Citrix Advisory Services in India

Citrix is a comprehensive solution that involves various infrastructure components such as Active Directory, Networking, SQL, Storage, Hypervisor, Antivirus, and Endpoint. Any changes made to these components can affect the user experience. By proactively assessing your Citrix environment, you can address underlying issues and plan for the future of your end-user computing. 

To address your requirement , we have prepared comprehensive package  

Citrix CVAD Infrastructure Assessment

Citrix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure consist of followings:

1. Business Layer 
2. Access Layer
3. Resource Layer
4. Control Layer
5. Hardware Layer 
6. Operation Layer 

We will conduct a thorough evaluation of each layer and provide you with a comprehensive health status report in PPT or Word format. Based on the results of this assessment, we can also assist you in implementing corrective measures.

Citrix NetScaler Assessment Service

If you decided to do just assessment for NetScaler , we can help you with that. This assessment will cover 

1. Capacity Planning for NetScaler 
2. Architectural Assessment – Placement of NetScaler /Cabling /Port configuration
3. Routing 
4. Best Practices related to service which you are running (LB/GSLB/Access Gateway /Dual Factor settings) 

We will conduct a thorough evaluation and provide you with a comprehensive health status report in PPT or Word format. Based on the results of this assessment, we can also assist you in implementing corrective measures.

About Me : I am an ex - Citrite with 23 years of experience and more detail can be found here . If you think I am worth and would like to check further details, you can contact via my gmail ID or via LinkedIn profile

 

About Me

 On 10th of January 2023 my existing organization told me that in they have evolved into a new business model and they let go many talents and in that one was me. 

I had anticipated it but thought let it happen then we will plan. <--- Looking at current circumstances and market situation, I should had a "Plan B" ready.

It's important to maintain a positive attitude and believe that everything happens for a reason. However, it can be difficult to shift careers, especially at an older age and in the context of India's strong family and social structures. It is especially important to be selective when considering new job opportunities at this stage in your career, as you likely have limited time left before retirement.

What kind of job am I looking for ? 

Before I answer this let me provide you my brief career background

I started my IT career in 2000 with Sonkh Technologies then worked with UV Infotech , Computer Associates , Tata Consultancy Service , Infosys and recently with Citrix.

Technical : How Technical am I?

I began my consulting career at Infosys, providing VMWare consulting services to various customers across different industries for nearly 5 years. I assisted Infosys clients in selecting the appropriate VMWare products (SRM/ESXi) and developing solutions based on their needs. During this time, I also designed solutions using HP Blades and worked with storage products such as NetApp. I also helped many customers with the process of converting their critical physical application servers to a virtual platform hosted on ESXi. (Check  Linkedin recommendation section)

I was hired Citrix by my Guruji Girish Gupta (even now he is my guru) in 2010 and joined as a Principal Consultant for End User Computing .This was direct customer facing role where I use to understand customer business requirements and then design Citrix solution around it. I was a single man army who needs to have knowledge around Hardware (Blade, PC , Printer) /Storage /Active Directory / Networking / Database (SQL) /Anti Virus/ Cloud (AWS/Azure /OCI /GCP)

Throughout my career, I progressed from a consultant to an Architect and eventually a Senior Architect. During this time, I gained experience across a range of industries, including ITeS, Manufacturing, Telecom, Pharma, Retail, Government, Public Sector, Education, KPO-BPO, and Public and Private Banks. As I moved into higher-level roles, my responsibilities broadened beyond technical expertise to include leading teams of technical consultants, conducting webinars for partners, and assisting presales engineers with solution positioning. I remained in this technical role until 2021. My technical testimony is available on my blogs and if required reference can also be provided. 

 In 2021 , I decided to move beyond technical role. I joined team of Enterprise Architect under the leadership of Daniel Watson . We become part of customer success organization under the leadership of Gregor Preidl. 

We started helping customer success organization by helping customers and sales organization:

• Establishing and aligning architectural direction and principles within customer organizations.
• Providing strategic roadmap recommendations based upon existing data sets or analysis of a customer's current platform(s).
•  Providing guidance and advisory services to Service Delivery Organization to ensure successful outcomes in multi-vendor / multi - organization programs.
• Provide technical guidance ,validate technical concepts ,perform quality check and validate leading practice for all the consulting projects.
• Position premium support service offering based on customer needs.
• Prepare RFP response. 

Recognization : In the year 2021

 

Training : Attended TOGAF training in 2021 -2022

Business : Do I understand Business ?

I have been provided additional responsibilities of Service Relationship Manager to help and drive business for customer success organization for India region. 

• Identify new revenue generating opportunities and programs by leveraging internal resources including Marketing, Technical Relationship Managers, Consulting, Account Managers.
• Write Statement of Work on behalf of Citrix Professional Service 
• Use a “medium-to-long range” planning horizon sales strategy, ensuring that day-to-day tasks are being carried out effectively, while anticipating and planning for long-term growth.
• Manage and build Consulting, Support and Education sales pipeline and accurately forecast quarterly revenues using SalesForce 
• Work with Citrix Sales, Citrix Presales, CSA and SI partners and others to qualify, manage and close Consulting opportunities
• Develop and deliver Consulting and Education presentations at Executive Briefings, and client sites
• Schedule and conduct quarterly account reviews with Enterprise Relationship Managers to identify Consulting and Education opportunities.
• Successfully meeting 100 percentage target quote of 2 Million for last two year (2021 - 2022) 

Switching back to previous question : What kind of job I am looking for ?

• If your organization is planning digital transformation, I can help you with Digital Transformation journey.
• If you are an ITeS organization , I can play business development architect and align with your various transformation unit during pre and post sales activities
• If you are OEM , I can help you drive business around customer success portfolio.
• If you are consulting organization, I can help you drive this business for you
• If need someone to drive premium support business , I can help you with that

If you need resume in  PDF or PPT format then drop me a note on my email ID

Restrict AGEE users from specific IP

Writing after Feb 2016 . What I am going to write about ? Today I am going to show the way to restrict set of Internet users accessing AGEE URL  
Here is the use case behind it. There are set of users  who need to be restrict to access AGEE URL over internet so that they access it when trying from specific subnet . At the same time other users should be allowed to access from anywhere. How can we achieve this?
We thought of using AAA group and restricting it using session policy. We created two AAA group matching AD group, one which needs to be restricted and other unrestricted.

Now we created two policies . One which has AD group allowed only from specific set of IP . So how it’s expression looks like ?

And if you look at the session profile , we have bind this AD group under Gateway session profile –>security –>Advance –>

For the other set of we mapped the other profile with no IP is defined and profile is tagged to different set of session policy

Once this is created we have to check if the policy is getting hit when user try to access we will use following command  “ nsconmsg -g pol_hits -d current “

Please provide feedback so that we can improve incase needed.

StoreFront HighAvilibility and Application aggregation

Warning :Hold your breath and read this maxi post . I am planning to get little bit about the design as well. Lets start the requirement and how to achieve the same.

Requirement  :I wanted to aggregate resource from two site and show single icon to the users. I started with following KEYWORD option suggested but it just make the published application as primary and secondary. It will not aggregate the application as single icon. To get application aggregated we have to follow below steps .

We have two sites one in Mumbai and other in Chennai . Both site have their own farm but  HighAvailability (and not the loadbalancing) is required between  two sites. It would have been easier if we had single farm setup across the site as explained in my previous blog. In order to get that we have to create two resource group or delivery group at both the site and map users to those two delivery group .

What is the problem in doing it ?

If we map same set of users to both the site then user will see two icon for same resource and will unsure which one to click for Mumbai or Chennai.

What is the plan ? Plan is to get HSD/Paint/Calculator/Notepad published for both Mumbai and Chennai users. Below diagram represent that we have two separate farm with two separate SF server group .

                                                                                                                                   Figure

Plan A To make simpler for the users , show one icon from both the site (HSD) and only icon from the respective site. Above figure shows for PlanA user in Mumbai see icon of paint and user in Chennai will see icon of Calculator though user have access to both the app.  When users hit https://mumbai.company.com they will land on StoreFront of Mumbai and will get aggregated resource from Mumbai/Chennai . When XDC of Mumbai is down , they will get failover to Chennai .

Prerequisite for it : Citrix suggest to make changes in web.config file located under the store  C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\storename\ directory, where storename (not the storeweb ) is the name specified for the store when it was created. There will be section within Web.config find out following section

Now file which needs to be included between above selection should look like this  . But how do I get all these detail?

Make sure you gather it before hand and then start making changes.

To get  value for name= domain\usergroup and sid=“Securityidentifier” use AD power shell. I would suggest map “EveryOne” or “Domain Users” so that latter you don’t have to make changes every now and then

equivalentFarmSet name="setname"                          :    This can be Mumbai or Chennai based on which location I am specifying

loadBalanceMode="{LoadBalanced | Failover}          : I have chosen Failover mode as I want to configure users to failover to other site

aggregationGroup="aggregationgroupname"           :  You can provide any name for the convenient . This can be same for both the site.

farm name="primaryfarmname"                                      :Most of the time people make mistake to understand what exactly it is and how to get it. If you  check storefront configuration for delivery controller it is the name of   that set. And this is how it looks like. For Mumbai aggregationgroupname is “MumbaiController” and for Chennai it is “ChennaiController”, also this is case sensitive .

Note: StoreFront at both the site will have entry for all the XDC as shown below . MumbaiController will have XDC entry for Mumbai and ChennaiControler will have XDC entry for Chennai.

So what editior should I use it edit web.confi? I have tried many other editor like XML notepad but then found Oxygen XML editor very helpful .

The other reason I would suggest oXygen is because it will help you with tagging .

Wrong tagging

So here is the config file for Plan1.  Changes need to made on both the site StoreFront and flip the order so that first site should be local site and second site will be remote site. Also note the change in this line

<resourcesWingConfigurations>
  <resourcesWingConfiguration name="Default" wingName="Default">

VS

<resourcesWingConfigurations>
  <resourcesWingConfiguration name="Default" wingName="Default"  /> While making changes make sure you remove  “/”

For Mumbai                                                                                              For Chennai

Plan B To make simpler for the users , show one icon from both the site and all the published application for the users.  When users hit https://mumbai.company.com they will land on StoreFront of Mumbai and will get aggregated resource from Mumbai/Chennai  and all the other resources which user has been assigned. Referring to above figure, user at both the site can see all the application (HSD/Notepad/Paint/Calculator)irrespective of the sites he/she belongs to.

  For Mumbai                                                                                                 For Chennai

Once the configuration is completed , StoreFront will point to both the XDC and changes can not be made. So it is important to make necessary changes prior to editing the web.config

To achieve this I have refer various blogs,article and to name few:

1 Citrix Blog and here

2. euc.consulting

3. LalMohan

4. vhorizon.co.uk

Meanwhile vhorizon.co.uk has published latest blog for  StoreFront 3.1 . Currently SF3.1 is TP and is not supported under LTSR release.

Preparing Lotus Notes for Hosted Shared Desktop (XenApp)

To start with Lotus Notes instalaltion use following  command                                                        
D:\Lotus\setup.exe /v"SETMULTIUSER=1 MULTIUSERBASEDIR=H:\notes\data MULTIUSERCOMMONDIR=C:\SharedNotesData CITRIX=1

Choose next
 



After installation right click on the shortcut of lotus notes and add the line "=H:\Notes\Data\notes.ini"

• After this User NSF file is required to be copied to <<MultiUserBaseDir>> path given during installation.
• Also require copying all the content given in <<MultiUserCommonDir>> to <<MultiUserBaseDir>>
• There is logon script which we can use to simplify last step

Inputs for this blog is from Vipul Tripathi