Weblog Sander Wilmink

Farm Commander for  looks a lot like ‘Norton Commander’ and ‘Total Commander’ but the functionality is very different. With Total Commander both the left and right panel are file systems. With Farm Commander the left Panel is a file system, where you can select files and directories. In the right panel are the Windows 2000/XP/Citrix/Terminal/Domain workstations/servers listed. First you select files in the left panel, and then you select the servers in the right panel.  Then you choose your action, copy, move or delete. Farm Commander then copies, deletes, and/or moves the selected files to/from the selected server. Especially in Citrix/Terminal Server environments you need to copy files from or to several servers at once. So time is gained here, Farm Commander also features a detailed report of each action. As administrator you must know if there were failures in the taken actions. (Read only/not enough rights)

In version 1.1 the following new features where added and/or addressed:

• Event viewer searcher added
• Bug fixes when searching AD
• Faster folder searching
• No longer crashes when current device is removed
• Proper windows vista/7 support
• Better detection of absence of Citrix

To learn more and to download the above file, please visit: Gourami Farm Commander Version 1.1 for Citrix, Terminal Services and VMware

The RDS (Terminal Server) team blog announces the release of an App-V for Terminal Services Whitepaper:

 ”We are proud to announce the availability of the white paper “Application Virtualization 4.5 for Terminal Services.”  This white paper discusses the benefits, configurations, and considerations when planning a Terminal Services (TS) solution with Microsoft Application Virtualization for TS (App-V for TS).  Many customers want to find out the best way to configure and/or deploy App-V for TS on terminal servers.  This paper includes topics ranging from choosing an App-V for TS application delivery method to configuring RemoteApp and App-V for TS to work together.  We hope you find this document an indispensible read if you are implementing App-V for TS.”

Download the whitepaper here

I got this info from Softgridblog.com and thought it was interesting enough to share with you. I found this post when I had issues with sequencing a application.

When you are sequencing an application the Windows Installer service might give you an error during monitoring phase.

Error 1719. Windows Installer service could not be accessed. Contact your support personnel to verify that it is properly registered and enabled.

When the application is installed without the sequencer monitoring, the installation finishes without an error and the application works fine.

In this particular situation the sequencer was running Windows Server 2003 and was accessed remotely through a Remote Desktop Connection (mstsc.exe).

The solution to this issue is create a console RDP session to the sequencer machine instead of an regular RDP session. 

You can connect to a console session through the following command:

mstsc /console /v:<server>

Thanks to my colleagues for publishing and solving this issue!

update for Windows Server 2008:
“mstsc /console” has been replaced with “mstsc /admin” on newer Windows Operating Systems (Windows 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 and up). So the correct syntax would then be:

mstsc /admin /v:<server>

Many driver problems in the Terminal Services environment revolve around poor multi-threaded performance, which in turn can cause Print Spooler instability. Problematic multi-threaded performance is usually exposed when multiple users connect to a Terminal Server simultaneously using the same print driver. Symptoms include the failure to autocreate client printers, increased thread count of the Printer Spooler and/or Citrix Print Manager services, and possibly the unresponsiveness and/or unexpected termination of these services (crashes).

This tool can be used to simulate multiple sessions autocreating printers using the same print driver.

It can also be used to compare the following among various drivers:

• CPU load incurred while creating a printer using a particular driver
• Time required to successfully create a printer using a particular driver

Note: The current version of the tool does not test concurrent printer capabilities, settings, or actual printing calls, which are also possible causes of printing crashes. Therefore, good stress results do not mean that printers are actually working or certified.

Go to the Citrix Support site for more information and download. CTX109374

An overview of application compatibility issues on TS

Some of the common compatibility issues with TS are highlighted here-in. For more information on the best practices for
developing applications for TS please refer to the TS Programming Guidelines.

Application installation

Most of application installations are designed for a single user client system which causes problems in the Terminal Services environment. Usually the installation does not create files and registries that would be usable by all the other users (other than the administrative user who is doing the install).

Concurrent usage of application

Files, registries, pipes, IP address, ports etc. are used concurrently by multiple instances of applications in a TS environment. If an application is not designed to take care of such concurrent access/modification scenarios then it might face compatibility issues on TS.Concurrent modification of these resources leads to data corruption and other unexpected behavior.

Multi-user environment

Having your application in a multi-user environment makes it vulnerable to privacy breach and unexpected sharing of data and user preference.

Performance

TS sessions work over networks where multiple users log on to a Windows Server machine over a network. When network bandwidth or machine hardware is a constraint, performance may become a bottleneck for applications.

Devices on TS

While TS does redirect clipboard, printers and drives to allow seamless integration from the client to the server. Several features and devices might not be available over a remote session.

TS Application Analyzer

TS Application Analyzer is a runtime program analysis tool to enable administrators/users to determine if they can deploy an application on TS with a degree of confidence. It provides a summary of TS incompatible behaviour of an application and provides recommendation indicating the confidence level for deploying the application on TS. The classes of Application Compatibility issues that are being targeted for detection are:

• Shared resources – Files/registries
• Access/Privilege issues
• Windows API calls with special cases for TS

The tool does the following:

1. Enables the administrators to analyze test runs on the given binary.
2. Decides whether the binary will face any problems when deployed on TS. If yes, finds out the type of the problem and its severity.
3. Presents this information in a readable format and summarizes the findings along with a recommendation.
4. The findings can be exported and analyzed viewed at some other machine.
5. The tool can be deployed on a set of user machines or test machine (running the client OS OR the TS server OS) seamlessly. The findings can be gathered at the administrator’s machine. The administrator goes through the findings on all the machines and then makes a decision whether the application can be deployed on TS or not.

Using the tool and interpreting the results

For the full documentation/step-by-step details of the tool please refer to the tool user guide here.
This is not a step-by-step guide but is rather some key things to keep in mind when using the tool –

The tool primarily focuses on the “Concurrent usage” and the “Multi-user environment” related issues. The tool highlights potential problems in an application which might not always manifest. It is essential to understand this in order to correctly interpret and use the results effectively.

The tool breaks down issues into several categories by issue type like File, Registry etc. The tool also breaks down the issues into 2 severity levels “Warnings” and “Problems”.

For most of the times you would want to focus only on the “Problems” unless you are actually trying to pin-point a problem source (which an app-writer or tester might do).

One key thing to understand about a “Problem” is that the tool has detected that a non-TS-compatible API call has been made by the application but this call itself can be a part of a condition in the application.

So it can say “try to open this file as an administrator if you can or if you can’t then just open it as a normal user” but for the tool this would still mean that the application tried to open a file as an administrator and it would flag a “Problem”

So “Problems” are potential problems and need to be analyzed in order to interpret them correctly.

Links to Other Resources

TS at TechNet
TS product homepage
Roaming profiles and folder redirection
TS Programming Guidelines