Some people have been treating this Lockdown from Coronavirus like a time to slow down. Not us! My small little team and I have been doing all sorts of things – and we aren’t even close to slowing down! Here’s some updates of what is going on with us, with Citrix and our Citrix Hero community!

The Citrix Hero Community continues to grow, especially after I published “Be A Citrix Hero“. We are now just under 400 members strong. The community is currently free to join. Powered by Mighty Networks, this fits three primary criteria you have asked for:

1. A Mobile App – Download Mighty Networks and find “Citrix Heroes” to join. You can opt to get updates right to the app instead of via email – something I like a great deal. I belong to five Mighty Networks right now and being able to have mobile notifications saves a lot of headache!
2. Not On Facebook – No Gaslighting, fighting or distractions – our community is JUST our community – yet operates as a social network! This includes the ability to chat! Many of you have taken advantage of chatting with each other and myself. It works great!
3. Real Life Talk, Not Just Tech Support – Of course, this is a hard one for many tech folks to break free from but this is a forum that allows for a more private and exclusive community where we can be real with each other.

So I wanted to share some recent wins from our community, brag a little bit and invite you to join us!

By the way – I’m hosting a few Ask Me Anything sessions this month. The only way you will get access is if you’re part of the community.

• Mike shared how as the sole IT person for 7 health centers, he was able to upgrade a XenApp 6.5 farm to a more modern CVAD environment.
• Ken started a discussion about PVS Boot Device Manager among some others.
• I asked people to share some WINS last week and got some very cool notes
  • Keegan made some Citrix Hypervisor updates to better support nVidia GRID
  • Ahmed fixed a user workaround and showed a user how to print to a local printer from her Citrix Desktop (little things matter!)
  • Shack rocked some App Layering that reduced 50 images down to 2!
  • Mike rolled out FSLogix and WEM to reduce logon times from over a minute to under 20 seconds! He’s loving PVS, by the way!
  • Benjamin put in some smooth operating remote access for employees that scaled from 20 to 700 users!
  • Venkatesh rolled out RemotePC to eliminate RDP hassles.
  • Ken finished a 6.5 to 7 1912 migration
  • Kitaab used Machine Creation Services on 7.15 to go from 100 WFH users to 1200!

Needless to say- I’m really proud of my community and hope you’ll join us soon!

Citrix just released Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 1912 LTSR Cumulative Update 1.

There are a few key things here – one being that StoreFront is no longer part of the “Core Components” install page which hopefully will stop people from installing it on the same server as the Delivery components. It may work for a POC but it really isn’t great for production. Trust me.

A few things to remember before you update any components:

• To maintain LTSR support, all components must be at the SAME REVISION LEVEL for each Cumulative Update. That means, for example – if you have controllers at 1912.0.1000 you need to have Browser Content Redirection 15.19.1000.
• Your FIRST step should always be checking the SA date of your licenses. They must all expire later than April 15, 2020. If the CSS/SA date is before that, download new licenses before your upgrade or you may not be able to start machines.
• Note that if you use the same licensing server for multiple legacy components, 11.16.3.0 does NOT support XenApp 6.5 concurrent unless you update to build 29000

Learning Opportunities During Lockdown

I pointed out in a presentation recently that a high number of us that were commuting previously now have extra time on their hands! What better way to use that time than to learn new skillsets, expand on what you know, or work on building your next career move?

So during the month of May I am launching THREE new areas to help you do just that!