At Synergy 2016 Citrix announced Netscaler HDX Proxy but what is it really? We all know how much customer LOVE the extremely OLD and FREE Webinterface (WI) and Secure Gateway (SG) for HDX sessions (XenApp / XenDesktop). Webinterface was replaced with StoreFront (SF) and as I announced retired Webinterface with the 3.5 release ( read more about it ).

Identity Provider (IdP) is what you need with ShareFile and often used with Microsoft Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS) as IdP. ShareFile and XenMobile are seamlessly working together when using XenMobile as IdP. This would break the seamless integration with Windows Clients using ShareFile Outlook Plug-In, Desktop Sync etc. The solution is to use both IdP's at the same time and the reason calling it dual IdP. With ADFS 2.0 you cannot export the signing certificate with the private key and even if you could it would only be good for one year before ADFS automatically would roll over to a new certificate.

Why bother with SMS when everyone has a smartphone these days? The point is when a new employee gets a brand new phone of the shelf it's not configured what so ever. Now you do know the phone number but that's it. Therefore, email is not an option and you're left with SMS to onboard the employee using XenMobile. I haven't really seen many companies who have their own SMS-Gateway. This is where email to SMS is a simple and quick option to do the job.

Here a quick how to:

Fileserver in a multi-user environment is a central topic, because of user home drives and folder redirection in place. These days virtual Windows fileserver are quickly deployed but not really configured and left with just defaults. With Server 2012 R2 it means SMB 3.02 and is better than previous versions but 2012 R2 offers more and you should use it. Especially VMWare environments are not using features because they are turned off by default. Activating them alone is also not enough if the VM hasn't the right amount of resources and I often find central fileserver with just 1 vCPU and 4 GB RAM!

In my opinion, Citrix Director is the best peace in XenDesktop 7 if you don't see it as a replacement for EdgeSight. That is what Citrix does, calls it an EdgeSight replacement but again, in my opinion, was a mistake to do. For customer who really used or still use EdgeSight, the "New" EdgeSight is more or less a joke. For those customers, Citrix must come up with something else or acquire another software or company for it like "Nexthing".

Again, Director "EdgeSight" is a nice integration but here is my list that could be better and let's hope Citrix will do something about it.

Upgrading the Citrix Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) seems to be more and more a problem than an easy process. I don't understand it anyway why the VDA cannot be pushed by the DDC on request. Meanwhile, we have to fight Citrix and Microsoft to get the VDA installed or upgraded. Here are points you should follow to be successful.

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