Best Practise Archives - Page 2 of 5

Google Chrome 45.x Blocks GPU Acceleration for WebGL, Direct2D, DirectWrite with Citrix XenApp on Windows 2008R2/2012/2012R2

Solution: Google Chrome 45.x Blocks GPU Acceleration for WebGL, Direct2D, DirectWrite with Citrix XenApp on Windows 2008R2/2012/2012R2

Google Chrome v. 45 have changed their behaviour of their web browser, so they are blacklisting GPUs, which means hardware acceleration is disabled by default in a Remote session this behaviour is seen in Microsoft RDS with RemoteFX, Citrix XenApp 6.5 -> 7.6 with vGPU/GPU pass-through. Behaviour is also seen on Linux environments with Google Chrome.

Issue highlightet in a Citrix XenApp 7.6 (2008R2/2012/2012R2) with GPU

Open Google Chrome and type in chrome://gpu and then you will see if your RDS/XenApp with a GPU is working or not.
With Google Chrome v 45 the default behaviour is now that Google choose to disabling the GPU.

Google Chrome experience with a GPU (Citrix XenDesktop vs Citrix XenApp)

above picture confirms the GPU is not enabled in Google Chrome with RDS/XenApp

interesting is that Multiple Raster Threads in Win7 with a GPU is disable… why lets find out.

This is properly because you haven’t configured the CPU correctly in the hypervisor for the virtual machine.
* hint I did on purpose so you can understand it can be complex to troubleshoot if you don’t configure your environment correctly.

best practices with HDX 3D Pro is 4 vCPU and in XenServer 6.5 you configure it 2:2

Then Multiple Raster Threads works in Win7 after you changed the configuration of the CPU on the Win7 vm.

browser - chrome win7 cpu fix

below picture confirms the GPU is not enabled in Google Chrome with RDS/XenApp in Server 2012R2

Now we have validated that the GPU is blacklisted in RDS/XA with a GPU, lets see if we can fix this.

Performance with a WebGL web app in Google Chrome

CPU is very high when the Google Chrome is running the WebGL application. This is because its using the CPU to do software rasterize of the GPU and this makes your user able to run a webgl application without a GPU, but wait. We actually have a GPU in our RDS/XA server now, why is this not offloading the CPU, thats because Google desided to turn off GPU and blacklist them.

Solution

Edit Google Chrome link and after the chrome.exe add
–ignore-gpu-blacklist
Open Google Chrome and run chrome://gpu in the browser
Check if Hardware acceleration is now working for all functions in Google Chrome

GPU hardware acceleration is now working in RDS/XA with a GPU in Google Chrome and CPU is now offloaded to the GPU as you can see in the below picture.

Mac Client Printer Mapping Fix for Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp 7.6

Hi all

If you have users that have a Apple Mac OSX device such as (iMac, Macbook, Macbook Pro) then this article might be interesting for you. I am helping many clients around the world and I often see more companies adapting Apple OSX devices. Specially SMB and Enterprises are adapting Apple Macbook products these days cause they are powerfull computers and have some of the best design and reliability. Many companies have no other option to adapt Apple OSX devices, so they attract the right talented employee, which are requesting this device if they want to work at the company, and you think this is funny then welcome to reality, Apple is back and more powerful than before. The good news is that Citrix can help with this and bring any app to work on these devices and secure the workspace with the Citrix Receiver where the user connect to a central and secure solution. The challenge comes when the user have local printers to their mac device and now tell IT they want to print from their Citrix session.

In latest release of Citrix XenDesktop, XenApp 7.6 if your users on Mac OSX devices, wants to use local printers and then connect to their remote Citrix VDI (Windows 8/8.1) or XenApp (Server 2012/2012R2) and then print, this is not going to work. Before this article got released users would only be able to get local printing working to a Windows 7 VDI or a XenApp server running Server 2008R2.

If you have users running pure Windows Computers, then you are not going to run into this issue with getting local printers to work with a Citrix environment running Windows 7/8/8.1, Server 2008R2/2012/2012R2.

In Citrix XenDesktop 7.6, default policies are set to map all client printers, so you dont have configure this policy.

Summary if you have a Mac device and Citrix Receiver and local printers installed on your Mac, now you want to accomplish connecting to your VDI (Windows 8/8.1) XenApp (Windows Server 2012/2012R2) then you are going to fail, do below and you succeed.

Solution:

(how to get local printers to work on a Apple OSX computer with Citrix Receiver to a XenDesktop/XenApp 7.6 environment running Windows 8/8.1 or Server 2012/2012R2)

On the desktop you want to configure, open Control Panel > View Devices and Printers.
Select any Printer, for example Microsoft XPS Document Writer.
Click Print server properties, as displayed in the following screen shot:

Select Drivers tab.
Click Add > Next.
Choose Processor Architecture, click Next.
Select Windows Update.
Select Manufacturer ‘HP’ and Printers ‘HP Color LaserJet 2800 Series PS’ (if there are two versions of this driver displayed, choose the Microsoft version)
Click Next > Finish.
Now connect or reconnect to your Citrix XenApp session running (Server 2012/2012R2) or Citrix XenDesktop VDI session running (Windows 8/8.1) then your local printers will be mapped in Citrix session and you can print.

Have fun.

/Poppelgaard

Citrix technology professional – CTP, and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional MVP, Thomas Poppelgaard provides professional services. Write to me on my email thomas@poppelgaard.com or call on my cell +45 53540356

Source

CTX139020

End user computing EUC Podcast Episode #1

The End User Computing Podcast (www.eucpodcast.com) is a community driven podcast for IT Professionals, and the first EUC Podcast is officially “in the bag”. Thanks to all those who hung around while the roadies tapped the mic, looked at the mic, tapped the mic again – got the manual out, realised it was in Danish written in a Manga syle, then essentially turned it off and on again.. but we got there in the end.

Introducing The End User Computing Podcast

Over the last several years, many of us in the industry have discussed the need for community driven End User Computing podcasts focusing on virtualization topics for people designing, deploying, and using Citrix, Microsoft, VMware and surrounding†technologies. I am excited to share that this month, two new Podcasts are being launched! First, a warm congratulations to Jarian Gibson and Andy Morgan on the successful launch of their Podcast, Frontline Chatter. Here’s to many years of continued success! Next, allow me to introduce the End User Computing Podcast!

Hotfix Name Changes Citrix XenDesktop 7.1 and XenApp/XenDesktop 7.5

There is some confussion about the new VDA for XenDesktop and VDA for XenApp, how do you apply which hotfix to which OS you are running, this article gives you an overview of which hotfixes to apply your Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp 7.1 > 7.5 environment.

Hotfix Name Changes

With the reintroduction of XenApp in version 7.5, the same underlying components are used for XenApp and XenDesktop. As a result, the ‘XA’ and ‘XD’ designation will not appear in the hotfix name. Instead, the component name is prepended to the hotfix name.