While doing shadowing across firewall by default people guess 1494/2598 but that is not the case. Shadowing is tested RPD over RDP /RDP over ICA and both have different result.
We captured wireshark trace and found that 139 and 445 which is not responding to send sync.
Once we opened above port shadowing started working. So for shadowing to work across firewall we need to open port 139/445/1494/2598
I had been testing softphone for a while now and was trying to find out what would be best Citrix policies for these softphone. I will be writing couple of series with regard to softphone, hence bear with me please :) .
We have tested following softphone on Virtual Hosted Desktop (VHD) and the mostly because of Call center manager setup which most of the organization have. Most organization uses MAC based extension registration and what does it mean in terms of virtualization, say if you are using Hosted Shared Desktop (XenApp) then it won't be possible to host softphone on XA. Even it is IP based extension registration it can be managed because Windows 2008 R2 allows you to have virtual IP . This changes are very difficult for voice team hence hosting such VOIP based application on XA does not work.
Soft Phone which we have tested so far
1. Nortel
2. Avaya
3. Cisco
4. Genesys
5. CosmoDesk
All of them worked perfectly fine with Windows 7 as well as XP . Voice quality was perfect and close to that of physical desktop. To get the result following set of standard XD policies had been used
Other then these policies many other factor contribute to this voice quality and some of them are
1. End device thin client /thick client
2. Receiver version used
3. End device operating system.
4. Headset used.
5. Voice codec used.
I will discuss some of the factor in my next posting. Till then thank you
We had an issue where VM were deleted but VHD where not able to delete . Button were grayed out
Virtual disk properties shows that it has two read only disk
Also VHD properties had following message "Disk size cannot be altered as the disk is already being updated or is in use by running VM
Finally to remove this we had enabled hidden object under view
Those two read only disk can be stopped now and also can be deleted
You will get the error message while starting the VM on XenServer "This operation can not be performed because the specific virtual disk could not be found"
After ejecting the mounted ISO VM booted normally
Citrix has released latest version of PVD (Personal vDisk ) 565 which support dynamic expansion . What does it mean to you? Say you have created PVD of 10GB and for some reason you ran out of space
Space distribution is shown below
Now lets expand this P: drive from 10GB to 15GB
And this is how space distribution changes
Now say C: drive is full
Reboot the VM and C: drive is expanded automatically
This has been explained here
When helpdesk team close the shadowing session ICA shadowing session does not logoff from the server. Because of this reason no more shadowing will be allowed on this server by same users. Let's find out how does it happen . I am shadowing "citrix.test" using user "citrix.test" . This is what shown under App control center
When this session is terminated via Ctrl+ *
This will still be shown under App Center as disconnected
This disconnected session does not logoff shadowing session gracefully. After looking at task manager it has been found that couple of process which was still running with PID
we were not able to kill Symantec Service Framework service even using local admin or domain admin
Created GPO and deliver following key using "Create" option
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Citrix\wfshell\TWI
Value Name:LogoffCheckSysModules
Type:REG_SZ
String: ccSvcHst.exe
as explained in CTX891671. After this registry changes Ctrl + * use to close the shadowing session.
When hosted desktop is launch via AGEE it display the host name with something like WI_ . This makes some of the application behave weird which uses this variable. Mainly some CRM application which uses this hostname . This can be verified via running set command.
To fix this small change on WI can help . Uncheck the below options
And after that when application like hosted shared desktop is launched it display the correct CLIENTNAME="workstationname"
Last time I wrote a blog and refer to blog by Dane Yong http://blog.itvce.com/?p=408 for installing DD which can integrate both XA and XD. After that I tried following again and it never worked. There are several other blogs which says how to integrate XA6.5 and XD5.6 together. They also mention to use different ISO but here is what you need to do
4. Open Internet Explorer – open the Desktop Director site, confirm XenDesktop site is enumerated successfully
5. Run IIS Manager, open the Application Settings for the DesktopDirector folder. Add the
Service.AutoDiscoveryAddressesXA option with relevant XA server
6. Open Internet Explorer and log in to the Desktop Director site again. Confirm that XenDesktop is enumerated successfully
on the main landing page and that searching for a user shows their XenApp sessions too
You can reach out incase you are not able to make it work :P
Prep XenApp vm to enable COM port debugging.
1. Logon to XenApp vm and run “msconfig” from command line.
2. Select “Boot.ini” tab, then click “Advanced Options” button and check to enable the following checkbox and selected values.
“/DEBUG”
“/DEBUGPORT=COM1:”
“/BAUDRATE=115200”
3. Reboot server to take effect
Attach a Virtual Serial Port to VM
While the target XenApp vm is running on Xenserver console command line issue the following command to enable virtual COM port redirection to a separate machine running sockpipe tool and Windbg:
#xe vm-param-set uuid=<UUID of the VM> other-config:hvm_serial="tcp:<<IP-of-the-Windbg-machine>>:7001"
(can use any open ports beside port 7001 on the machine running sockpipe/Windbg) . This command can be run even if the VM is not running.
Configure Debug session
1. From sockpipe/windbg machine disable Windows firewall or 3rd party Anti-virus/firewall, etc.
2. Start sockpipe via command line (run in administrator mode for the command line if it’s Win7 or Win2K8), and run command “sockpipe mypipe 7001”
"mypipe" is name given to the pipe being used to connect to the VM. This needs to be unique for all the Debug Session and so should be the port number.
Start Windbg and select “File > Kernel Debug” and enter the following on the first COM tab:
· Baud Rate=115200
· Port=\\.\pipe\mypipe
· Check the “Pipe” check box
· Click OK button
If the VM is running then reboot the XenApp VM so the virtual COM port of the VM will be redirected to sockpipe/windbg machine IP address. If the VM is not running, just start the VM
How to Capture
When XenApp vm experience hang or freeze, on Windbg machine select “Debug > Break” within Windbg to enter break point. On bottom of Windbg you can type the command
“.dump /f c:\temp\fulldump.dmp” (or whatever location you have enough free disk space to hold the entire memorydump of same size as the vm’s physical memory)
Now wait for the full memory to copy out of the VM thru it’s virtual COM port.
Download Dump Configurator from CTX129575
Download Sockpipe
Source : Based on input provided by my colleague Vipul Tripathi
Environment :
XS= 6.0.2 with latest patch
PVS =6.1 HF1 running on Dell R720
Target=Windows 7 32 bit VM
Hardware = Dell R720 , NIC =BCM57712
Core Switch : Nexus5K
Problem description:When the target's were booted it use to contact the PVS server but while downloading image ARP use to time out. This use to happen with few machine say 3 out 5 machine.
Troubleshooting :
1. Broke the bond , tested with Xenbridge/Open V Switch mode
2. Finally put the virtual PVS and DHCP on same VLAN , all the target worked booted perfectly. This gave us thought that intra VLAN something is wrong. This translate into layer 3 issue . When target and PVS are on same VLAN , layer 3 act as a layer 2 and just f/w the packets.
3. We decided to test something else , used the working VM mac with non -working VM and voila. This gave us déjà vu that something messed at layer 3.
4. Now Q was how do I separate Nexus 5K in the core and create my own layer 3 on Dell switch to test intra VLAN testing. Dell blade switch M8024 can also act as layer 3. We created layer 3 VLAN with different gateway. Now we moved our v PVS on this network. We also had to extend our DB and AD to this PVS as well ? So we added static route to one leg of PVS. Now streaming traffic was in separate VLAN and Target were in separate VLAN. One target boots it does intra VLAN communication to PVS . PVS intern fetch those info from DB /AD using backend connection. This way I eliminated layer 3 Nexus . Above setup can only be replicated on single host
CISCO troubleshooting:
1. Core had VPC configured on their Active /Standby pair. We decided to shut down one leg and see if this works. To our surprise every thing work.
2. We captured two set of trace one with VPC shut down and one without VPC shut down.
Here is what we see when VM's work : When ARP request received by CISCO core they does return back the MAC address of the targets
But when it does not work then it does not broadcast the MAC .
Basically, depending on the hashing algorithm of the Dell switch, a packet may arrive at either the HSRP active or standby. If the packets arrived on the HSRP standby, it would forward it over the peer-link towards the HSRP active which would then result in the ARP reply being broadcast . For other streams, the Dell switch would send the packet to the HSRP active which would result in a unidirectional reply and this works fine. This turned out to be KNOWN bug and CISCSO advised them upgrade their IOS to 5.0(3)N2(2).
As per bug Symptom:
ARP response from the Nexus 5000 is sent as a broadcast instead of a unicast. Some TCP/IP implementations on Network interface cards do not accept a broadcast ARP response and will not install an ARP entry in their ARP database. Such
clients will not be able to access network resources.
Conditions:
When the arp request is received on the HSRP standby switch and sent over the peer link to the HSRP active switch.
Once the IOS upgraded , this fixed this problem
This post is dedicated to my colleague who has done wonderful analysis of how STA works .Contents is not as it as because some of them are internal to Citrix.
1. User clicks Desktop link "POOLDG-01" to request a remote desktop connection, actually is requesting an ICA file
2. WI asks XMLService for the "Address" of required VDA.
3. WI asks XMLServcie for the "LaunchRef".
4. WI asks XMLServcie for the "LogonTicket" using below XML protocol
5. WI sends request to standalone STA for another Ticket, AG uses it for session validation as well as identify the VDA
it should proxy ICA for
6. WI now has all the information needed, then it returns back the new wrapped ICA file to client
7. wfica32.exe works on client side to parse the ICA file and connect to remote VDA thru AG: ag01.homa.com:443
[POOLDG-01]8. AG checks with Standalone STA on the Ticket passed in to check if session is valid
Address=;40;STA5195C7C8D65F;81AF47C9F9859D64A7C84617FE9040409. AG uses the "ServerAddress" to connect VDA on 192.168.1.81:1494, the LogonTicket then will be passed as a parameter LogonTicket=F41E843C8EC6F8C8055D679E545552
10. VDA asks DDCService to validate the Ticket, DDCService checks the Ticket information in IMA, redeems the Ticket, retrieved user's credential associated with Ticket
11. DDCService returns user's credential to VDA so that VDA could proceed with logon
For troubleshooting STA's issue :
Verint playback don't play via Hosted shared desktop while it play via RDP session . When it played via RDP session it will show the wavelength like thisFor this to work we have to make sure we have compatible IE at Agent and Server side . Following are the setting suggested by Verint
But when it played via Hosted share desktop then it is played like this
I was trying to configure PVS6.1 setup on windows 2008R2, configuration went successful but I tried to connect to server using console got following error : Event ID 11 Cannot establish a connection to the database because the server cannot be found
When the PVS config wizard run it usually populate registry with the database info in encrypted format. But in my case this was missing
I checked the CTX129060 and policy was applied as mention
We captured processmon and it has some info
Following CTX129161 explain to change value to 1 but we had this value , what we did changed to 0 and that worked for us
When login to AGEE with NS version 9.3 , you will see screen like shown below. Sometime customer don't want to show File Share tab as well as shrink this widget .
This has been documented in CTX120643 but it mention some wrong line number for NS build 9.3. For NS build 9.3 change the following under homepage.html file at /netscaler/portal/template/homepage.html. Add as suggested in CTX120643 and shown below at like 602.
Once this is done you also need to rearrange the block for that make the changes in same line at line number 567 to the value
Save this setting as discussed in CTX12643
Now the page will look like this
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