Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktops (WVD) or Citrix – The Big Question answered!

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Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktops (WVD) has been making a lot of waves in the EUC industry ever since it was announced by Microsoft in September 2018.

Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) is a desktop and application virtualization solution that runs from Microsoft Azure. Unlike, Microsoft’s previous foray into the application and desktop virtualization markets in the past with Microsoft RemoteApps which didn’t take off quite well, this time I believe they have a compelling product in their hands.

WVD provides an impressive list of things to the companies who want to adopt it. The important benefits are quoted below.

  • Set up a multi-session Windows 10 deployment that delivers a full Windows 10 with scalability
  • Virtualize Office 365 ProPlus and optimize it to run in multi-user virtual scenarios
  • Provide Windows 7 virtual desktops with free Extended Security Updates – This is big for a lot of companies around the world who aren’t ready to migrate to Windows 10 yet.
  • Bring your existing Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and Windows Server desktops and apps to any computer
  • Virtualize both desktops and apps
  • Manage Windows 10, Windows Server, and Windows 7 desktops and apps with a unified management experience

WVD Requirements

Licensing

Below are the licensing requirements for running WVD in Azure.

Infrastructure Requirements

Your infrastructure should meet the following requirements to support Windows Virtual Desktop:

  • An Azure Active Directory
  • A Windows Server Active Directory in sync with Azure Active Directory. You can configure this with one of the following:
    • Azure AD Connect (for hybrid organizations)
    • Azure AD Domain Services (for hybrid or cloud organizations)
  • An Azure subscription that contains a virtual network that either contains or is connected to the Windows Server Active Directory

Citrix Value-Add for WVD

So, what is Citrix doing here and how does Citrix add value to the WVD offering? WVD by itself is a perfect fit for a lot of businesses out there, mostly the start-ups and SMBs. What if we combine WVD with Citrix? That’s a deadly combo right there. Citrix could take Microsoft’s WVD offering to the next level by wrapping a management layer around it, offering flexibility, choice, cost optimization and enhanced security.

The enhancements that Citrix provide to WVD offering is best depicted in the picture below (courtesy of Citrix).

  1. Citrix has developed special optimization packs for Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business which makes a world of difference, if businesses want to run these collaboration tools in a virtualized infrastructure. Without the optimization packs, it’s virtually impossible to deliver good user experience with Teams and Skype for Business when using Audio, Video and Screen Sharing. Running single-session VDI workloads still won’t cut it either.
  2. Hybrid Cloud Model – WVD would only lets you run your multi-session Win 10 workloads in Azure. Citrix could further compliment that approach to run your traditional RDSH workload wherever you would like – on-prem, Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud or on HCI solutions such as Nutanix. Customers can combine WVD with RDSH workloads and manage them via a single console.
  3. Use Citrix HDX which is the best of the breed in remoting protocols.
  4. Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS) lets rapid creation of virtual machines with minimal infrastructure utilizing the hypervisor APIs.
  5. AutoScale – Customers could quickly ramp up and down workloads on-demand. These days, customers have an option of doing vertical load balancing which brokers user load/sessions to a single machine until a desired level is reached after which the connection gets routed to the next workload until it gets fully loaded. This is so much useful in cost optimization and reduces the overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by reducing the numbers of extra servers used.
  6. Advanced Monitoring – Citrix has its own repertoire of monitoring tools on top of Microsoft’s Azure-based monitoring.
  7. App Layering – Citrix App Layering radically reduces the time it takes to manage Windows applications and images. It separates the management of your OS and apps from your infrastructure. You can install each app and OS patch once, update the associated templates, and redeploy your images.
  8. App Protection is an add-on feature that provides enhanced security when using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops published resources.
  9. Session Recording allows you to record the on-screen activity of any user session hosted on a VDA for Server OS or Desktop OS, over any type of connection, subject to corporate policy and regulatory compliance. Session Recording records, catalogs, and archives sessions for retrieval and playback.
  10. Citrix Analytics – AI driven performance and security analytics to businesses that deploys Virtual apps and desktops service.
  11. Citrix SD-WAN – Citrix SD-WAN is a next-generation WAN Edge solution that simplifies digital transformation for enterprises. It offers comprehensive security, the best application experience for SaaS, cloud, and virtual apps and desktops.
  12. With Citrix and WVD combo, customers can bring the multi-factor authentication vendor of their choice such as Okta, OAuth-based authentication, RADIUS-based multi-factor auth and so on.

Let’s Bust a Myth

This may come as a surprise for many of you who are working in the EUC space. A lot of the folks in the industry are thinking that in order to use WVD, you will need to buy Citrix Managed Desktops which is new product offering from Citrix and that is the only offering entitled to use WVD. That isn’t true at all.

You could use a plethora of the following services from Citrix and enjoy the full benefits and simplicity that WVD has to offer. In summary, if you are an existing Citrix Cloud customer that utilizes any of the below services from Citrix, you are entitled to WVD as well.

Conclusion

Let’s conclude this. Citrix’s offering isn’t really trying to compete with Microsoft’s WVD, but rather they are complementing each other by providing more choices to the customers who want to run their VDI and RDSH workloads in the cloud. Isn’t it great to have choices in life? 🙂

Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS) – Primer For On-Prem Vs Azure

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Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS) is a compelling technology these days for provisioning virtual machines quickly and easily in Citrix environments. The whole technology is built around simplicity and requires just a supported hypervisor that utilizes snapshots to create additional VMs on the fly. There isn’t much required from a supporting infrastructure point of view as well. If you have a robust hypervisor with enough space in the storage array, MCS will work just fine. All that you would require is a service account with defined permissions for the whole thing to function.

If anyone wants to know what permissions are required for the MCS service account to function correctly, that could be found in the following Citrix official links.

I will even argue that MCS is just as good as another provisioning technology from Citrix, named Citrix Provisioning (formerly Citrix Provisioning Services or PVS) with the recent advancements it has made. There are scenarios when Citrix PVS is the better choice but that is a topic for another blog post.

While we are in the midst of Coronavirus pandemic and everyone is staying at home safe and sound, I have had some pleasant experiences working with MCS spinning up extra virtual machines for my customers here in Auckland, as they needed to ramp up their farm capacity to cater to the extra load. I could literally spin up machines in seconds(I am not exaggerating even a bit…) and just be ready for the incoming wave of Citrix users.

In this blog, let’s discuss how Citrix MCS works in general and what happens under the hood when MCS creates virtual machines. Let’s also discuss and compare Citrix MCS in an On-Prem setup versus MCS in Azure. I also have to say that most of the diagrams that you see below are shameless copies of Citrix’s own diagrams used in one of their webinars. I don’t mind accepting that 🙂 Now, that’s out of the way, let’s dive right in.

Citrix MCS – On Prem

So how does Citrix MCS works with your On-Prem hypervisor?

  1. You create a master template or gold template and make all the changes that you want to it.
  2. Once you are happy with the changes to the VM, go to your hypervisor console and take a snapshot of the VM.
  3. After that you go to the Studio console and either add a new Machine catalog or add machines to an existing catalog. At that time, a full copy of the VM’s base image disk is taken and copied to the first storage repository (Datastore for VMware folks!).
  1. Now it creates a Preparation VM and it is going to get interesting from now on.
  2. To the Preparation VM, an Instruction Disk is attached. This will strip out all the previous identity information from the prep VM. In other words, it de-personalize the VM so that a fresh identity could be assigned to it at a later stage.
  3. Now its time to power ON the Preparation VM.
  4. The Image preparation process begins in step 7.
  1. The Preparation VM now updates the snapshot A’ along with the original snapshot.
  2. The Preparation VM is shutdown after this stage.
  3. The Instruction Disk is deleted.
  4. The OS disk is detached and the preparation VM is also deleted.
  5. The update snapshot A” is now replicated to each storage repository(or Datastores in VMware). The image is now ready to deploy.
  1. MCS now creates copies of that image and in that process creates Identity Disks that differentiates the VM from others. If you create more than one VM in the Machine catalog, more Identity Disks are created and will assigned to each image.
  2. Next step is creating the required number of VMs by attaching the Identity Disks and Differencing Disk. Since all the VMs are sharing a single snapshot, the snapshot is read-only. Any changes, additions or runtime area is added to the Differencing Disk. The on-prem hypervisor is now leveraged to merge the disks to produce the virtual machines.

Identity Disks are 16 MB in size and are read-write capable. This makes them reusable for future VM creation. Delivery Controllers are responsible for creating Identity Disks.

Citrix MCS – Azure

Now let’s look at how MCS works in Azure. It’s mostly the same steps except for a few key differences. In the on-prem version, depending on the hypervisor used, the file formats could vary as in VMDK for VMware vSphere and VHD for Hyper-V or Citrix Hypervisor. With MCS in Azure, the disk file format is VHD as it is based on Azure Hypervisor which is a customized version of Hyper-V.

  1. You create a Master VM to make further copies of it just as in traditional MCS setup.
  2. The Master VHD is created in a Storage Account. This is the master storage account.
  1. We then run the MCS Wizard via the Studio if you use the Citrix Cloud service or from Azure Portal if you are subscribed to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Essentials.
  2. The MCS Wizard checks for the availability of the resources using the Azure API.
  1. We will now create a Resource Group (RG) to host all the additional VMs that MCS will create in Azure. One RG could host upto 240 VMs.
  2. Storage Accounts are created within the Resource Group to host the disks for the virtual machines. One storage account can host up to 40 VMs. Additional storage accounts are created depending on how many VMs we need.
  3. Network security Groups (NSG) are created next and they will isolate the prepped VM from the rest of the network. If we need 400 VMs, two RGs will be created to host all the VMs.
  1. Next step is validate the connections. The Service principal connectivity will be validated to access the Azure resources.
  2. The image is consolidated and is prepared for copy. Remember the image is located in the Master storage account in the steps above.
  3. The Master Image is copied to the other Storage accounts defined for the machine catalogs. Unlike other hypervisor approaches, we don’t need to create snapshots ourselves in this occasion. Azure based Citrix MCS will use the provisioning APIs in Azure to set this all up for us.
  1. The Identity disk for the Preparation VM is created but not attached yet.
  2. Preparation VM (A’) is created after that.
  3. Once the Prep VM is ready, it is stopped to attach the Identity Disk.
  4. At this stage, the Identity Disk is attached to the Preparation VM.
  1. The Preparation VM is started again for further steps.
  2. Once the preparation steps are completed, the VM is stopped.
  3. Preparation VM disk is now copied to the new Storage Account that is defined for MCS. This is the Base Image.
  4. The base image is replicated to other storage accounts within MCS.
  5. The Preparation VM and its’ Identity Disk is now deleted.
  1. Then we have a Pre-Flight check where all the created resources are checked for its integrity by MCS. Now the Base Image ready to be cloned to make more VMs.

Storage Accounts – Legacy Approach

Now, there are two approaches here – Storage Accounts (Legacy ) and On-Demand Provisioning. Let’s discuss Legacy approach until steps 21 to 25.

  1. Identity Disks are created for the required number of VMs that will be created by MCS.
  2. OS Disks (from Base Image) are also created followed by Identity Disks.
  3. VM are provisioned and linked to the OS Disks.
  4. Identity Disks are attached to the VMs.
  5. VMs are stopped to avoid extra costs during billing. (This is the case of VDI machines). When users connect, the machines are started on-demand and VMs are fired up ready for action.

On-Demand Provisioning

In On-Demand provisioning method, MCS will keep all the required settings within the database and will create VMs only when it is required in an on-demand fashion and not pre-created as in traditional MCS.

  1. Only identity Disks and NICs are created during MCS in this approach.

You would have noticed by now, instead of Storage Accounts, Azure Managed Disks are being used here.

  1. When there is user traffic in the farm, Citrix VDAs are created on-demand. As a part of that step, OS Disk is created at VM launch time.
  2. VMs are created and linked to the OS Disks at VM launch time.
  3. As a final step, Identity Disks are attached to the VM at launch time before the VM is ready to serve the users.
  1. Once the VM is no longer needed, the VM is shutdown and deleted.
  2. OS Disks are also deleted post shutdown.
  3. However, the Identity Disks and NICs are retained for future use. When the VMs are required again, the OS Disk will be attached, merged with the Identity Disk before it is available to be used again.

That’s about it peeps. Happy MCSing in the cloud!!

Configure RDP Proxy in NetScaler

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The RDP Proxy functionality is provided as part of the Citrix Gateway and currently is available to all NetScaler Enterprise and Platinum customers.

The following RDP Proxy features provide access to a remote desktop farm or an RDSH session host server through Citrix Gateway:

  • Secure RDP traffic through CVPN or ICAProxy mode (without Full Tunnel).
  • Single sign-on (SSO) to RDP servers through Citrix Gateway. Also provides an option to disable SSO if needed).
  • Enforcement (SmartAccess) feature, where Citrix ADC administrators can disable certain RDP capabilities through Citrix Gateway configuration.
  • Single/Stateless(Dual)  Gateway solution for all needs (VPN/ICA/RDP/Citrix Endpoint Management).
  • Compatibility with native Windows MSTSC client for RDP without the need for any custom clients.
  • Use of existing Microsoft-provided RDP client on MACOSX, iOS, and Android.

Firewall Ports

RDP proxy requires port 3389 to be opened from the internet. You could also choose to use other port numbers if you don’t want to use the 3389 port. In a nutshell, just opening 443 port isn’t enough to get this to work.

Initial Configuration

Now to get started, we will need to enable RDP proxy feature if it isn’t turned ON. For that, navigate to System – Settings – Configure Advanced Features and ensure that RDP proxy is turned ON. if not, tick the box to Turn ON RDP proxy feature. You will need NetScaler Enterprise and above for this feature to work.

Create LDAP Profile and Policy

Create an LDAP profile for authentication. Navigate to NetScaler Gateway – Policies – Authentication – LDAP

Click on the Servers tab and click Add. Enter the required details such as AD server IP address, port details and a service account. For those who haven’t done this before, here is a helpful link from Citrix. It’s dead easy to set this up. https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-gateway/12-1/authentication-authorization/configure-ldap/ng-ldap-authen-configure-tsk.html If you have any questions, just pop it in the comments window and I will respond when I see them.

Now create the LDAP policy. Click on the Policies tab, click Add. Enter the entries as shown in the picture below. Ensure that the correct LDAP profile is selected.

Create the RDP Client Profile

Navigate to NetScaler Gateway – Policies – RDP Profiles and Connections – Client Profiles

Click Add

Give it a name such as RDProxy_Profile and leave the rest of the values default if you would like. I changed the RDP Cookie Validity from 60 sec to 120 seconds

Click OK

Create an RDP Server Profile

Create an RDP Server Profile. Click on the first tab that says Server Profile

Click Add and enter a name for the server profile. Enter the IP address (this is the IP address of the RDP Proxy Virtual Server that you will configure under the NetScaler Gateway). Enter the port number – You can choose to go with the default RDP port if you wish to or choose another one

Click OK

Create a Session Profile

Now, go to NetScaler Gateway – Policies – Session – Session Profiles. Click Add

Give the profile a Name

No changes under the Network Configuration tab. Leave everything as default there

Under Client Experience tab, change Clientless Access to ON and tick Single Sign-on to Web Applications and Credential Index to Primary. the last setting is turning ON Single Sign-on with Windows

Under the Security Tab, select Default Authorization to ALLOW and Secure Browse to ENABLED

Under Published Applications, set ICA PROXY to OFF

Under the Remote Desktop tab, pick the RDP Client profile that was created in the previous step

Click Create

Create a Session Policy

Now create a Session Policy that will be bound to the NetScaler Virtual Server. Remember that we haven’t created the virtual server yet.

Switch to Session Policies tab and click Add. Give the session policy a Name and pick the session profile that we just created in the previous step.

Create a Bookmark

Now create a Bookmark and this is what will appear to the users in the form of an application icon to click on.

Give a Name to the bookmark and enter the name of the string that you want to be displayed in the portal. Enter the Bookmark link in the format rdp://IPaddressOfTheBackendRDSServer

Click Create

Create the Gateway Virtual Server

Let’s create the Gateway Virtual server next. Navigate to NetScaler Gateway node, expand that and under Virtual Servers, click Add

Under Basic Settings, configure the below items

  • Name – RDPProxy_rdpproxy.fqdn.co.nz
  • IP Address type – IP Address
  • IP Address – X.X.X.X
  • Port – 443
  • Pick the RDP Server Profile – RDP Server Profile
  • Ensure that Enable Authentication, AppFlow Logging and State is turned ON
  • Disable ICA Only

Click OK

Attach a Server Certificate. The certificate can be a wild card cert or you could choose to get a named certificate that matches the external RDP proxy FQDN

Now bind the Primary authentication policy. We are going to use LDAP and hence I will use LDAP policy that we created in the steps above.

Under SSL Parameters, ensure that only TLS1.2 is turned ON for enhancing the security of client connections.

You can choose to go with the default SSL ciphers or modify the ciphers according to the company requirements.

Under Portal theme, I went with RfWebUI which I think is one of the cleanest UIs. You could choose to create a custom one and use that instead.

Under Published Applications, choose the URL Name and select RDP Link (this is the bookmark link that was created)

Under Policies, attach the Session Policy named RDP Session Policy

Click Create

Testing the Setup

Selecting the RfWebUI gives the below logon page and users could simply use their domain user name and password to log in. They don’t need to enter the domain name.

Upon login, you will be shown the Favorites page where you could add links for quick access. This is very similar to the subscriptions in Storefront.

Click on the Desktops tab and you will be able to see all the published Bookmarks there. I have one in there, you can choose to have any number of bookmarks.

Click on the RDP link to launch the application. It will first download the app.rdp file which could be used to launch the application. You will just need to give the users access to the servers locally by adding them to the Remote Desktop Users group or you could choose to do this via AD domain groups to manage it centrally.

Federating AZURE with VMware Identity Manager and Office 365 as a Service

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In this post, we will discuss how to go about setting up federation between Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and VMware Identity Manager. We will be using a Microsoft developer account in this demo configuration so in the real world, you will need to replace the Office account with your customer one.

The blog is split into 5 sections so feel free to jump to the relevant sections depending on what you are after.

Part 1: Setting Up a Developer Account

Part 2 : Federating Office 365 with VMware Identity Manager

Part 3: Setting up the SAML between VMware Identity Manager and Office 365

Part 4 : Testing the Federation Setup

Part 5 : Inserting Office 365 Deep Links into VMware Identity Manager

Part 1: Setting Up a Developer Account

Firstly, we need to setup an Office 365 E3 Developer subscription account to be able to integrate with Workspace ONE. In this section we will cover the process of setting this up. Setting up a developer subscription allows you a 12 -month free trial.

Go to the link below to setup the Office 365 subscription account.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/developer-program/office-365-developer-program-get-started

Click the join the Office 365 Developer Program hyperlink

You will now be re-directed a to Join the Office 365 developer program today!

Do not select  JOIN NOW

Instead, to the right of the page first select the Sign In icon

On Microsoft Sign in Page type in the email address of an  Microsoft account you own
(NB! If this account is already associated with an office 365 account you will have to create a new account)

Alternatively Create a new account, if required

Click on the user logo on the top right and ensure that there is a first and last name added for the account as below

Now go back to the developer program join page using an incognito window and sign back in using the same account

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev-program

Set the Country Code and Company info. Accept the EULA and email opt-in programs

Click Next

On the Office 365 Developer Program Preferences page, select enough check box and options to make sure the JOIN button becomes available and the select JOIN. That gives us the below confirmation screen.

Click on Set Up Subscription

In the Setup your developer subscription window, create a unique admin account , for example, your username could be any generic name such as CloudAdmin or office365admin and your Domain could be your first name and surname. Again these are just examples that I used for the demo, please feel free to choose what you like for your deployments.


NB! Ensure you document these credentials

When you are done, select Continue

On the Add phone number for security window type in your Country Code and your phone number

Select SEND code , follow through on the security picture block selecting your relevant pictures, and select Next Enter the Code from your phone and select Set up

Once your registration is complete you can login in using your new ADMIN account. On the your Office 365 Subscription page select and right click the Go to subscription hyper link and select Open Link in New Tab

On the Sign In window , Enter your password and select Sign in

On the Office 365 Page almost in the middle select Admin

On the sign in page pick your new Office365Admin (This is the name of my account) account

If you get prompted with a Welcome to Office 365 Admin Center Page select Skip

Notice the Office 365 E3 Developer Setup is incomplete msg. Select Go to Setup box

NB! Before moving onto the next section, ensure that you are 100% clear what YOUR registered Domain will be.

This is most likely your company’s domain name or if you are doing this for yourself, it is the domain name that you own personally or on behalf of your company.

Note when registering your own domain name with Office 365, there are several approaches. The most seamless and trouble free approach is to register your own Domain Name with GoDaddy. This provides a seamless experience and the verification takes seconds once you have your own domain name from GoDaddy.

There are 2 modifications that you usually make and they are as follows

1. MS record modification

2. MX record modification

Click Next once you enter your domain name in the field below

On the Verify domain page notice there are step-by-step instructions to follow,

Notice that there are DNS records called TXT name, TXT value and TTL

Each namespace will have Registered Zone database. Your Office 365 instance will need to be verified with this namespace

Click on the copy icon next to your MS record

Select Verify at the bottom of the screen

Next step is to update the zone records for the domain name that you hold. I am not going to list the steps in here as it is different for everyone depending on how the domain names are managed.

Go back to your Office 365 domain configuration and click on Verify. it might give you an error because of the time it takes to replicate DNS configuration and it might require you to click on verify button a couple more times.

On Add new users window select Got it, thanks, select Next

On the Assign licenses to unlicensed users page select Next

On Install your Office apps page select Next

On the Migrate email messages page, leave the default Don’t migrate email messages radio button and select Next

On the Choose your online services page, ensure that Exchange, Skype for Business and Mobile Device Management for Office 365 check boxes are selected and select  Next

On the Add DNS Records page.

When ready, select Verify at the bottom of the Add DNS Records window.

Notice that when Verify is successful the you just configured your Office 365 Tenant successfully will show and you are asked to provide feedback related to your experience.

However, If Verify is Not successful, ensure that the MS and MX records are updated in DNS correctly.

If successful, You should get a message saying “You’ve reached the end of the setup”, click on  Go to Admin Center

In Admin Center:

  1. Select the 3 parallel dots at the lower corner of the left pane, this will expand the console
  2. Select the Spanner icon for Setup and select Domains

In the Home > Domains interface, check to see if your namespace you have associated with your Office 365 setup has a (Default) next to it. If this is the case do the following.

  • Select your account name that is not set to default :
  • Select Set as default

Note!
Your custom domain cannot be the default domain when federating with VMware identity Manager.

Select Close. Check to see that you have a corresponding configuration in the domain portion of your setup as the screenshot

At the end of the exercise, it should look like the below

Part 2 : Federating Office 365 with VMware Identity Manager

From VMware Identity Manager version 2.8. Support has been added for User Provisioning in Office 365. In Part 2, we will now federate our Office 365 Tenant with a VMware Identity Manager SaaS tenant.

Using your Tenant Admin credentials, login into your SaaS VMware Identity Manager Tenant.

  • To the right of the Workspace ONE console under Tenant Admin select Administration Console

Select the Identity & Access Management tab

  • To the right in the Identity & Access Management tab select Setup > User Attributes

In the User Attributes interface, notice you have already set userPrincipalName and distinguishedName to Required and you have already created the objectGUID attribute.

These are pre-req requirements for Federating Office 365 with VMware identity Manager.

Now, go to your Domain Controller and open Active Directory Domains and Trusts

In Active Directory Domain and Trusts MMC snapin select and right-click Active Directory Domains and Trusts

Select Properties Under the UPN Suffixes Tab under Alternative UPN suffixes type your custom domain name

Eg auckland10.euc-livefire.com

Select Add , select OK to close the window

Now open Active Directory Users and Computers

Navigate to the OU where the users reside. For eg, Corp — Marketing OU

Find the user and right click the accounts and go to Properties.

Under the Accounts tab, change the domain name to Auckland10.euc-livefire.com in our example. Repeat the same for the rest of the users.

Switch back to your VMware Identity Manager SAAS tenant

  1. Under the Identity & Access Management tab select Manage
  2. Select Directories
  3. Select Sync Now for the Livefire Domain
  4. In the Review window, notice that a warning message that Directory Sync Safeguards will apply, select the Ignore Safeguards checkbox above the message
  5. Select Sync Directory

Download and Install the Microsoft Online Services Sign-in Assistant. The link to download the software is here

Install Azure AD Module by running the command below

Install-Module -Name AzureAD

You might need to restart the VM once these two binaries are installed.

Now, its time to delve into the PoSH world. Let’s try some commands 😉

Open the PowerShell shortcut on the desktop named “Windows Azure Active Directory” under administrator account. Type the below command

Connect-Msolservice

It prompts an authentication dialog as above. Use the credentials that you created during the Office 365 setup.

Next we have to create a Service Principal account type in the PowerShell

$sp = New-MSOLServicePrincipal -DisplayName 'ServPrinc1' -Type password -Value 'yourpassword'

Next we are going to assign a role to the ServPrinc1 user

Add-MsolRoleMember -RoleName 'User Account Administrator' -RoleMemberType ServicePrincipal -RoleMemberObjectId $sp.ObjectId

Next we will type echo $sp to get the GUID for the ServicePrincipalNames

Copy the ServicePrincipalNames value with out the {  }

Revert back to your VMware Identity Manager SaaS Tenant Admin Console

  1. Select the Catalog Tab in the Admin Console, select NEW
  2. In the New SaaS Application window under Definition select or browse from catalog
  3. In the DEFINITION window to the right in the search area type off
  4. Select Office365 with Provisioning by selecting the   +    sign to the right
https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/002/235/328/original/c4cff158-8f9d-4602-8664-d0f99dcc2640.png

On the New SaaS Application window select Next

https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/002/235/325/original/5ebe6ef4-c48a-448b-8d29-a096d7bcc07a.png

In the New SaaS Application window, in the Configuration section add the following:

Under Target URL, add the following

https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/authorize?client_id=00000002-0000-0ff1-ce00-000000000000&response_mode=form_post&response_type=code+id_token&scope=openid+profile&redirect_uri=https%3a%2f%2foutlook.office365.com&domain_hint=auckland10.euc-livefire.com
  • In the New SaaS Application window, in the Configuration section leave the following as defaults:

      -Single Sign-On URL / Application ID / Username Format / Username Value

Add the following: under Application Parameters in the tenant line under Value add YOUR custom Fully Qualified Domain Name ie auckland10.euc-livefire.com

Under Application Parameters in the issuer line under Value add your custom domain name i,e. auckland10.euc-livefire

Make sure there are no hidden carriage returns if you paste this in (Note the issuer has a dash this value must match the IssuerURI in the powershell command)

In the New SaaS Application window, in the Configuration section under Advanced Properties leave the following as defaults:

–Enable Multiple O365 Email Domains / Credential Verification / Signature Algorithm / Digest Algorithm / Assertion Time
-Under Custom Attribute Mapping in the UPN and ImmutableID keep the values default there too.

In the New SaaS Application window, in the Access Policies section select NEXT

In the New SaaS Application window, in the Summary section select SAVE

Notice you now have Office365 with Provisioning in the Catalog

  1. Select the check box next Office365 with Provisioning and select EDIT
  2. In the Edit SaaS Application window in the left pane, select Configuration, in the right pane, scroll down until you see Setup Provisioning. Notice you only 4 sections in the left pane.
  3. Change Setup Provisioning from No to Yes. Notice you now have 7 sections in the left pane. We will now go and configure Provisioning. It’s been a super fun ride, isnt it? 😉 Be patient please, we are almost there!!!

In the Edit SaaS Application window in the left pane select Provisioning

  • In the Provisioning Adapter Configuration under Office 365 Domain type your custom domain, eg. auckland10.euc-livefire.com
  • Under Client ID, add the ServicePrincipleNames value you recorded earlier
  • Under Client Secret area type the password your associated with the ServicePrinciple Name
  • In the Edit SaaS Application window in the bottom right corner select Next

Under the User Provisioning tab, do the below

  • In the Attribute Name section, select Display Name, In the Edit Mapped Value window, in the Value container select the drop down arrow add the following, $(user.userName) and select SAVE
  • In the Attribute Name section, select User Principle Name, In the Edit Mapped Value window, in the Value container select the drop down arrow add the following, $(user.userPrincipalName) and select SAVE
  • In the Attribute Name section, select Guid, In the Edit Mapped Value window, in the Value container select the drop down arrow add the following, $(user.objectGUID) and select SAVE
  • In the Attribute Name section, select Mail Nickname, In the Edit Mapped Value window, in the Value container select the drop down arrow add the following, $(user.userName) and select SAVE
  • Select Next

At the end of the configuration, the User provisioning page will look like the below

https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/002/241/353/original/1ce4fdf1-035a-410b-af2f-325cba4cb553.png

In the Group Provisioning section,

  • Under Group Provisioning select + ADD GROUP
  • In the Add Group to Provision window under Group Name type Mark and then select Marketing@euc-livefire.com, Under Nickname type Livefire Marketing. (or anything that is relevant to your org) Select  Save
  • select NEXT
  • click SAVE
https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/002/463/206/original/7f9bbe3a-b675-491f-85c8-448a3cc7914c.png

We will now Enable Provisioning and Save

  • In the Catalog for Web Apps select the Office 365 with Provisioning and select Edit
  • In the Edit SaaS Application window in the left pane select Configuration
  • Scroll down until you see Setup Provisioning and change No to Yes,
  • on your left pane, click on “4 Provisioning”, Scroll down, next to Enable Provisioning, change the toggle from No to Yes
    • Select TEST CONNECTION
    • Select NEXT, select NEXT, select NEXT, select SAVE

We will now do the Entitlement configuration of the Users

  • In the Catalog for Web Apps select the Office 365 with Provisioning and select Assign
  • In the Assign wizard type Mark in the search area under Users / User Groups, select Marketing@euc-livefire.com
  • Under Deployment Type, select the drop down arrow change the Deployment Type to Automatic
  • In the Assign wizard, review your configuration, in the bottom right hand corner select SAVE

Part 3: Setting up the SAML between VMware Identity Manager and Office 365

Login to your to the VMware Identity Manager Admin Console, as Admin, under the Catalog > Web Apps tab, to the right, select SETTINGS

  • In the Settings window under SaaS Apps, select SAML Metadata, in the right hand pane under the SAML Metadata heading select DOWNLOAD under Signing Certificate
  • Using Notepad++ Open the signingCertificate.cer from your default download location .

In the signingCertificate.cer, we will now need to remove all carriage returns the document

Do this with Notepad++ as i have found that it works best. Any hidden carriage returns will cause this config to FAIL

  • Remove the —–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—– and  —–END CERTIFICATE—– lines from the certificate.
  • Then select the certificate portion of the file and click ctrl + F in the Replace tab at the top type \n in the Find what field.Leave the Replace with field empty. Make sure the Search Mode at the bottom is Extended.  Then click on Replace All.
  • Your certificate should now no longer have carriage returns. Notepad++ will tell you how many instances were replaced and your certificate will look different.
https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/002/600/568/original/69f79ff3-872b-4a82-b29a-6380429e8dac.png
https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/002/600/566/original/33e0f46e-ffcf-4cb5-b9bf-68d7f15db44e.png

Go back to the PowerShell window and connect to Microsoft Online using the command below

Connect-Msolservice

Now run the command below to setup federation. Dont miss the certificate info at the end of the syntax. i haven’t added it to avoid the messy look.

Set-MsolDomainAuthentication -DomainName auckland10.euc-livefire.com -Authentication Federated -IssuerUri “auckland10.euc-livefire.com” -FederationBrandName “auckland10Corp” -PassiveLogOnUri “https://lalm0204.vidmpreview.com/SAAS/API/1.0/POST/sso” -ActiveLogOnUri “https://lalm0204.vidmpreview.com/SAAS/auth/wsfed/active/logon” -LogOffUri “https://login.microsoftonline.com/logout.srf” -MetadataExchangeUri “https://lalm0204.vidmpreview.com/SAAS/auth/wsfed/services/mex” -SigningCertificate

In the command above ensure that you add the certificate information at the end. This is very important to do.

We will now check the federation with the following command in powershell

Get-MsolDomainFederationSettings -domainName auckland10.euc-livefire.com

Part 4 : Testing the Federation Setup

Login back to your office 365 Tenant with your office Admin account with this url https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?source=applauncher#/homepage
and use your office365admin account . This is the same account that we created as a part of Office 365 setup.

Entering the password will take you to the Admin Center for O365.

  • In the left-hand pane under Home, select Users > Active users. Notice that Marketing group Users 1 – 4  has been automatically provisioned with the unique suffix appended for the user principle name. Also notice that your users are Unlicensed.
  • Click on User1
  • In the User 1 properties selectthe Product Licenses tab
  • In the location area select a Location ie New Zealand. Next to Office 365 Enterprise E3 Developer, there is a check box that is unchecked, check the checkbox and select Save.
  • In the User1 properties select Close.
  • NB! – Follow steps 1-5 for all the users including the Cloudadmin account to ensure that licensing is applied to all account.
https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/002/617/997/original/b539a3d3-4c11-4ea5-ad4a-886640de89da.png

On the User1 properties, in the license and apps tab, scroll down and you will notice that Mobile Device Managerment for Office 365 is Off. We will go and enable this in Azure so that we can do compliance with Workspace OneUEM. Select Cancel to close the Product Licenses window

In your existing browser, open up a new tab and type https://portal.azure.com Your Office365admin credentials should log you in automatically but if not, login with your office365admin account.

  • On the Welcome to Microsoft Azure window select Maybe later
  • In the Left-hand pane select Azure Active Directory, then in the middle pane select Mobility (MDM and MAM
  • In the right hand pane towards the top select Get a free Premium trial to use this feature –>
  • Under Activate you will see ENTERPRISE MOBILITY + SECURITY E5 highlighted in Purple, below this, select Free Trial
  • The ENTERPRISE MOBILITY + SECURITY E5 window will launch, to the bottom select Activate
    • Notice to the right that your free trial has been successfully activated pops up momentarily.

Go back to the tab with your Office 365 Admin console.

  • Click on User1 and click on the License and apps tab.
  • Notice that Enterprise Mobility + Security E5 is turned Off.
  • Next to Enterprise Mobility + Security E5, click on the checkbox, Notice you now have a whole range of Advance Azure security Features
  • Select Save
  • NB! Repeat the Licensing process you did for User 1 forUser 2 and on your Office365admin account.
    • In the Admin Console select both User 2 and Office365admin check boxes
    • in the menu bar at the top select manage product licenses,
    • select the radio button next to add to existing product license assignments and click next
    • turn on the switch for enterprise mobility + security and click add
    • on the summary window click Close

Now logon to the VIDM portal as a user to test it.

In this section we will insert Deep Links within VMware Identity Manager portal

Log in to your to your VMware Identity Manager Console as Admin and select the Catalog tab > Web Apps

  • Select NEW
  • In the New SaaS Application window under Name type Microsoft Word
  • You will need to have a .PNG file for the application icons stored somewhere accessible. I have stored mine locally. Under Icon, click on browse, search for the software link on your desktop, and navigate to \Applications\Azurefiles\icons. select your Word.png Icon and select Open. At the bottom right select NEXT
  • On 2. Configuration in the Single Sign-On section under Authentication type to the right select the drop down and then select Web Application Link

Copy the URL below and edit in Notepad++ the following text named “EXAMPLEDOMAIN.euc-livefire.com” with your assigned domain suffix and then copy the edited URL and Paste under the Target URL

https://login.microsoftonline.com/login.srf?wa=wsignin1.0&whr=EXAMPLEDOMAIN.euc-livefire.com&wreply=https://office.live.com/start/Word.aspx?auth=2

Select NEXT > SAVE & ASSIGN

  • Under Users / User Groups in the Search area type Mark, select Marketing@euc-livefire.com
  • Under Deployment Type select Automatic and select SAVE

Repeat the above steps for the rest of the Office applications as follows

Excel

https://login.microsoftonline.com/login.srf?wa=wsignin1.0&whr=auckland10.euc-livefire.com&wreply=https://www.office.com/launch/excel?auth=2&home=1

PowerPoint

https://login.microsoftonline.com/login.srf?wa=wsignin1.0&whr=auckland10.euc-livefire.com&wreply=https://www.office.com/launch/powerpoint?auth=2

Outlook

 https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/authorize?client_id=00000002-0000-0ff1-ce00-000000000000&response_mode=form_post&response_type=code+id_token&scope=openid+profile&redirect_uri=https%3a%2f%2foutlook.office365.com&domain_hint=auckland10.euc-livefire.comom

Now log back into the ViDM user tenant portal to test the applications

With this, we have come to the end of this blog post. It was quite a journey for me to learn all these for the first time, I am sure they will be of second nature once we do this a few times at work. Cheers!!

Storefront Load balancing using NetScaler

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It’s been a while since I wrote on my blog so let’s get straight into the post without much mucking around. This time we will discuss how to go about setting up Storefront load balancing using NetScalers. This can be configured on a standalone NetScaler or a NetScaler pair in HA. The recommendation is obviously to get this setup on a HA NetScaler pair so that NetScaler outage wouldn’t result in Storefront also being unavailable.

My Storefront version is 3.11 and have a cluster with 2 Storefront servers. NetScaler version is 11.1 but the NS version shouldn’t matter much as the steps would be more or less the same for other NetScaler firmware versions – newer or older. (unless you are too far behind)

Pre-Requisites

To configure Storefront load balancing we need the following –

  • 2 or more Storefront servers
  • an IP address for the virtual server that hosts the LB configuration
  • SSL certificate that points to the intended load balanced URL of Storefront – the certificate can be a wild card or a named certificate

First Things First

Logon to your NetScaler and navigate to System — Settings — Configure Basic Features. Ensure that Load Balancing is selected, if not select it and click OK

1

NetScaler Configuration

Create Servers

Now, navigate to Traffic Management — Load Balancing — Servers. Click Add

2

Give the Storefront server a name and enter the IP address of the server. Ensure that “Enable after creating” is selected. Click Create

Add the second Storefront server following the above steps. If you have more than 2  servers, add all of them.

3

Create Monitors

New NetScaler version come with a built-in Storefront monitor so we are going to make use of it here. Go to Traffic Management –Load Balancing — Monitors and click Add

Here I am only going to create a single monitor to probe all my Storefront servers. You can choose to create multiple monitors depending upon the number of Storefront servers that you have. In my case, i will create just one.

Give a name to the monitor and select the type as STOREFRONT

5

Now select Special Parameters tab and provide the name of the Store that you have created in Storefront. Check the 2 entries – Storefront Account Service and Check Back End Services. 

4

Click on the Standard Parameters tab. Ensure that Secure is selected as below. Click Create

6

Create Service Groups

Go to Traffic Management –Load Balancing — Service Groups

Give a name to the service group and select the protocol as SSL. Check the entries below

  • State
  • Health Monitoring
  • AppFlow Logging (only if you have NetScaler MAS in your environment)

Click OK

7

Under Service Group Members, add the server entities that we created earlier. Once done, they will look like the below

8

Under Settings, type the Header as X-Forwarded-For

9

Under Monitors, bind the monitor that we created before

10

Under SSL Parameters, setup the settings as below

11

Under Ciphers, setup the ciphers based on your company security policy.

12

Once done, Service Group for Storefront should look like this

13

Now, it’s time to create the Virtual Server

Virtual Server

As mentioned in the pre-requisites section , we need an IP address for this. If the NetScalers are sitting in the DMZ, a DMZ IP address is required. In my case, NetScalers are hosted internally so i will use an internal unused IP address.

We will also need the SSL certificate here.

Go to Traffic Management –Load Balancing — Virtual Servers

Click Add

Give a Name to the virtual server and select the protocol as SSL

Specify the IP address under IP Address field and specify the port # as 443

14

Click More and specify the settings as below (note, that AppFlow logging only needs to be enabled if you have a NetScaler MAS setup or other monitoring solutions that could make use of AppFlow logs)

15

 

Under Services and Service Groups, click on Load Balancing Virtual Server ServiceGroup Binding

Click Add Binding and select the Service Group that you created in the previous step. Click OK

Once completed, the page should look like the below. Click Close and click Done

16

It’s time to attach the certificate. Go to Traffic Management — SSL — Manage Certificates / Keys / CSRs

17

 

Click on Upload button and upload your certificate file to NetScaler

Go to Traffic Management — SSL — Certificates — Server certificates

Under Certificate, click on Server Certificate and then Install

Give a certificate key-pair name and choose the certificate that was just uploaded in the previous step. Click Install

Now, go back to Traffic Management –Load Balancing — Virtual Servers

Select the Virtual server created for Storefront and click Edit. Under Certificates, select Server Certificate and then Click Add Binding

Under SSL Ciphers, select the ciphers that you would like to be in place. I am going with the default one. This is not the most secure for a production setup so go with something that’s secure enough for your organization.

Under SSL Parameters, configure the settings as below. Click OK

18

Under Method, Select LEASTRESPONSETIME for the Load Balancing Method. Configure a Backup LB Method, I choose LEAST CONNECTION

You can read more about the LB Methods here

19

Click OK

Under Persistence, select COOKIEINSERT for Persistence with a time-out value of 0. You can also read why I selected the timeout value of 0 here

Under Backup persistence, select SOURCEIP with a timeout of 60. Fill in the Netmask as in the picture

20

Click OK and then Done

We have now completed almost 90% of the config. There are a couple of things left so hold on tight.

The configuration so far will ensure that load balancing will be performed between the Storefront servers ( I know, i know I haven’t setup the DNS entries for the load balanced VIP)

If someone type in the http URL of LB Storefront in their browser, it will not go anywhere. It will show them the IIS page instead. So how do we ensure that the users are redirected to the correct Storefront page (https version) every single time? We will setup another virtual server on port 80 with a redirect URL configured.

Let’s do that now.

Under Traffic Management –Load Balancing — Virtual Servers, Click Add

Under Basic Settings, give the virtual server a Name and select protocol as HTTP

Specify the same IP address as for the Storefront LB VIP and provide 80 for the Port #

Click OK/Create

Under Persistence, select SOURCEIP with a timeout of 2 mins

21

Click OK

Under Protection, type in the correct HTTPS URL that you would want the users to be redirected to under Redirect URL field

22

Click OK. Then click Done

You will notice that the virtual server will be marked as down

23

DNS Changes

Now head over to the DNS server and open the DNS Console

Create an A record pointing to the Storefront LB name with the IP address configured on the vServer for LB configuration.

Storefront Changes

This is the last step, I promise. Head over to the Storefront servers and it’s time now to run some Powershell commands

Now, the monitors that we created earlier will be marked as Down if we didn’t perform this step prior to creating them on the NetScaler. That’s because the monitor created was based on HTTPS and by default, Storefront monitoring is done on HTTP

To change this to HTTPS. We need to configure the monitor service to use HTTPS instead. On all the StoreFront 3.0 servers perform the following steps.

Run PowerShell as an administrator.

Navigate to the Scripts (C:\Program Files\Citrix\Receiver StoreFront\Scripts) folder via the Powershell on the Storefront server,

Run ImportModules.ps1

24

Run the below command

 Get-DSServiceMonitorFeature

25

Now, type the below to setup the Storefront Monitor on HTTPS

Set-DSServiceMonitorFeature -ServiceURL https://localhost:443/StoreFrontMonitor

 

Repeat the above steps on all the Storefront servers.

Now, head back to the NetScaler and you can see that the monitor will be in GREEN and showing a status of UP

That’s all we need to do to setup Storefront load balancing using NetScalers.

 

 

 

 

Don’t let your user-experience be a “Spectre” of itself after “Meltdown”

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Bust your ghosts not your user experience

The names Spectre and Meltdown invoke feelings of dread in even the most seasoned IT engineer.  To those uninitiated, let me get you up-to-speed quickly.

Spectre is a vulnerability that takes advantage of “Intel Privilege Escalation and Speculative Execution”, and exposes user memory of an application to another malicious application.  This can expose data such as passwords.

Meltdown is a vulnerability that takes advantage of “Branch prediction and Speculative Execution”, and exposes kernel memory.  A compromised server or client OS running virtualized could gain access to kernel memory of the host exposing all guest data.

Both vulnerabilities take advantage of a 20-year-old method of increasing processor performance.

Server_Protection

As a result, code will need to be updated to address these vulnerabilities at OS and OEM-manufacturer levels, at the expense of system performance.

On their part, Microsoft reluctantly admits that performance will suffer.  “Windows Server on any silicon, especially in any IO-intensive application, shows a more significant performance impact when you enable the mitigations to isolate untrusted code within a Windows Server instance,” wrote Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President for the Windows and Devices group.

According to Geek Wire, these two vulnerabilities which take advantage of a 20-year-old design flaw in modern processors can be “mitigated;” the word we’re apparently using to describe this new world in 2018, in which servers lose roughly 10 to 20% performance for several common workloads.

This affects not only workloads executed against local, on-site resources but even those utilizing services, such as AWS, Google Public Cloud or Azure.

cpu_utilReader submission @ The Register showing CPU before / after patches

We’ve heard from some of our insiders who use Login VSI to validate system performance that they’re seeing a reduction of 5% in user-density after performing Microsoft recommendations. Knowing that the vulnerability wasn’t solved by OS updates alone we, at Login VSI, wanted the ability to test the impending hardware vendor firmware / BIOS changes.

Now is the time to capture your baseline performance

How do you know how much of an impact the fixes for Spectre and Meltdown will be if you don’t have anything to compare it to? Keep in mind that these patches will need to be installed on a number of systems in your solution including server hardware, operating systems, storage subsystems and so on.

Many of our customers perform tests where they compare a known good solution, or a baseline, with changes that have been made. This gives them the ability to accurately assess the performance impact of that change, which in turn allows them to compensate with more hardware, or further tuning of the applications and OS. The patented methods used by Login VSI provide a quantifiable result for determining the impact of a change in virtual desktop and published application environments.

Using Login VSI

If you wish to test the changes before pushing them into your production environment, then use Login VSI to put a load, representative of your production users, on the system. This will objectively show how much more CPU will be used as a result of the Spectre or Meltdown patches. It is expected that the end users will incur increased latency to their applications and desktops as a result of the higher CPU utilization.

Using Login PI

While it is not recommended, if you are planning on pushing the patches into your production environment to “see how it goes”, then install Login PI now to get an accurate representation of performance related to user experience. This will give you the ability to then compare to that same experience after the patches have been installed. We expect that you will see latency to the end user increase as a result of higher CPU utilization. If you already struggle with CPU utilization in your solution, there is a good chance you’ll be also using Login PI to test your availability.

As we complete our testing we will be sharing our findings in a series of articles.

“If your computer has a vulnerable processor and runs an unpatched operating system, it is NOT SAFE TO WORK WITH SENSITIVE INFORMATION”. – Security Experts who discovered Meltdown / Spectre 

If sensitive data is part of your business (Such as ours!) patching is not a matter of if, but when.

Ask yourself:

How long can you afford to have your company’s data exposed to malicious intent?  Do you want to be the next Equifax or Target?

In this article series, we will provide some insight from our lab environments. Be aware your results may vary based upon individual workload and configuration.

Microsoft has released a Security Advisory

The vulnerability affects both the client and server OSs of Windows.  This is compounded when dealing with large-scale published application and desktops deployments.  The advisor can be found at the following location:

https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security-guidance/advisory/ADV180002

The specific details addressed in the security update and Windows KB are outlined in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database.

Included are:

To completely protect yourself there are two phases of patching this vulnerability.

1 – Windows OS updates

2 – OEM device manufacturer firmware updates (not yet available)

Microsoft acknowledges addressing these vulnerabilities from a software perspective is limited, and therefore, without the OEMs providing updates the loop is not closed.

In the interim we can start measuring the impact of the Microsoft fixes.

They offer guidance for both Desktop and Server OSs:

Desktop –  January 2018 Security Update. Security Advisory: Click Here!

Server –  KB405690. Security Advisory: Click Here!

NOTE – Certain AV solutions are not compatible with the security update released by Microsoft. As such, unless an AV vendor has a registry flag, QualityCompat, they will not receive the January Security update and will still be vulnerable. 

With the upcoming OEM hardware patch releases we expect to be able to produce a variety of interesting and informative results.  Please stay tuned for the next articles!

Reference materials:

https://meltdownattack.com/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/09/meltdown_spectre_slowdown/

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/microsoft-admits-meltdown-spectre-patches-will-hit-windows-server-performance/

Citrix AppDisk – All that you need to know!!

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AppDisk is an awesome technology from Citrix but it comes with its own quirks which admins/consultants should be aware of. Below are some of the items that i thought are important to know about the technology and how to set it up.

There are a few things to keep in mind before attempting to create an AppDisk.

firefox_screenshot_2016-11-29t00-48-41-888z

AppDisk additional permissions

  • when you specify a size for the AppDisk, you wouldn’t be able to utilize all the size that you allocated. for eg, for an AppDisk size of 5 GB only, 3.66 are useable so always give some extra when creating appdisks
  • Don’t create snapshots of the machine prior to creating the AppDisk when using MCS Catalogs
  • There is currently no way to resize the AppDisk from within the Studio. PowerShell is the way to go.
  • There is NO versioning built into AppDisks at this stage. All that you are doing when clicking on “Create New Version” is creating a clone of the existing AppDisk which could be used to edit and update the AppDisk
  • Enable both the Shadow Copy and Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Service Provider services. https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX211853
  • Some of the commands that you will find useful when working with AppDisks are as follows
>Get-AppLibAppDisk
>Get-AppLibTask

To get a list of all the active tasks running, run the below

>Get-AppLibTask -active $true

To stop a particular task, run the Get-AppLibTask and take a note of the task ID

>Stop-AppLibTask

The above stop command will not remove the failed task from the Studio console. to remove it completely from the studio, run the following command

>Remove-AppLibTask
  • In many cases, AppDisks work on different OSs. For example, you can add an AppDisk that was created on a Windows 7 VM to a Delivery Group containing Windows 2008 R2 machines, as long as both OSs have the same bitness (32 bit or 64 bit) and both support the application. However, Citrix recommends you do not add an AppDisk created on a later OS version (such as Windows 10) to a Delivery Group containing machines running an earlier OS version (such as Windows 7), because it might not work correctly.
  • Finally, the link here from Citrix is a MUST READ as it covers a lot of information on MCS type and PVS type deployments https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/xenapp-and-xendesktop/7-8/install-configure/appdisks.html

Creation Process

  • Boot the reserved VM into the Maintenance environment and leave it at the login screen
  • Head to the Studio console and select the AppDisk node. Click Create AppDisk
  • Specify the size of the disk and a name of the AppDisk in the wizard.
  • As soon as the AppDisk creation begins, the VM will be restarted. Boot the VM back into the Maintenance vDisk
  • Now wait for the process to complete
  • In the mean time, you would be able to see a drive mapping with label (Citrix) being created on the VM with the specified disk size of the AppDisk (5 GB in my case)drive-map
  • Refresh the Studio console to ensure that the VM is powered ON and is registered.studio
  • Be patient as this could take while to complete.
  • If the process gets stuck at “Creating…..” state, run the command 
    Get-AppLibTask -active $true

    Check the value of TaskProgress and if it is at 95%, its time to restart the VM. studio

  • Once restarted, boot the machine back into the Maintenance disk
  • Ensure that the VM is registered. Login to the VDA now and make sure that the AV agent isnt running (I have seen that logging into the server helps speed up things)
  • The AppDisk creation process should now be complete.
  • Its time now to install the applications- Right click the AppDisk name and select Install Applications
  • Once you are happy with the app install, its time to seal the disk
  • Right click and select “Seal AppDisk”
  • When the sealing process is started, the VM will restart. Just ensure that the VM restarts back into the maintenance disk
  • Once the server is back up, log into the server to speed up the sealing process. if there are AV agents running, temporarily disable it
  • The VM will restart again
  • choose the maintenance disk again and boot into it
  • it is at this stage, it will start AppDNA disk analysis (assuming that you have AppDNA integration configured)importappdiskdna
  • Refresh the Studio now and you can see the Appdisk is at Ready(AppDNA:Capturing) state
  • Soon the process should complete. The AppDisk should now be ready for app delivery readystate
  • Head on to the PVS console and delete the Maintenance vDisk that was initially created for AppDisk . Once the AppDisk is sealed, you MUST boot into the vDisk version before the Maintenence version to be able to see the applications installed on the AppDisk. Strange but true 🙂
  • If you need to edit(add more apps) a Sealed Appdisk, create a fresh Maintenance vDisk and continue with the updates. The older Maintenance vDisks will not work once sealed and should be removed from PVS console (Versioning)

 

Assigning an AppDisk

As previously stated, AppDisks require a machine catalog that isnt assigned to any delivery groups. So naturally the first step after creating an AppDisk is to create a delivery group and attach the AppDisk to it.

Updating an AppDisk

  • Create a Maintenance vDisk from the PVS Console
  • Change the VM type to Maintenance in the PVS Console (Device Collections)
  • If the Prep machine is already a member of a Delivery group, remove it from the delivery group.
  • Boot the Prep VM into the Maintenance vDisk and leave it at the login screen
  • Go to AppDisk node in Citrix Studio and select the AppDisk that needs to be updated.
  • Choose Create New Version
  • Give it a name and select the Machine catalog name where the prep machine resides
  • Click Create New Version
  • At this point, it creates a Control Disk

control-disk

  • The Prep VM will now restart. the next step is to “Reserve” the Virtual machine
  • Boot the VM back into the Maintenance vDisk

reservevm

  • It then proceeds with the Layer creation and completes it. It would say ready to install applications in Studio
  • Proceed to install applications as you would normally do
  • Seal the Appdisks when completed.
  • Delete the Maintenance version from the PVS console and change the VM type to Production from Maintenance

 

Diagnosing issues with AppDisk

AppDisks come with a logging tool that could be found here at C:\Program Files\Citrix\personal vDisk\bin\CtxAppDisksDiag.exe

Run the above tool as an admin and select the folder where you would like to see the log files and click OK

 

Importing an AppDisk

There are times you will need to import a pre-created AppDisk to the Studio. This method will also work for the manually built virtual machines.

Carl Stalhood has detailed the process to import AppDisks in his blog post here

Setting Up HDX Flash Redirection – XenApp & XenDesktop

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Setting up flash redirection to work in Citrix could sometimes be a daunting task. There are a multitude of moving parts to this solution and a slight error could lead to days of troubleshooting and remediation work. I thought i will document the procedures that I followed to successfully setup Flash redirection to work on  XenApp 7.5 farm and thin clients for a customer environment.

I am not going into the details of this technology and what each versions flash redirection does as you can read about them here

I strongly recommend you read the PDF document from Citrix on HDX redirection in general.

The below procedures apply to all the versions of XenApp and XenDesktop where flash redirection is applicable. My particular case was XenApp 7.5 with IE 11

Please also check the pre-requisites section on this Citrix KB article https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX205558

We will split the setup into 2 parts – Server side (VDA or Citrix Servers) setup and Client side setup

Server Side setup

  • Citrix Policies – Setup the Citrix policies for flash in Studio or Delivery Services Console as the case may be. Below is how they should look like if they are correctly configured. Also note that the latency threshold may differ according to your network conditions.

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  • Flash Hotfixes – Look out for any specific hotfixes by Citrix to enable Flash acceleration. There is one required for XenApp 7.5 VDA and is available here . You may have a different version so go online and check if there is a specific hotfox availabe for Flash redirection to work. I had to download the hotfix and install on the VDA

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  • Version of IE – 32 bit Internet Explorer must be used for Flash redirection to work even if you are using a 64 bit OS like Windows Server 2012 R2. Citrix recommends using IE 11
  • Flash Player Active X Plugins – Active X plugins are required on the server side for flash acceleration to work. These plugins integrate with Internet Explorer and could be installed separately if you are using IE 10 and below. You may visit Adobe Flash website to download a specific version of the Active X component. With IE 11, the Active X components are built-in alongside the browser (not a good thing in my opinion) and update are available as Windows updates from Microsoft’s site.

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  • Flash Player NPAPI Plugins – It’s good to keep the IE Active X Controls and the NPAPI plugin versions the same. Though NPAPI plugins are required only for non-IE browsers according to theory, this seem to have an effect on the success of flash redirection

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  • Special IE Settings – Disable Enhanced Protection Mode in IE, Some websites like YouTube.com need to be added to compatibility view mode for flash redirection to work. you may also need to add the website to Trusted Sites in IE in certain cases.

Client Side Setup

  • Flash Player Active X Plugins/Controls – This is a critical piece. This should either be equal to or greater than the version being run on the server.
  • Flash Player NPAPI Plugins – I would say this is the most important bit as we found out that even though you use IE in the Citrix session, NPAPI versions are compatibility checked and matched. If the check failed, flash redirection stopped working regardless of the Active X (IE) version. Keep client side NPAPI version the same or above as your NPAPI version on the server for Flash redirection to work.
  • Configure the ADM file for HDX Mediastream for Flash on all the corporate domain joined clients. This is not a requirement but still nice to have configured. Without this, your clients will still work if they meet the rest of the requirements

Other key things to note

  • Dont perform an upgrade of an existing Flash player plugin for client or server. Always install a fresh copy.
  • Flash Logging is a must have when you setup flash redirection. In most of the cases, logging will be turn ON by default and will be found under Event Viewer > Applications and Service Log > Citrix >Multimedia >Flash
  • When Flash redirection works, PseudoContainer.exe will run on the client device. Spot it using Task Manager >Details/Processes Tab
  • There is a troubleshooting guide for Flash redirection from Citrix and could be found here http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127188
  • Citrix has got a How to guide for setting up Flash and could be found here http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124190
  • Flash Logging could be enabled following the KB http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX141595
  • Check the Flash Redirection compatibility KB from Citrix here http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX136588

That’s it folks. Feel free to post your comments below

 

XenApp & XenDesktop 7.x – Citrix Director Load Balancing using NetScaler

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Here is a quick and easy way to load balance your Citrix Director instances in a XenApp or XenDesktop environment.

Below is my environment

  • Citrix Director servers ( Controller servers in most cases) – director-1 and director-2
  • A NetScaler HA pair ( you can do this on a stand alone NetScaler as well)

 

Monitors

Firstly, create a monitor for the Director services

Navigate to Traffic Management >Load Balancing >Monitors and click Add

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Give it a name and select type as HTTP ( if there are no SSL certificates installed on the Director servers). Click on the Special Parameters tab and under the HTTP Type box, enter GET /Director/LogOn.aspx?cc=true

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Before you click Create, ensure that it is enabled and Secure box is ticked if SSL certs are being used.

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Click Create

Servers

  • Second step is to create Servers

Navigate to Traffic Management >Load Balancing >Servers and click Add

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Add your Director servers here

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Similarly, add the second Director servers as well

Service Groups

  • Now create the Service Group

Navigate to Traffic Management >Load Balancing >Service Groups and click Add

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Give the Service Group a name and protocol is HTTP and click OK

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Now Edit the service group that was just created and click on Service Group members and add the newly created services, director-1 and director-2

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Once added, it will look like the below

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Click Close. Click on the Monitors link as below and add the monitor that was created in Step 1

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Once add the screen will look like the below. Click Close

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The service group will look like the below once the above steps are completed.

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Click Done

Responder Policy

A Responder policy needs to be created to redirect the users from the root of the IIS web server to the Director page.

Please note that Responder feature may need to be enabled first before you can use it.

Click on the + sign next to AppExpert and select Responder. Right click and choose Enable Feature. The yellow exclamation mark will disappear when you do that.

Once enabled, Navigate to AppExpert >Responder > Actions

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Now think of a nice name to call the load balanced Director instance. you will need to add a DNS host entry later on for this name. the name that i have chosen is director

Give it a descriptive name and use the drop down for Type to select Redirect

Under Expressions, type the string here with the quotes as below

"http://director.domain.co.nz/Director"

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Click Create

Time now to create the Responder policy. The one that we created earlier was a Responder action.

Give a descriptive name to the Responder policy and under the Action drop down menu, select the name of the action that was created in previous step. Under the Expressions field,  type

HTTP.REQ.URL.CONTAINS(“Director”).NOT

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Click Create

Virtual Server for Load balancing

Reserve an IP address to use for the virtual server.

On the left, navigate to Traffic Management >Load Balancing >Virtual Servers and click Add on the right. Give it a name and select the Protocol as HTTP

Specify the IP address for virtual server and the port number as 80. Click OK.  Note that in production environments, use secure Director access by using an SSL certificate. For the purpose of demo, we are using an unsecure connection

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On the page where it says, Services and Service Groups, click No Load Balancing Virtual Server ServiceGroup Binding

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Add the service group that was created in earlier steps

Click Continue

On the right hand side under Advanced Settings, Click Persistence

Select SOURCE IP as the Persistence and change the timeout value to 245 ( the default time out value for Director is 245 mins). Leave the rest of the settings as defaults and Click OK

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Now, move on to the right hand side again and select Policies

Select Responder as the policy and Type as Request and click Continue

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Select the redirect policy created earlier and click Bind

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Click Done

Ensure that the virtual server is marked as UP in green.

DNS Config

Create a host A record in DNS for the name which in my case is director

Test the Director URL and ensure that it redirects you to the correct URL and also login and confirm that Director is usable.

That’s all you need to do to setup Director load balancing using NetScaler.

 

 

 

 

Tuning HDX policies for optimal end user performance – XenApp/XenDesktop 7.6 FP3

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With the release of 7.6 feature pack 3, the default graphics delivery behavior has changed and the enhanced Thinwire Compatibility mode is not available via user policies. You will need to take into consideration about the different use cases and the importance of policy precedence to ensure the intended delivery method is used. If FrameHawk is specifically applied to a subset of users, they will use FrameHawk even if a higher priority policy specifies Thinwire Compatibility mode. here is a cheat sheet from Citrix to make your life a lot easier when configuring HDX policies

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XenApp / XenDesktop 7.x – All the PowerShell cmdlets

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Here is a dump of all that you can do via the PowerShell cmdlets in a XenApp /XenDesktop 7.x world. Note that the below has been taken from a XenApp 7.5 controller so there might be SDK updates in the newer releases.

Run the below command below in a PowerShell administrative window

Get-Command -Module citrix*

Output is below

CommandType     Name                                               ModuleName                                          
-----------     ----                                               ----------                                          
Cmdlet          Add-AcctADAccount                                  Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Add-AcctIdentityPoolScope                          Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Add-AdminPermission                                Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Add-AdminRight                                     Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Add-BrokerApplication                              Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Add-BrokerDesktopGroup                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Add-BrokerMachine                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Add-BrokerMachineConfiguration                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Add-BrokerMachinesToDesktopGroup                   Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Add-BrokerScope                                    Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Add-BrokerTag                                      Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Add-BrokerUser                                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Add-ConfigRegisteredServiceInstanceMetadata        Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Add-ConfigServiceGroupMetadata                     Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Add-HypHostingUnitMetadata                         Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Add-HypHostingUnitNetwork                          Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Add-HypHostingUnitStorage                          Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Add-HypHypervisorConnectionAddress                 Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Add-HypHypervisorConnectionMetadata                Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Add-HypHypervisorConnectionScope                   Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Add-HypMetadata                                    Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Add-LicGlobalMetadata                              Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Add-ProvSchemeControllerAddress                    Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Add-ProvSchemeMetadata                             Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Add-ProvSchemeScope                                Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Add-ProvTaskMetadata                               Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Add-SfServerToCluster                              Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Add-SfStorefrontAddress                            Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Add-XDController                                   Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Clear-CtxTraceSession                              Citrix.Common.Commands                              
Cmdlet          ConvertTo-CtxAppVLauncherArg                       Citrix.AppV.Admin.V1                                
Cmdlet          Copy-AcctIdentityPool                              Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Copy-CtxSystemInformation                          Citrix.Common.Commands                              
Cmdlet          Copy-CtxTraceLog                                   Citrix.Common.Commands                              
Cmdlet          Disconnect-BrokerSession                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Export-BrokerDesktopPolicy                         Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Export-ConfigFeatureTable                          Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Export-CtxGPTemplate                               Citrix.Common.GroupPolicy                           
Cmdlet          Export-LogReportCsv                                Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Export-LogReportHtml                               Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-AcctADAccount                                  Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Get-AcctDBConnection                               Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Get-AcctDBSchema                                   Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Get-AcctDBVersionChangeScript                      Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Get-AcctIdentityPool                               Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Get-AcctInstalledDBVersion                         Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Get-AcctScopedObject                               Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Get-AcctService                                    Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Get-AcctServiceAddedCapability                     Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Get-AcctServiceInstance                            Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Get-AcctServiceStatus                              Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Get-AdminAdministrator                             Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminDBConnection                              Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminDBSchema                                  Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminDBVersionChangeScript                     Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminEffectiveAdministrator                    Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminEffectiveRight                            Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminInstalledDBVersion                        Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminPermission                                Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminPermissionGroup                           Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminRevision                                  Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminRole                                      Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminRoleConfiguration                         Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminScope                                     Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminService                                   Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminServiceAddedCapability                    Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminServiceInstance                           Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-AdminServiceStatus                             Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerAccessPolicyRule                         Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerAppAssignmentPolicyRule                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerAppEntitlementPolicyRule                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerApplication                              Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerApplicationInstance                      Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerAssignmentPolicyRule                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerCatalog                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerConfigurationSlot                        Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerConfiguredFTA                            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerConnectionLog                            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerController                               Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerDBConnection                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerDBSchema                                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerDBVersionChangeScript                    Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerDelayedHostingPowerAction                Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerDesktop                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerDesktopGroup                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerDesktopUsage                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerEntitlementPolicyRule                    Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerHostingPowerAction                       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerHypervisorAlert                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerHypervisorConnection                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerIcon                                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerImportedFTA                              Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerInstalledDbVersion                       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerMachine                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerMachineCommand                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerMachineConfiguration                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerMachineStartMenuShortcutIcon             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerMachineStartMenuShortcuts                Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerPowerTimeScheme                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerPrivateDesktop                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerRebootCycle                              Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerRebootSchedule                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerRemotePCAccount                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerResource                                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerScopedObject                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerServiceAddedCapability                   Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerServiceInstance                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerServiceStatus                            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerSession                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerSharedDesktop                            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerSite                                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerTag                                      Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerUnconfiguredMachine                      Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-BrokerUser                                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigDBConnection                             Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigDBSchema                                 Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigDBVersionChangeScript                    Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigEnabledFeature                           Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigInstalledDBVersion                       Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigLicensingModel                           Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigLocalData                                Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigProduct                                  Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigProductEdition                           Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigProductFeature                           Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigProductVersion                           Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigRegisteredServiceInstance                Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigService                                  Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigServiceAddedCapability                   Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigServiceGroup                             Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigServiceInstance                          Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigServiceStatus                            Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-ConfigSite                                     Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Get-CtxAppVApplication                             Citrix.AppV.Admin.V1                                
Cmdlet          Get-CtxAppVApplicationInfo                         Citrix.AppV.Admin.V1                                
Cmdlet          Get-CtxAppVServer                                  Citrix.AppV.Admin.V1                                
Cmdlet          Get-CtxAppVServerSetting                           Citrix.AppV.Admin.V1                                
Cmdlet          Get-CtxConfigurationLogReport                      Citrix.Common.Commands                              
Cmdlet          Get-CtxIcon                                        Citrix.Common.Commands                              
Cmdlet          Get-CtxProfileApplication                          Citrix.Common.Commands                              
Cmdlet          Get-CtxTraceProvider                               Citrix.Common.Commands                              
Cmdlet          Get-CtxTraceSession                                Citrix.Common.Commands                              
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestConfiguration                           Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestDBConnection                            Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestDBSchema                                Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestDBVersionChangeScript                   Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestDefinition                              Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestInstalledDBVersion                      Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestService                                 Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestServiceAddedCapability                  Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestServiceInstance                         Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestServiceStatus                           Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestSuiteDefinition                         Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-EnvTestTask                                    Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-HypConfigurationDataForItem                    Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypConfigurationObjectForItem                  Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypConnectionRegion                            Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypDBConnection                                Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypDBSchema                                    Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypDBVersionChangeScript                       Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypHypervisorPlugin                            Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypInstalledDBVersion                          Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypScopedObject                                Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypService                                     Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypServiceAddedCapability                      Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypServiceInstance                             Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypServiceStatus                               Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypVMMacAddress                                Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypVolumeServiceConfiguration                  Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-HypXenServerAddress                            Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Get-LicAdministrator                               Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Get-LicCertificate                                 Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Get-LicEffectivePermission                         Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Get-LicEntitlements                                Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Get-LicGlobalMetadata                              Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Get-LicInventory                                   Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Get-LicLACEnabledState                             Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Get-LicLACLocation                                 Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Get-LicLocation                                    Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Get-LicServerInfo                                  Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Get-LogDataStore                                   Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogDBConnection                                Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogDBSchema                                    Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogDBVersionChangeScript                       Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogHighLevelOperation                          Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogInstalledDBVersion                          Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogLowLevelOperation                           Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogService                                     Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogServiceAddedCapability                      Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogServiceInstance                             Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogServiceStatus                               Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogSite                                        Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-LogSummary                                     Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Get-MonitorConfiguration                           Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-MonitorDataStore                               Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-MonitorDBConnection                            Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-MonitorDBSchema                                Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-MonitorDBVersionChangeScript                   Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-MonitorInstalledDBVersion                      Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-MonitorService                                 Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-MonitorServiceAddedCapability                  Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-MonitorServiceInstance                         Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-MonitorServiceStatus                           Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Get-ProvDBConnection                               Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvDBSchema                                   Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvDBVersionChangeScript                      Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvInstalledDBVersion                         Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvObjectReference                            Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvScheme                                     Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvSchemeMasterVMImageHistory                 Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvScopedObject                               Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvService                                    Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvServiceAddedCapability                     Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvServiceConfigurationData                   Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvServiceInstance                            Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvServiceStatus                              Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvTask                                       Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-ProvVM                                         Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Get-SfCluster                                      Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-SfDBConnection                                 Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-SfDBSchema                                     Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-SfDBVersionChangeScript                        Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-SfInstalledDBVersion                           Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-SfIsStorefrontInstalled                        Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-SfService                                      Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-SfServiceAddedCapability                       Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-SfServiceInstance                              Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-SfServiceStatus                                Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-SfStorefrontAddress                            Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-SfTask                                         Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Get-UserProfileDefinition                          Citrix.UserProfileManager.Admin.V1                  
Cmdlet          Get-UserProfileManagerServiceAddedCapability       Citrix.UserProfileManager.Admin.V1                  
Cmdlet          Get-UserProfilePath                                Citrix.UserProfileManager.Admin.V1                  
Cmdlet          Get-XDDatabaseSchema                               Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Get-XDLogging                                      Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Get-XDMonitor                                      Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Get-XDSite                                         Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Grant-HypSecurityGroupEgress                       Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Grant-HypSecurityGroupIngress                      Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Group-BrokerDesktop                                Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Group-BrokerMachine                                Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Import-AdminRoleConfiguration                      Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Import-BrokerDesktopPolicy                         Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Import-ConfigFeatureTable                          Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Import-CtxGPTemplate                               Citrix.Common.GroupPolicy                           
Cmdlet          Import-LicLicenseFile                              Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Lock-ProvVM                                        Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          New-AcctADAccount                                  Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          New-AcctIdentityPool                               Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          New-AdminAdministrator                             Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          New-AdminRole                                      Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          New-AdminScope                                     Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          New-BrokerAccessPolicyRule                         Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerAppAssignmentPolicyRule                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerAppEntitlementPolicyRule                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerApplication                              Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerAssignmentPolicyRule                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerCatalog                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerConfigurationSlot                        Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerConfiguredFTA                            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerDelayedHostingPowerAction                Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerDesktopGroup                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerEntitlementPolicyRule                    Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerHostingPowerAction                       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerHypervisorConnection                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerIcon                                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerMachine                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerMachineCommand                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerMachineConfiguration                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerPowerTimeScheme                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerRebootSchedule                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerRemotePCAccount                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerTag                                      Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-BrokerUser                                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          New-CtxAppVServer                                  Citrix.AppV.Admin.V1                                
Cmdlet          New-CtxInformationPackage                          Citrix.Common.Commands                              
Cmdlet          New-EnvTestDiscoveryTargetDefinition               Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          New-HypVMSnapshot                                  Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          New-LicAdministrator                               Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          New-LicAllocation                                  Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          New-ProvScheme                                     Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          New-ProvVM                                         Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          New-SfCluster                                      Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          New-SfStorefrontAddress                            Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          New-UserProfileConfiguration                       Citrix.UserProfileManager.Admin.V1                  
Cmdlet          New-UserProfileShare                               Citrix.UserProfileManager.Admin.V1                  
Cmdlet          New-XDDatabase                                     Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          New-XDSite                                         Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Publish-ProvMasterVmImage                          Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Register-ConfigServiceInstance                     Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Remove-AcctADAccount                               Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Remove-AcctIdentityPool                            Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Remove-AcctIdentityPoolMetadata                    Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Remove-AcctIdentityPoolScope                       Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Remove-AcctServiceMetadata                         Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Remove-AdminAdministrator                          Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Remove-AdminAdministratorMetadata                  Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Remove-AdminPermission                             Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Remove-AdminRight                                  Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Remove-AdminRole                                   Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Remove-AdminRoleMetadata                           Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Remove-AdminScope                                  Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Remove-AdminScopeMetadata                          Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Remove-AdminServiceMetadata                        Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerAccessPolicyRule                      Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerAccessPolicyRuleMetadata              Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerAppAssignmentPolicyRule               Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerAppEntitlementPolicyRule              Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerApplication                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerApplicationInstanceMetadata           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerApplicationMetadata                   Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerAssignmentPolicyRule                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerAssignmentPolicyRuleMetadata          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerCatalog                               Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerCatalogMetadata                       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerConfigurationSlot                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerConfigurationSlotMetadata             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerConfiguredFTA                         Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerControllerMetadata                    Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerDelayedHostingPowerAction             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerDesktopGroup                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerDesktopGroupMetadata                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerEntitlementPolicyRule                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerEntitlementPolicyRuleMetadata         Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerHostingPowerAction                    Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerHostingPowerActionMetadata            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerHypervisorAlertMetadata               Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerHypervisorConnection                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerHypervisorConnectionMetadata          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerIcon                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerIconMetadata                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerImportedFTA                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerMachine                               Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerMachineCommand                        Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerMachineCommandMetadata                Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerMachineConfiguration                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerMachineConfigurationMetadata          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerMachineMetadata                       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerPowerTimeScheme                       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerPowerTimeSchemeMetadata               Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerRebootCycleMetadata                   Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerRebootSchedule                        Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerRemotePCAccount                       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerScope                                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerSessionMetadata                       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerSiteMetadata                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerTag                                   Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerTagMetadata                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-BrokerUser                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Remove-ConfigRegisteredServiceInstanceMetadata     Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Remove-ConfigServiceGroup                          Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Remove-ConfigServiceGroupMetadata                  Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Remove-ConfigServiceMetadata                       Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Remove-ConfigSiteMetadata                          Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Remove-EnvTestServiceMetadata                      Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Remove-EnvTestTask                                 Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Remove-EnvTestTaskMetadata                         Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Remove-HypHostingUnitMetadata                      Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Remove-HypHostingUnitNetwork                       Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Remove-HypHostingUnitStorage                       Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Remove-HypHypervisorConnectionAddress              Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Remove-HypHypervisorConnectionMetadata             Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Remove-HypHypervisorConnectionScope                Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Remove-HypMetadata                                 Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Remove-HypServiceMetadata                          Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Remove-LicAdministrator                            Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Remove-LicGlobalMetadata                           Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Remove-LogOperation                                Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Remove-LogServiceMetadata                          Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Remove-LogSiteMetadata                             Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Remove-MonitorServiceMetadata                      Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Remove-ProvScheme                                  Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Remove-ProvSchemeControllerAddress                 Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Remove-ProvSchemeMasterVMImageHistory              Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Remove-ProvSchemeMetadata                          Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Remove-ProvSchemeScope                             Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Remove-ProvServiceConfigurationData                Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Remove-ProvServiceMetadata                         Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Remove-ProvTask                                    Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Remove-ProvTaskMetadata                            Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Remove-ProvVM                                      Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Remove-SfServerFromCluster                         Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Remove-SfServiceMetadata                           Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Remove-SfTask                                      Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Remove-SfTaskMetadata                              Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Remove-UserProfileShare                            Citrix.UserProfileManager.Admin.V1                  
Cmdlet          Remove-XDController                                Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Remove-XDSite                                      Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Rename-AcctIdentityPool                            Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Rename-AdminRole                                   Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Rename-AdminScope                                  Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Rename-BrokerAccessPolicyRule                      Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Rename-BrokerAppAssignmentPolicyRule               Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Rename-BrokerAppEntitlementPolicyRule              Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Rename-BrokerApplication                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Rename-BrokerAssignmentPolicyRule                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Rename-BrokerCatalog                               Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Rename-BrokerDesktopGroup                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Rename-BrokerEntitlementPolicyRule                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Rename-BrokerMachineConfiguration                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Rename-BrokerPowerTimeScheme                       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Rename-BrokerTag                                   Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Rename-ProvScheme                                  Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Repair-AcctADAccount                               Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Repair-UserProfileShare                            Citrix.UserProfileManager.Admin.V1                  
Cmdlet          Reset-AcctServiceGroupMembership                   Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Reset-AdminServiceGroupMembership                  Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Reset-BrokerLicensingConnection                    Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Reset-BrokerServiceGroupMembership                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Reset-ConfigServiceGroupMembership                 Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Reset-EnvTestServiceGroupMembership                Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Reset-HypServiceGroupMembership                    Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Reset-LogDataStore                                 Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Reset-LogServiceGroupMembership                    Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Reset-MonitorDataStore                             Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Reset-MonitorServiceGroupMembership                Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Reset-ProvServiceGroupMembership                   Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Reset-SfServiceGroupMembership                     Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Revoke-HypSecurityGroupEgress                      Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Revoke-HypSecurityGroupIngress                     Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Send-BrokerSessionMessage                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-AcctDBConnection                               Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Set-AcctIdentityPool                               Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Set-AcctIdentityPoolMetadata                       Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Set-AcctServiceMetadata                            Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Set-AdminAdministrator                             Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Set-AdminAdministratorMetadata                     Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Set-AdminDBConnection                              Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Set-AdminRole                                      Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Set-AdminRoleMetadata                              Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Set-AdminScope                                     Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Set-AdminScopeMetadata                             Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Set-AdminServiceMetadata                           Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerAccessPolicyRule                         Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerAccessPolicyRuleMetadata                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerAppAssignmentPolicyRule                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerAppEntitlementPolicyRule                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerApplication                              Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerApplicationInstanceMetadata              Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerApplicationMetadata                      Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerAssignmentPolicyRule                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerAssignmentPolicyRuleMetadata             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerCatalog                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerCatalogMetadata                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerConfigurationSlotMetadata                Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerControllerMetadata                       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerDBConnection                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerDesktopGroup                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerDesktopGroupMetadata                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerEntitlementPolicyRule                    Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerEntitlementPolicyRuleMetadata            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerHostingPowerAction                       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerHostingPowerActionMetadata               Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerHypervisorAlertMetadata                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerHypervisorConnection                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerHypervisorConnectionMetadata             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerIconMetadata                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerMachine                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerMachineCatalog                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerMachineCommandMetadata                   Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerMachineConfiguration                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerMachineConfigurationMetadata             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerMachineMaintenanceMode                   Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerMachineMetadata                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerPowerTimeScheme                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerPowerTimeSchemeMetadata                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerPrivateDesktop                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerRebootCycleMetadata                      Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerRebootSchedule                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerRemotePCAccount                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerSession                                  Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerSessionMetadata                          Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerSharedDesktop                            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerSite                                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerSiteMetadata                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-BrokerTagMetadata                              Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Set-ConfigDBConnection                             Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Set-ConfigRegisteredServiceInstance                Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Set-ConfigRegisteredServiceInstanceMetadata        Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Set-ConfigServiceGroupMetadata                     Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Set-ConfigServiceMetadata                          Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Set-ConfigSite                                     Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Set-ConfigSiteMetadata                             Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Set-CtxAppVServerSetting                           Citrix.AppV.Admin.V1                                
Cmdlet          Set-EnvTestConfiguration                           Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Set-EnvTestDBConnection                            Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Set-EnvTestServiceMetadata                         Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Set-EnvTestTaskMetadata                            Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Set-HypAdminConnection                             Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Set-HypDBConnection                                Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Set-HypHostingUnitMetadata                         Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Set-HypHostingUnitStorage                          Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Set-HypHypervisorConnectionMetadata                Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Set-HypServiceMetadata                             Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Set-HypVolumeServiceConfiguration                  Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Set-LicAdministrator                               Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Set-LicLACEnabledState                             Citrix.Licensing.Admin.V1                           
Cmdlet          Set-LogDBConnection                                Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Set-LogServiceMetadata                             Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Set-LogSite                                        Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Set-LogSiteMetadata                                Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Set-MonitorConfiguration                           Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Set-MonitorDBConnection                            Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Set-MonitorServiceMetadata                         Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Set-ProvDBConnection                               Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Set-ProvScheme                                     Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Set-ProvSchemeMetadata                             Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Set-ProvServiceConfigurationData                   Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Set-ProvServiceMetadata                            Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Set-ProvTaskMetadata                               Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Set-SfCluster                                      Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Set-SfDBConnection                                 Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Set-SfServiceMetadata                              Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Set-SfTaskMetadata                                 Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Set-UserProfileDefinition                          Citrix.UserProfileManager.Admin.V1                  
Cmdlet          Set-XDLicensing                                    Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Set-XDLogging                                      Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Set-XDMonitor                                      Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Set-XDSiteMetadata                                 Citrix.XenDesktop.Admin                             
Cmdlet          Start-BrokerCatalogPvdImagePrepare                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Start-BrokerMachinePvdImagePrepare                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Start-BrokerNaturalRebootCycle                     Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Start-BrokerRebootCycle                            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Start-CtxTraceSession                              Citrix.Common.Commands                              
Cmdlet          Start-EnvTestTask                                  Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Start-HypVM                                        Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Start-LogHighLevelOperation                        Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Stop-BrokerRebootCycle                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Stop-BrokerSession                                 Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Stop-CtxTraceSession                               Citrix.Common.Commands                              
Cmdlet          Stop-EnvTestTask                                   Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Stop-HypVM                                         Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Stop-LogHighLevelOperation                         Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Stop-ProvTask                                      Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Switch-EnvTestTask                                 Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Switch-ProvTask                                    Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Test-AcctDBConnection                              Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Test-AcctIdentityPoolNameAvailable                 Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Test-AdminAccess                                   Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Test-AdminDBConnection                             Citrix.DelegatedAdmin.Admin.V1                      
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerAccessPolicyRuleNameAvailable           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerAppAssignmentPolicyRuleNameAvailable    Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerAppEntitlementPolicyRuleNameAvailable   Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerApplicationNameAvailable                Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerAssignmentPolicyRuleNameAvailable       Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerCatalogNameAvailable                    Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerDBConnection                            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerDesktopGroupNameAvailable               Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerEntitlementPolicyRuleNameAvailable      Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerLicenseServer                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerMachineNameAvailable                    Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerPowerTimeSchemeNameAvailable            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-BrokerRemotePCAccountNameAvailable            Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Test-ConfigDBConnection                            Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Test-ConfigServiceInstanceAvailability             Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Test-CtxAppVServer                                 Citrix.AppV.Admin.V1                                
Cmdlet          Test-EnvTestDBConnection                           Citrix.EnvTest.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Test-HypDBConnection                               Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Test-HypHostingUnitNameAvailable                   Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Test-HypHypervisorConnectionNameAvailable          Citrix.Host.Admin.V2                                
Cmdlet          Test-LogDBConnection                               Citrix.ConfigurationLogging.Admin.V1                
Cmdlet          Test-MonitorDBConnection                           Citrix.Monitor.Admin.V1                             
Cmdlet          Test-ProvDBConnection                              Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Test-ProvSchemeNameAvailable                       Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Test-SfDBConnection                                Citrix.Storefront.Admin.V1                          
Cmdlet          Test-UserProfileShare                              Citrix.UserProfileManager.Admin.V1                  
Cmdlet          Unlock-AcctADAccount                               Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Unlock-AcctIdentityPool                            Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Unlock-ProvScheme                                  Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Unlock-ProvVM                                      Citrix.MachineCreation.Admin.V2                     
Cmdlet          Unregister-ConfigRegisteredServiceInstance         Citrix.Configuration.Admin.V2                       
Cmdlet          Update-AcctADAccount                               Citrix.AdIdentity.Admin.V2                          
Cmdlet          Update-BrokerImportedFTA                           Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Update-BrokerNameCache                             Citrix.Broker.Admin.V2                              
Cmdlet          Update-HypHypervisorConnection                     Citrix.Host.Admin.V2

Running a QFARM command in XenApp 7.x

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As most of you are aware by now, Qfarm command doesn’t run anymore in XenApp 7.x as it is a part of old IMA architecture.

With FMA, there are several ways to check the Server load, the easiest being using Citrix Studio and checking Load Index.

However, there is another method to check the load from using a PowerShell window and it is as below.

asnp citrix*
Get-BrokerMachine –Filter ‘SessionSupport –eq “MultiSession”’ –Property @(‘DNSName’,’LoadIndex’)

qfarm1

if you need more details, you could add more parameters in your command line as below

Get-BrokerMachine –Filter ‘SessionSupport –eq “MultiSession”’ –Property @(‘DNSName’,'WindowsConnectionSetting','SessionCount',’LoadIndex’)

The result from running the above command is as follows

qfarm2

Hope it’s useful for someone out there!!!

 

 

Power Management of XenDesktop 7.x Delivery Groups – Prevent workloads from powering off when not in use

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There are many a times when you would want to prevent XenDesktop/XenApp 7.x power management from powering off virtual machines in the catalog. If you ever wondered how to do it, here are the steps

Open the PowerShell in administrative mode on the Controller server

asnp citrix*
Set-BrokerDesktopGroup "Delivery group Name" -AutomaticPowerOnForAssignedDuringPeak $True

if the above doesnt fix it, then run the below command as well which will ensure that all the VMs are ready for connections all the time

Set-BrokerDesktopGroup "<Delivery group Name>" -PeakBufferSizePercent 100 -OffPeakBufferSizePercent -100

Citrix License Usage Monitoring using PowerShell

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The below PowerShell script could be used to deliver automated emails on the Citrix License usage for Citrix Admins.

Where do you run this script from?

Citrix License Server

How do you run this?

The script could be saved as a file with an extension of .ps1

Also ensure that you have a folder called report_do_not_delete created in the C: drive on the license server. Also, make the relevant changes in the script marked in Red. Run the script as a scheduled task at a specific time to receive the license usage reports in your mailbox or run it manually from a PowerShell window in Admin mode

#Region Settings
#Your License Server
$CitrixLicenseServer = “yourlicenseservername”

#Do you want to report on licenses with 0 users?
$ShowUnusedLicenses = $true

#Toggle an alert above this percentage of licenses used
$UsageAlertThreshold = 0

#EndRegion Settings

#Region CollectData
#retrieve license information from the license server
$LicenseData = Get-WmiObject -class “Citrix_GT_License_Pool” -namespace “ROOT\CitrixLicensing” -ComputerName $CitrixLicenseServer

$usageReport = @()
$LicenseData | select-object pld -unique | foreach {
$CurrentLicenseInfo = “” | Select-Object License, Count, Usage, pctUsed, Alert
$CurrentLicenseInfo.License = $_.pld
$CurrentLicenseInfo.Count = ($LicenseData | where-object {$_.PLD -eq $CurrentLicenseInfo.License } | measure-object -property Count -sum).sum
$CurrentLicenseInfo.Usage = ($LicenseData | where-object {$_.PLD -eq $CurrentLicenseInfo.License } | measure-object -property InUseCount -sum).sum
$CurrentLicenseInfo.pctUsed = [Math]::Round($CurrentLicenseInfo.Usage / $CurrentLicenseInfo.Count * 100,2)
$CurrentLicenseInfo.Alert = ($CurrentLicenseInfo.pctUsed -gt $UsageAlertThreshold)
if ($ShowUnusedLicenses -and $CurrentLicenseInfo.Usage -eq 0) {
$usageReport += $CurrentLicenseInfo
} elseif ($CurrentLicenseInfo.Usage -ne 0) {
$usageReport += $CurrentLicenseInfo
}
}
#EndRegion CollectData
$usageReport |Select-Object @{name=’Date-time’;Expression={Get-Date} },License,Count,Usage,PctUsed,Alert|ft -AutoSize|Out-File -Append C:\report_do_not_delete\$(get-date -uformat “%Y-%m-%d”).txt
#$usageReport | Format-Table -AutoSize | out-file “C:\reports\usagereport.txt”

#mail
Send-MailMessage -From “sender@sample.com” -To “receiver@sample.com” -Subject “Citrix XenApp license usage – Daily Report” -Body “Citrix XenApp license usage – Daily Report” -SmtpServer “smtp.sample.com” -Attachments “C:\report_do_not_delete\$(get-date -uformat “%Y-%m-%d”).txt”

Storefront Multi-Site and High Availability – Guidelines for an Active-Active datacenter design

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I am currently working on a XenDesktop 7.6 project that is designed to span 2 datacenters, Auckland and Sydney. One of the critical customer requirement is to redirect the user connections to their primary site regardless of their location first and failover to secondary site if the primary site is down. They also have a bunch of call center users in Manila, Philippines who should be assigned to primary site Sydney and Auckland as a failover site. Auckland users must be directed to Auckland XenDesktop site and Sydney users must be redirected to Sydney datacenter for their primary apps and desktops. There were also some additional requirements that are outlined below. In summary, the below are the technical requirements

  1. Redirect users to their nearest NetScalers
  2. Provide single published application icons for the same applications across both sites so that the application access is seamless to the user
  3. Users will be mapped to a primary site( Auckland or Sydney) and will need to failover to the secondary site in case of primary site unavailability
  4. Provide a single URL for application access for the users in all the sites, Auckland, Sydney and Manila.
  5. Any unique applications from both sites should be enumerated.
  6. There are certain applications that should be launched from one particular site for all the users due to the application backend requirements (limitations)

How do we achieve the above? This was something that was impossible to do with Citrix Web Interface up to versions 5.4. Wait, there is some hope.

XenDesktop Site Details

Auckland XenDesktop site consists of XenDesktop 7.6 site alongside Storefront 2.6 cluster with 2 nodes and NetScaler 10.5 for GSLB.

Sydney site also has a distinct XenDesktop site with a SF cluster with 2 nodes and a NetScaler for GSLB ( All same versions as in Auckland)

Design

Let’s look at how each element should be designed to achieve the above stated requirements.

Requirement 1 – Redirect users to their nearest NetScalers

This is quite an easy one and we would have done this countless times in our previous projects – yes, the good old GSLB ( Global Server Load Balancing). I am not going to reinvent the wheel here as there are some fantastic literature about this already from Citrix and from Carl Stalhood. I recommend the one from Carl as he has the latest one based on NetScaler 10.5

Requirement 2 – Provide single published application icons for the same applications across both sites so that the application access is seamless to the user

I am sure this is quite new to a lot of people out there, at least for me it was. This is where Storefront comes in. Citrix has built some excellent intelligence around Storefront to achieve this quite easily. This feature is technically called Resource Aggregation. There is an good explanation on this from Citrix here which i recommend every one to read. The key for this to work is to keep the application and desktop names the same across both XenDesktop sites. The path of application executables must also match for this to work. if there are differences, then they will be shown up as separate applications.

Also please note that AppController applications cannot be aggregated via this method.

Here is an excerpt from Citrix edocs on the above with changes relevant to my setup “Where a desktop or application with the same name and path on the server is available from both Sydney and Auckland, StoreFront aggregates these resources and presents users with a single icon. This behavior is a result of setting the aggregationGroup attribute to AggregationGroup1 for both the Sydney and Auckland deployments. Users clicking on an aggregated icon are typically connected to the resource in their location, where available. However, if a user already has an active session on another deployment that supports session reuse, the user is preferentially connected to the resource on that deployment to minimize the number of sessions used.”

Requirement 3 – Users will be mapped to a primary site( Auckland or Sydney) and will need to failover to the secondary site in case of primary site failure

The idea here is to split the users into 2 groups and assign them a primary site – In the end, one group will have the primary site assigned as Auckland and the other with primary site assigned as Sydney.

The key here is to add the users to separate AD groups for each sites and configure the XenDesktop sites/farms in a specific order (Manage Delivery Controllers in SF) and use the word “Failover” in Storefront configuration. I will get to this in detail in the Setup section below.

Requirement 4 – Provide a single URL for application access for the users in all the sites, Auckland, Sydney and Manila.

GSLB could do this quite easily. Please refer to the above links

Requirement 5 – Any unique applications from both sites should be enumerated.

This is already explained in parts under Requirement 2. If there is a case where any unique applications are to be delivered from one site for all the users, all that is required to be done is to publish that application in the relevant site. The application will appear when the enumeration is done and clicking it will take the users to the site from where the application is published.

Requirement 6 – There are certain applications that should be launched from one particular site for all the users due to the application backend requirements (limitations)

This use case is relevant when there are 2 or more applications with the same name across datacenters and you would need your users to always go to one datacenter to launch it. if the application isnt available at the primary datacenter, then it will be launched from the secondary datacenter. This is done by adding “Primary” and Secondary” keywords in the application description. Doing this will override the application load balancing/Failover rules specified above and will attempt to launch first from the Primary site. if the primary site app isn’t available for any reason, launch it from the Secondary site.

How this is all setup in Storefront

All the configurations are made in Web.Config file residing on the Storefront servers. Please also note that the changes must be made to the config file of the Stores and not the Web version of the Stores.

Now before you get started with the configuration, there are a few things that you need to have beforehand to make your life easier. XML Notepad will be one of them and the other will be the sample configuration from Citrix which could be found here

I recommend using XML Notepad as it makes the Web.Config file look ridiculously simple.

Getting Started

Create the Store as you usually do via Storefront Console. Update the information under “Manage Delivery Controllers”. Also ensure that you add the secondary site info as well in here now. This piece is very important in the process as the names that are used here will be reused in the Storefront configs later on in the Web.Config file. Once you make changes to Web.Config file, you cant change the “Manage Delivery Controllers” section via the GUI anymore for that store.

My Sydney Storefront cluster store will look like this after configuration. Please also refer the order of the sites – very important. First one must be Sydney followed by Auckland.

Sydney Site is called SYD and Auckland site is called AKL

Capture7

Those who have keen eyes must also have noticed that the “Edit” button is missing from the above. This is the file after the changes are made.

My Auckland Storefront cluster will have the above settings reversed.

Now create 2 AD Groups – One to host Sydney users and another one for Auckland Users. Add the users accordingly to it.

Get the SID of these groups – I used Sysinternals PsGetSid tool

Now to the main part, Web.Config file changes

Web.Config file

All StoreFront store configurations can be found in the respective web.config file  .\inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\\web.config.

This is where we add the configuration for StoreFront High availability.

For convenience, I made a backup copy of the web.config file before making any changes.

As you will be making a lot of changes it is much simpler to edit the file direct on the server and not have to keep copying it back and forth to your machine each time.

I recommend you copy the example configuration from Citrix from here

Then in XML notepad, expand citrix.deliveryservices –> resourcesCommon and delete anything underneath resourcesCommon

Then right click citrix.deliveryservices and click paste.

Your web.config should now look like this

Capture8

Delete 2 references to “equivalentFarmSet” under the node “equivalentFarmSets” and the config file should look like the below. You would also need to remove one “farm” and a backup reference. Overall It should look like the below. If it doesn’t, you are not going to achieve what you need.

Capture9

Now start populating the data values on the right and mine looked like the below after the config.

Capture10

The ones marked with red dots are descriptors so you could add what you like there.

Once you have done that, you have half of the logic in place. now for the other half, copy the node “UserFarmMapping” and paste it under “UserFarmMappings”. Look for the extra “s” XD

Once copied, you will need to reverse the entries for the failover to work. The copied part looked like this after the final config

Capture12

This is the final configuration below for the Sydney Storefront cluster. Save the Web.Config file. Close the file. Make sure that the changes are propagated to the other SF servers in the Sydney cluster using the GUI.

Capture13

Now, I will have to repeat the same process for the Auckland Storefront cluster in residing in Auckland datacenter

Just reverse all the settings that are made above and to those who are still confused on how it all should look like at the other end, below are a couple of screenshots from Auckland side.

Capture14

This is how the Store config is via the GUI in Auckland. Look at the order as I want the Auckland site to be processed first followed by Sydney controllers

Capture15

Citrix Studio Configuration

Add the Auckland_Test_Users AD group to the Delivery Group in Auckland site.

Capture16

Now how do you get the failover to happen to Sydney for Auckland users?? Well, create another 2 groups – one for Auckland and another for Sydney. use the Sydney group and add it in Auckland Delivery group. I didn’t talk about the extra 2 groups in the beginning to keep it simple. In fact you will need 2 AD groups per datacenter site. In my screenshot above, i used an account for testing – sydctxuser

Now the Sydney Delivery group is configured as below

Capture17

Please note that the Auckland account is added for failover. Use the second Auckland group in here in a production setup.

There you have it. You have a storefront that is intelligent enough to route the users based on their mappings and provide high availability. Also here is a copy of the configuration part of the web.config file as a sample below. Just change the items marked in BOLD except for “Default” entries

Capture18

 
<resourcesWingConfigurations>
        <resourcesWingConfiguration name="Default" wingName="Default">
          <userFarmMappings>
            <clear />
            <userFarmMapping name="Sydney_user_mapping">
              <groups>
                <group name="BCS\Sydney_Test_Users" sid="S-1-5-21-1752688384-406871208-1000598102-10304" />
              </groups>
              <equivalentFarmSets>
                <equivalentFarmSet name="SYDNEY" loadBalanceMode="Failover" aggregationGroup="AggregationGroup1">
                  <primaryFarmRefs>
                    <farm name="SYD" />
                    <farm name="AKL" />
                  </primaryFarmRefs>
                  <backupFarmRefs></backupFarmRefs>
                </equivalentFarmSet>
              </equivalentFarmSets>
            </userFarmMapping>
            <userFarmMapping name="Auckland_user_mapping">
              <groups>
                <group name="BCS\Auckland_Test_Users" sid="S-1-5-21-1752688384-406871208-1000598102-10303" />
              </groups>
              <equivalentFarmSets>
                <equivalentFarmSet name="AUCKLAND" loadBalanceMode="Failover" aggregationGroup="AggregationGroup1">
                  <primaryFarmRefs>
                    <farm name="AKL" />
                    <farm name="SYD" />
                  </primaryFarmRefs>
                  <backupFarmRefs></backupFarmRefs>
                </equivalentFarmSet>
              </equivalentFarmSets>
            </userFarmMapping>
          </userFarmMappings>
        </resourcesWingConfiguration>
      </resourcesWingConfigurations>           
                    
                    
               

Integrate Azure MFA with NetScaler Gateway for Two-Factor Authentication

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The Network Policy Server (NPS) extension for Azure MFA adds cloud-based MFA capabilities to your authentication infrastructure using your existing servers. With the NPS extension, you can add phone call, text message, or phone app verification to your existing authentication flow without having to install, configure, and maintain new servers. 

This extension was created for organizations that want to protect VPN connections without deploying the Azure MFA Server. The NPS extension acts as an adapter between RADIUS and cloud-based Azure MFA to provide a second factor of authentication for federated or synced users.

When using the NPS extension for Azure MFA, the authentication flow includes the following components: 

  1. NetScaler receives requests from VPN clients or Citrix ICA Proxy users and converts them into RADIUS requests to NPS servers. 
  2. NPS Server connects to Active Directory to perform the primary authentication for the RADIUS requests and, upon success, passes the request to any installed extensions.  
  3. NPS Extension triggers a request to Azure MFA for the secondary authentication. Once the extension receives the response, and if the MFA challenge succeeds, it completes the authentication request by providing the NPS server with security tokens that include an MFA claim, issued by Azure STS.  
  4. Azure MFA communicates with Azure Active Directory to retrieve the user’s details and performs the secondary authentication using a verification method configured to the user.

Pre-Requisites

There are some requirements that are needed to be met for deploying this solution.

Licenses

The NPS Extension for Azure MFA is available to customers with licenses for Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (included with Azure AD Premium, EMS, or an MFA stand-alone license). Consumption-based licenses for Azure MFA such as per user or per authentication licenses are not compatible with the NPS extension.

Libraries

These libraries are installed automatically with the extension.

The Microsoft Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell is installed, if it is not already present, through a configuration script you run as part of the setup process. There is no need to install this module ahead of time if it is not already installed.

Azure Active Directory

Everyone using the NPS extension must be synced to Azure Active Directory using Azure AD Connect, and must be registered for MFA.

When you install the extension, you need the directory ID and admin credentials for your Azure AD tenant. You can find your directory ID in the Azure portal. Sign in as an administrator. Search for and select the Azure Active Directory, then select Properties. Copy the GUID in the Directory ID box and save it. You use this GUID as the tenant ID when you install the NPS extension.

Network requirements

The NPS server needs to be able to communicate with the following URLs over ports 80 and 443.

Additionally, connectivity to the following URLs is required to complete the setup of the adapter using the provided PowerShell script

Sync domain users to the cloud

This step may already be complete on your tenant, but it’s good to double-check that Azure AD Connect has synchronized your databases recently.

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal as an administrator.
  2. Select Azure Active Directory > Azure AD Connect
  3. Verify that your sync status is Enabled and that your last sync was less than an hour ago.

Determine which authentication methods your users can use

There are two factors that affect which authentication methods are available with an NPS extension deployment:

  1. The password encryption algorithm used between the RADIUS client (VPN, Netscaler server, or other) and the NPS servers.
    • PAP supports all the authentication methods of Azure MFA in the cloud: phone call, one-way text message, mobile app notification, OATH hardware tokens, and mobile app verification code.
    • CHAPV2 and EAP support phone call and mobile app notification.
  1. The input methods that the client application such as VPN, Netscaler, or others can handle. For example, does the VPN client have some means to allow the user to type in a verification code from a text or mobile app?

Register users for MFA

Before you deploy and use the NPS extension, users that are required to perform two-step verification need to be registered for MFA. More immediately, to test the extension as you deploy it, you need at least one test account that is fully registered for Multi-Factor Authentication.

Use these steps to get a test account started:

  1. Sign in to https://aka.ms/mfasetup with a test account.
  2. Follow the prompts to set up a verification method.
  3. Create a Conditional Access policy to require multi-factor authentication for the test account.

Important!

Make sure that users have successfully registered for Azure Multi-Factor Authentication. If users have previously only registered for self-service password reset (SSPR), StrongAuthenticationMethods is enabled for their account. Azure Multi-Factor Authentication is enforced when StrongAuthenticationMethods is configured, even if the user only registered for SSPR.

Combined security registration can be enabled that configures SSPR and Azure Multi-Factor Authentication at the same time. For more information, see Enable combined security information registration in Azure Active Directory.

You can also force users to re-register authentication methods if they previously only enabled SSPR.

Installing Network Policy Server Role

Install the Network Policy Server role in your environment. You can choose to install this on any domain joined Server OS machine in the network.

Ideally, you would want to sit close to your Active Directory server just to make it quicker to send traffic for Authentication and Authorization. Or Just install this straight on your AD server, it’s totally up to you.

Installing the NPS role is dead easy. Just fire up your Server Manager and go to Manage – Add Roles and Features. Select Network Policy and Access Services

It will ask you to install Remote Server Administration Tools. Say Add Features.

Click Next (3 times) until you reach the Confirmation page. Click Install

  • Once installed, you will need to register the server in Active Directory.
  • Open the NPS console as below and right click the NPS node and click Register Server in Active Directory

Now it’s time to install the NPS extension for Azure.

Installing and Configuring NPS Extension for Azure MFA

Stop!

1) Before you proceed with this step, you will need to have the Azure Administrator account handy.
2) Ensure that NPS server could access the internet to the URLs specified in section Network Requirements
  • Once downloaded, run the NpsExtnForAzureMfaInstaller.exe as an Administrator. If you want to change the install location, Click Options and choose a different location.
  • if not, just Click Install
  • The setup is quick. Click Close, once finishes.
  • Open PowerShell as Administrator. You have to have your Azure Portal admin credentials handy before this step.
  • Navigate to the install location for NPS Extension C:\Program Files\Microsoft\AzureMfa\Config using PowerShell.
  • Run the Powershell script in that directory AzureMfaNpsExtnConfigSetup.ps1 as below
  • PowerShell will begin the installation of NuGet provider assemblies including MSOnline cmdlets
  • It’s gonna tell you that you are installing this from an untrusted repository. Just say A for Yes to All and continue.
  • Now, PowerShell will take you to portal.azure.com where you will need your Azure AD admin credentials to login.
  • Login with your Azure credentials
  • At this stage, it will ask for the Tenant ID. Copy the Directory ID and paste it in the PS window

It does a few things as below

## It creates a Self-Signed certificate

## It grants private key access to NETWORK SERVICE

## Restarts the NPS Policy Service

You may now exit out of PowerShell as it is time to configure NPS.

Configure NPS

Configure RADIUS Clients

  • Open the NPS console and navigate to RADIUS Clients and Server Folder
  • Expand the folder and Right Click on RADIUS Clients
  • Select New
  • Configure the settings as below
    • Give it a Friendly Name
    • Enter the IP address of the NetScaler (NSIP)
    • Enter a Shared Secret Key (Save this key as we will need this later)
    • Click Ok

Add all the RADIUS clients following the steps above. If you set this up on a NetScaler HA configuration, you will have 2 NetScaler NSIPs to add. You should something similar as follows.

Configure Remote RADIUS Servers

  • Select the node – Remote RADIUS Server Groups
  • Right- click and select New
    • Give a Group Name
    • Click Add
  • Type the IP address or name of the Active Directory Domain Controller Server in there and Click OK.

Tip!

The AD server is required to be added for the Remote RADIUS node. This is where the RADIUS/NPS server triggers the first step of authentication and will be passed on to the AD server for validating the LDAP credentials. If you add the NPS server details in here, it will NOT work!

You can choose to add the FQDN of the domain controller or just use the IP address. You can multiple DCs in here for redundancy.

  • Click on the Authentication/Accounting tab. Configure it as below
  • Click on the Load Balancing tab now and supply the weightage to the servers if you are adding multiple AD servers.
  • You can also configure the Timeout settings in here.

Notice that I have increased the timeout values to 60. This is important when using phone calls and SMS based authentication because they take more time. Even when using the Microsoft Authenticator app, default values are a little too less, so adjust it according to your environment.

Add all the servers that you intend to use as Domain Controllers in here.

Configure Connection Request Policies

It is time now to create a Connection Request Policy. We need a couple of them for this deployment. There are a few things to keep in mind as follows before we proceed to create the policies.

  • The default built-in connection request policy uses NPS as a RADIUS server and processes all authentication requests locally.
  • To configure a server running NPS to act as a RADIUS proxy and forward connection requests to other NPS or RADIUS servers, you must configure a remote RADIUS server group in addition to adding a new connection request policy that specifies conditions and settings that the connection requests must match.
  • If you do not want the NPS to act as a RADIUS server and process connection requests locally, you can delete the default connection request policy.
  • If you want the NPS to act as both a RADIUS server, processing connection requests locally, and as a RADIUS proxy, forwarding some connection requests to a remote RADIUS server group, add a new policy using the following procedure and then verify that the default connection request policy is the last policy processed by placing it last in the list of policies. This is the approach we are using for NetScaler deployment.

Create a Connection Request Policy for No Forward

  • Open the NPS server console and expand Policies node
  • Right Click Connection Request Policies and choose New
  • Give the policy a Name
  • Click Next
  • Click Add
  • Select Client IPv4 Address
  • Click Add again
  • Specify the Client IP v4 Addresses – This will be the NetScaler NSIP if RADIUS isnt load balanced. If load balanced, you must use the Subnet IP of the NetScaler (SNIP)
  • Click Next
  • Configure Authentication as below
  • Click Next

  • Configure the Authentication exactly as below
  • Click Next a couple of times until the Summary page is reached.

Create the second Connection Request Policy for Forwarding

  • Right Click Connection Request Policies and choose New
  • Give the policy a Name
  • Click Next
  • Click Add
  • Select NAS Identifier
  • Click Add again
  • Enter the name of the NAS Identifier – MFA
  • Click OK
  • click Next
  • Configure the Authentication as below – MS-CHAP-v2
Inserting image...
  • Click Next
  • If you are on the Summary page, click Finish

The two connection request policies should be moved up in the policy priority order and should look like the below.

Create the Network Policy

  • Go to the Network Policies node
  • Right Click and select New
  • Give the policy a Name
  • Click Next
  • Click Add
  • Select NAS Identifier
  • Enter MFA in there
  • Click Add again

  • Click Next
  • Select Access Granted

  • Click Next
  • Configure the Authentication methods as below
  • a few more extra clicks will get you to the Summary page.
  • Click Finish on the Summary page.
  • Make the policy that we just created higher up in the order.
  • Disable the existing or built-in Network policies.
  • Disable the existing Network Policies (Default) 
  • Move the new Network Policy to the top and assign it priority 1

Repeat the above steps on all the other NPS servers that you have in the deployment. 

NetScaler Configuration

You can now proceed to create your vServer in NetScaler. It could be a NetScaler Gateway or a VPN vServer. In this post, i will not be showing how to create a NetScaler vServer. It is fairly straightforward and there are tons of blog posts on it on the internet. You will just need to set eveything up just like how you would setup a single factor Gateway portal in NetScaler.

  • You will need to make sure that ports 1812 and 1813 are open from the NetScaler to the backend NPS server (bi-directional)
  • If you have multiple subnet IPs on the NetScaler, use a Net profile to isolate traffic to a particular source IP address.
  • If you aren’t load balancing NetScaler, NSIPs are the source IP address. Otherwise SNIPs will need to be used. (The client IPv4 address entries that you made in the previous step will change accordingly)

Create RADIUS Policies and Profiles

  • Go to NetScaler Gateway node – Policies – Authentication – RADIUS
  • Go to Servers tab and click Add
  • Give a name to the Server profile
  • Enter the IP address of the NPS server
  • Port is 1812
  • Enter the Shared Secret Key
  • Change the time out to 60 seconds if you intend to use phone calls, SMS or phone app auth.
  • Test the connection and ensure that you get all green
  • Click More
  • Enter the NAS ID here – MFA
  • Password encoding as mschapv2
  • Click Create
  • Similarly, create additional RADIUS servers using the same steps above.

Create RADIUS policies now to attach the RADIUS server profiles so that it could be bound to vServers.

  • Create a RADIUS policy and attach the profile as below

Once, your vServer is ready, the RADIUS policy could be attached to the vServer as a primary authentication. Doing this will still perform Active Directory LDAP authentication after which the NPS extension will check the second factor authentication.

You can now test with an account that is MFA enabled. If everything is setup correctly, MFA will work fine and prompt with a second factor.

Troubleshooting

  • Always check the Authentication server status of RADIUS server in NetScaler. It should be green when the traffic is allowed. if it is not, check why? Work with your NW team to figure out why the traffic doesnt reach the NPS backend or being returned back.
  • Add a DNS A record entry for the Remote URL for Citrix access
  • If the NetScaler IPs (NSIP) don’t work, try the Subnet IP as RADIUS clients. If you make a change, ensure that the change is reflected in the Network Policies too.
  • On NetScalers where multiple subnet IPs are used, isolate the traffic using NET Profiles.
  • Check aaad.debug logs on NetScaler.
    • if you get the below, it is mosty likely an issue with the RADIUS client IPs. It is just that the wrong IP is being used.

No valid RADIUS responses received.

Rejecting with error code 4004

  • Look out for Routing issues. If your NPS servers are sitting in a different subnet as compared to NetScaler IPs, looking at the Route table could shed some light. If routes are missing, add them. But please remember not to break existing traffic. If unsure, ask the network guy for assistance.
  • Check the Dial-In tab in AD properties for the user. Ensure that the user is allowed access. Or You can configure NPS to override the AD settings by setting the below (look for the red dot below)
  • Use the Health Check tool for Azure MFA
  • Event Logging – Ensure that NPS logs are turned ON. Log files will be found at C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles. Make sure that the logs are set to DTS compliant. Event Viewer is also a reliable source.
  • If you don’t want to limit non-MFA users from accessing the portal, you can add the below registry keys to the NPS servers. This will allow users who aren’t registered in Azure MFA to continue to authenticate using LDAP authentication. This is vital during migration phase. However, this setting must be removed before you move into production.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\AzureMfa
REG_SZ=REQUIRE_USER_MATCH
Value=FALSE

Hope this helps! Please feel free to comment or provide feedback.

Grayed Out Disk Cache Size in Citrix MCS – XenApp 7.15 LTSR

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To all the people out there who had issues when trying to create a machine catalog on versions above 7.9 and wondered why the Disk Cache option is greyed out, here is a potential answer to that issue. This is exactly what I ran into while recreating the catalogs for a customer who wanted to expand their disk space for their XenApp workloads. As you probably might know, the only way to expand the C drive space is by recreating the machine catalog.

XenApp version is 7.15 LTSR which was deployed originally as XenApp 7.5 and later upgraded to 7.15 LTSR version meaning that the original catalogs weren’t created using MCSIO.

The catalogs that needed Citrix MCSIO turned ON didn’t have the disk cache feature alive in the Catalog creation wizard. See the picture below.

Citrix MCSIO was first introduced in XenApp 7.9 which was supposed to be an alternative to PVS’s own memory cache feature. It is still debatable that if MCS’s memory cache feature is as good as PVS, but admins these days have an alternative if they want to give their workloads a bit of performance boost while running MCS.

Now, back to the issue! The fix lies in the Hosting Node in Studio where you have/had configured the connection to your hypervisor. In my case, when they were originally created, there was no MCSIO feature around so never had storage options to turn ON back then.

You could either edit the existing Resources under existing Connections.

I chose to create a new Resource under an existing Connection.

You will basically need to choose a Cluster in your hypervisor farm and choose between Local and Shared storage.

Under Storage Selection, select the datastores for OS, PvD and Temporary Cache. Though PvD is deprecated, it doesnt let you progress unless PvD option is ticked.

Choose a Name for your Resource and select the Network Adapter.

Click Next

Click Finish at the Summary page.

Note – if your MCSIO driver version is older than 7.15.0.38, you will most likely have performance issues. I am running XenApp 7.15 LTSR CU3 which already has the above driver version.

Once you have setup your new Resource under Hosting node, head over to the Machine Catalog node in Studio.

Create a new Machine Catalog and you will see that the Disk Cache option is alive.

Hope this helps somebody out there!

Desktop Restart – Citrix Storefront Power Management

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If you have noticed the Restart button for published desktops in Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 1912 LTSR recently and wondered why in the world Citrix would give users access to users to restart machines, you are not alone. Make no mistake, this is a perfectly fine setting to be enabled out-of-the-box for VDI deployments where just Desktop OSes are being published or on the delivery group that contains Desktop OSes. You would want your users to be able to restart the desktop every now and then anyway.

Now after going through the Citrix SDK documentation, I found the below notes for the -AllowRestart argument that governs the restart button.

AllowRestart (System.Boolean) Indicates if the user can restart sessions delivered from the rule’s desktop group. Session restart is handled as follows: For sessions on single-session power-managed machines, the machine is powered off, and a new session launch request made; for sessions on multi-session machines, a logoff request is issued to the session, and a new session launch request made; otherwise the property is ignored.

So, it isn’t too bad to have that button available for RDSH delivery groups but should probably be called something else. The name “restart” has a negative vibe to it in multi-session world. lol

The option\button will appear like the below.

How would you remove the Restart option?

You will need to do this via Powershell.

asnp citrix*
Get-BrokerAccessPolicyRule

Find the delivery group that has RDSH based published desktops and take a note of the Name parameter. You can do this on all the delivery groups if you want to disable this button for all published desktops, both RDSH and VDI.

Run the below command to find the value for the delivery group that you want to turn OFF the setting for. The parameter we are looking for is AllowRestart. When the value is True, Restart button is shown. Setting it to False will remove the button from Storefront.

Get-BrokerAccessPolicyRule -Name "XA-W2K16-DG-CORE_Direct_1"

Now, run the below command to turn off the Restart button

Set-BrokerAccessPolicyRule -Name "XA-W2K16-DG-CORE_Direct_1" -AllowRestart $False

You may need to do this for the AG version and Direct version of the delivery group.

Direct Version
Access Gateway version

Refresh the Storefront page via gateway and internally to see the results.

That’s all to it folks. Have a good one!