Citrix XenApp 6.5 Administration Training Day 4 Notes

Module 8: Configuring Policies

• Group Policy Integration
  – Group policy integration does not require changes to the Active Directory schema
  – GPMG is generally recommended. Benefits: backup, restore, migrate, view the resultant, perform modeling… AGPM
  – IMA-based group policies
  – Group policy extension
  – Group policy architecture. GPO Citrix policy (ADM/X, GPF/X) is stored in sysvol folder, IMA-based citrix policy is stored in datastore database and local sysvol folder (GPF/X).
  – HKLM\Software\Policy\Citrix registry key

 

• Policy Evaluation
  – IMA-based policy subjects to the AD GPO refresh cycle (90 min) for computer configuration, but applies immediately for user configuration
  – Processing –> local/ IMA based/ site/ domain/ OU <-Precedence
  – If Loopback processing is enabled, it only affects AD GPO processing

 

• Policy Rules
  – Computer/ User policies
  – Bandwidth limit precent
  – policy templates
  – Policy Filter (unfilter vs filtered)
  – Policy modeling, resultant

 

Module 9: Configuring Load Management

• Load Manager
  – By default, the load is measured and balanced by the number of user sessions on each server
  – Load manager calculates server load using load evaluators attached to servers or application
  – Session sharing takes precedence over load balancing, except when the server is fully loader
  – Load balancing process
  1) each sever calculate the load periodically based on the load evaluators
  2) each server sends calculated value to the zone data collector (the last 10 samples are calculated into a running average value)
  3) the data collector gathers the information and maintains a numeric index for each load balanced server
  4) the data collector receives request and returns the IP address or FQDN of the least busy server
  5) the user device plug-in connects in

 

• Load Calculation
  – Five load throttling settings (Extreme 1, … Medium low 5)
  – Load Throttling formula: current load + 1/N * (10000 – current load)
  – If a change of +/- 500 occurs to the server load, the server sends the change to the data collector immediately
  – Moving average rules: CPU, Memory utilization (low, high threshold)
  – Incremental rules: application user load, server user load
  – Boolean rules: IP range, scheduling

 

• Load Evaluator Configuration
  – Only one load evaluator can be assigned to each server and each streamed application

 

• Load Balancing Policies
  – Benefits: redirect to backup server/ redirect to dedicated severs/ reducing WAN by directing users to closest regional servers/ force application to be streamed
  – preferential load balancing: importance of application/ user sesssion

 

Module 10: Optimizing the user Experience

• Optimizing Session Performance
  -Tune the session performance policy to reduce the impact of network latency and bandwidth

 

• HDX Broadcast Session Reliability
  – Enabled by default
  – HDX realtime is only available for Windows user device. And it is recommend for LAN environment only.
  – HDX plug-n-play

 

• HDX MediaStream Flash Redirection v2

 

• SpeedScreen Latency Reduction
  – Mouse click feedback/ Local text echo

 

• HDX 3D Image Acceleration
  – Lossy compression scheme

 

• User Profiles
  – it consists of: registry hive and a set of profile folders stored in the file system
  – type: local/ roaming/ mandatory/ temporary
  – redirecting user data

 

• To enable profile management
  – user the adm template
  – profile management logon process
  – .mft (Master File Table)