Citrix Streaming Profiler 6.7

Citrix have released a new version of Citrix Streaming Profiler 6.7 for Windows. Citrix have made numerous changes to build new additions, stability, to improve application compatibility and enhancement performance, scalability into this release. If you use Citrix Streaming i highly recommend that you look at this release, Citrix keeps on improving this great product that is a great competitor to App-V and if you are a Citrix customer you might already have access to this awesome technology so go ahead and start streaming your apps.

/Poppelgaard

What’s New

In addition to general improvements, this release includes

Streaming 64bit applications to 64bit platforms: This is a yet another definitive example of Citrix hearing customers and expands Citrix application compatibility
Enhanced SDK: For the customers that are using SDK to create profiles/packages for application streaming, Citrix have expanded the APIs to be able to create browser plug-in’s, define rules, sign the packages and also manage services
Improved Scalability – In response to the market asks/speaks Citrix have reduced the Single Server Scalability overhead significantly and this means ability to run more XenDesktops with Application Streaming than the previous version of Application Streaming.

Please note, Citrix have updated both Citrix Streaming Profiler and Citrix Offline Plugin components. It’s not required to recreate the profiles/packages (though Citrix recommends, it’s preferred to reap the full benefits of changes in both the components), since Citrix made the Citrix Offline Plug-in work with the previous version of profiles/packages, as always.

Published Streamed Applications Configured for Offline Access are not available Offline

If you are using Citrix Streaming technology and are providing your applications for offline acces, this CTX article is a must read.

Symptoms

Published streamed applications configured for Offline access are not available Offline.

Background

You can see that the offline application is downloaded on the client machine but once it reaches 100 percent, it disappears from the list of available offline applications.

Cause

The profile filename does not match with the directory.

Resolution

Rename the folder containing the profile experiencing the issue and ensure to update the published applications accordingly in the Delivery Services Console.

Example

The following profile has the issue:
\\servername\streamed_apps\Office_2007\Office2007English.profile

To allow for offline use, you need to rename the folder as
\\servername\streamed_apps\Office2007English\Office2007English.profile

Source

Citrix Offline Plug-in 6.5

Citrix have released Offline Plug-in 6.5 for web

New Features in This Release

In addition to improved application compatibility on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows 7 SP1, the 6.5 release provides the following enhancements for application streaming:

Increased support for streamed apps in pooled XenDesktop environments. For faster application launch time on user devices, select the option to “Create a virtual hard disk” (VHD) while profiling. This feature copies the profile contents into the VHD and mounts it in the RadeCache location at application launch.
Compliance with new FIPS guidelines. The Streaming Profiler in this release generates only SHA-256 hashes, as required by current guidelines. To include SHA-1 hashes required by Offline Plug-ins 6.0, select the option for “Legacy Offline Plug-in support” while profiling.
Enhancements for creating AppHubWhiteList. The registry key for creating the AppHubWhiteList is now consistent with other Citrix registry keys on 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.
Ability to deliver AppHubWhiteList using Citrix Receiver Updater. Ensure that unsigned profiles and services stream only from approved locations
AppCenter session reports include the names of streamed applications. The reports of user sessions now include application names instead of just profile names.
Launch time improvements. General performance improvements reduce launch time for streamed applications, including Microsoft Outlook.

Download Citrix Offline Plug-in 6.5 here

Communication Ports Used by Citrix Technologies *updated

Fred Donovan from Citrix have updated the whitepaper – Communication Ports Used by Citrix Technologies to version 1.5 (April 2011)

Overview

This document provides an overview of ports that are used by Citrix components and must be considered as part of Virtual Computing architecture, especially if communication traffic traverses network components such as firewalls or proxy servers, where ports must be opened to ensure communication flow.

References

The assignments are listed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), updated regularly, and revised when new information is available and new assignments are made. The specific location of the port numbers list is available at the following Web site: http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers.

Microsoft Article “Network Ports Used by Key Microsoft Server Products”.

Microsoft Article ID 832017 “Service overview and network port requirements for the Windows Server system”.

Download WhitePaper – Communication Ports Used by Citrix Technologies here

Application Streaming To App-V Conduit

Introduction

The AppStreamingToAppVConduit utility engages “dual mode” XenApp based execution for Microsoft App-V sequences.

The XenApp publishing system can publish Citrix Application Streaming based applications for both server side execution and client side execution. Application Streaming has always included the ability to run “dual mode”, or “fallback”, where the system attempts to run the application by streaming on the client, but if that cannot be accomplished, the execution can be configured to fallback to a server provided delivery, where the application can be locally installed on the XenApp server or streamed on-demand for server side execution.

Whether run on the client, or run on the server, the user gets the application. The criteria for triggering a fallback to server mode are varied; they include:

Machine is not a Windows machine so cannot be running the streaming client.
Machine Operating System is not supported by the profile.
Machine lacks a required local installation pre-requisite such as specific version of .NET or Java or a particular version of locally installed Internet Explorer.
Administrator defined pre-launch script triggers fallback. This case is used by the conduit and is described in the sections that follow.

App-V comes in two versions

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) comes in two configurations:

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V), the desktop version.
Microsoft Application Virtualization for Terminal Services (App-V for TS), the server version.

About this Whitepaper

This document and the conduit that it describes are primarily concerned with using App-V to deliver applications to end-user personal computers. The delivery occurs using XenApp based publishing and engaging “dual mode” fallback to XenApp servers for App-V based stream to client applications.

* This whitepaper applies to XenApp 6 for Windows Server 2008R2

Download Whitepaper – Application Streaming To App-V Conduit here