SmartAuditor, or ICA session recording, is one of the top 2 new features in Presentation Server 4.5 Feature Pack 1. Michel Roth of ThinComputing.net has posted a 15 minute overview on the configuration and use of Citrix SmartAuditor--the first that I have seen. When installing SmartAuditor, it is very important to follow the exact steps outlined in CTX113599 and have your Citrix license server configured to use Presentation Server Platinum licenses. Why? Before SmartAuditor will run, it checks to see if Platinum licenses are available, otherwise, it will not run.

At 3:35 Michel has a good tip for configuring IIS on the SmartAuditor server.

For those of you going to iForum App Delivery Expo 2007, beginning on October 22, be sure to check out Session 203 - Citrix Presentation Server SmartAuditor - Record User Sessions for Security and Compliance. It looks like a good session with a customer presentation by Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina.

Do you want to know what the 2nd top new feature is in Feature Pack 1? Watch the Citrix News section for the latest coming out of the iForum App Delivery Expo.

I have a clean CPS 4.5 installation and run into a strange problem. When I visit the web interface login page, I would get an internal error has occurred error. The event log shows the following whenever this error occurs.

code: 3008

Event message: A configuration error has occurred.

Event time: 10/9/2007 11:56:07 AM

Event time (UTC): 10/9/2007 3:56:07 PM

Event ID: dc2535769fd24e80bcc65338977a195f

Event sequence: 1

Event occurrence: 1

Event detail code: 0

Application information:

Application domain: /LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT/Citrix/AccessPlatform-1-128364189657368327

Trust level: Full

Application Virtual Path: /Citrix/AccessPlatform

Application Path: c:\inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\AccessPlatform\

Machine name: RAYVCPS45

Process information:

Process ID: 63876

Process name: w3wp.exe

Account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE

Exception information:

Exception type: HttpException

Exception message: Could not load file or assembly Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the path specified.

Request information:

Request URL: http://10.2.248.112/Citrix/AccessPlatform/auth/login.aspx

Request path: /Citrix/AccessPlatform/auth/login.aspx

User host address: 10.7.83.182

User:

Is authenticated: False

Authentication Type:

Thread account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE

Thread information:

Thread ID: 1

Thread account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE

Is impersonating: False

Stack trace: at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.ReportTopLevelCompilationException()

at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.EnsureTopLevelFilesCompiled()

at System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.Initialize(ApplicationManager appManager, IApplicationHost appHost, IConfigMapPathFactory configMapPathFactory, HostingEnvironmentParameters hostingParameters)

Custom event details:

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I don know why it is happening. But after I performed a repair of .net framework 2.0, the problem went away.

Hope it helps in case someone else runs into the same problem

What is Health Assistant/HMR?

Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 introduced a new feature called Health Assistant also called Health Monitoring and Recovery (HMR). This feature maintains the health of critical services in a Presentation Server farm. Every Presentation Server has a service called a Health Check Agent (HCA) that periodically runs the tests to ensure the health of that server. If a test fails, the system can take a pre-configured corrective action along with writing to the event log. Each test can have its own configuration. i.e. how often it will run, how long will the test wait before it times out, how many times will the test run before it returns failure and what action will the test take on failure. With every test, the admin can configure one of these 5 actions to execute on failure

1. Alert only (shown in the AMC)
2. Remove server from load balancing - This is to ensure new users don end up on a bad machine. Existing sessions will still be running and reconnects to disconnected sessions or direct server connections will still be allowed
3. Shutdown IMA service
4. Restart IMA service
5. Reboot server

PS 4.5 has the following 4 health packs/tests

1. Logon/Logoff test This test monitors the logon/logoff cycle to determine if there is a problem with session initialization. When the time between logon and logoff is below a given value, it normally indicates a problem. Too many of these short cycles within a given time period indicates a problem with the health of the server
2. Terminal Services test This test ensures that sessions can be enumerated, session information can be retrieved etc to gauge the health of terminal services (similar to what utility does)
3. IMA test This test enumerates applications to check the health of the IMA service
4. XML Ticket Request test This test checks the health of the XML service by ensuring that it is able to process XML ticket requests

6 new health packs/tests released!

With the PS 4.5 Feature Pack 1, we released 6 new health packs/tests. If you are just looking for these 6 new health packs, you can also download them from the following location (and install them on PS 4.5 Enterprise or Platinum servers) - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX112805

5.Microsoft Print Spooler test -test ensures Microsoft print spooler reliability. It enumerates printers on the local server, enumerates printer drivers and print processors. Exercising these tasks is fundamental to gauge the health of the print service
6. Citrix Print Manager Service test This test verifies the health of the service by enumerating local session printers etc
7. Check DNS test - The Check DNS test by default will run a forward DNS lookup and a reverse DNS lookup to ensure that there are no DNS related errors that can degrade the health of the server.
8. ICA Listener test - The responsibility of this test is to ensure that ICA clients can make a successful connection to the local server via the ICA protocol. This functionality is validated by pinging the ICA listener and monitoring the response.
9. Check XML Threads - This test monitors to see if the XML service is getting overloaded with traffic. When this happens, Web Interface/PN Agent connections will suffer. This test will alert administrators that they may need to address XML server performance
10. Check Local Host Cache test This test is responsible for recognizing and responding to LHC corruptions and inconsistencies on the local machine that might have resulted from stale data left when removing a server and/or published application. LHC inconsistencies refer to duplicate entries or entries that do not match with the data store objects.

Writing custom health packs

There is a HMR SDK that can be used to write new tests. Check out this link for more information - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX112283

Scalability Impact
All the tests have been authored in such a way that they have little to no impact on system performance and scalability. But the number and frequency of tests determine any possible impact to the system performance and we believe if you keep the tests down to 6 and run them with a frequency of 5 minutes or higher, you will have near zero performance degradation. As you already know, it might be better to first test this in your QA environment.

Future

We are looking at adding more actions in the future (like ability to refresh/recreate LHC, ability to restart MS print spooler service/Citrix print service, ability to register with DNS server and restart ICA Winstation) that can be tied to some of these health packs. Also, we will have better integration with our EdgeSight technology. Please leave some comments if you have any suggestions for further improvements in this area.

On Sept. 26, 2007 at 1pm EST, Citrix TechTalks will host the webinar What New in Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 Feature Pack 1 The webinar will be delivered by key Citrix engineers in the development of FP1:

• Gary Barton - Presentation Server Core Engineer
• Butch Davis - Engineer, SmartAuditor (ICA session recording)
• David Coleman - Director Product Management, Communication Gateway (EasyCall click-to-call functionality) session will also cover the improved Vista/Office 2007 support, ICA streaming client improvements, health assistant enhancements multi-monitor support.
  Get more details here.
  What questions do you have for the presenters?

On Friday, Sept. 21, 2007, Citrix announces general availability of Feature Pack 1 for Citrix Presentation Server. The key new features are:

• SmartAuditor (ICA session recording) - Record any Presentation Server (ICA) session based on pre-defined policies to monitor and examine user activity for regulatory compliance and technical support. It like TiVO for your Presentation Server environment and only takes 9 Mb for an 8 hour recording of a typical user interaction.
• EasyCall (click-to-call) - Click on an on-screen phone number in any application -- Web-based, Windows, or on Presentation Server -- and place a call from your preferred phone (cell, office, home, etc.) to the terminating number, while taking advantage of your low corporate calling rates.
• License Simplification - Presentation Server Platinum Edition customers now only have to manage 2 licenses (Presentation Server Platinum License, Access Gateway Universal License), instead of 5 licenses (Presentation Server, Access Gateway, Password Manager, Application Streaming, EdgeSight). Enterprise Edition customers manage 1 license (Presentation Server Enterprise License) , instead of 2 (Presentation Server, Application Streaming). />

Michael Roth of ThinComputing.net has an overview of Feature Pack 1 and will be conducting a hands-on look at SmartAuditor in the near future.

Customers with active Subscription Advantage (software maintenance) can download Feature Pack 1 on mycitrix.com - 32-bit | 64-bit(login required).

To assist with upgrades and migrations from earlier versions of Presentation Server to Feature Pack 1, Jo Harder, Citrix Senior Architect in our Consulting Group, just posted the Technical Guide for Upgrading/Migrating to Presentation Server 4.5 Feature Pack 1. If you haven seen Jo speak, she is one of the most popular presenters at iForum (now Citrix Application Delivery Expo), always having a top 5 session by attendance. She also recently delivered the companion webinar to this Technical Guide.

What do you think about SmartAuditor and EasyCall?

To introduce myself, I am Sridhar Mullapudi from the Presentation Server product management team. I want to talk about our upcoming Mac ICA Client release and also request participation in a Beta program to give us some feedback. If you are interested, send a mail to Mac-ICAClient-Beta@citrix.com. As a Mac person myself, I am excited about this long awaited release. The main features in this release are

• Universal Binary Client - This client will run natively on Intel and PowerPC based Macs
• Seamless Windows - Ah! Finally. I guess I don have to explain what this feature is
• Session Sharing - Multiple application sessions from a user can share the same session. This means faster application launch times for subsequent applications.
• Improved file transfer speeds (at least twice as fast as before). You will see a big difference when you transfer files over a high latency link
• Session Reliability - This will let users reconnect automatically to the application(s) when connection is lost without displaying annoying dialogs
• Pass-through authentication - This is now enabled using Kerberos (the local machine and the PS environment should be set up to enable Kerberos)
• SpeedScreen image acceleration - This helps improve user experience when viewing web pages that have images etc.
• SpeedScreen Progressive Display - This is a cool feature introduced in PS 4.5 that dramatically improves (provides a local experience) when accessing 2-D applications etc
• SecureICA - This is not a new feature but we dropped it in the last client release and are introducing back due to strong customer request. Though Citrix strongly recommends using SSL for the ICA encryption needs, customers still use and like the simplicity of SecureICA and hence this support will be maintained for a while.
• Printing enhancements - Any printer available to local Mac application will be available for PS delivered applications. Users can also pick and choose their printer (not just relying on their default printer) and can change page sizes, layouts etc
• Keyboard Pass-through This will give the user an option of using Mac specific keyboard shortcuts that can be applied to the ICA Client itself (without passing it to the server application)

Mac OS 10.5, 10.4 and 10.3 versions will be supported with this client (though the recommended OS versions are 10.4 and 10.5)

Mac ICA Client is a high priority for Citrix and we will constantly innovate on this platform (we have already started planning for the next release). Some cool things we are thinking for the future are, ability to subscribe to applications (so you can put just the apps you need on your doc or desktop and can always have a one click access to them), much better integration with local desktop (use application icon instead of Citrix icon for the app on the dock, spotlight integration, simpler file type association etc). If you have any suggestions, feel free to share it with us.