Citrix XenApp Cut-over 4/13/2017

This notice applies to the apps.oregonstate.edu service.

New troubleshooting steps have been added to the Citrix XenApp Service InfoSheet.

On Thursday, 4/13 at 11:00AM-Noon, we will be cutting over from the College of Engineering Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop infrastructure to the Information Services infrastructure.

This is NOT an outage and should not impact any currently connected users.

With this cut-over, we will be upgrading from XenApp 6.5 to XenApp 7.12.  With this deployment; the Service Desk will gain access to two powerful tools to assist in troubleshooting customer issues when using http://apps.oregonstate.edu.  These two tools can be reached by connecting via remote desktop to nws-term4.nws.oregonstate.edu and launching them from the start menu.

Service Desk technicians have the role of “Helpdesk Administrator” scoped to “Campus Labs – Applications” and “Campus Labs – Virtual Lab”.   With these permissions you should be able to assist customers with various common tasks.

Broker: OSU-CTX-DDC-01.OREGONSTATE.EDU

Citrix Director

The Citrix Director tool is a perfect companion to XenApp for Service Desk employees.  When you log into Director you are immediately prompted about looking up either a user, machine, or endpoint.  Select User and then type in the customer that is calling in with an issue.  You will be presented with all of the details about all connections that the customer is using (there can be multiple applications, desktops, etc.) as well as the ability to restart, shadow, reset, or list the processes that my session is currently using.

 Citrix Studio

“Citrix Studio is the primary management console for administering XenApp and XenDesktop sites.  This console is used for tasks such as initial site setup, machine provisioning, and application and desktop publishing.” In your role as a Service Desk employee you won’t use this tool as often as Citrix Director but it still has important features that may be beneficial when answering questions for customers or assisting them with their support issues.

Search

The search window allows you to search for any items within the Citrix infrastructure that you have permissions to.  This includes Desktops, Servers, and Sessions currently in the system.

Delivery Groups

Delivery Groups are the set of resources (servers, desktops, applications, and users) that have been configured for a specific purpose.  Your permissions grant you the ability to see a “Campus Labs – Applications” and “Campus Labs – Virtual Lab” delivery group.  For now we can ignore the “Campus Labs – Virtual Lab”; that’s for XenDesktop that we’ll be deploying at a later date.  By clicking on the “Campus Labs – Applications” you’ll be able to see that it consists of 10 servers.  From here you can see all the details about delivery group configuration and which applications have been assigned to this delivery group.  You can also right-click on the delivery group and select “View Machines” or “View Applications” to see the resources allocated to this delivery group.

View Machines – You will see a list of the Windows 2012 R2 servers that we have configured to host the applications running on http://apps.oregonstate.edu. You can see the status of each machine (is it on, is it registered, and the number of sessions attached to it).  If a machine has sessions on it you can view the session, send a message to the customer, and log off those sessions (in the cases that the session is hung).

Note:  You also have the ability to put a server into “Maintenance Mode”. This temporarily stops new connections to a machine to perform administrative tasks (fixing problems, applying updates, etc.).  You should only do this if you are receiving calls from several users about a specific server.  You should immediately begin working with Endpoint Management to determine the cause of the errors and ensure a speedy return to service for that server.

Applications

The application section is where you can dig into the details about the applications that are deployed to XenApp (http://apps.oregonstate.edu).  You’ll be able to see items like who has access, who’s using it now, and is the application enabled (available for customers to use).

Configuration Settings:

The configuration settings won’t be much use to you as a Service Desk employee as they are site-wide and managed by the Endpoint Management team.  The Controllers section lists the servers that are configured as Citrix controllers for our environment.  We have two currently to ensure that Citrix continues to function should one of the servers experience an issue and/or to allow maintenance on one while still providing uptime.  The AppDNA and Zones sections aren’t really implemented at this time.

Citrix Universal Profile Manager

The Citrix Universal Profile manager is a tool that we are using to keep a central profile for customer interactions with Citrix.  This ensures that the customer experience between XenApp applications and XenDesktop desktops are kept synchronized.  The data stored in these profiles is not customer data; it entails the settings and preferences of the various applications and desktops in use.  This profile location is generally hidden and not visible to the customer and we’re hoping to keep the size of this profile very limited.

Profile Location: \\ctx-profiles.sig.oregonstate.edu

Profile Naming: \\ctx-profiles.sig.oregonstate.edu\profiles\username.domain\windows-os-version (e.g.: \\ctx-profiles.sig.oregonstate.edu\powern.onid\Win7v2) (versioning details).

Citrix Profile Folder Redirection

ONID customers that are logging into XenApp or XenDesktop sessions will have their standard Windows profiles redirected to \\onid-fs.onid.oregonstate.edu\profiles\username\Profile.  We are currently using folder redirection to redirect the Desktop, Documents, Downloads, and Favorites.  On the previous XenApp implementation this information was stored in \\onid-fs.onid.oregonstate.edu\profiles\username\Windows.Documents folder.  As of Spring Break 2017; customers will be pointing to the Profile directory.  If you have customers that need something stored in their old location; work with them to browse their home space and find the files (nothing has been removed).

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