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Wednesday 21 March 2012

XenApp 6.5 Windows Server Customization

Please check out www.kaztechsolutions.co.uk for more of my technical posts, alternately please call us on 01932 268289. 

These are a list of settings that i change to a XenApp server (6 and above) before i start the install of XenApp, if you have a any additional changes that you make please let me know.  A lot of these configurations are taken from the this XenApp guide, XenAppBlog.com and my own experiences.

Configure Windows 2008 R2 with license and IP information.
Apply SP2 and latest windows updates as required.
Setup the page file to run on a drive that doesn't contain any apps - look here for info on setting up page file.
Change power setting to high performance.

Turn off IE ESC (Enhanced Security) through server manager.
Disable Data Execution Prevention on Windows 2008 : bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff
Disable Windows animated boot : bcdedit /set bootux disabled

Disable Windows Scheduled tasks

  • Application Experience > AitAgent
  • Application Experience > ProgramDataUpdater
  • Autochk > Proxy
  • Customer Experience Improvement Program > everything under this node (Consolidator, KernelCeipTask, UsbCeip, ServerCeipAssistant, ServerRoleCollector, ServerRoleUsageCollector)
  • Defrag > ScheduledDefrag
  • DiskDiagnostic > Microsoft-Windows-DiskDiagnosticDataCollector
  • Power Efficiency Diagnostics > AnalyzeSystem
  • Server Manager > ServerManager
  • Windows Error Reporting > QueueReporting
Configure GPO's for XA Server - 
  • Disable UAC - User Account Control: Detect application installations and prompt for elevation
  • Disable Windows Services through GPO - Windows Firewall, Multimedia Class Scheduler, Network List Service, Network Location Awareness, Windows Defender
  • Disable Windows Updates - Configure Automatic Updates: Disabled
  • Disable Error Reporting - Disable Windows Error Reporting: Enabled
  • Disable CEIP - Turn off Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program: Enabled
  • Disable System Restore - Turn off System Restore: Enabled
  • Disable Printer mappings for RDP sessions - Do not allow client printer redirection: Enabled
  • Use Windows Group Policy Preferences to apply the following registry changes.
Hide System Hard Error Messages - HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows
“ErrorMode”=dword:00000002
Spooler Warning Events - HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Providers
“EventLog”=dword:00000001
Paging of the ExecutiveHKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
“DisablePagingExecutive”=dword:00000001
Registry Lazy Flush Interval HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Configuration Manager\
“RegistryLazyFlushInterval”=dword:00000060 (dec)
Worker Threads HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Executive\
“AdditionalCriticalWorkerThreads”=dword:00000064 (dec)
SMB 1.0 Client Optimization Note: Tuning SMB 1.0 is required in mixed (2003 / 2008 R2) environments, where SMB 2.0 cannot be used.
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Lanmanworkstation\Parameters

"MaxCmds"=dword:00002048 (dec)
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MRxSmb\Parameters
"MultiUserEnabled"=dword:00000001
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
NoRemoteRecursiveEvents”=dword:00000001
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ Lanmanserver\Parameters
"MaxWorkItems"=dword:00008192 (dec)
"MaxMpxCt"=dword:00002048 (dec)
"MaxRawWorkItems"=dword:00000512 (dec)
"MaxFreeConnections"=dword:00000100 (dec)
"MinFreeConnections"=dword:00000032 (dec)
SMB 2.x Client Tuning - HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\ LanmanWorkstation\Parameters
“DisableBandwidthThrottling"=dword:00000001
“DisableLargeMtu”=dword:00000000
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
"NoRemoteRecursiveEvents”=dword:00000001
Disable Logon Screensaver - HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
"ScreenSaveActive"="0"

And remember to optimize your Av as well using the following Citrix guide.


For more XenApp registry changes have a look at XenApp 6 Tuning GPO for Windows 2008 on XenAppBlog.com

NOTE:  Once you have your GPO setup the way you like it take a backup of it using GPMC for future use, as once you have these settings configured within a GPO you can simply import these settings back in.

Monday 19 March 2012

Disable Language Bar

Please check out www.kaztechsolutions.co.uk for more of my technical posts, alternately please call us on 01932 268289. 

One thing i do like to do on all my XenApps Server's is to disable the language bar through the reistry on each XA server. 

Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Citrix/wfshell/TWI
Value Name: SeamlessFlags
Value Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0x40000


http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX101644 


Enabling Desktop Viewer on XA and XD

Please check out www.kaztechsolutions.co.uk for more of my technical posts, alternately please call us on 01932 268289. 

Some times you may notice that the desktop viewer bar is not avaliable when you connect to a XD or XA but you can enable this with the following to ensure that the Desktop Viewer bar is always used for XD session while you have implemented the preceding change for a single Web Interface site that contains both XenDesktop farm and XenApp farm.





  • Ensure that the c:\inetpub\wwwroot\citrix\SiteName\conf\default.ica file does not contain a line ConnectionBar=0 or ConnectionBar=1
  • If you require an app to show as a desktop change the following .conf file




  • Ensure that the c:\inetpub\wwwroot\citrix\SiteName\conf\webinterface.conf file has the line, ShowDesktopViewer=On. The default content for this line could be #ShowDesktopView=Off.

Wednesday 14 March 2012

XenApp 6.5 Planning

Please check out www.kaztechsolutions.co.uk for more of my technical posts, alternately please call us on 01932 268289. 

I always find when doing any kind of Citrix deployments whether it be test labs, pre-production or live systems there is an awful lot to consider before you even start to plan your roll out - and rightly so. A lot of this is for my own use and just to jog my memory form time to time and also to make sure i don't miss anything out of the planning side of things. If you would like to add something to this or let me know the way you go about planning a XenApp 6.5 please let me know.


Hardware and Software considerations
  • What hardware will you be using? How much RAM does the server, what are the CPU's and their spec, what disks are going to be used and their speed.
  • Windows licensing? What edition of OS are you going to be using? Std, Ent or DataCenter.
  • Do you have your Windows RDS licensing?
  • What OS do you plan to install XenApp on and is it 32bit of 64bit?
  • What hypervisor do you plan on using? XenServer, VMware, Hyper-V?
  • What Citrix Licensing do you have and what model do you have? Concurrent or user/device? 

Application/User Considerations
Networking Considerations 

XenApp Server Configuration Considerations
Installing XenApp

Configuring XenApp
- Are you joining an existing farm or a new one?
- If creating a new farm have the name and domain ready.
- Select the data store database type and connection information.
- Do you have the database credentials?
- Are you going to use shadowing?
- What server mode and zone name?
- Do you have the licensing information?
XenApp Security
Migration Considerations