This is the second part of an ongoing series around enhancing Citrix MCS within Azure. The first post focused on optimizing identity disk costs via PowerShell and Azure Automation. This is post will tackle one of the biggest impacting performance optimizations you can make to machines within Azure: Accelerated Networking. Accelerated Networking is defined by... Continue Reading →
Enhancing Citrix MCS and Microsoft Azure – Part 1: Identity Disk Cost Optimization
Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS) is commonly utilised to deploy non-persistent workloads into Microsoft Azure, providing image management and provisioning at scale. MCS in Azure uses on-demand provisioning which means for pooled or newly provisioned workloads (in the case of dedicated) that when the machine is not powered on, it simply does not exist. The... Continue Reading →
Citrix WEM Cache Problems…. Again.
I have been beating my head against the wall with WEM Cache issues for what feels like a lot of years now, customer after customer, deployment after deployment hurt in one way, shape or form until the WEM cache is taken care of on boot. If the cache is appropriately slapped, then WEM does what... Continue Reading →
Azure Site Recovery and MCS Provisioned Workloads
Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is Microsoft’s multi-faceted solution for performing services such as Disaster Recovery (DR), Business Continuity Planning (BCP) execution and migration services (these days primarily wrapped into the Azure Migrate service). When deploying dedicated/persistent machines on the Microsoft Azure platform, it is often desirable to protect these workloads via ASR, providing cross-region failover... Continue Reading →
Automating Active Directory Domain Join for Azure Storage Accounts with Container Workloads
Having the ability to Active Directory Domain Join (ADDS) an Azure Storage account has changed the game for many organizations deploying file service into Azure. I wrote previously about the options for storing container workloads such as FSLogix Containers in Azure, one of them being native Domain Joined Storage accounts. There are a few steps... Continue Reading →
Azure and Ubiquiti VPN with Dynamic IP Address
I am a huge fan of the Ubiquiti network solutions, I leverage a few of their components in my home network and lab environments – USG, Cloud Key, a couple of managed switches and a single beast of an Access Point which serves my entire household of lab belting, Netflix hammering, educational streaming (thanks COVID)... Continue Reading →
Selective Deletion of the WEM Actions Tracking Cache
Every action that WEM handles, and most settings that are applied in the user context are stored within the users registry hive within the following locations: For basic Actions, Tasks, Environment and USV style settings: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\VirtuAll Solutions\VirtuAll User Environment Manager\Agent\Tasks Exec Cache And for user based printing management settings: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\VirtuAll Solutions\VirtuAll User Environment Manager\Agent\User Printers... Continue Reading →
WEM Documentation Script Update
A little while ago I put together a script (with the help of George Spiers) to help fill the lack of ability to Document a Citrix Workspace Environment Management deployment George, was kind of enough to post this on his blog here, and the source code can be found here in my github repository I... Continue Reading →
Warm up Citrix VDA’s with ControlUp Logon Simulator and PowerShell
For a while now I have been a huge advocate of the logon optimisation work that George Spiers has provided, and I have been testing and implementing the majority of these optimisations on the projects I am involved with. Its led a to a passion (obsession) around reducing logon times and optimising the user experience,... Continue Reading →