinning a cost savings light on their organizations. To find out more about saving real money for your organization and meet some of the real Citrix champions working at our customer sites come to Citrix Synergy in May 2009 http://www.citrixsynergy.com.
Citrix champions speak out! Are you seeing your projects increase in these financially challenging times? Are you shining a cost saving light for your organization?

Cost Savings, Green Benefits and Improved Server Management.

Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery, recently announced that leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) manufacturer SAP AG will be virtualizing an estimated 500 servers with Citrix® XenServer™ by the middle of 2009. SAP has also deployed Citrix® XenApp™ application virtualization technology to deliver applications to both SAP employees and external partners. In addition, SAP expects to receive the benefits that a combined XenServer and XenApp solution provides - such as streaming standardized workload images and superior management functionality - which the company anticipates will generate a 35 percent savings in terminal server costs.

SAP was looking to consolidate its server infrastructure and also wanted to create a much more flexible and dynamic computing architecture. Following an extensive test of XenServer, the company decided to move forward with a multi-stage roll-out of the server virtualization solution onto 500 servers, initially in the company's Saint Leon Rot, Germany office. In the next phase of the project, the servers that power the worldwide training centers will be virtualized, followed by the project management division with several hundred development, test, and support environments. After the server virtualization project in Germany is complete, the roll-out will continue at the end of 2009 to SAP's offices in Asia and the United States.

SAP has also deployed Citrix XenApp application virtualization technology to deliver more than 40 applications, including Microsoft Office and the SAP Business Suite software, to its entire user base. In total, there are more than 50,000 end users who access the XenApp infrastructure to work on tasks such as product development and support.

XenServer is FREE !

Read more news like this.

Its powerful AppExpert!

The App Compat Toolkit for XenApp is a valuable web resource that contains essential tools and best practices to help customers and partners quickly migrate applications to XenApp. It's as easy as Analyze, Virtualize and Validate.

Analyze - Quickly determine which applications have already been delivered with XenApp by searching the new Citrix Ready Community Verified online database.

Automatically assess the application in your environment to understand any incompatibilities in detail by using the AppTitude Virtualization Manager for Citrix XenApp from our ISV partner AppDNA. This product is currently in beta, click here to download.

Virtualize - Best practice is to virtualize every application and manage as a single instance in the datacenter. This reduces incompatibility and conflict on the server and on the user machine and dramatically reduces testing and support costs

Validate - Choose the application testing method that is best for your environment. Test in house with fully configured Evaluation Virtual Appliance (EVA) or the new Citrix Ready Virtual Lab online test portal. Either way, you get to Proof of Concept and final deliver faster and with more confidence. To learn more, go to the Validate page.

The App Compat Toolkit for Xenapp gives you:

• Faster time to application delivery
• Increased confidence by following best practices
• Quicker remediation of application incompatibilities
• Leverage of the experience in the Citrix community
  
  

We introduced this last week at Summit and have received a favorable response. Please tell us what you think? Please leave a comment.

Acresso Software recently put together a project to study the impact of using their products with the Application Virtualization feature of Citrix XenApp.

Preparing applications for a virtual deployment can be one of the largest hurdles in an application virtualization project. In lab tests conducted by The Tolly Group, AdminStudio decreased the time needed to prepare an enterprise-level application for streaming via Citrix XenApp by up to 60%. Learn more about how AdminStudio can reduce the time needed to prepare applications for deployment in this benchmark study.

Acresso Software and Citrix commissioned The Tolly Group to test and illustrate the benefits of implementing Acresso's AdminStudio® packaging solution with the application streaming feature of Citrix XenApp™. The results of this study showcase how AdminStudio combines powerful application virtualization with Web-based process management tools to reduce an organization's IT costs and increase application reliability. When deployed in a Citrix XenApp environment, AdminStudio enables virtual applications to be deployed quickly.

• Decreases the time to package virtual applications by up to 60%, with a minimum savings during tests of 28%
• Reduces hourly packaging costs by up to 47% for large-sized enterprise-class applications
• Integrates AdminStudio with XenApp to increase efficiency when packaging applications for virtual deployment
• Requires no extra learning curve to prepare virtual applications compared to traditional applications
• Ensures best practices when migrating to a virtual environment by using tools designed to pre-package applications

Read more here

XenApp enables IT organizations to reduce the costs of delivering applications by centralizing management, security and control of apps and data. Application virtualization technology provides a flexible application delivery system that can select the best method to deliver an application dynamically, based on the user, application and network.

This next embedded presentation digs down much deeper into the application virtualization technology included in Citrix XenApp 5.0 .

(click here to see the presentation in full screen)

You can download the Delivery and Streaming Best Practices document here and the Office 2007 Profiling document here. The Administrator FAQ is here and you can find a Troubleshooting document here.

You can download a complete virtual appliance of Citrix XenApp 4.5 at this link.

This morning we announced Citrix XenApp 5. You can visit the product page for details on everything related to XenApp 5. Here you can download the updated feature matrix, XenApp 5 & Windows Server 2008 feature analysis, Top 8 reasons to upgrade and a link to register for the upcoming XenApp technical Webcasts. The technical Webcasts will cover XenApp 5 functionality as well as best practices for migrating/upgrading to XenApp 5.

The XenApp 5 bits will be uploaded to MyCitrix download page on Sept 4th. And, don't forget to register for the Sept 9th first ever live XenApp virtual event!

The St.Bernard iPrism works with Citrix's Application Virtualization platform - XenApp, and works quite well. Seen as a perfect complement to each other the Citrix NetScaler and XenApp products were tested with the St.Bernard iPrism Web Filter. Both companies offer architectures of one-arm (out-of-band) and two-arm (in-band) deployments. At Citrixlabs in Santa Clara, CA, USA, we tested both the out-of-band and in-band configuration of the iPrism Web Filter. We loved the fact that the iPrism is auto-discovered by the management software, so no console cable was needed.

With NetScaler:

We deployed the iPrism Web Filter behind the NetScaler in our proof of concept datacenter in Santa Clara, CA, USA, and configured the NetScaler for NAT (Reverse NAT) for outbound connections to the Internet. NAT is often performed by the Firewall. The Web Application Firewall, also part of the Citrix NetScaler, was configured for protection of inbound security threats to websites and web applications.

The iPrism was configured to monitor outbound traffic from the internal subnet of 172.16.104.0/24, and block all traffic to offensive websites, and monitor traffic to all other websites. The Real-Time monitor in iPrism gave us a detailed report on the users and IP Addresses that were going out to which sites on the internet. We could see who was accessing what, and which content was being blocked. Particularly nice, was the fact that the iPrism automatically authenticated each user to the Citrixlabs domain controller, every time they surfed a new website, without them knowing it. This was very useful for keeping a tight grip on security and for compliance reporting.

With XenApp:

The powerful value is in the integration with XenApp. We plugged the iPrism in as an in-line device, and configured it to work with Citrix XenApp©, formerly known as Citrix Presentation Server. One of the key questions that will arise in this situation is with all of those Citrix XenApp thin clients logging into the XenApp and then launching browsers to the internet, how does iPrism keep track of them. By adding the XenApp IP Address to the iPrism configuration, the users are tracked using "Session Based Authentication" - this catches each individual user and IP Address in each browser session and in the reports. We were impressed by this and determined the iPrism to be an excellent fit into a datacenter outfitted with Citrix.


Citrix & St.Bernard Deployment Guide!

Network Diagram:

Watch this video tip:

NetScaler Developer Network!