World of EUC

Are u asking how can you can (trash) a Mac address that the vda is using?

For users Client Machine, MAC Address I want to extract

They going through a netscaler? Or a vip?

I'm wondering if we could find it from storefront iis logs?

This one is tuff. Let me do some research. I'm curious as well.

I thought I had something

<https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/287757-retrieve-client-mac-address/>

But the ctx link is dead.

Screenshot_20191109-122716.jpg

I have searched everywhere. This is all I can find

I don't have anything else . Other than create a virtual channel for this.

if you need more client context information and you have a budget you should look at the solution by deviceTRUST. 

I did it in 6.0.
But didn't use cross vcenter vmotion.

It will still work fine. In my experience. I don't understand why they put that in the doc. I don't see how it has anything to do with it. When u select the hypervisor connection it still looks at the vcenter u put in the field. So not sure if Citrix is trying to say they don't want to deal with it.

Perfect - that's what we'll do then -thanks

There are things that work and there are things that are supported. The two do not always overlap.

I defer to the legend - we also did reach out to the Citrix TAM, and (I am translating from French here) -If when you set up XenApp or XenDesktop, you do not use linked mode to define the VMware cluster in the Studio Host section, it will not affect anything in Citrix support.

I take it to mean we need to define the individual vcenters

Yea. In studio it looks at the hypervisor name. 
Example:
<Https://vcenter.domain.com/sdk>
It will hook into with a API and ask to import the SSL cert.
Unless u are using a self signed ca. But neverless after this it will ask for ur prod cluster and storage, network. This hook is for MCS provisioned machine. Although PVS is similar.

Hey Brandon, what's your HyperVisor? What's your sort of scale machines wise?

Good start.
<https://www.mycugc.org/blogs/cugc-blogs/2018/09/21/my-first-time-citrix-machine-creation-services-mcs>

I'm a pvs guy as well. MCS gets me nervous. I use this doc alot

Today it’s on premises ESXi, but it will be Azure.  Today, we’re 1,000+ VDAs 

Thanks <@ULLH5JGFR>, I just finished reviewing that blog.  It’s really helpful. 

MCS is okay but there are serious considerations around how your underlying storage is laid out. Your updates will take longer dependent upon LUNs in use. I'd stick with PVS for on-prem. When you go cloud you should be able to import that same VHD.

That's a good blog. I've discussed this also at XenAppBlog Virtual Expo and have a few slides. Once I get my blog back up will do full write up on it.

Yea man. Leee has good advice as well. Helps me out alot

It is a great blog. Wish I had time to put down my builds in a blog.

Cheers Ray. MCS for hyperconverged makes 100% sense.  For smaller environments it's usually okay too but for 1000 machines on say local or maybe shared storage maybe not. The maintenance overhead can be tedious and time consuming.

<@ULLH5JGFR> start blogging man. Share your stuff and we'll share it around too. All experience is valuable and no one knows everything.

Local storage...:grimacing:. Shared depends.

Local storage will have storage location and copy per host similar to shared with many storage locations.

Yep. Need a bit more info. Agreed <@UK6S90JDR> , this is what I was getting at. At present with PVS it's pretty instant.

I have graphics for local storage, unoptimized distributed, and nutanix.

Perfecto. I'm sure Brandon will ask questions if he needs to about relating his infra to your diagrams. Another case of #communityrocks

Hey I’ve got the same graphics <@UK6S90JDR>! :joy:

In theory we’re moving to Azure, WVD, Citrix Cloud.  Conceptually I have a high level plan.  Until I actually start building, at the moment my missing link is the MCS image update/rollback.  I’ll review the Virtual Expo session.  Thanks guys!

(There’s a presentation on YT from Synergy: Provisioning survival guide that goes over them all)

I have a graphic for rolling as well somewhere. Need to find deck for make new one.

The concept is instead of updating catalog in place, you creating a new one, use a test delivery group for testing/UAT, expand new catalog for prod delivery group, put existing in maintenance mode, and remove after x mount of days. If you need to roll back just swap maintenance mode from new back to old.

Can even use App Layering in this and App Layering kind of forces this anyways

I’m not sure App Layering is an option with Enterprise Virtual Desktop, Win10 multi user.

Also creates fast rollback since you aren't using MCS process to rollback, you are just swapping machines and log off/log back on.

I don't think App Layering is but just saying if you are/were to use App Layering it can be used with the process.

Agreed, I’m general App Layering is an option for MCS/PVS image management.  I’m looking into if Azure Image Builder is possibility for WVD images.

I can't imagine paying for Azure, WVD, and Citrix Cloud moving from on-prem. How much more budget did you need to ask for?

It's very pricey. We looked at it and I would love to but I would have to do just like Brandon is doing. Ditch pvs and redo all with MCS. Sound so complicated

No MCS is the bomb. I loath the idea of PVS now. Once we brought in Nutanix and moved to MCS, master image management is so simple.

And if you’re doing AHV we can convert the PVS image for you :)

We came from 3 tier on ESXi and local storage on XS. Both PVS.

If you have HCI then MCS is grand. You need to share hardware details Brandon.

Without breaking out to a sales pitch, one HCI isn’t the other. Data locality matters..

Gotcha Kees. A S2D HCI solution isn't Nutanix.

I don’t know the financials, but in a couple of months, we went from anti-cloud to cloud-fist and signed a deal with Microsoft.  I’m trying to get ahead of it before “they” move the backend of apps we host in Citrix.  Right now, I'm just doing discovery and don’t expect to move workloads until next year. 

wow! It would be tough to work for a large company and just get news like that dropped on me. No say in it, just here is what we're doing.

Oh man.... It worries me when you say moving backends.

It's needs real analysis to see what you can move to services and what that costs etc... Unless of course, you have an open budget.

On the other hand, if they have the budget and you get to get your hands on this cool new tech, that's fun too. Just hard doing big migrations when you spend a lot of time keeping the lights on as it is. I hope my grocery bill doesn't go up too much Brandon.

I keep hearing, lift and shift...  I’m going to get paged because they moved an app server or db and now Citrix is slow.

wow. Lift and shift was 8x more expensive than staying on prem when I ran the numbers back in 2016.

<@ULM1JLE2H> please explain de-clouding ;-)

It's still the same Steve. I see this attitude alot though. Usually they get half way through and start to revert.

So instead we've been doing the "cloud considered" strategy and working to make moving to the cloud easier when it eventually makes sense to do so.

I used msc in 5.5 and 7.6. I recall I had so many issues with kms. I recall I had to snapshot, then run rearm, update image. Then take another snapshot then deployment. But that was so many years ago.

You need BIS-F Ray. It'll handle all that sealing process for you.

PVS is tuff to troubleshoot shoot at times. If networking is jacked pvs is jacked. I wish msc could update static machines like it does on pooled. I know u can update the static master then new machines would get the updates. But existing machines don't. Well not to my knowledge. Sorry not meing to hikack thread.

Drop me a message you now have fully linked clones.

As far as financials, my theory, and my theory alone... Since we’re large retail, Microsoft “partnered” with us, gave us a huge deal, and together we can compete with Amazon/AWS. 

No, I don’t think anyone knows our strategy.  Lots of chatter and everyone scrambling to catch-up since anything cloud was taboo.

I use Citrix UPS in most envioments i setup as it allows me to use session printers (network printers) without having to use native print drivers on the VDAs i can just use the Citrix universal print driver for the session printers

Cool, thanks for your feedback John. I have not tested it since 4-5 years ago (or more). At that time there were som issues when you had lots of printers, and there were also issues with multi-function printers (stapling, sorting etc). Can you confirm that it works flawlessly today? I really appreciate your feedback.

My last org we used it extensively.  We had applications that required the printer to be ready before launching the app and it would increase logon times +30seconds for those apps.

I blogged abit about my experience here.  It's important to have good drivers that operate correctly. We had old Zebra printers and the native drivers for them was absolute trash

<https://trentent.github.io/2015/07/08/citrix-universal-print-server-troubleshooting-printing-blank-pages-or-inconsistent-printing/>
<https://trentent.github.io/2015/07/09/citirx-universal-print-server-more-zebra-label-printer-troubleshooting-tips/>

Wow - thanks Trentent I will start Reading :grimacing::+1:

U have all the features working with the hdx stack?

I went down that route but the native client had to much bloat and I had to disable alot of things. The app was only a chat deal after that. Sorry which I could help u.

Yes, at least on teams site.
On HDX site isnt ready yet with that version... we use the Teams machine installer i had to set a lot of exlusion on UPM police but it works well so far. 

Could or no u mind sharing ur exclusions?

Sorry man. Not trying to hijacked ur thread. There are so many guides that try. But nobody seems to have it done all the way.

Sorry, sometimes i might choose the wrong words:grimacing::grimacing: what i meant, that the Teams Stack i have all feature working.
In hdx not yet... but it is not yet a show stoper.

Sure, will share the exclusion... give me some hours

I have no access to the system at the moment, will do it a soon a get to the office at sunrise:+1::+1:

This has a good bit
<https://james-rankin.com/articles/microsoft-teams-on-citrix-xenapp/>

Our stance is it is not yet supported, nor a proper VDI installer for it is available yet that doesn’t destroy profiles. So web-only version for us inside Citrix. Rumors abound that new version of teams is due imminently, the VDA side was released in 1906 I think? And workspace app 1906/1909 has the RTOP equivalent built in. So sounds like everything is in place and ready, except the actual Teams app itself. Which we know is in beta and coming. So we wait.

Also lots of adverts on Twitter about Teams and a new version early next year supporting multiple windows etc. Perhaps that will be the update we’re waiting for. Who knows.

Yea I hope so. I am finding alot that Citrix is ready in the 1906 release, just like u said.  Just waiting on MS now

For clarity I think it is specifically non-persistent VDI it is not supported in. YMMV.

This are my UPM Exclusion for MS Teams.

Exclusion list - files
!ctx_localappdata!\Microsoft\Teams*.nupkg
%localappdata%\Microsoft\teams\application cache\cache
%localappdata%\Microsoft\teams\databases
%localappdata%\Microsoft\teams\cache
%localappdata%\Microsoft\teams\gpucache
%localappdata%\Microsoft\teams\Indexeddb
%localappdata%\Microsoft\teams\Local Storage
%localappdata%\Microsoft\teams\tmp
 
Exculsion list - directories
!ctx_roamingappdata!\Microsoft\Teams\Cache
!ctx_localappdata!\Microsoft\Teams\Packages\SquirrelTemp
!ctx_localappdata!\Microsoft\Teams\current\resources\locales
!ctx_localappdata!\Microsoft\Teams\Current\Locales
!ctx_roamingappdata!\Microsoft Teams\Logs
!ctx_localappdata!\SquirrelTemp
!ctx_roamingappdata!\Microsoft\Teams\Application Cache
 
Files to synchronize
!ctx_localappdata!\Microsoft\Teams\Current\Locales\en*.pak
!ctx_localappdata!\Microsoft\Teams\current\resources\locales\locale-en*
!ctx_localappdata!\Microsoft\Teams\current\resources\locales\culture*

<@ULL6F7DRA> - speaking of Teams, from yesterdays discussion. Look at this thread.

Is that fluency direct? 
Speech to talk USB device

yes it appears so. the request sent to me is quite vague so I'm still getting my bearings on the product. You know much about it?

I deployer it 5 years ago in a docs office

I don't think so. It's a straight forward app

Well I say that, but it seemed that way for me at the time.

PDF is a little older but might still help

We have to help each other where we can .

Your help is beyond what I expected. Really appreciate it.

Rock on! Man, this community is great :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks, can't take a the credit. The fluency guy help alot back then. This community is awesome.

We also have this deployed and as noted within that document we also changed to TCP audio for better results over UDP.

so sad that the TCP option gives better audio.  Citrix needs to fix it so high quality audio is over UDP too.  Microsoft does has great quality audio over UDP with RDP.  Not sure about VMWare

image.png

Got a customer testing W10 1909 as an endpoint with Receiver 4.9.8. Looks like it doesn't work when launching the app from SF. Workspace App 1909 works just fine though. Anyone else notice this?

Have you tried black-listing the internal websites in BCR? Just curious to know, I don't have any specific experience in production.

I did and it was still broken, the only thing that worked was to remove the BCR Chrome extension. It's not really a solution but it's better to have shitty video playback then no playback at all.
The website was using SAP Success Factors. It's an app to create training videos.

Citrix needs to add wildcard support to whitelist or blacklist all websites. Also from the extension we should be able to deactivate BCR at will.
BCR is a great feature but it's sadly incomplete.

Datei von iOS.mov

First thought - are you running "Legacy Graphics Mode"? Depending on your worker OS, Legacy Graphics migt cause issues. In general, OS=WS2008R2 --&gt; Enable Legacy Graphics Mode (Citrix Policy). OS=newer-than-ws2008 --&gt; Disable Legacy Graphics. I've seen various issues with this. Often Legacy Graphics was enabled in a default policy, and at some point in time, later OS was introduced on VDA's, causing issues.

No Legacy Mode involved. We can see the issue on W10 1809 and Server 2016. Will give it a try with the latest 1909 VDA. 

Seen this reset g the profile fixed it for me

It is not related to the profile. Already questioned :disappointed:

what receiver version? We had what we called "black box" issues when people were not on LTSR receiver. 4.10+ would re-create it but LTSR was golden

Workspace App 1904. We need to go with WA otherwise we are having issues with DPI scaling. I will give it a try with the LTSR receiver 

We tried different setups today. The latest 1909 VDA &amp; Workspace App is not fixing the issue. The same goes for the LTSR receiver. Going to open a support case. 

Yes  7.15 CU2  VDA with 4.9.8000 receiver

<@ULJUX26GG> did you get this resolved? We're seeing on thin clients only with 7.15 CU4, CU5, all different versions of Receiver / WSA. Does not affect fat clients.

Not yet. We can’t see the issue when connection via an external NS Gateway same VDA. Internal we are working with HDX Optimal Gateway Routing where the issue is visible. I couldn’t test a direct ICA connection so far because of firewall restrictions.

Is it happening on fat clients, or thin clients? We see it mostly on our helpdesk staff, who have either 2 or 3 monitors, on TCs, and internal only. Switched one to a fat client and that seems to have resolved the problem.

Only fat Clients with W10 1809+1903 with 2-4 monitors. 


<@ULHA2PS2H> published Desktop only or double hop scenarios? 

<@ULHA2PS2H>
Update: It is related to the Video Codec. When disabling the codec for compression the black bars are gone. Can reproduce with 1909/1912.

Thanks <@ULJUX26GG>! I'll give that a test shortly.

Having an active support case on this. Tell me if this is fixing your issue 

I have enabled the policy for our Test users, and will let you know as soon as I hear back.

I got positive feedback from the users today.
4/4 users are reporting the black bars are gone :clap::skin-tone-4:

Positive / negative feedback from our users. Yes, it fixed the problem with the bars. However, it also significantly slowed down their sessions (response time).

Choosing between pest and cholera... At the moment we don’t have huge multi media use on the sessions hosts. Maybe you open a support case and refer to my case number?

<@ULHA2PS2H>: Short question. Can you see this issue more on endpoints with AMD graphic cards?

Can u see it the users vda session of u shadow him/her? If u take the PowerPoint file does it happen with you?

I had a similar issues. I'm running CR though.
Also using workspace not reciver
I'm sure u did your research.

But...... Google shows this.

<https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/387434-cursor-disappears-on-extended-desktops-with-4k-monitors/|https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/387434-cursor-disappears-on-extended-desktops-with-4k-monitors/>


<https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX202319|https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX202319>

I know this article is for Linux but I'm curious if it's the mouse icon. Sounds dumb I know.
<https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX131504|https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX131504>

I also understand it's the CTO so at times they don't care. Just want it fixed. Sorry to just give u links. But it's something passing through from his client and dpi setting I would suspect

You’ll be shocked to hear that I’m still waiting to hear back from the CTO on details. They’re never around, so I’ve been unable to actually look at it first hand. I’ve read all of those links , and my initial thought was that this was a DPI scaling issue. We’re an LTSR shop, so we’re on 4.9. I think I’m going to just install CWA 1909 and see if it resolves the issue.

Yea I figured you read them. It's hard helping higher ups. Im ready for 1912 LTSR. I was reading about it. Looks like they will add 2 years of feature updates . Not positive on that.

I've been waiting for this next LTSR since going live with 7.15 last year. It's based off of 1909 CR, so we'll get every feature - and, more importantly - every enhancement currently available.

James Rankin:  Havent had any reason to change them.....yet......

I can confirm that these exclusions work very well with FSL. No problems so far and no big profiles :grin:. 

I was more talking about the CPM exclusions, but that's also helpful.

Curious to know once they update the teams with the rtop enhanced if it will change. TBD I assume.

Looks like teams is ready

<https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-for-vdi|https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-for-vdi>

Doesn't look like a new installer to me.......will check later in case it has been updated

Based on the article update. Never assume

I think this may be what he wants: <https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX138924>

storefront is on prem, but only want it for the one desktop, not for everything.  No netscaler involved.

<@ULW9PENH2> I think you are correct about that being what I want.  Will give it a try.

Thanks a bunch!

Ahh only one yeah my idea would have been global. 

If that doesn't work, I think there may be another policy that works similarly: "Network access: Do not allow storage of passwords and credentials for network authentication" under Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Network Access. I believe this may prevent passage of credentials via RDP or ICA too.

Or would this just be something for wireshark....

HDX Insight. Do you have that and if you do, do you have access to it?

Also tools like the connection quality indicator that is in the VDA desktop but you can see it in the desktop session.

Wireshark on the end point will show somethings but may not show complete end to end connection.

I am going to ask about getting the quality indicator installed.. that was my first thought.. easy for them to pinpoint it.

All I have right now is that the Citrix popup for attempting to reestablish a connection screenshot..

I use the Citrix Quality Indicator and disable the notification popups via GPO. The nice thing about is that everytime the RTT goes nutz a nice event log is written.

definitely, use it to log but don’t nag the user

Haha I nag them, and display the custom  message. Might disable thst

Isn't there a keyboard shortcut for published apps?

the standard is that they see the logoff process, are you using WEM and have fast logoff enabled by any chance ?

Hey Lucas, no, we’re not using WEM but Liquidware ProfileUnity. The second the logoff button is pressed, it’s almost as if a tsdisconn is issued and then the logoff proceeds behind the scenes. I’ve reached out to Liquidware and they’ve said it’s not them controlling that behaviour.. any thing else it could be?

there are load of ways someone could have done it, at one time it was popular to put tsdicon as a logoff script in gpo, which behaves the same. Apparently there's also ways to do it with Liquid : <https://liquidwarelabs.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026279351-How-to-improve-and-speed-up-logoff-experience-for-XenApp-RDP-users>  . I'm guessing one of those is active in your environment somehow.

Great thanks - I’ll double check the config and have a hunt around for anything obvious. Cheers!

Nope, not in profileunity config definitely so must be somewhere else! How strange 

I'd consider a procmon on logoff and search for tsdiscon.exe , should be at least pretty fast to confirm or deny that it is indeed triggered.

I’ll have to see if can reproduce on a persistent machine to be able to grab the logs as these are non persistent and restart and revert.. (unless you know of a way to block this temporarily?) thanks

Set-BrokerDesktopGroup -Name "Desktop Group Name" -ShutdownDesktopsAfterUse $False
Should normally disable that if I'm not mistaken

There is a onedrive mapper script <https://www.lieben.nu/liebensraum/onedrivemapper/>

But I would strongly advise you to uses the onedrive per machine client and fslogix :slightly_smiling_face:

the script uses webdav and that can be really slow....

I'd rather use FSLogix - but given that we will have no file shares, where would we store the VHD? We'd need to store it in OneDrive itself....

Maybe OneDrive client in online mode only?

I need to map it to a drive letter, unless I want to reconfigure every citrix tweak in existence here :disappointed:

subst x: %userprofile%\onedrive - no idea if this works

Subst does work, but if the OneDrive client isn’t installed, what’s it going to map too?

The one drive mapper script is probably going to be your best bet if you don’t want the client... WebDAV is generally crap, but if you aren’t hitting it hard then it should do the job 

If he uses the one drive per machine client with fslogix, massive amounts of data will be stored on the file share correct?

I want to say that changes are sync'd every 5 minutes.

Do you talk about UPM? NEVER enable Active write back. It’s NOT best practice to enable it. It can actually let your fileserver explode!

If we enabled previous versions we just let them use it. Why else enable previous versions if not to let users restore stuff themselves?

That's exactly why I'm wondering why this was disabled (by the previous admin) in the first place. We allow them to do this on their physical desktops.

We allow our users to restore previous versions from their home drive and any mapped drives to which they have access. Now, most of them have no idea how to do that, so....meh.

this can either be done via the ExlcudedImages key (pre-VDA 7.9) or the UviProcessExcludes key in anything modern.

Source
<https://jkindon.com/2019/09/17/deploying-brave-and-microsoft-edge-dev-browsers-in-citrix-cvad-environments/|https://jkindon.com/2019/09/17/deploying-brave-and-microsoft-edge-dev-browsers-in-citrix-cvad-environments/>

I read it as 
Key: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\CtxUvi 
Value Name: UviProcessExcludes 
Type: REG_SZ 
Value: chrome.exe;crappyapp.exe,poopapp.exe

Ah, should have known he’d have a blog on it! Thanks. Found another user who has been experiencing random Outlook 2016 crashes, so I think I’m going to try disabling the API hooks. I don’t have a ton of faith in it given that I really could find any examples of others having to do that with Office apps.

Btw uviprocessexcludes is no longer needed for chrome 78 oh and keep the default values in

We have the same issue, the workaround is to expand the citrix computer section first and then the user one.

My workaround was to migrate them all to studio - annoying but solid :flushed:

I’m with James - moved everything to Studio and haven’t looked back.

Can confirm that this is happening in my lab setup as well

Not sure why Citrix Admins across the world are still using the GPO policies and not the Studio ones. Am I missing something?

Yeah but most orgs don’t allow Citrix admins to get gpo objects permissions. So creating a new policy object can require additional actions from AD Admins. In Studio the Citrix Admin can just create the settings and bam! It’s working.

We use GPO policies rather than Studio because Citrix Cloud Studio crashes constantly in the Policies section

We’re not on cloud, but one of the biggest benefits for me was instant change capabilities. That bailed us out a few times when we found issues, and would have been a mess had we had to wait for GPO replication and/or reboots. That said, Studio could be a little snappier.

<@UL5TCSW3D> We have a couple of customers on Cloud and we don't have Studio crashing in the Policy section so wondering if one of your Studio policies are making Studio crash

We have a case open with Citrix, I think it is fairly common

The Citrix Cloud environment is far away from being perfect but we had no issues like the one you mentioned, for any of our customers' tenants. We did have others!
I smile every time I stumble on one of <@UM531NUFJ>'s posts and see he's controling Citrix Policies from GPOs :)

Pretty common IME for customers to do it that way

There is no right or wrong - in multi site, have fun managing Citrix Policies without them being nested in GPO (unless you are in Cloud), I personally use Studio if it's a single site deployment, but that's typically because i like to have Citrix components managed together - and then you land on the limitations of Cloud where whilst you can have multi site and drive it all in studio, you can't use some policies (like some of the printer ones) as it simply doesn't work and you have to use a combination of both - right place for right architecture with everything, Policies are no exception

Our XA admins use GPO for their stuff in our multi-site environment. I still use Studio, though I do have to duplicate everything. Minor inconvenience as far as I’m concerned, since we don’t have to really do much work there. I can see why that would sway others from it, though.

We also see this issue. We use GPO for Citrix policies because we have templates which are much easier to import than with studio. 

I'm happy to report this is fixed with 1912.

Citrix Group Policy Management 7.24.0.0 to be more precise

audio-device-duplicate.png

Question, anyone seen this audio issue? The instance ids of the audio device are reused in the Citrix session which results in a volume reset to a 100%.

<https://www.logitblog.com/audio-troubles-with-citrix-virtual-desktop-1811/|https://www.logitblog.com/audio-troubles-with-citrix-virtual-desktop-1811/>

First thing’s first, if you’re not clear on the different options for CVAD in public cloud it’s worth checking out this session <https://youtu.be/BIWZXeQdyxg?t=254> . If you’re already familiar with the differences between CVAD extend vs Citrix Managed Desktops vs Citrix Cloud, perfect, always like to level set just to make sure.