XenDesktops not registering with 5.6 Feature Pack 1 [Resolved]

I had some machines on an XenDesktop 5.6 farm that were not registering. [Reviewing this again, I realize that it was actually ALL of the machines]  The first place I went to check was on in the Desktop’s registry to make sure the DDCs were correct:  HKLM\Software\Citrix with HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent\ListOfDDCs
WOW6432Node since this particular system was a 64 bit Windows 7 box.  The registry key had both of the DDCs listed with a space between then.  Check.  Event Viewer just showed a generic message stating a failure to register with any DDCs.

Looking at my Eventlog on the actual DDC, I came across this message : 
The Citrix Broker Service failed to determine the base settings needed for the Virtual Desktop Agent of machine ‘<FDQN>’
 

The stated resolution is to check generic KB article CTX126990 but the real answer for me was in CTX129644!

I had some weird licensing issue where my license server information was corrupted/blanked out.  After following the instructions in CTX129644, all machines began registering fine.

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Microsoft Office 2013 Preview is available for download.

So if you consider yourself the bleeding edge type, you might want to head over to Microsoft today and check out their Office 2013 Preview βeta!

The preview is a Click-To-Run version that can be run alongside your standard 2007/2010 versions.  Moshe Silber sent of this Lync 2013 screenshot showing off the new Tabbed Conversation view.

You can grab the bits here @
Microsoft.com/Office/Preview/

 

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XD5 to XD5.6 : Make sure you have some Desktop Groups Defined.

So here is a very unlikely scenario that I ran into recently.  I had an installation of XD5 at a client site and due to some scheduling particulars, I hadn’t been back to work on the XenDesktop installation for some time.  Fast forward a bit and I am revisiting the XD installation and figure before moving forward, let me upgrade the site to XenDesktop 5.6 Feature Pack 1!  The upgrade process moved through without a hitch on all the controllers until I tried to create my first published group. 

No Database user Found.

Grrr.. Apparently upgrading a XenDesktop site without any Desktop Groups will cause the upgrade to silently fail.
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX133067/

Sure, I could have scoured the Citrix KB site to find that article prior to upgrading but it’s summertime! :)  Ohh Well.. Time for a quick rebuild of the controllers, DB and site.

Although the situation and scenario is unlikely to happen to YOU, I felt compelled to write a quick post about it so that I could feel like it wasn’t a TOTAL waste of time!

Enjoy your Summer!

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Citrix Provisioning Services 6.1 error–IPC error 0xA0070002

I’ve been working a lot with Citrix Provisioning Services 6.1 and I REALLY dig the vDisk versioning in it.  Sort of reminds me of snapshot management in VMware.  Makes dealing with various vDisk updates and images much more manageable.

Everything was working great until recently when this IPC error starting popping up.  I am not sure of the environment changes that started the issue but can gladly report that it has been fixed.

The IPC error basically occurred whenever I tried any disk related function.  New versions or new vDisks all resulted in an IPC error.  At the time, I was not up to date on my 6.1 hotfixes so I applied 002, 003, 005 & 006.  004 was a target hotfix and since I couldn’t create versions of my vDisk, I skipped it.  The hotfixes unfortunately did not resolve the issue.  A call to tech support and the following registry keys were sent over to me:

Create the following registry entry under the Subkey and set it to the IP address of the Provisioning Services NIC on the server:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\ProvisioningServices\Manager

Registry entry: GeneralInetAddr

Data type: REG_SZ

Value: <PVS IP ADDRESS>:6909

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\ProvisioningServices\IPC

Registry entry: MsgTimeout

Data type: DWORD

Value: Range between 1 second to 3600 seconds. The default MsgTimeout value is 60 seconds.

Restart the Citrix Provisioning Services Soap Server and Provisioning Services Stream Service.

I set my MsgTimeout to 60 seconds.  [Issue Resolved].

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How to Back Up Your Citrix Netscaler

Here is a great write up by Sam Jacobs of the IPM Tech Dev team.

When one thinks of backing up a Netscaler, the first thing that comes to mind is the Netscaler configuration file, ns.conf. There are a number of other files, however, which are also crucial to the operation of your appliance, for example, your license file(s), SSL certificate(s), etc. At the very least, it would be time-consuming to locate, download, install and reconfigure the above in the event of an appliance failure.

Most of the above files, can be found somewhere in the /nsconfig directory hierarchy. The attached ZIP file, NSBackup.zip contains a .cmd file which will allow you to back up those critical files. Each time that it is executed, NSBackup creates a date/time-stamped copy of the entire /nsconfig subdirectory hierarchy at the location that you specify. It uses the pscp utility (also included in the ZIP), a secure FTP client, to do its work.

No installation is required. Simply:

• UnZIP the attached into any directory (e.g. C:\NSBackup)
• Open a command prompt
• Change to the C:\NSBackup directory, and enter:

NSBackup <NS management IP> <nsPassword>

If pscp.exe is not in the current working directory, make sure that you add the path to it on line 8 of the .cmd file.

If you have made any source code modifications (for example, customized the Netscaler logon page - index.html), NSBackup will NOT copy them, and you will need to do so manually (or create a script to back them up).

You may also use Citrix Command Center, http://community.citrix.com/display/ns/Citrix+Command+Center, which is available at no charge if you are licensed for any of the following:

• Citrix Netscaler Enterprise / Platinum Editions
• Access Gateway Enterprise Edition
• WANScaler – all editions

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