Citrix Profile Management 4.0, (formely known as User Profile Manager) has been released!

Profile management (formerly known as User Profile Manager) ensures that the user’s personal settings are applied to the user’s virtual desktop and applications, regardless of the location and end point device with best reliability and performance.

Profile management is enabled through a profile optimization service that provides an easy, reliable way for managing these settings in Windows environments to ensure a consistent experience by maintaining a single profile that follows the user. It auto-consolidates and optimizes user profiles to minimize management and storage requirements and requires minimal administration, support and infrastructure, while providing users with improved logon and logout.

Profile management is available as a feature of XenApp Enterprise and Platinum editions and XenDesktop VDI, Enterprise and Platinum editions. Customer entitlement to use this feature is based on Subscription Advantage as outlined in the EULA. Download usage rights of Profile management on previous versions of XenApp and XenDesktop are allowed per the terms of the EULA. Download is extended to Presentation Server 4.5 (Enterprise or Platinum editions) and XenDesktop 4.0 (VDI, Enterprise and Platinum editions). Please refer to the EULA as the final authority of usage rights.

 

Click here to download the PM software. Note: you might need to have a MyCitrix id in order to download it

 

What is NetScaler?

What is NetScaler?

Simple definition: NetScaler is a hardware device (or network appliance) manufactured by Citrix, which primary role is to provide Level 4 Load Balancing. It also supports Firewall, proxy and VPN functions
Other definitions:

By Citrix: “Citrix NetScaler makes apps and cloud-based services run five times better by offloading app and database servers, accelerating app and service performance, and integrating security. Deployed in front of web and database servers, NetScaler combines high-speed load balancing and content switching, data compression, content caching, SSL acceleration, network optimization, application visibility and application security on a single, comprehensive platform.
By using NetScaler to create a services delivery fabric overlay spanning enterprise and cloud datacenters, enterprises can make the cloud a transparent extension of their own network. IT organizations can extend existing in-place processes and tooling to the cloud-based services the business adopts. ” (source: Citrix Netscaler ADC

Here are two good real examples of the benefit of NetScaler:
“Without NetScaler, we would have needed additional servers to handle growth. Avoiding buying additional servers and upgrading bandwidth saved us over 30.000 euros immediately. This is an attractive return on investment.” Ignace Quaghebeur – System Engineer, Jetair
“Our number-one project is implementing the Oracle ERP. Giving brokers and co-manufacturers secure access to the system is imperative. Citrix NetScalers was the best solution for delivering Oracle with reliability, speed and cost-effectiveness.” George Scangas – It Infastructure Manager, Welch Foods, Inc.
(Note: Both examples were extracted from the Citrix page link above)

“Netscaler optimizes application availability through advanced L4-7 load balancing and traffic management in order to accelerate performance” (Wikipedia entry)

Netscaler ADC -” A hardware and software solution providing advanced application and service delivery. Netscaler is a reverse-proxy with high-speed load balancing and content switching, data compression, content caching, SSL acceleration, network optimization, application visibility and application security on a single platform” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_proxy)

What is Level 4 Load Balancing?
The level 4 refers to the Transport layer in the OSI model. A router with NAT (Network Access Translation) feature is considered a Layer 4 router instead of a typical network router which resides in the Layer 3 of the OSI model. The layer 4 Load Balancing router uses different rules to make decisions on where to route traffic. So servers and other machines with least load or fastest response times will receive the packets from the L-4 router

Read this explanation from wikipedia for a more precise definition and better understanding:
“A typical network router simply sends incoming packets onto the appropriate IP address on its network. A layer 4 router, more correctly a NAT with port and transaction awareness, uses a little trickery and sends incoming packets to one or more machines which are hidden behind a single IP address.
The layer 4 refers to the 7 layer OSI model. The router is on the Transport Layer and makes decisions on where to send the packets. Modern load balancing routers can use different rules to make decisions on where to route traffic. This can be based on least load, or fastest response times, or simply balancing requests out. This is also a redundancy method, so if one machine is not up, the router will not send traffic to it. ” (wikipedia entry on MultiLayer_Switch )

Here are some models of the Netscaler hardware available (or discountinued) on the market

Citrix NetScaler 7000
Citrix NetScaler 9010
Citrix NetScaler 10010
Citrix NetScaler 12000
Citrix NetScaler MPX 5500
Citrix NetScaler MPX 7500 and MPX 9500
Citrix NetScaler MPX 9700, MPX 10500, MPX 12500, and MPX 15500
Citrix NetScaler MPX 17500, MPX 19500, and MPX 21500
Citrix NetScaler MPX 15000
Citrix NetScaler MPX 17000
The following link has more details about these devices (It is the Citrix NetScaler Hardware Installation and Setup Guide)

Click to access NS-HardwareInstallation-Guide.pdf

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager(SCCM) and XenApp connector Overview

MS-SCCM is part of the Microsoft System Center suite (MS SCS), which is a compreensive set of products created by MS to manage your enterprise

This is the list of products available in the MS  SCS

System Center Configuration Manager
System Center Operations Manager
System Center Data Protection Manager
System Center Virtual Machine Manager
System Center Service Manager
System Center Capacity Planner
System Center Mobile Device Manager
System Center Essentials
System Center Licensing

Here is a brief description of each component:

System Center Family of Products:

System Center Configuration Manager—System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) starts with the ability of imaging or laying down the base operating system on a server or client system based on specific organizational guidelines for configurations. Once the operating system has been installed, SCCM continually patches and updates the system as well as provides the ability to push out new software to the system, also based on specific templates and guideline configurations. SCCM keeps track of system inventory, provides remote-control capabilities, and provides IT administrators the ability to ensure the system configuration is maintained in a common configuration.

System Center Operations Manager—Once SCCM lays down the base configuration of the system and keeps it patched and updated, System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) takes over for monitoring the ongoing health of the system as well as the applications installed on the system. Specific rules are created that track the normal operations of the system, and any time the system falls out of the standards, the organization’s IT personnel are notified of the changes.

System Center Data Protection Manager—Although SCCM and SCOM deploy and monitor system operations, there are times when data is corrupted or lost or systems fail and having a backup of the data is crucial. This is where Data Protection Manager (DPM) fits in as it backs up client systems, server file systems, Exchange databases, SharePoint data, or SQL databases on a continuous basis, providing an organization the ability to recover a single lost or corrupted file all the way through restoring a completely dead system.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager—As the industry has shifted from one made up of primarily physical server systems to one where servers are now virtualized in the data center, the Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) product from Microsoft helps organizations manage their virtual systems. In the fully managed scenario, in the event that SCOM identifies a physical or virtual system is about to fail, it can automatically create a new guest session using SCCM to a Hyper-V or VMware virtual host, build out a brand-new system, and use DPM to automatically restore the latest backup of information all as a scripted disaster recovery process. VMM can also transfer fully running physical servers and transfer the operating system, application, and data to a virtual server in an automated physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion process.

System Center Service Manager—Although all of the previous tools chug along doing IT-related tasks, such as imaging, patching, monitoring, and backing up, organizations also have a need to manage processes and change control. The System Center Service Manager (SCSM) product is an incident management and change-control system that tightly integrates with SCOM, SCCM, and VMM to take alerts, automatically log the problems, take inventory information, and track system configurations so that help desk personnel and support individuals have at their fingertips information they need to support users and application owners in the enterprise. SCSM brings together management policies and processes as the umbrella under which the other System Center tools facilitate day-to-day tasks and procedures.

System Center Capacity Planner—As an organization looks to replace servers and systems, or upgrade and deploy new software applications, the System Center Capacity Planner helps the organization test performance demands on current systems and model the future environment relative to the necessary hardware specifications needed to meet the performance demands of the organization.

System Center Mobile Device Manager—Throughout an enterprise, an organization doesn’t have just servers and client workstations, but the proliferation of mobile devices make up the IT landscape. System Center Mobile Device Manager (MDM) integrates with SCCM to provide cradle-to-grave management of mobile devices similar to what SCCM does for servers and client systems, including provisioning, updating, securing, monitoring, and wiping devices in the course of a mobile device’s life cycle.

System Center Essentials—Finally, not all enterprises have separate IT groups handling servers, client systems, and applications, such as enterprises with fewer than 500 users and fewer than 50 servers. Microsoft has System Center Essentials that provides key management functions around tracking inventory, patching and updating systems, deploying software, monitoring, and managing virtual systems that helps smaller enterprises meet their management needs in an all-in-one integrated tool.

Each of the products have had variations over the years (2003, 2007, 2008, R2, SP1, SP2, 2010, and so on) with each successive version adding more functionality and capabilities than the version before it.

(this section was extracted from the site: http://www.networkworld.com/subnets/microsoft/032610-system-center-suite-ch1.html )

As far as XenApp Connector is concerned, MS SCCM is the most relevant component of the MS SCM suite. The reason is simple:

MS SCCM offers Software Distribution Management, so it coordinates installations to servers, desktops, laptops and mobile devices. So, the  software distribution capability to XenApp Connector comes live when the two components are combined

The software distribution steps in SCCM starts with (1) packages, followed by (2) advertisements and (3) updates

The packages contain one or more programs and can be customized though command line. Packages can also be physical installation files or virtual applications (Microsoft App-V sequences, not Citrix virtual apps or Citrix streaming which are different technologies, and are not included in SCCM)

Advertisement is a important concept here. Once the package is installed, the SCCM needs to advertise or “push out” the various software packages. and make them available, so users can pick which ones they want to install

Once software is advertised, it can be updated automatically or manually.  SCCM can update Microsoft software or 3rd party software. and custom business applications as well.

SCCM was built on Windows Software Update Services (WSUS) whihc has been around for many years

 

SCCM utilize the concept of sites (such as an AD site) as in a grouping of physical and virtual devices manged by the same SCCM servers.

You can have individual sites such as in Atlanta, Sao Paulo, Mexico City or combine them into a unique site called “Americas”

 

SCCM connects to XenApps via the XenApp connectors.

(more to come on this)

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