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Citrix Interview Questions1) Explain Citrix Logon Process.

2) Purpose of Zone

Zone is subset of Farm. It is a grouping of Presentation Servers that shares the common Data Collector

3) When would you suggest creating new zones?

Users need to access the closest application in a geographically dispersed environment Presentation Server is part of a disaster plan that fails over to an alternate location

The same published applications are hosted in multiple zones

User-specific backend data is located in other locations than the main data center

4) How big a zone can get?

It’s just a matter of looking at the traffic patterns. For instance, do you want one single data collector updating 1000 servers whenever you make a change to the environment (one zone), or do you want two data collectors to each update only 500 servers (one zone).

5) When would you suggest creating new farm?

When you want the member servers talk to different datastore – like a test environment;

6) What is a Data Store?This is the place where all the static information are stored. Farm configuration information, Published Application configurations, Server configurations, Static policy configuration, XenApp administrator accounts, and Printer configurations) that all servers can refer.

7) How to migrate datastore database from SQL2000 to SQL2005 OR How to recover datastore database?Restore the DB to new serverChange mf20.dsn on all servers starting with data collectorsRestart IMA service on all servers

8) How to find out the datastore database server name?

Examine the DSN file which contains the connection details to the database.C:\Program Files\Citrix\Independent Management Architecture\MF20.dsnThe following is an example of an MF20.dsn file from a server connecting to a remote SQL Server instance:[ODBC]DRIVER=SQL ServerUID=useraccountAddress=MySqlServer,1433Network=DBMSSOCNDATABASE=myfarmdbWSID=MyMfServerAPP=Citrix IMASERVER=MySqlServer

9) How to verify Datastore DB connectivity?

To determine if a server is communicating regularly with the data store, check the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\CITRIX\IMA\DataStoreFailureTime

If the value is all zeros, the MetaFrame server is communicating with the data store.

10) How often does the member servers check datastore database?

By default, every 30 minutes.

11) what happens if datastore connectivity is lost?

If the server loses its connection to the central data store, there’s no limit to how long it will continue to function. (In MetaFrame XP, this is limited to 48 or 96 hours, but that was because the data store also store license information.) But today, the server can run forever from the LHC and won’t even skip a beat if the central connection is lost. In fact now you can even reboot the server when the central data store is down, and the IMA service will start from the LHC with out any problem. (Older versions of MetaFrame required a registry modification to start the IMA service from the LHC.)

12) How will you remove Citrix server from the farm?If the server is unresponsive, remove it by right click on server in the console. For functional server, remove it from add/remove programsuse CHFARM command

13) How will you remove citrix server from the datastore DB?When citrix is uninstalled from the server, it cleans the entry from data store database. Additionally you can run this command to remove the entry from Datastore DB.DSCHECK /servername

14) How to clean up datastore database?DSCHEK without parameters will check for consistency and clean up the database. /clean parameter can be used to clean up specific server/application from the datastore but use with caution.

15) How do you troubleshoot printing issues?Check print spooler serviceCheck printer mapping errors in event logCheck printer driver availability n compatibilityCheck printer policies for over rides

16) Have you configured session printers?Through policies. Add the printer drivers first, map thee printer and then assign to user/group

17) What does secure gateway d0?

18) What are monitors in Netscaler?Netscaler uses monitors to track the status of back end servers. These monitors can be http, tcp, ping etc

19) What would you do if you see a service down in Netscaler?Try pinging the actual server from netscaler CLI and verify its responding

20) Have you configured Netscaler?

16) Can you monitor Citrix services through EdgeSight?

17) How do you configure alerts in EdgeSight?

18) How many users can you host on XenApp 6.5 vs XenApp 5.0?

19) How do you manage capacity planning?

20) What are the challenges that you have faced in current environment?

21) XML service is down. What happens?

22) XML service down on serverA which has 10 applications; can you access the applications?

23) What is Citrix XML service?

The Citrix XML server is a component of Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop that’s used to enumerates available resources and provide secure tickets for users that to use the WebInterface or CloudGateway.

XML service has two functions:

Communicating with the XenApp farm / XenDesktop zones; the XML broker Generating and validating secure ticket to authorize users, the Secure Ticket Authority (STA)

24) How to change the port used by XML service?

By default XML service uses port 80. But citrix recommends using port 8080 inorder to avoid conflicts with IIS.

To change the port used by XML service:

In XenApp 6 and above – this can be changed via Citrix policies.

In Earlier versions – Use the ctxxmlss command-line utility. This can be done by unloading the Citrix XML Service with /u, changing the port with /r<port number> and restarting the XML service.

ctxxmlss /u

ctxxmlss /r8080

An alternative method is by changing the port in the registry (and restart the Citrix XML service after changing).

Key :HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CtxHTTP

Value: TCP Port

The value is listed in hex, you need to change the view to decimal.

25) Explain Citrix Load Levels?

The following are explanations of the load levels:9999 : No load balancing installed 0 to 9998 :    “normal” load level 10000! :        Application is disabled for this server 10000 :         Load is at 100% 10001 :         Out of licenses 10002 :         Indicates that no ICA connections, listener is disabled, are available on that server. 20000 :         Citrix server is unable to reach license server

26)How to recover Citrix License Server?The Citrix servers can function without contacting the license server and it is 30-days fault tolerant, and in Enterprise version an alert can be set with Resource Manager to send an email in case of License Server Connection Failure. If the license server reconnects at any time in the thirty days the problem resolves itself. If the server is not going to come back up, then the license file, digitally signed with the case-sensitive hostname of the old license server, is the critical component. The license file, a *.lic file, can be backed up to a thumb drive separately, and restored to a new server with the same name of the old license server, and the Citrix License server software installed. 27)How to recover from IMA failing?There are many reasons that the IMA Service doesn’t start1. IMA Service load time2. IMA Service subsystem3. Missing Temp directory4. Print spooler service5. ODBC configuration6. Roaming Profile

Check the Windows Registry setting: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARECitrixIMARuntimeCurrentlyLoadingPluginIf there is no value specified in the CurrentlyLoadingPlugin portion of the above Windows Registry entry then the IMA Service could not connect to the data store or the local host cache is missing or corrupt. If a CurrentlyLoadingPlugin value is specified the IMA Service made a connection to the data store and the value displayed is the name of the IMA Service subsystem that failed to load.If administrators see an “IMA Service Failed” error message with an error code of 2147483649 when starting the Presentation Server the local system account might be missing a Temp directory which is required for the IMA Service to run. Change the IMA Service startup account to the local administrator and restart the server. If the IMA Service is successful in starting under the local administrator account then it is likely that a missing Temp directory for the local system account is causing the problem. If the Temp directory is not present then manually create one as >Temp. For example: C:\Windows\TempAlso verify that the TMP and TEMP system environment variables point to the temporary directory. Restart the server to restart the IMA Service

 28) What is new in XenApp 6.5?

Session LingeringSession Pre-LaunchApp CenterLoad Evaluators assigned to Worker Groups or OUs instead of individual serversDatastore and Zone information configured via GPOSesssion Only and Controller rolesDesktop Director web console can manage XenApp sessionsMultiStream ICA – ica traffic can be split into four separate TCP streams if requiredLog On control feauture to drain users

Citrix Xenapp Interview Questions And Answers:

1. What is Citrix XML Service?

The Citrix XML Service is used by clients connecting over the TCP/IP+HTTP protocol and the Web Interface for MetaFrame Presentation Server.

The Citrix XML Service Port is used by the ICA Client for connection to the Citrix server / published application: When TCP/IP + HTTP is selected and you specify servers in the Address List box, the client communicates with the Citrix XML Service on a specified server for Enumeration.

2. How to change the port number?

CTXXMLSS.EXE to change the port number.

3. What Is The Main Concept Of Citrix?

Main concept of citrix is to deploy remote application to users.

4. What are different Xen app editions?

 Advanced, enterprise, platinum.

5. Name few functions of each edition ?

Advanced edition: basic edition, positioning applications, getting those application out to users.

Planitum Edition: Adds password manager, edge site for monitoring citrix server, password manager provides ssl for single sign , provides access gateway, replacing secured gateway ..Access gateway being a hardware device, and secured gateway being a software device.

Enterprise : Adds some more functionality to xenapp.

6. What is a citrix xenapp farm?

group of xenapp servers, they can be combination of web interface servers, where the web site will allow the users to connect into the xen app, license servers and xen app servers itself. Farm has a single data store.

7. What is a citrix xenapp Data collector?

Stores dynamic information, for each of the Zones in a farm we will have a data collector. Ex: how many users are on a server, what the users are doing, what applications are being run.

8. What is a citrix xenapp Data store?

stores static information, farm has a single data store, data store is connected by some data connection, like sql or Oracle.

Note: With the use for both this data collector and data store we can manage a farm.

9. What is the function of local host cache in citrix?

local host cache, available on each server. Its like a mini data base, for example if a XENAPP server losses its connectivity to data store then it will use the information it has in its local host cache.

10. Name few citrix xenapp clients?

1. Program neighborhood agent 2. xen app web plugin

3. java clients 4. xen app plugin for hosted app 5. XenApp plugin for stream app.

11. Prerequisites for installing xenapp 6.5?

Terminal service role, Application server role

Iis role,A database, Jre 1.6.0-05 .net frame work 3.5 Visual j# .net 2.0 ,Asp.net

Visual c++ 2005 8.0 sp1.

12. What is the function of citrix xenapp Hosted apps?

Hosted app is an application that are hosted in citrix xen app servers and are accessed by clients remotely.

13. What is the function of Streamed apps?

Streamed apps comes with platinum edition and here the vdisk is provisioned by  a provisioning server to target devices

14. What is the use of appcompat?

easily move application with this app compat tool kit. Move application to xenapp,

search and anaylize, virtualize and validate

15. Name few best citrix services?

Citrix client network: which maps client drives and peripherals,Citrix cpu utilixation ,gmt/resource mgmet:

Citrix encryption service,Citrix health monitoring and recovery,Citrix IMA,Citrix licenses management console

Citrix license,Citrix ls port updater service,Print manger,Secure gate way,Streaming service,Virtual memory optimization

Wm service

16. Architecture of ica protocol?

ICA: citrix actually replaced the terminal servers RDP with its own protocol called ICA.

Ica protocol is called thin protocol as it can run with very low bandwith connections, ica protocol is not transferring the real data back and forth, its just updating screen updates and mouse clicks from server to client and client to server. With ica protocol the users can print to there local printers.

17. Name few citrix xenapp port numbers?

ICA : 1494,ICA with session reliability: 2598,IMA communication: 2512

Xenapp advanced console: 2513,Tcp browsing: 1604,Xml service port shared with IIS: 80

Ssl communication: 443,Licenses management console: 8082

Licenses port: 27000,Xenapp Questions

what is a data store?

The data store is the database where servers store farm static information, such as configuration information about published applications, users, printers, and servers. Each server farm has a single data store.

what is a data collector?

A data collector is a server that hosts an in-memory database that maintains dynamic information about the servers in the zone, such as server loads, session status, published applications, users connected, and license usage. Data collectors receive incremental data updates and queries from servers within the zone. Data collectors relay information to all other data collectors in the farm.

By default, the data collector is configured on the first server when you create the farm, and all other servers configured with the controller server mode have equal rights to become the data collector if the data collector fails. When the zone’s data collector fails, a data collector election occurs and another server takes over the data collector functionality. Farms determine the data collector based on the election preferences set for a server.

Applications are typically not published on the data collector.

what is the use of zones

A zone is a grouping of XenApp servers that communicate with a common data collector. In large farms with multiple zones, each zone has a server designated as its data collector. Data collectors in farms with more than one zone function as communication gateways with the other zone data collectors.

what will happen if IMA fails

if IMA service stops the communication between data store and the server not happen. new connections can't be broked but existing connections will remain.

what will happen if data store corrupts

what is the requirement for installing xenapp6

Query command in citrix?

query [appserver | object | process | session | user] [/?]

How does Citrix load balancing work?

Difference between published applications and Published Desktops? Pros/Cons of both.

Load Evaluators in Citrix?

1. Default Load Evaluators 2. Advance Load evaluators 3. Custom load evaluators

IMA port number?How to change IMA port?

IMA port:-2512...we can change IMA port via "imaport /set" command line or via local registry.

Overview and Interview Questions on basics of Citrix

What is Citrix?

Citrix allows you to install, publish and manage applications from one central location. These published applications can then be securely access from anywhere in the world using any client device over any connection (ex. Web Interface, Program Neighborhood, and Citrix Program Neighborhood Agent) using the Citrix ICA client, which requires minimal bandwidth and can virtually be installed on any Operating System .

Some key Citrix Features:

•Map Local Client Drives when establishing a connection to an Application.

•Access Printers connected to the Citrix Server, Client Workstation or Network Printers when connected to an Application.

•Load Balance Applications across servers

•Published Applications or Desktop

•Leverage Resource Manager to view Statistical data pertaining to the Citrix Farm.

•Leverage Installation Manager to deploy applications or hot fixes to other Citrix Servers in the Farm.

Provide secure connection using various levels of encryption (128 bit, 128 bit login only, 56 bit,40 bit or Basic encryption) and SSL using Secure Gateway or SSL Relay.

2.What is Data store

Data store is the place where all static information are stored (i.e Farm configuration information , Published Application details, Server configurations info., Policy configuration ,Administrator accounts, and Printer configurations details etc.)

3.What is Zone Data Collector?

Data Collector stores all the dynamic information like sessions, load and published applications in the servers in their zones and communicates the zone information to the Data Collectors in other zones in the farm. Data collector is whose IMA service takes on the additional role of tracking all of the dynamic information of other Presentation Servers. This information is stored in memory and called as “dynamic store”. The data store is a database on disk. The dynamic store is information stored in memory. To look the contents of the in-memory dynamic store on the data collector, use “queryds” command. QueryDS can be found in the "support\debug" folder of your Presentation Server installation source files. To determine which server is acting as the data collector in the zone run " query farm /zone"from the command line

4.What is a Farm?

A Farm is a group of Citrix servers which provides published applications to all users that can be managed as a unit, enabling the administrator to configure features and settings for the entire farm rather than configuring each server individually. All the servers in the farm share a single data store .A server farm is a grouping of servers running Citrix Presentation Server that can be manage as a unit, similar in principle to a network domain. When designing server farms, keep in mind the goal of providing users with the fastest possible application access while achieving the degree of centralized administration and network security that you need.

5.What is LHC?

The IMA service running on each Presentation Server downloads the information it needs from the central data store into a local MDB database called the local host cache, or “LHC.” (The location of the local host cache is specified via a DSN referenced in the registry of the Presentation Server, at

HKLM \ SOFTWARE\Citrix\IMA\LHC Data source\Data Sourmce Name

.

By default this is a file called “Imalhc.dsn” and is stored in the same place as MF20.dsn.)Each Presentation Server is smart enough to only download information from the data store that is relevant to it, meaning that the local host cache is unique for every server. Citrix created the local host cache for two reasons:

1.Permits a server to function in the absence of data store connectivity.

2.Improves performance by caching information used by ICA Clients for enumeration and application resolution. The LHC is an Access database (Imalhc.mdb) stored default in the path

"<Program Files>\Citrix\Independent Management Architecture" folder. LHC contained the following information:

1. All servers in the farm, and their basic information.

2. All applications published within the farm and their properties.

3. All Windows network domain trust relationships within the farm.

4. All information specific to itself. (product code, SNMP settings, licensing information)

The LHC is critical in a CPS environment. In fact, it's the exclusive interface of the data store to the local server. The local server's IMA service only interacts with the LHC. It never contacts the central data store except when it's updating the LHC. If the server loses its connection to the central data store, there's no limit to how long it will continue to function. (In Meta Frame XP, this is limited to 48 or 96 hours, but that was because the data store also store license information.) But today, the server can run forever from the LHC and won't even skip a beat if the central connection is lost. In fact now you can even reboot the server when the central data store is down, and the IMA service will start from the LHC with out any problem. (Older versions of Meta Frame required a registry modification to start the IMA service from the LHC.) The LHC file is always in use when IMA is running, so it's not possible to delete it or anything. In theory it's possible that this file could become corrupted, and if this happens I guess all sorts of weird things could happen to your server. If you think this is the case in your environment, you can stop the IMA service and run the command "dsmaint recreatelhc" to recreate the local host cache file, although honestly I don't think this fixes anything very often. Local Host Cache is synchronized with the Data Store by the Zone Data Collector for every 30 minutes and it can also be configured through registry.

6.How to Refresh the Local Host Cache?

If the IMA service is currently running but published applications do not appear correctly in ICA Client application browsing, force a manual refresh of the local host cache by executing dsmaint refreshlhc from a command prompt on the affected server. This action forces the local host cache to read all changes immediately from the data store .

A discrepancy in the local host cache occurs only if the IMA service on a server misses a change event and is not synchronized correctly with the data store.

7.What is Zone?

Zone is subset of Farm. It is a grouping of Presentation Servers that shares the common Data Collector. Zones are very helpful in controlling traffics. It collects data from member servers and distributes changes to all servers in the farm. A zone in the Presentation Server farm elects a zone data collector for the zone and it is responsible to communicates between other ZDCs in the farm. It is used to redirect the users to least busy server. The ZDC maintains all load and session information for every server in the zone. ZDCs keep open connections to other ZDCs changes in the member servers of a zone and are immediately propagated to the other ZDCs in the farm. Zone has server members and one of them is ZDC (Zone Data Collectors) in each zone. These ZDCs communicate between zones. Zones are very help full in controlling traffic. We can move the servers among the zones and after moving the servers from one Zone to another the servers must be restarted to get settings and configurations from the Data Store.

8.Explain Citrix Load Levels?

We can get Citrix Load levels from QSERVER /APP and QFARM /APP at the command prompt .Load values can be in between 0-10000.

The following are explanations of the load levels:

9999: No load balancing installed ,0 to 9998:“normal” load level

10000! : Application is disabled for this server,,10000: Load is at 100%

10001: Out of licenses,10002: Indicates that no ICA connections, listener is disabled, are available on that server.

A few other conditions also cause this code to be returned:

<>If logons have been disabled on the server

<>If the server is out of swap space - check load balancing administration and change page file from 2097152 to 500 on the problem server. If the application is disabled

<>If it is an anonymous application and no logons are left for anonymous users

<>For multi-homed servers, the selection for LAN adapter is “All network adapters configured for this protocol” instead of a specific LAN adapter

<>Check the connection limit on all listener ports (ICA, and RDP) because this has been found to affect the load balancing parameters and cause the 10002 load level.

<>If the connection limit has been changed from “unlimited” to “2,” you may not be able to connect to a published application and will get the error message: “Cannot connect to the Citrix server. The Citrix server you have selected cannot be located.”

<>You may also delete and recreate the listeners for that protocol and reorganize the pagefile. If the servers are built from a ghosted image, it may be necessary to delete the pagefile, recreate the pagefile, and reboot the server.

9. What are the default tests available in Health Monitoring & Recovery Tool?

XenApp Health Monitoring and Recovery Tool have the following default tests.

1. Citrix IMA Service test,2. Logon Monitor test, 3. Terminal Service test 4. XML Service test

Health Monitoring & Recovery in the farm-wide configuration allows us to select the maximum percentage of servers that HMR can exclude from load balancing. The default value is 10% of server.

10.What is Hotfix Management and how to configure Server Restart Schedule?

Hotfix Management in Access Management Console allows us to check the Hotfixes installed in the particular server as well as compare the Hotfixes with the scope of server. But this tool will not automatically intimate or download available Hotfixes from the Citrix website. We

can configure server restarting schedule for the servers in the XenApp farm. Right-Click the server and go to All Task. Go to Set restart options and Set restart schedule.

10.What is the session reliability service in Windows services?

Citrix XTE Server is the Windows service for session reliability.

11. What is Installation Manager?

Installation Manager will not be in the part of Citrix installation setup. It should be downloaded from the Citrix website and installed separately. We need to have Power Shell already installed in the server. Install the IM component in the workstation/system you want to manage from and the IM utility in the XenApp servers. After installing the we can access it through the Windows management console. We can select the shared msi file path from where the application to be deployed and the server and the time of installation. We can also schedule command-line task to install exe files or to run some commands or queries in the servers.

12. What is Configuration logging?

Administrative Configuration Logging is the new feature in XenApp 5.0 and it can be configured in farm-wide properties. We can store all the administrative changes in the farm. We can see the log from the Report Center. We can clear log from the farm properties. We can configure to have credential to clear the log.

13. How to configure Secure ICA and SSL/TSL connection in XenApp?

To configure Secure ICA, Go to Access Management Console and right click the application and go to the properties. In the Client option select the Encryption level. This should be configured both in client and server side. If we use XenApp client it will automatically select the Encryption type. If we use Program Neighbourhood we have to select the proper Encryption type in the client side. We can enforce these properties in the Group Policies or in Citrix policy in XenApp Advanced Configuration. We can Enable the Secure ICA encryption and select the Encryption Level. If we enable SSL/TSL connection, we should have installed Citrix SSL Relay and Server Certificate installed in the server. We can configure this in Citrix SSL Relay Configuration Tool in Citrix Administration.

14. How to recover Citrix License Server?

The Citrix servers can function without contacting the license server and it is 30-days fault tolerant, and in Enterprise version an alert can be set with Resource Manager to send an email in case of License Server Connection Failure. If the license server reconnects at any time in the thirty days the problem resolves itself. If the server is not going to come back up, then the license file, digitally signed with the case-sensitive hostname of the old license server, is the critical component. The license file, a *.lic file, can be backed up to a thumb drive separately, and restored to a new server with the same name of the old license server, and the Citrix License server software installed.

15.What is "Citrix Startup License" in Citrix presentation server license management console?

The Startup license does not affect the license count. It is used to allow Citrix products to communicate with the license server using a continuous open connection. Every five minutes the license server and the products send a heartbeat message to each other to verify that they are mutually communicating.

16.How to restore the data source to the new server?

To restore the data store to a different server, or just to move it to a more convenient place on the network, the procedure is as follows:

1.place the mf20.mdb that was backed up in the proper directory:C:\ProgramFiles\Citrix\Independent Management Architecture;

2.Create a file dsn to the new data store;

3.Run dsmaint config /user:user /pwd:password /dsn:path to dsn on the new data store server and restart IMA;

4.Run dsmaint failover new data store server name on all the other servers in the farm and restart IMA To create a dsn file, go to the control panel, administrative tools, of the Citrix server that holds the new data store, and go to “Data Sources (ODBC)”. On the tab marked “file dsn”, create anew file, with Access 4.0 drivers, that is in the same directory as the mdb file is, and can be named anything, but for convention should be mf20.dsn. on the final screen, the actual database that the dsn file is supposed to point to must be selected. Under the select button, highlight the proper database, (not the imalhc.mdb but the mf20.mdb) and close the utility.

17.What is CtxHide? How to solve CtxHide.exe Causing Citrix Session’s to hang on Logon?

CtxHide.exe is responsible for hiding the DOS window in which UsrLogon.cmd is running.

Workarounds

1. Remove CtxHide.exe from the appsetup key in the registry

Use the registry editor to navigate to the following value:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\AppSetup

Double Click on the App Setup value and remove the CtxHide.exe entry as the example shows below. Note that your App Setup value may contain more than the following example.

Windows Registry Editor Version 6.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]

"AppSetup"="CtxHide.exe UsrLogon.Cmd,cmstart.exe"

The result of removing CtxHide.exe is that users can see usrlogon. cmd running on logon

2. Swap CtxHide.exe for Runh.exe

Runh.exe has been used to hide usrlogon.cmd script from the user experience prior to Meta frame Presentation Server 3.0. It performs the same function as CtxHide.exe. For more information on runh and to download the executable go to:

http://thin.msterminalservices.org/runh.cfm .

Download runh.exe from the above link and place the runh.exe in the server’s system32directory. In Windows registry navigate to the AppSetup key, remove CtxHide.exe and replacewith runh. Runh will now call and hide usrlogon.cmd.

Windows Registry Editor Version 6.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]"AppSetup"="runh UsrLogon.Cmd,cmstart.exe"

To return to the original configuration navigate to the AppSetup value, remove runh and addCtxHide.exe.

18.What is ICA and what is the advantage of ICA?

The Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) is the communication protocol by which servers and client devices exchange data in a server environment. ICA is optimized to enhance the delivery and performance of this exchange, even on low-bandwidth connections.

The ICA protocol transports an application’s screens from the server it is running on to the user’s client device, and returns the user’s input to the application on the server. As an application runs on a server, Meta Frame Presentation Server intercepts the application’s display data and uses the ICA protocol to send this data (on standard network protocols) to the client software running on the user’s client device.

When the user types on the keyboard or moves and clicks the mouse, the client software sends this data to the application on the server. ICA requires minimal client workstation capabilities and includes error detection and recovery, encryption, and data compression.

Citrix ICA protocol is used for remote application sessions between users and Presentation servers. The ICA protocol supports TCP/IP, NetBIOS, or IPX/SPX. Citrix ICA protocol is responsible for transmitting background information between the ICA clients and the Presentation servers, including the port mappings, drive mappings, print jobs, and sound. Only Sends Screen Updates & Mouse/Key Board Strokes. Only 30 – 35 kb/sec (Printing and File Transfer increase this) Fat Apps VS Thin Apps Ports used by ICA:

1494: ICA Protocol on TCP (TCP + HTTP) & 1604: ICA Protocol on UDP

.

19.Describe ZDC Election Process in detail?

Incase ZDC is not be available, another server in the zone can take over that role. The process of taking the role is called ZDC election. Server Administrators should choose the Zone Data Collector strategy carefully during the farm design itself. When an election needs to occur in a zone, the winner of the election is determined by

1. Highest version of Presentation Server first

2. Highest rank (as configured in the Management Console)

3. Highest Host ID number (Every server has a unique ID called Host ID).

When the existing data collector for Zone failed unexpectedly or the communication between a member server and the Zone Data Collector for its zone failed or the communication between data collectors failed, then the election process begins in the Zone. If the server is shutdown properly, it triggers the election process before it goes down. The servers in the zone recognize the data collector has gone down and starts the election process. Then the ZDC is elected and the member servers send all of their information to the new ZDC for the zone. In turn the new data collector replicates this information to all other data collectors in the farm.

Note: The data collector election process is not dependent on the data store. If the datacollector goes down, sessions connected to other servers in the farm are unaffected .The datacollector election process is triggered automatically without administrative interference .Existing as well as incoming users are not affected by the election process, as a new datacollector is elected almost instantaneously.

C:\ QueryHR.exe

------ Showing Hosts for "10.22.44.0" ------

Host 1:----------------------------

Zone Name: 10.22.44.0

Host Name: TEDDYCTX02

Admin Port: 2513

IMA Port: 2512

Host ID: 4022

Master Ranking: 1Master Version: 1

--------------------------------------- Show Host Records Completed ------- ------------------------

To see the Host ID number and its version, run queryhr.exe utility (with no parameters).

Each server in the zone has a rank assigned to it. The administrator can configure such that the servers in a zone can be ranked to make the server as the most desired to serve as the zone master or ZDC. The ties between servers with the same administrative ranking are broken by using the HOST IDs assigned to the servers.

When a Presentation Server starts or when the IMA service starts, the IMA service starts trying to contact other servers via the IMA protocol on port 2512 until it finds one that’s online. When it finds, it queries it to find out which server is acting as the data collector. The winner of this Zone Data Collector election is determined by the newest version of the IMA service. We can control which server will act as data collector by keeping that server the most up-to-date.

Data Collection Election Priority

Whichever server has the most recent version of the IMA Service running. (This may include hotfixes) and the server with the highest preference set in the data store Basically data collectors and data store are not really related. The data store holds permanent farm configuration information in a database, and the data collector tracks dynamic session information in its RAM.

In addition to their primary role to provide dynamic farm information for admin consoles or for incoming connection requests, data collectors also take part in the distribution of configuration changes to Presentation Servers in the farm. When we make a changes in a presentation server that change is written to the local host cache of whichever server we connected to, and then immediately replicated to the data store. Presentation Server only looks for changes in the central data store every 30 minutes. Whenever a change is made to the data store, that change is sent to the data collector for the zone.

The data collector then distributes that change (via IMA port 2512) to all of the servers in its zone, allowing each server to update its own local host cache accordingly. Furthermore, if we have more than one zone, the initial data collector contacts the data collectors in the other zones. It sends its change to them, and in turn those data collectors forward the change to all of the servers in their zones.

Coolest part is if the change is larger than 64k, the data collectors don't send the actual change out to its zone. Instead they send out a notification which causes the servers in the zone to perform an "on demand" sync with the central data store. However it's rare for a single change to be more than 64k in size. The data collector election priority settings in the management console

Presentation Server Java Management Console > Right-click on farm name>Properties > Zones > highlight server > “Set Election Preference”

We can totally control which server is our data collector by manually setting the preferences in the Java console. We can manually configure four levels of Zone's Data Collector election preference options

Most Preferred, Preferred , Default Preferred ,Not Preferred

The important thing to remember is that these preferences will be ignored if a newer server is up for election.

20.How Load Evaluator works?

QFARM /LOAD command executed in a Presentation Server farm will display all servers in the farm along with each server’s respective load value. Each and every Presentation Server generates its own “score” and sends this information to the data collector in the respective zone. This score will be a decimal number between 0 and 10,000, with zero representing a “no load” situation, and 10,000 indicating the particular server is fully loaded and is not accepting any more connections. Citrix Load Management is handled by load evaluator and its simply a set of rules that determine a particular server’s “score”, or current load value. It is the “score” that determine the decisions that distribute loads within the server farm. Load evaluators can be applied to servers and/or published applications. If any servers in the Zone go down then Load Evaluators are used to overcome the situation. In default XenApp installation there are Advanced and Default Load Evaluators are there.D

Default Load Evaluator includes only two rules, Load Throttling and Server User Load. Advanced Load Evaluator includes four rules, CPU Utilization, Load Throttling, Memory Usual and Page Swaps.

21.How Zone Preference and failover configured?

Zone preference and failover can be configured from Policies. It is located in User Workspace >Connections in Citrix Policy. You can select the server group in which order the connections are preferred. This is useful when an entire zone goes down.

22.What is Preferred Load Balancing?

Preferred Load balancing is the feature in XenApp Platinum edition

, which allows you to configure preference for the particular users to access the applications in the XenApp farm. We can see this in Server properties in Advanced Management Console. In Memory/CPU>CPU Utilization Management, there will be the third option called "CPU sharing based on Resource Allotments"

To give more resources to particular application in the server, we can configure in

Application properties>Advanced>Limits and Application important

in Access Management Console. So if you set the Application importance to High, then when those application is used by the users will get more CPU cycles than the users accessing other applications

To give more resources to the users, we can configure it in Citrix Policies in XenApp Advanced Configuration. To enable it go to the policy properties>Service Level>Session Importance>enable, and assign preferred Importance Level (High, Medium, Low).

Application Importance + Session Importance = Resource Allotmment.

23.What are the different Types of Citrix Load Evaluators?

1. CPU Utilization 2. Memory Utilization 3. Page Swap

4. Application User Load 5. Context Switches 6. Disk Data I/O

7. Disk Operations 8. IP Range 9. Page Faults 10. Scheduling 11. Server User Load.

24.How to recover from IMA failing?

There are many reasons that the IMA Service doesn't start

1. IMA Service load time 2. IMA Service subsystem 3. Missing Temp directory 4. Print spooler service 5. ODBC configuration

6. Roaming Profile Check the Windows Registry setting:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARECitrixIMARuntimeCurrentlyLoadingPluginIf there is no value specified in the

Currently Loading Plugin portion of the above Windows Registry entry then the IMA Service could not connect to the data store or the local host cache is missing or corrupt.

If a Currently Loading Plugin value is specified the IMA Service made a connection to the datastore and the value displayed is the name of the IMA Service subsystem that failed to load .

If administrators see an "IMA Service Failed" error message with an error code of 2147483649 when starting the Presentation Server the local system account might be missing a Temp directory which is required for the IMA Service to run.

Change the IMA Service startup account to the local administrator and restart the server. If the IMA Service is successful in starting under the local administrator account then it is likely that a missing Temp directory for the local system account is causing the problem.

If the Temp directory is not present then manually create one as >Temp.

For example:C:\Windows\Temp

Also verify that the TMP and TEMP system environment variables point to the temporary directory. Restart the server to restart the IMA Service.

25.What is Special Folder Redirection?

Special Folder Redirection (SFR) allows for the automatic redirection of server-side Special Folders to their client-side equivalents. When a user clicks on the Documents folder in theirXenApp 5 sessions, the folder that opens will actually be the local Documents folder. When SFRis used, all file operations will take place in the client-side folder. SFR is only available when XenApp 5 is installed on Windows Server 2008 and also requires XenApp Plugin version 11(client).

26.What is Citrix Resource Manager?

Citrix Resource Manager (RM) is a tool that is used to manage resources on single or multiple Meta Frame servers. RM enables the ability to collect, display, store, and analyze data about system performance, application or process use, and user activity. RM provides real-time system monitoring, reporting of system activity, and billing reports to charge users for use of resources using a summary database.

In XenApp5 Resource Manager is moved to Edge Sight. We cannot connect to RMSummaryreport database from XenApp5. But still we can see some of the reports fromReport Center in Access Management Console. One of the important reports is Policy Report.

27.What is Printer terminology in Citrix?

An administrator can configure the following types of printers for use in an ICA session:

Client local printer ,Network printer ,Server Local printer

Client Printers: The definition of a client printer depends on the ICA Client platform. On DOS-based and WinCE client devices, a client printer is physically connected by a cable to a port on the client device. On 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows 9x, Windows NT, and Windows 2000),any printer that is set up in Windows (these printers appear in the Printers folder on the client device) is a client printer.

Network Printers: Printers that are connected to print servers and shared on a Windows network are referred to as network printers. In Windows network environments, users can setup a network printer on their computers if they have permission to connect to the print server. When a network printer is set up for use on an individual Windows computer, the printer is a client printer on the client device.

Local Printers: Printers that are connected directly to Citrix servers are local printers within a particular server farm. This definition includes a printer that is connected to the Citrix server that hosts a user’s ICA session, as well as printers that are connected to other Citrix servers in the same server farm. If a printer is connected to a Citrix server outside of a server farm(either the server is not a member of a server farm or is a member of a different server farm),the server farm considers the printer a network printer, not a local printer.

28.HOw to implement Policies in Citrix?

Presentation Server policies are created by adding policy rules. Policy rules are broken down into the following categories:

Bandwidth,Client Devices,Printing Security, User Workspace

An administrator can apply policies by filtering:

Client IP address,Users and user groups,Client names Servers ,Access Control

Once a policy is created it has to be prioritized for effective functioning. Following options are available for prioritizing a policy

Make Highest priority ,Increase Priority,Decrease Priority,Make Lowest Priority

Citrix Policies can be configured from XenApp Advanced Configuration Console If there are any policies which conflicts to each other, the resultant applied policies are the one with higher priority Policies Override

1. Citrix Policy 2. Group Policy 3. ICA Session Setting 4. User Object Setting.

29.What is IMA?

Independent Management Architecture (IMA) provides the framework for server communications and is the management foundation for Meta Frame Presentation Server. IMA is a centralized management service comprised of a collection of core subsystems that define and control the execution of products in a server farm. IMA enables servers to be arbitrarily grouped into server farms that do not depend on the physical locations of the servers or whether the servers are on different network subnets.

IMA runs on all servers in the farm. IMA subsystems communicate through messages passed by the IMA Service through default TCP ports 2512 and 2513. The IMA Service starts automatically when a server is started. The IMA Service can be manually started or stopped through the operating system Services utility.

IMA can be defined as a SERVICE, PROTOCAL and as a DATASTORE.

IMA Service: IMA Service is the central nervous system of Presentation Servers. This service is responsible for just about everything server-related, including tracking users, sessions, applications, licenses, and server load.

IMA Data store: Which stores Presentation server configuration information, such as published applications, total licenses, load balancing configuration, security rights, Administrator Accounts, Printer configuration, etc?

IMA Protocol: Which is used for transferring the ever-changing background information between Presentation servers, including server load, current users and connections, and licenses in use.

Ports used by IMA:

2512: Used for Server to Server Communication

2513: Used for CMC to Data store Communication

“ Independent Management Architecture” is a term Citrix uses to describe the various back-end components that make up a CPS environment. In the real world, IMA consists of three components that we actually care about.

It is a database (called the “IMA Data Store”) used for storing Citrix Presentation server configuration information, such as published applications, load balancing configuration, security rights, policies, printer configuration, etc.

A Windows service (called the “IMA Service”) that runs on every Presentation Server that handles things like server-to-server communication.

A protocol (called the “IMA Protocol”) for transferring the ever-changing background information between Presentation Servers, including server load, current users and connections, licenses in use, etc.

In Presentation Server, the IMA protocol does not replace the ICA protocol. The ICA protocol is still used for client-to-server user sessions. The IMA protocol is used for server-to-server communication in performing functions such as licensing and server load updates, all of which occur “behind the scenes.”

If we open IMA data store database with SQL Enterprise Manager, we'll see it has four tables:

DATATABLE

DELETETRACKER

INDEXTABLE

KEYTABLE

IMA data store is not a real relational database. It’s actually an LDAP database. IMA Data Store Size 1MB per server.

We can’t access the IMA data store directly through SQL Enterprise Manager. (technically you can, but if you run a query you’ll get meaningless hex results.) If we try to edit any of the contents of the data store directly in the database, it will be definitely corrupt.

There’s a tool on the Presentation Server installation CD called “dsview.” There is another tool called “dsedit” a “write-enabled” version of dsview.

30.What is USRLOGON.cmd?

Whenever a user logs on to the Citrix server, the USRLOGON.CMD file runs. This file is located in %systemroot%/system32. It is configured to run automatically when each user logs in.

This file has two functions:

1.USRLOGON.CMD creates the ROOTDRIVE variable. This variable is used by the Logon Script to identify the user's home directory.

2.USRLOGON.CMD calls USRLOGN2.CMD. USRLOGN2.CMD runs the application scripts that fix user level problems with certain applications.

31.How to identify Citrix License been consumed by a Device?

LMSTAT command shows a Client Hardware ID, a license has been assigned to that device. Lmstat is the license administration command shows what licenses are assigned to which client or server. This utility is run on a license server from a command prompt by browsing to \Program

files\Citrix\Licensing\LS. The *.lic must be present in the \ProgramFiles\Citrix\Licensing\MyFiles directory that excludes the built-in citrix_startup.lic file. Lmstat prints information that it receives from the license server but does not contact the product server.

Syntax

lmstat [-a] [-A] [-c “license_file”]

Open the command prompt and change the directory to \Program Files\Citrix\Licensing\LS Type: lmstat –a

Example output of an lmstat -a command indicating two user machines accessing the farm and consuming two user license assignments.

A Client with Hardware ID that consumed a Citrix license is shown in hexadecimal number like below

Hardware ID for Session 1 6f78c1bd

Hardware ID for Session 2 3a7379f6.

32.What are the commonly used Citrix commands ?

dsmaint

dsmaint config [/user:username] [/pwd:password] [/dsn:filename]

dsmaint backup destination_path

dsmaint failover direct_server

dsmaint compactdb [/ds] [/lhc]

dsmaint migrate [{ /srcdsn:dsn1 /srcuser:user1 /srcpwd:pwd1}]

[{/dstdsn:dsn2 /dstuser:user2 /dstpwd:pwd2}]

dsmaint publishsqlds {/user: username /pwd:password}

dsmaint recover

dsmaint recreatelhc

dsmaint verifylhc

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driveremap

driveremap /drive:M

driveremap /u

driveremap /noreboot

driveremap /IME

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dscheck

dscheck [Options] [ /full | /clean]

[ Servers | Apps | Printers | Groups | MSLicense | Folders | Licenses ]

dscheck /full Servers [Options]

Verify/Clean or Delete the server. May be left blank.

Defaults to all servers.

/Clean - Modify the data store to correct the errors.

/DeleteAll - Delete the server entries from the data store.

/DeleteMF - Delete the Meta Frame Server entry from the data store.

/DeleteComSrv - Delete the Common Server entry from the data store.

dscheck /full Apps [Options]

< AppName> - Verify/Clean or Delete the application. May be left blank. Defaults to all applications.

/Clean - Modify the data store to correct the errors.

/ServerCheck - Verify that all applications are hosted by valid servers.

/DeleteMF - Delete the Meta Frame Application entry from the data store.

/DeleteComApp - Delete the Common Application entry from the data store.

dscheck /full Printers [Options]

/purge_replications - Removes all printer replications from the data store.

/purge_client_printers - Removes all Client Auto-Create printers pending deletion from the data store.

/purge_drivers - Removes all drivers that are not associated with any servers from the data store.

dscheck /full Groups [Options]

/Clean - Removes the group object. Group Name is the relative DN from the Context.

/Clean -Removes the group from the parent group.

Use the output of DSCHECK.exe GROUPS /verify" for both Parent Group Name and Group Name.

dscheck /full MSLicense [Options]

/purge_licenses - Removes all Microsoft Licenses from the data store.

/list - Lists all Microsoft Licenses in the data store.

dscheck /full Folders

/clean - Collapse orphaned folders in the data store.

dscheck /full Licenses

/clean - Removes all corrupt licenses from the data store.

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altaddr

altaddr [/server:servername] [/set alternateaddress ] [/v]

altaddr [/server:servername] [/set adapteraddress alternateaddress] [/v]

altaddr [/server:servername] [/delete] [/v]

altaddr [/server:servername] [/delete adapteraddress] [/v]

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query

query view information about server farms, processes, servers, ICA sessions and users

query farm

shows the server name, protocol and ip address

query farm /app

shows the published applications

query farm /disc

shows the disconnected session data for the server farm

query farm /load

displays server load information

query user

displays the current connections

queryhr

is used to display info about the member servers in the farm. Executing queryhr withno parameters lists all servers in the farm.

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chfarm

is used to change the farm membership of a Citrix server

icaport

is used to query or change the TCP/IP port number used by the ICA protocol

imaport

is used to change the IMA port used by the server

ctxxmlss

is used to change the XML service port

enablelb

is used to re-enable the server back to load balancing after it fails

twconfig

confgure ICA display settings

auditlog

is used to view the report of users logoff and logon activity. With auditlog /time wecan get time the users spent in the servers.

33.How to Recreate the Local Host Cache?

If the IMA service does not start, the cause may be a corrupt LHC. Verify the data store isavailable before beginning this procedure. If the data store is not available, the IMA servicefails to start until the data store is available.

Recreating the Local Host Cache after a minimum of SP1 has been installed

1. Stop the IMA service. This can be done via the command line,net stop imaservice or fromservices.

2. From the command line run:dsmaint recreatelhc

which renames the existing LHCdatabase, creates a new database and modifies the registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\IMA\Runtime\PSRequired

key to

1. Settingthe value PSRequired to 1 forces the server to establish communication with the datastore inorder to populate the Local Host Cache database. When the IMA service is restarted, the LHC isrecreated with the current data from the data store.

3. Restart the IMA service. This can be done via the command line, net start imaservice, orfrom services.

Recreating the LHC database on servers that do not have a minimum of SP1installed

1. Stop the IMA service, if it is started. This can be done via the command line,

net stop ima service, or from services.

2. Go to %Program Files%\Citrix\Independent Management Architecture

and rename the imalhc.mdb to imlhc.mdb.bak

3 Launch the ODBC Data Source Administrator:• On Windows Server, choose Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Data Sources (ODBC).

4. Select the File DSN tab and browse to.ProgramFiles%\Citrix\Independent Management Architecture.

5. Select theimalhc.dsn file and click Configure.

6. In the Database area, click Create. The New Database dialog box appears.

7. In the Database Name box, type the name imalhc.mdb for the new local host cache database.

8. Click OK to create the database, and then click OK to close the ODBC Data Source Administrator

9. Open regedt32 and navigate to the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\IMA\RUNTIME

and modify the value of PSRequired (REG_DWORD): 0x1

10. Restart the IMA service. This can be done via the command line,

net start ima service , or from services.

34.How to disable print drivers from automatically updating the DataStore?

When a new printer or printer driver was installed on a Meta Frame server, a substantial amount of traffic (in the order of 8 to 10MB per second) occurred between the IMA Service and the data store the IMA Service was using. This occurred because the IMA Service needed to update the Management Console for Meta Frame XP with the information about the new printer or printer driver, which caused the huge amount of network traffic. To resolve this problem, navigate to the following registry key and change the value off Disable Printer Worker Thread to 1:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\IMAPrinter

Type: REG_DWORD

Value: fDisablePrinterWorkerThread = 1

After making this change to the registry, restart the IMA Service for the change to take effect. When the registry switch is set to 1, the IMA Service does not automatically update printer or printer driver information to the Management Console. You need to update this information manually. To do this, click Printer Management in the left panel of the Management Console and then double-click Update Printer and Driver.

Note: Ensure the latest MfPrintSs.dll is installed on the server.

35.How do I disable the Citrix Management Console splash screen?

There are two ways to disable the Citrix Management Console splash screen:

• Add -nologo to the Ctxload.exe command line. For example, if you publish ctx load as a published application, edit the published application and add -nologo to the end of the command line.

• If you run the Citrix Management Console from the toolbar, open the ProgramFiles\Citrix\Administration folder. Create a shortcut to ctxload. Open the properties of that shortcut and add -nologo to the end of the target box. Click OK. Add the shortcut to the toolbar.

36.What is licenses auto-activation

License auto-activation is a benefit offered to customers purchasing meta FrameXP product through an electronic licensing program with Citrix. License auto-activation removes theneed to activate MetaFrame product licenses via the Citrix Activation System. With license auto-activation, Meta Frame XP product licenses purchased through an electronic licensing program are automatically activated when they are installed on the MetaFrame XP server.

37.How to install XenApp client in command prompt and apply policies?

Run the XenAppHosted.msi in command prompt

"c:\>msiexec /a xenapphosted.msi"

This will launch "Client Packager Installation". We can create a pre-configured client package with the answer file for the questions asked by the installer, so that we can have silent installation of the client in various systems in the environment.

There is another way to create client installation package.

Type the command "msiexec.exe /I path/XenAppHosted.msi [Options]"

To add Group Policy to manage the client we need to add the .ADM by Citrix to the existing Administrative Template of the Group Policy Management. This is available where Citrix Clients have been already installed. It is located in "c:\program files\Citrix\ICAClient\Configuration\icaclient.adm"

We can manage Citrix Client connectivity by the Windows Group Policy.

38.How to change the Citrix XML Service Port on Meta frame Servers ?

Un-registering the XML Service

1. Open a Command Prompt window and run ‘ctxxmlss /u’ (This command will un-register the Citrix XML service and mark it for deletion)

2. Reboot the server

Registering the XML on a port other than sharing with IIS

1. Un-register the service using the instructions above.

2. Open a ‘Command Prompt’ window and run ctxxmlss /r[Port Number]

(Notice that there is no space between the switch “/r” and the port number.

3. Reboot the server or open the service control manager and manually start the Citrix XML Service

Registering the XML Service to share the port with IIS on Windows Server 2003running IIS 6.0

By default when installing IIS 6.0, the virtual Scripts Folder is not created

1. Un-register the service using the instructions above.

2. Navigate to the ‘\Inetpub’ folder and create a new folder with the name of ‘Scripts’

3. Open the IIS Manager MMC Snap-in

4. Right click on the ‘Default Web Site’ and select New | Virtual Directory…

5. Click Next

6. Under Alias: type the name ‘Scripts’ and click Next

7. Under Path: type C:\Inetpub\Scripts and click Next

8. Under Allow the following permissions: make sure that the following are selected

a. Read

b. Run Scripts (such as ASP)

c. Execute (such as ISAPI applications or CGI)

9. Click Next and click Finish

10. Right click on the Scripts virtual directory and go to Properties

11. Under the Virtual Directory tab make sure that the Execute Permissions: field is set to Scripts and Executables

12. Under the Directory Security tab click on Edit… under Authentication and Access Control and make sure that the Enable anonymous access check box is checked

13. Now copy the files ctxxmlss.txt, clm.dll, wpnbr.dll to the newly create Scripts folder under the Inetpub folder.

Note: The file ‘ctxxmlss.txt’ is located in the ‘Program Files\Citrix\System32’ folder and the files‘clm.dll’ and 'wpnbr.dll' are located in the ‘%SYSTEMROOT%\System32’ folder

If Microsoft IIS is installed, the administrator of the MetaFrame XP installation is given the option to install the Citrix XML Service and share a port with IIS.

In fact, no separate XML service is running. IIS serves the XML data using an ISAPI filter namedWpnbr.dll located in the \Inetpub\Scripts folder. To remove the Citrix XML Service functionality from your Meta Frame server, simply rename or delete the Wpnbr.dll file.

Once the XML Service port is changed on the Metaframe Servers you will need to change NFuse or WI to point to the new port.

39.Access Gateway vs. Secure Gateway ?

Citrix Secure Gateway provides secure access to Citrix Presentation Server from the untrusted domain. Citrix Secure Gateway has evolved into the Citrix Access Gateway solutions. The best thing about Citrix Access Gateway appliance is it is not a Windows based. CAG is a hardened Linux appliance whereas CSG is installed over a Windows server. CSG can only proxy ICA traffic, but including that CAG in the DMZ to provide full SSL VPN access or more tailored filtering of access to applications and services. CAG Enterprise edition provides High Availability, native end point scans and load balance between several WI servers. TS Gateway from Microsoft is same as Citrix Secure Gateway that it allows access to internal Terminal Servers from external non trusted devices through SSL

Licensing

CSG comes as a part of Presentation Server and does not require any additional licensing. The CAG uses concurrent user licenses that are purchased separately to your Presentation Server licenses. We need to purchase the CAG hardware as it prohibits us from running the CAG software on any devices which are not purchased from Citrix.

Presentation Server Integration

Presentation Server is not integrated into CAG as well as CSG, though they both provide an SSL relay function to Presentation Server. User interface access to published applications is provided via Web Interface (WI) or Advanced Access Control (AAC, a component of Access Gateway Advanced Edition). What the CAG has over the CSG is integration with AAC. AAC makes it simple to control what users can do in their ICA sessions and what applications are available externally. In this sense, it’s easier to manage application access via AAC than it is via CAG and WI or CSG and WI alone.

Other Features

Secure Gateway does not offer any of the below advanced features of the Access Gate way such as:

SSL: this is essentially a Winsock redirector client that’s improves on an L2TP/IPSec or PPTPVPN by not relying on routes and using SSL only;

Web Application Access:

users can access internal web applications including integration with SharePoint Server;

Web-based File Share Access:

users are able to access internal file shares via a web browser with access to features such as uploading files control. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and PDF files can also be viewed directly in the browser without the requirement for local applications;

Web-based E-mail:

provide users integrated access to Outlook Web Access or iNotes. Citrix also provides a custom interface which allows the administrator to define what users can do in their session such as downloading attachments.

40.How to modify the Citrix License Port Number and Vendor Deamon Port Number ?

By default in License Server Version 11.5 Citrix License Manager Deamon communicates over port 27000 and the Citrix Vendor Daemon runs in 7279. You should not change this port number unless you have a firewall that uses another port number, or if this number is already in use.

Note:

In previous versions of Citrix Licensing, the port on which the Citrix vendor daemon communicated changed dynamically. The Citrix Licensing service chose a new port every time it restarted. This can be changed. If you need to change the port number, you must specify the new number in all license files on the server and in the firewall. By default, no port number is listed in the license file. When the License Manager daemon does not find a port number listed in the license file, it uses port 27000.

Citrix recommends that you back up your license files (files end with the .lic extension) before you change any port numbers. License files are stored in "C:\ProgramFiles\Citrix\Licensing\MyFiles". Citrix License Server Version 11.5 or later provides the LS Port

Updater service that monitors the MyFiles directory and replicates the port numbers in the license files for you automatically.

To set a static number for Citrix License Vendor Daemon port

1. From the Windows Services panel, stop the Citrix License Management Console service.

2. Open the license file in notepad.exe and locate the line VENDOR CITRIX.

4. Modify the line by appending the following:

VENDOR CITRIX options=<path to the options

file> port=<port number>

Example:

VENDOR CITRIX options="C:\Program Files

\Citrix\Licensing\MyFiles\CITRIX.opt" port=7950

5. Save the license file with a .lic extension.

6. Repeat Steps 2 through 5 for each license file on the license server.

7. From the Windows Services panel, restart the Citrix License Management Console service and the Citrix Licensing service to make your Citrix vendor daemon port number changes take effect. If a TCP/IP port number is specified on the VENDOR line, the Citrix vendor daemon may not restart until all the clients close their connections to the vendor daemon.

8. Verify that the new Citrix vendor daemon port number is being used by looking for the lines that use the new port number in the debug log (By default, this file is in C:\ProgramFiles\Citrix\Licensing\LS). The lines will be similar to the following:

3:13:48 (lmgrd) Starting vendor daemon at port 27950

3:13:51 (lmgrd) Using vendor daemon port 27950 specified in license file

To change the License Manager Daemon Port Number

1. From the Windows Services panel, stop the Citrix License Management Console service.

2. Using notepad.exe, modify the SERVER line of the license file by adding a port number afterthe hostname.

For example :SERVER this_host HOSTNAME=server1 27900 or SERVER this_host ANY 27900

3. Save the file with a .lic extension.

4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 for each license file on the license server.

5. From the Windows Services panel, restart the Citrix License Management Console service and the Citrix Licensing service to make your Citrix license manager daemon port number changes take effect.

6. Verify that the new Citrix license manager daemon port number is being used by looking for the line that uses the new port number in the debug log. The line will be similar to the following:

3:13:48 (lmgrd) lmgrd tcp-port 27900

Note: Do not restart the services until all license files on the license server have the same port number. If the License Manager daemon encounters different port numbers in the license files, the license server stops running. The text shown above many vary slightly depending on which version of Citrix Licensing you are running

From the Citrix License server version 11.5, Citrix provides an LS Port utility

that you can use to change the port numbers in your files. If you need to change the License Server port or Vendor Daemon port numbers, run the License Server Port utility to enter the new numbers and update the license files.

1.At the license server, open a command window and navigate to "C:\ProgramFiles\Citrix\Licensing\LS".

2.Type:lsportutil /set /lsport num /vendor num

where num is the new port number. For example, if you want to change the vendor daemon number to 24000, type: lsportutil /set/lsport 27000 /vendor 24000

3.Restart the Citrix Licensing service.

Note: Even if you change only one port number, you must specify both of the numbers in the command. To find out which port numbers are currently defined, type:

lsportutil /query.

41.How to clone the XenApp server?

One of the many enhancements Citrix made in XenApp v6 is that cloning a server is now much easier that it was in previous versions. Here’s a step-by-step guide, with lots of screen caps:

1. Install the updated XenApp Server Configuration Tool.

2. Run the XenApp Server Role Manager (Start – All Programs – Citrix – XenApp Server Role Manager – XenApp Server Role Manager)

3. Select “Edit Configuration”

4. Select “Prepare this server for imaging and provisioning:”

5. On the next screen, check “Remove this current server instance from the farm,” and then click “Next”. As the pop-up tip indicates, this will save us from having to do it manually later. The server will automatically join the farm when you bring it back on-line.

6. On the next screen, click “Apply:”

7. The server runs through the items that are needed to prepare XenApp for cloning. This means that once the new server comes on-line, it will automatically join the farm that the original server was in.

8. Back at the XenApp Server Role Manager screen, we can choose to reboot the server (which you probably don’t want to do just yet), or simply close the window and proceed with any additional tasks we may need to perform before cloning, such as Sysprep.

9. After we have finished any additional tasks, we can shut the server down, and clone it content. When your clones come back on-line, if they have a network connection on the correct IP subnet, they will automatically join the farm. However (“gotcha” alert), if you didn’t Sysprep them, they will all try to join the farm under the same machine name – the one your original server had. So if you didn’t change the name of the server, it’s best to disconnect it from the network, change the name and IP address, reconnect to the network, join it to the AD Domain, and then reboot it so it can join the XenApp farm using the correct name.

42.What are different load evaluators are available in Citrix

1. Default Load Evaluators 2. Advance Load evaluators. 3. Custom load evaluators.

43. What you will check when any user is not able to launch citrix application.

a) First try to launch same application from Citrix server(on which you installed and published)

b) Try to add same application to your ID and try to launch

c) Check user permissions for that Applications

d) Verify that latest Citrix client software installed at desktop

e) Verify that user is having correct proxy settings to connect to your Citrix network (for remote users)

44.What are the different ports used in Citrix

Citrix ICA traffic uses - 1494 , client to server ,Citrix XML service runs on 8080

LDAP Directory- TCP 389 ,Independent Management Architecture Services - TCP 2512, 2513

Licensing Service - TCP 27000, 27009 (configurable) ,Management Console (Using IMA) - TCP 2512, 2513

Application requests - TCP XML 80, 8080 or 443 (configurable) ,Client connections - TCP 80/443 (configurable)

Server-to-server - TCP XML 80/8080, 443 (using SSL Relay).

45.What is the difference between 2k & 2k3 terminal server licensing

Windows 2000 having 90 days Windows 2003 having 120 days.

46.What is SBC

Server-based computing (SBC) is finally achieving an accepted status as the preferred method for managed access and delivery of applications and desktops. This is due in part, to advances in networking infrastructure, as well as in the Microsoft Windows® operating system itself.

47.What are the different ports use in Citrix

1494: This port is used by any client using the TCP protocol to communicate with the Presentation Server. You will need to open this port on your firewall for inbound connections unless you are using some form of encapsulation or encryption. You can change the port using the ICAPORT command but I find it to be more trouble than it is worth.

1604: Called the ICA Browser port this is a UDP port that can be used by the Program Neighbourhood to enumerate applications. You probably won t use this though.

80: This is the default port used by the XML service and is used by clients who enumerate applications with the TCP+HTTP or XML protocol. You will thus need to open this port on your firewall for inbound connections if clients will be using it to locate servers. You can change the port easily enough using the CTXXMLSS command.

443: This is the default SSL. The SSL Relay will use it to secure communications between the Web Interface and the server farm. You could also use it to secure client communication to the web Interface or use it for client connections to the Presentation Server.

5000: The Presentation Server uses this port to communicate with the IBM Db2 server hosting the data store.

1521: This port is used to communicate with the Oracle data store.

1433: The port used to communicate with a Microsoft SQL data store.

2512: This port is used for server to server communication such as when load information is communicated. The port used to access the data store is saved in the HKLMSOFTWARECITRIXIMAIMAPORT key on the server containing the data store.

All other servers use the port number saved in HKLMSOFTWARECITRIXIMAPSSERVERPORT key in the registry to access the data store. Have a look at IMAPORT to see how to change it

2513: This port is used by the Presentation Server Console when connection to a server. Have a look at IMAPORT to see how to change it.

2598: This is the session reliability port number and needs to be opened on your firewall if the ICA Clients will be using session reliability when communication with the server.

27000 and a random port number: This is the port used for communication between the Citrix License server and the Presentation Servers. Remember that the Citrix vendor daemon running on the license server uses a random port. It tracks license usage.

Port 1494. The server will respond to the client on 1494 and assign it a port number in the "high port" range (1023-65534)443 or 80 for Https or http.

48.What you will check when any user is not able to launch Citrix application?

1) First try to launch same application from Citrix server(on which you installed and published)

2) Try to add same application to your ID and try to launch

3) Check user permissions for that Applications

4) Verify that latest Citrix client software installed at desktop 5) Verify that user is having correct proxy settings to connect to your Citrix network (for remote users).

49.Citrix Installation Manager - What is the requirement of Installation Manager and what kind of extension its support

Installation Manager is a powerfull feature in Metaframe XPe that facilitates the rapid installation of applications and other software components.

Installation manager let you install applications other software components to any or all available servers in your farm-attended or unattended-using any metaframe XP server on the network regardless of physical location network connection type or hardware set up. It supports extensions like ADF MSI and MSP.

============================================================

1. How do you repair the IMA local host cache?

dsmaint recreatelhc from cmd promt.

2. Why are Session Printers not recommended for slow WAN connections?

The print job is spooled across the WAN to the Citrix server and back again. It will cause an already slow link to become slower.

3. What group policy file would you edit to add custom drive letters for the purpose of hiding them from users when they login to a XenApp server?

User Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Explorer | "Hide these specified drives in My Computer "

and "Prevent access to drives from My Computer"

4. Client Package MSI File - How do you create a custom ICA client package using the MSI file from the Citrix download site?

msiexec /a ica32pkg.msi This Will run the client packaging tool.

5. Java Client - A customer has a single Citrix XenApp 4.5 server with WI installed on this Citrix server. They are not running CSG and they do not have a CAG. The Java client has been installed successfully and WI works

The XML Port is most probebly not open. Port 80 or 8080.

6. GP Processing Mode - What group policy processing mode is usually configured on group policies that are applied to XenApp servers?

Loop back processing

7. Citrix Licensing - How the licensing works in Citrix and difference in Citrix Licensing version wise

a) First there would be product licences such as Standard/Advanced/Enterprise/Platinum edition.

b) Then you have to purchase the concurrent licensees depending on the no of users this can be downloaded from the website .LIC file depending on the hostname of the server which is case sensitive.

8. PVS - What is PVS and why would you use it?

9. What is a ZDC and why is it recommended to have a dedicated one when there are more than 5 XenApp servers?

10. What are the console available to manage Citrix server?

Citrix Management Console Access Suite

11. What is ICA and what are the advantage of ICA

ICA - Independent Computing architecture.

it provides better compression

Transmits High-level windows display information

12. ICA vs RDP

Why is ICA that much faster than RDP ? What is the technological differences between thetwo?

RDP works only under TCP/IP while ICA works on many protocols.

ICA is a protocol developed by Citrix.RDP is developed by Microsoft.

Each performs the same virtualization channels to the end user clients.

13. Citrix Load Evaluators what are different load evaluators are available in Citrix?

1. Default Load Evaluators 2. Advanced Load evaluators 3. Custom load evaluators

14. How to implement Policies in Citrix the Citrix policy can be applied through Console Management in 3 levels

1. Farm Level 2. Citrix Server Level 3. Policy

15. What is Printer terminology in Citrix?

Citrix Printing can be configured 3 ways (types)

1. Local Printing. 2. Network Printing 3. Client Printing

Client Printer: The printer connected to the Workstation & the drivers are installed on the citrix server for printing.

Network Printer: The Printer connected to the print server & the drivers should be available on the citrix server.

Local Printer: The printer connected to locally to the citrix server & the drivers are installed for the print operation.

16. Citrix Server Installation ,What is the requirement for Citrix server installation? ,Windows 2003 Server ,Terminal Services

Terminal Services Licenses. ,.NET ,IIS ,www ,Citrix P.S 4.0 4.5 Citrix Licenses server ,Citrix Xenapp Troubleshooting

Here are some typical troubleshooting scenarios, when dealing with a Citrix XenApp environment. This list does not include every type of troubleshooting scenario possible; however, it can build a good foundation that can be used to tackle other problems.

•Application Streaming •Seamless/Multi-Monitor •3rd Party Applications •CPU Spikes

•Deadlocks/Hangs •Database •Network •Black Hole Effect •XenApp Plugin (PNA) •Debugging

Here are some typical troubleshooting scenarios, when dealing with a Citrix XenApp environment. This list does not include every type of troubleshooting scenario possible; however, it can build a good foundation that can be used to tackle other problems.

1.End user launches app from WI or PN Agent 2.RAD file is downloaded

3.RAD file launches client Application Isolation Environment (AIE) 4.RAD file instructs streaming client to download:

•Manifest file | AIE rules | Application executable | Pre and post execution scripts

5.Streaming client launches executable according to instructions in manifest file and AIE rules including pre and post execution scripts and registers with the ctxsbx.sys (redirector)

6.Application is available to user

7.Streaming Client requests additional files as required, checking first in the client cache, then if necessary, downloading additional files from the file server

Seamless/Multi-Monitor

Multi-Monitor

•An optional component

•Client provides a monitor layout via thinwire channel which is shared by all process loading mmhook.dll via shared memory

•Work area change is always posted to host. This could be due to change in work area of the existing area or change in virtual screen size due to addition /deletion of monitors.

•API hooks are controlled by flags and can be customized per process. Refer to CTX115637 for various configuration options

3rd Party Applications

•Leverage the Global Flags for user-mode applications using the Gflags utility

•Set 3rd party application to run under Image File Executions

•Configure a debugger to invoke the application (such as WinDbg)

•When the application launches, the debugger will automatically attach to the process and halt its execution!

•This gives the opportunity to explore all application threads from process initialization (~*kb)

•From here the internals of the application can be understood at the Native Windows API level (i.e. Which Windows API's are being used)

Database

Always keep an updated GOOD backup of your Data Store!!!

Troubleshooting

•SQL Profiler (Microsoft SQL Server)

•Event Logs

•API spy utility (TracePlus)

•Netstat

•DSCheck (always use the latest version available!!!)

Slow logons :

•Understand the logon process and Identify the slowdown!

•Validate via network trace that the connection between server to client is good

•If the connection makes it to the server, check which processes exist

•Use TaskManager and sort by session ID

•Gather userdumps for each process for the slow session to try to identify any synchronization problems, such as LPC and ALPC wait chain conditions

•Ensure Terminal Services is running (svchost.exe) and that the thread count appears normal

•Ensure critical Citrix processes are okay, such as IMA, CpSvc and XML

Network

•Always trace both ends of the connection

•Visio topology diagram

•Network tracing (NetMon, Wireshark)

•Winsock tracing (TracePlus)

•Netstat (port status)

•For session disconnects, look for the RST flag being set in trace and check devices in between

•Consider current Session Reliability or ICA keep-alive settings, and any potential impact

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

•Sync Packet (SYN)

Start of TCP session. Three way handshake (Syn, Syn-Ack, Ack).

ICA session initialisation packets are transmitted next.

•Reset Packet (RST)

Something has gone wrong, TCP session failed, unhandled closure of session.

•Finish Packet (FIN)

Session is been closed in a handled manner.

•Push Packet (PSH)

Data is been sent to receiving process directly.

•Ack Packet (ACK)

Packet was received successfully by the remote device

Citrix Configuring TCP Ports

Communication

Default port

Configuration

Delivery Services Console/Access Management Console

135 Not configurable

Citrix SSL Relay 443 See Using the SSL Relay with the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)

Citrix XML Service

80 See Installing and Configuring XenApp

Client-to-server (directed UDP)

1604 Not configurable

ICA sessions (clients to servers)

1494 See XenApp Command Reference for information about using the ICAPORT command

License Management Console

8082 See Licensing Your Product

Server to license server

27000 In the console, open the farm or server properties page, and select License Server

Server to Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle

139, 1433, or 443

See the documentation for the database software

Communication

Default port

Configuration

server for MS-SQL

Server to server 2512 See XenApp Command Reference for information about using the IMAPORT command

1) Default ICA port number?

Citrix Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) protocol is a networking protocol that runs over TCP/IP using registered port 1494. However, some firewalls are not preconfigured with details of the ICA protocol. Configuration for the ICA protocol is straightforward. The ICA protocol is similar to the TELNET protocol. It uses a single port at the MetaFrame server. The default port is 1494; you can change the port number using the ICAPORT utility.

2). what is Data Store?

It contains information about The data store provides a repository of persistent information about the farm that Each server can reference, including the following: • Farm configuration information • Published application configurations • Server configurations • MetaFrame administrator accounts • Printer configurations • Trust relationships

3) What is Data store?

For each server farm, you need a database called a data store. Citrix Presentation Server uses the data store to centralize configuration information for a server Farm in one location. The data store maintains information about the servers, applications, and administrators in the server farm. Using a data store ensures a scalable and flexible system for managing your servers.

4) How to check the data store is up or not/

Hklm\software\citrix\IMA\runtime

Righhand side value is there it means the connections is through

Next method ?

5) What is LHC (Local Host Cache)

A subset of data store information, the local host cache, exists on each server in the farm, providing each member server with quick access to data store information. The local host cache also provides redundancy of the data store information, if for example, a server in the farm loses connectivity to the data store. When a change is made to the farm’s data store, a notification to update the local host cache is sent to all the servers in the farm. However, it is possible that some servers will miss an update because of network problems. Member servers periodically query the data store to determine if changes were made since the server’s local host cache was last updated. If changes were made, the server requests the changed information.

6) What is IMA? Independent Management Architecture (IMA) it’s a Service

Independent Management Architecture (IMA) provides the framework for server Communications and is the management foundation for MetaFrame Presentation Server. IMA is a centralized management service comprised of a collection of core Subsystems that define and control the execution of products in a server farm. IMA enables servers to be arbitrarily grouped into server farms that do not depend on the physical locations of the servers or whether the servers are on different network subnets. IMA runs on all servers in the farm. IMA subsystems communicate through messages passed by the IMA Service through default TCP ports 2512 and 2513. The IMA Service starts automatically when a server is started. The IMA Service can be manually started or stopped through the operating system Services utility.

7) Purpose of the Data Collector / Zone Data Collectors:-

Zone data collectors are communication gateways between zones in farms that have more than one zone. Zone data collectors communicate information used by MetaFrame Presentation Server to list available applications for users and, when users open an application, to locate the most appropriate server on which to run the application When resolving a user’s application request to the least-loaded server in the farm, a zone data collector queries the other zone data collectors for the information it needs to identify the server with the lightest load.

8) Configuring Zones and Data Collectors

A zone data collector is a server that manages dynamic information about the servers in the zone. Each farm has at least one zone. Zones are designed to enhance the performance of a farm by allowing Geographically related servers to be grouped together, whether they are connected to the same network subnet or not.

9) What is Speed Screen?

Citrix has long talked up “SpeedScreen Latency Reduction” (or “SLR” for short)

Citrix’s SpeedScreen Latency Reduction does two things. Firstly, (and most importantly), it provides something called “local text echo.” Local text echo allows characters to appear on the ICA client device’s screen the instant a user pushes the key on their keyboard.

10) Using a RAID Environment

This section describes factors to consider if you are thinking about putting the farm’s data store in a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) environment. See the table below for information about cost, performance, and fault tolerance related to four different RAID configurations.

RAID 0 RAID 0 has no redundancy. It is “striped,” which means that data is divided into blocks spanning multiple disks. RAID 0 has multiple actuators (read/write mechanisms) because of the multiple disk use. More actuators improve read and write performance. Citrix does not recommend the use of RAID 0 for critical data, such as a server farm’s data store. The savings realized from purchasing fewer disks does not typically make up for the costs resulting from downtime and support. RAID 1 RAID 1 uses fully redundant disk mirroring. With disk mirroring, a complete copy of one drive is maintained on another drive. RAID 1 provides high fault tolerance and can improve read performance. However, RAID 1 writes the data twice, which can degrade write performance in single disk/controller environments. In addition, this type of redundancy requires twice the disk space.

RAID 5 Like RAID 0, RAID 5 is striped. However, because RAID 5 adds parity to the data striping, it includes fault tolerance. If one disk in a RAID 5 group fails, the logical disk continues to function. The parity information is used to recreate data on areplacement disk. The loss of two disks in a group at one time cannot be sustained. RAID 5 uses multiple disk actuators that provide improved read and write performance.

RAID 10 RAID 10 combines RAID 1 and RAID 0. It is a striped and fully mirrored set of disks. It is the best configuration for both redundancy and performance. Because of this, it is the most expensive storage option. 11) How to put a server into install mode, "Gui way, command line way"

12. How does Citrix load balancing work?

When a client initiates a connection to the server, a vserver terminates the client connection and initiates a new connection with the selected server, or reuses an existing connection with the server, to perform load balancing. The load balancing feature provides traffic management from Layer 4 (TCP and UDP) through Layer 7 (FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS).

The NetScaler uses a number of algorithms, called load balancing methods, to determine how to distribute the load among the servers. The default load balancing method is the Least Connections method.

A typical load balancing deployment consists of the entities described in the following figure

The entities function as follows:

Vserver. An entity that is represented by an IP address, a port, and a protocol. The vserver IP address (VIP) is usually a public IP address. The client sends connection requests to this IP address. The vserver represents a bank of servers.

Service. A logical representation of a server or an application running on a server. Identifies the server's IP address, a port, and a protocol. The services are bound to the vservers.

Server object. An entity that is represented by an IP address. The server object is created when you create a service. The IP address of the service is taken as the name of the server object. You can also create a server object and then create services by using the server object.

Monitor. An entity that tracks the health of the services. The NetScaler periodically probes the servers using the monitor bound to each service. If a server does not respond within a specified response timeout, and the specified number of probes fails, the service is marked DOWN. The NetScaler then performs load balancing among the remaining services.

5) Difference's between ica and rdp

1 Requires Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Datacenter Server.

2 Not available on Windows CE .NET thin clients.

6) You just installed X, y, z application on a Terminal Server / citrix server and the application runs fine for the administrator but not for average Joe user. How would you go about figuring out the problem? What tools would you use?

7) In presentation Server 4.5 what is the name of the console where you publish applications.

8) What's the name of the .CMD file that runs every time a user logs into Citrix.

USRLOGON.CMD

Whenever a user logs on to MetaFrame, the USRLOGON.CMD file is run. This file is located in %systemroot%/system32. It is configured to run automatically when each user logs in.

This file has two functions:

USRLOGON.CMD creates the ROOTDRIVE variable. This variable is used by the Logon Script to identify the user's home directory.USRLOGON.CMD calls USRLOGN2.CMD. USRLOGN2.CMD runs the application scripts that fix user level problems with certain applications.

9) What is an .ICA File, What is contained inside an ica File

File type: Citrix file or

Bitmap graphic (Image Object Content Architecture)

ICA files contain network and system settings used by several Citrix applications.

10) What is Speed Screen

11) Difference between published applications and Published Desktops? Pros/Cons of both.

Query command in citrix?

1. What is Farm?

Citrix farm is a collection of citrix servers which provide published applications to all users. It also prevent singel of failure of all citrix servers due to load balanced capabilities.

What is the requirement for Citrix server installation?

· Operating systems:

Windows Server 2003 (Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter Edition) with Service Pack 1 or 2 installed

Windows Server 2003 R2

· Disk space requirements:

400MB for Citrix Presentation Server, Enterprise Edition

50MB for the Presentation Server Console

25MB for the Access Management Console

35MB for the Document Center

· Terminal Services running in application mode

· Java Runtime Environment Version 1.5.0_09

o If you do not have this installed, Autorun.exe prompts to install it for you

o Alternatively, you can cancel the installation and install JRE manually from the Support\JRE1.5 folder on the server installation CD for Citrix Presentation Server

· .NET Framework Version 2.0

o If you do not have this installed, Autorun.exe prompts to install it for you

o You can also install .NET Framework Version 2.0 manually from the Support\dotNet20 folder of the Citrix Presentation Server CD or image

What is Client Lock Down

Fire up a full PN Client and go to Tools->ICA Settings-&gt;Hotkeys Tab. CTRL+ALT+DEL hotkey is Ctrl+F1. So if you add that hotkey combo into the default.ica file in WebInt, it will give users the ability to lock their Citrix sessions by hitting Ctrl+F1 and walk away from the thin client

What is Printer terminology in Citrix

Common Microsoft Windows and Citrix Printing Terms Defined

Citrix Printing Terms

Autoconnected Printers: Printers that are defined for users in their ICA sessions based off the list of network printers defined on the client machine, but are connected directly to the print server. During session initialization, the server attempts to map directly to the print server using the credentials of the user that initiated the ICA session. If the server is unable to establish a direct connection to the location, the printer is autocreated in the session instead of being autoconnected. When a printer is autoconnected, the print job is sent directly from the server running Presentation Server, bypassing the client device, to the specified print server outside of the ICA session.

Autocreated Printers: Client local or network printers that appear for the user within an ICA session and use the ICA protocol to send a print job. Autocreated printers use the ICA printer naming convention.

Autorestored Printers: A manually created client printer attached to a standard client printer port. This kind of printer can be created by an administrator or power user running the Add Printer wizard and manually creating a local printer that is attached to a standard client printer port. These printers are deleted when logging off and re-created when logging on.

Autoretained Printers: These are client printers that are added by the user within an ICA session through the Add Printer wizard by browsing and connecting to printers enumerated through the client network print provider. When re-creating a retained printer, all Citrix policies except the autocreation policy are respected. This means that retained client printers are created exactly as the autocreation policy would have selected them. Such printers continue to be re-created with every logon from the same client until the client printer within the session is deleted manually or the remembered printer connection is removed from the client’s properties store. On a Windows client, the properties store can be found in the user profile under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Citrix\PrinterProperties

Client Printers: Any printer available to a user before an ICA session is launched.

oClient Local Printer: Printers that are physically connected to client devices through LPT, COM, or TCP ports.

oClient Network Printer: A network printer that appears in the Printers and Faxes folder of a client device and is managed by a print server. This differs from a print device attached to a standard TCP/IP port.

Citrix Print Manager Service (cpsvc.exe): Provides printer management for all ICA sessions including printer policy enforcement, driver installation, client printer port management, auto-creation of network and client printers, and printer/port cleanup when logging off.

Citrix Universal Print Driver (UPD): A single driver that is installed and configured on the server to which an administrator can assign to all client autocreated printers. This allows for an administrator to not have to manage, install, and duplicate a potentially large set of third-party print drivers through the server farm.

Citrix Universal Printer: A single generic printer using the Citrix Universal Print Driver. It is mapped within each session and is not bound to any printer defined on the client device. It is not enabled by default.

Legacy-style Client Printer Port: The printer ports used by printers created using the legacy naming convention. Such ports are tied to the client workstation by name.

The naming convention is as follows:

<client>\<CLIENTNAME>\<PRINTERNAME>

Where <CLIENTNAME> is the name of the client workstation and <PRINTERNAME> is the name of the printer on the client.

Standard-style Client Printer Port: The printer ports used by printers created using the standard naming convention. Such printers are tied to the client workstation by Terminal Services session ID.

The naming convention is as follows:

<client>:<ID>:<PRINTERNAME>

Where <ID> is the session ID number of an active session and <PRINTERNAME> is the name of the printer on the client.

Session Printers: Network printers shared by a print server that are discovered and attached through a session printing policy.

Unmanaged Printer: Permanent printers attached to legacy client printer ports. Both the port and printer become permanent fixtures on the server that they are created on. Whenever the specific client is not connected to the server, the port is marked offline. However, if a session is opened from the client, the port is marked online and any queued print jobs begin to print on the specific client printer.

7. How to use datastore for database

8. What is the difference between all citrix versions?

9. What are different load evaluators are available in Citrix

Citrix load evaluators

Many deployments of Citrix where I've had to do health checks have had their default Citrix load evaluators set for load balancing. The default load evaluator sets the user load as 100 users per server. This can be very dangerous as this figure has for all intents and purposes not been tested to and whilst a 100 users per server may be possible on large powerful servers, it isn't attainable across the board.

Load evaluators on each server need to be configured to just below the stress limit. So if the servers become unresponsive at a user load of 60 and the server can be rebooted successfully instead of at 61 users where a reboot does nothing. Then we can assume that 60 is the stress limit for the server and using n-1 (where n is the stress limit) would be a fair indicator for the load evaluator.

However we need to factor in transaction times to see whether they are impacted at n-1 and if they are we need to set the load evaluator for a lower user load.

When loads on servers reach certain points, the associated infrastructure will start to struggle to meet demands put on it. For example, the network components may not be able to deal effectively with network requests and as such user sessions may become unresponsive.

Not knowing your stress limits on resources before going 'live' can become a total nightmare when a system is 'live' as it may take time to locate the causes and as I've said before, 'fix it cheaply in test or pay a fortune to fix it later!'.

During one stress testing phase I found above a certain load all the servers in the farm became unresponsive. The load on the servers was just before the server stress limits and the aggregate server load on the other associated infrastructure was therefore very high.

So the first port of call was to check whether the servers could see the rest of the infrastructure they interfaced with. Which was fine, next I looked at the network and eventually found out the network card on the data store couldn't cope with the number of requests made by the Citrix servers.

This is where stress testing shows it's benefits as in most cases non functional testing is never done on a full scale environment, that is, if the plan is to deploy 1000 Citrix servers for 25,000 users, your test environment won't be the same size as the cost could be excessive. So the test environment in most cases is a scaled down version.

The only way to contemplate how thousands of users would affect the system, is to try to test at the stress limits and monitor the infrastructure components. For example, using an environment a quarter of the size of the planned primary environment and using the maximum levels of user load (n-1) per server, it's possible to get high numbers of test users using the test environment.

By running these stress tests over several days not only would the infrastructure be able to simulate months of load but also apply consistent levels of stress on infrastructure components.

This is the stress testing approach I used on a Citrix environment where it was determined the datastore network cards were unsuitable. Testing using the expected loads didn't create any infrastructure issues and the Citrix servers coped extremely well at these loads as the transaction times remained fairly consistent.

When the higher loads were applied, the datastore started to struggle. Fortunately we were able to change the network cards during testing otherwise the higher loads would have caused a nightmare if we'd gone into production using these types of network cards.

It's important to assess the correctness of setup including whether the right thresholds have been configured for Citrix load evaluators.

Citrix User Policies

With User Policies, you can apply select MetaFrame settings, including shadowing permission settings, printer autocreation settings, and client device mapping settings, to specific users or user groups. Using policies, you can tailor your environment at the user / group level.

Policy rules have three states: Rule Enabled, Rule Disabled, or Rule Not Configured.

By default, not all rules are configured. All unconfigured rules are ignored when users log on to the MetaFrame server. I highly recommend reducing the amount of rules set to Rule Not Configured to reduce to need to process the policy and to speed up the logon time.

Keep with the following when creating a new Citrix Policy:

1. Decide the purpose for the Citrix policy Why are you creating the policy and who will it affect. An example of a policy would be to assign them common settings specific to their function, connection type or geographic location.

2. Create the policy - You will need to define a name for the policy, assign user(s) / group(s) to the policy and set the rules that will be the basis of the policy.

3. Prioritize or rank your policies In order to over come user(s) / groups(s) that are members of multiple policies you will need to configure policy priority. I highly recommend creating an Administrator policy the disables all policy and gives full control to a select group of Citrix administrators to the top of the policy list to prevent from locking yourself out.

In order to view the priory of Citrix Policies you set the consoles view mode to Details. Select Details on the View menu Click the Priority section of the title bar to sort by priority.

Important! User Policy settings override all other MetaFrame XP and Terminal Services settings. However, if you disable functionality in Citrix Connection Configuration, you cannot enable the functionality by creating user policies

How to Create a New Citrix Policy

The following details how to create Citrix User Policies

Open the Citrix Management Console, right click on the Policies section and click Create Policy

1. Enter a name for the new policy and click OK.

2. Adjust the policy priority by clicking up or down priory buttons located on the toolbar.

You have now sucessfully created a Citrix Policy and are ready to configure the rules and assign user(s) / group(s) to it.

How to Configure a Citrix Policy

The following details how to configure policy rules.

1. Double click on a Citrix Policy to open the policy properties.

2. Click the policies that the rules you would like to set and click OK when finished.

You have now successfully configured a Citrix Policy and are ready to assign the Policy to user(s) / group(s).

How to Assign a Citrix Policy to User(s) and or Group(s)

The following details how to assign a policy to user or groups.

1. Right click on the policy you would like to assign user and or group to and click Assign Users.

2. Select the User(s) / Groups(s) you would like to assign to the policy and click OK. I highly recommend sticking with group to simply policy management. However if you need to assign a user then you will need to check the Show users checkbox.

The Citrix policy will now be assigned to the designated user(s) / group(s) next time they login to the MetaFrame farm.

11. What you will check when any user is not able to launch citrix application.

1) First try to launch same application from Citrix server(on which you installed and published)

2) Try to add same application to your ID and try to launch

3) Check user permissions for that Applications

4) Verify that latest Citrix client software installed at desktop

5) Verify that user is having correct proxy settings to connect to your Citrix network (for remote users)

13. What is ICA and what are the advantage of ICA

14. What is Speed Screen

15. What are the query command in citrix

1)qfarm

2)querydc

3)queryds

4)queryhr

16. What are the different ports use in Citrix

Some Citrix Port Numbers

1494: This port is used by any client using the TCP protocol to communicate with the Presentation Server. You will need to open this port on your firewall for inbound connections unless you are using some form of encapsulation or encryption. You can change the port using the ICAPORT command but I find it to be more trouble than it is worth.

1604: Called the ICA Browser port this is a UDP port that can be used by the Program Neighbourhood to enumerate applications. You probably won t use this though.

80: This is the default port used by the XML service and is used by clients who enumerate applications with the TCP+HTTP or XML protocol. You will thus need to open this port on your firewall for inbound connections if clients will be using it to locate servers. You can change the port easily enough using the CTXXMLSS command.

443: This is the default SSL. The SSL Relay will use it to secure communications between the Web Interface and the server farm. You could also use it to secure client communication to the web Interface or use it for client connections to the Presentation Server.

5000: The Presentation Server uses this port to communicate with the IBM Db2 server hosting the data store.

1521: This port is used to communicate with the Oracle data store.

1433: The port used to communicate with a Microsoft SQL data store.

2512: This port is used for server to server communication such as when load information is communicated. The port used to access the data store is saved in the HKLMSOFTWARECITRIXIMAIMAPORT key on the server containing the data store. All other servers use the port number saved in HKLMSOFTWARECITRIXIMAPSSERVERPORT key in the registry to access the data store. Have a look at IMAPORT to see how to change it.

2513: This port is used by the Presentation Server Console when connection to a server. Have a look at IMAPORT to see how to change it.

2598: This is the session reliability port number and needs to be opened on your firewall if the ICA Clients will be using session reliability when communication with the server.

27000 and a random port number: This is the port used for communication between the Citrix License server and the Presentation Servers. Remember that the Citrix vendor daemon running on the license server uses a random port. It tracks license usage.

17. How the licensing works in Citrix and difference in Citrix Licensing version wise

18. What are the console available to manage citrix server.

Access Management Console

Presentation management console

Citrix web console

19. What is WebInterface or Nfuse

(Nfuse is the web interface of the citrix server).

20. What is citrix secure / access gateway and how its work

Citrix Access Gateway™ is a universal SSL VPN appliance that combines the best features of IPSec and typical SSL

VPNs — without the costly and cumbersome implementation and management — to make access easy for users, secure

for the company, and low-cost for the IT department. The Access Gateway provides a secure, always-on, single point

of access to any information resource. It works through any firewall; supports all applications and protocols, including IP

telephony; is fast, simple and cost-effective to deploy and maintain via its Web-deployed, auto-updating client; and

ensures that devices meet company security standards with a worm-blocking client and integrated end-point scanning.

The Access Gateway automatically and seamlessly reconnects users to their applications when they change locations and

devices, and gives them the same access experience they have at the desktop. Citrix Access Gateway provides secure access to any application hosted on Citrix Presentation Server™, as well as distributed Windows® and UNIX® applications, direct-access Web applications, network file shares, data and collaboration services, and even telephony services using VoIP softphones. With the addition of the Advanced Access Control option, theIT organization can utilize sense and response capabilities tonot only provide or deny access to appropriate applications,

but also control the level of user action rights for each application or resource accessed.

21. What are the difference between Win2K and 2K3 Terminal server.

22. What is the difference between 2k & 2k3 terminal server licensing

23. What is SBC

24. What is Printer driver replicationa and mapping

25. How to recover when Datastore failing

data store can be recreated by the *.mdb file which is located at program files/Citrix/Indipendent Architectute Management

this file can be moved to another server and a data base connectivity and be created using ODBC and creating a *.dsn file.

26. How to recover when IMA failing

There can be a number of reasons why the IMA Service appears not to have started including the following:

IMA Service load time ,IMA Service subsystem ,Missing Temp directory

Print spooler service ,ODBC configuration ,Roaming Profile

Examine the following Windows Registry setting:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARECitrixIMARuntimeCurrentlyLoadingPlugin

If there is no value specified in the CurrentlyLoadingPlugin portion of the above Windows Registry entry then either the IMA Service could not connect to the data store or the local host cache is missing or corrupt.

If a CurrentlyLoadingPlugin value is specified the IMA Service made a connection to the data store and the value displayed is the name of the IMA Service subsystem that failed to load.

Missing Temp Directory

If administrators see an “IMA Service Failed†error message with an error code of 2147483649 when starting the MetaFrame XP Presentation Server the local system account might be missing a Temp directory which is required for the IMA Service to run.

To gain further insight into the situation change the IMA Service startup account to the local administrator and restart the server. If the IMA Service is successful in starting under the local administrator’s account then it is likely that a missing Temp directory for the local system account is causing the situation.

If the Temp directory is not present then manually create one as >Temp. For example:

C:WinntTemp

Also verify that the TMP and TEMP system environment variables point to the temporary directory. Restart the server to restart the IMA Service

27. What is the requirement of Installation Manager and wht kind of extension its support.

28. What are the parameters of Resource Manager?

In your day-to-day management of your MetaFrame XPe environment, Citrix Resource Manager will be one of your most valuable tools. Resource Manager (RM) serves three purposes:

Real time monitoring of MetaFrame XPe servers.

Historic reports containing information about MetaFrame XPe servers.

A central repository of usage information and statistics across all servers in your farm.

Real time monitoring allows you to view the status of different components of the MetaFrame XP server. Each component (known to Resource Manager as a "metric") is viewed via the CMC, and has a green icon next to it if everything is okay. If there are problems, the icon will turn a different color, depending on what the problem is. You can configure the system to send alerts to SNMP traps, email addresses, or short message service pagers if problems occur. You can completely customize the types, behaviors and thresholds of each metric in your environment.

In addition to displaying the live status of MetaFrame XPe servers, Resource Manager can also be used to collect and store detailed data about individual servers. A system snapshot is taken every 15 seconds, and a report can be generated on any timeframe in the past 96 hours, allowing you to see exactly what the condition of the server was at a specific time.

Finally, if you are using Feature Release 2, MetaFrame XPe servers running Resource Manager can periodically send statistics and data to a centralized database. From there you can generate reports about overall farm usage. You can even set up pricing information and generate invoices based on which users accessed the systems.

The newest version of Citrix Resource Manager has evolved quite a bit in the past few years, even since MetaFrame XP was first released. For that reason, this section addresses the Resource Manager component of MetaFrame XPe with Service Pack 2 applied. Since Service Pack 2 is free, you can use it even if you don't plan on using Feature Release 2.

Technical Overview

Even though Citrix Resource Manager is fairly straightforward, there are several components required to make it work. These components include:

Citrix Resource Manager software.

Metrics.

Farm metric server.

IMA data store.

Local resource manager database.

Summary database.

Database connection server.

Resource Manager Software. In order to use Resource Manager, you need to ensure that the Resource Manager components are enabled when you install MetaFrame XPe. If not, you can install them at any time by running the SP-2/FR-2 installation program. The Resource Manager software must be locally installed on each MetaFrame XPe server that you want to monitor. This software extends the functionality of the IMA service, allowing it to collect metrics on various server components.

Metrics. A metric is a component (and its associated parameters) that is monitored, including the thresholds for changing the status of the metric and sending alerts. Each metric has an icon that changes colors to indicate its current status. Metrics are configured in the server farm and applied to specific servers or published applications. Examples of the hundreds of metrics available include current user load, CPU utilization, and number of published applications in use.

Farm Metric Server. The Farm Metric Server (FMS) is responsible for monitoring the status of the metrics of all servers and published applications in the entire server farm. This server actually controls the metric icons, changing their status as conditions warrant. The FMS gets its information from the zone data collector, which is updated every 15 seconds by each MetaFrame XPe server.

IMA Data Store. All Resource Manager configuration information is stored in the IMA data store. This includes the metrics and their associated configurations and thresholds, as well as alert parameters and which metrics are applied to which servers and published applications. Just like the other information in the IMA data store, each MetaFrame XPe server's local host cache contains its local subset of the Resource Manager information from the IMA data store.

Local Resource Manager Database. While the Resource Manager configuration information is stored in the IMA data store, each MetaFrame XPe server is responsible for locally maintaining its own Resource Manager data. This data, stored in \Program Files\Citrix\Citrix Resource Manager\LocalDB\RMLocalDatabase.mdb on each server, is maintained for the previous 96 hours, with new data overwriting the oldest data.

Summary Database. In Feature Release 2 environments, the summary database is a SQL or Oracle database that stores long term information about server usage. You can configure this data to be whatever you want, but most people store only a small subset of the local resource manager data in the summary database. The difference is that the summary database is used to store the data for weeks or months.

Database Connection Server. This server is responsible for receiving summary data from all MetaFrame XPe servers and writing it to the summary database. This is the only server that directly connects to the summary database.

Figure 16.2 (next page) shows how the various Resource Manager components work together in the MetaFrame XPe environment.

Figure 16.2: The components of Citrix Resource Manager

Monitoring Servers and Applications

Everything in Resource Manager is monitored via the metrics that you configure. After installation, default server metrics are in place so you can begin monitoring a server immediately without any additional configuration.

How you view the current status of the metrics depends on which type of metric you are interested in viewing. There are essentially two types of metrics: published application metrics and server metrics. Obviously, the published application metrics show information relating to each specific published application. They can be viewed in the published application's area in the CMC (CMC | Published Applications | Your Application | Resource Manager Tab). The server metrics, which contain server-specific status and information, can also be viewed via the CMC (CMC | Servers | Your Server | Resource Manager Tab).

Metric Status

When viewing metrics, each specific metric has an icon whose color corresponds to the state of the metric. Each metric type, both for published applications and servers, has six possible states, as outlined below:

Green. The metric is operating within its acceptable limits as configured in its properties.

Yellow. The metric has exceeded the limits of the green state and switched to yellow, having exceeded the time and value limit threshold you configured.

Red. The metric has exceeded the time and limit thresholds of the yellow state and switched to red. Any configured SNMP, SMS or email alerts have been sent.

Blue. The metric has been added, but it has not yet been configured, so it can't change color. This blue status will not change until you edit the properties of the metric and configure it for use.

Gray (Paused). The metric has entered a "snooze" state, manually invoked by an administrator. During this snooze period the metric will not activate any red alarms, and yellow and red conditions will not cause the metric to appear in the watcher window. However, during this snooze state, the metric is still active and it is still collecting data. The metric will exit the snooze state and become green, yellow, or red, after a preconfigured amount of snooze time has passed, as configured in the metric's properties.

Black (Stopped). The metric has entered a "sleep" state, manually invoked by an administrator. During this sleep period, the metric will not activate any red alarms. Also, yellow or red conditions will not cause the metric to appear in the watcher window. However, during this sleep state, the metric is still active, and it is still collecting data. The metric will not exit the sleep state until it is manually "woken up" by an administrator.

SMA Service => sweet monitoring and alerting service

How many connections to servers in the farm can IMA process/keep at one time?

While there is no finite answer to this, there is a registry setting that limits the Host Resolver to keeping only 512 open connections to hosts. This is very important in large farm design, and it can be manipulated.

The connections to hosts in a zone by a ZDC do not last forever, and can be torn down and re-established. It is important to farm performance that steps are taken in the zone to limit this teardown/setup process from occurring, and bumping up the registry setting alleviates this in zones with more than 512 hosts. The registry setting is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Citrix\IMA\Runtime\ MaxHostAddressCacheEntries

When Miami Inc designs their global farm, the ZDC setup is of the utmost importance as the number of servers in each zone will grow over time to very high levels. A thorough understanding of this setting and the following information is critical.

Zone Setup and Information

What is the function of a zone?

Zones perform two functions:

• Collecting data from member servers in the zone

• Distributing changes in the zone to other servers in the farm

What is a Zone Data Collector (ZDC)?

Each zone in a Presentation Server farm has its own “traffic cop” or ZDC. A ZDC may also at times be referred to as the Zone Manager. The ZDC maintains all load and session information for every server in the zone. ZDCs keep open connections to other farm ZDCs for zone communication needs. Changes to/from member servers of a ZDCs zone are immediately propagated to the other ZDCs in the farm.

How does the ZDC keep track of all of the hosts in the farm to make sure they are live?

If ZDC does not receive an update within the configured amount of time from a member server (default 1 minute) in its zone, it sends a ping (IMAPing) to the member server in question. This timeframe can be configured in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Citrix\IMA\Runtime\KeepAliveInterval

If ZDC does not receive an update within the configured amount of time from a peer ZDC server, it does not continually ping the “lost” ZDC. It waits a default of 5 minutes, which is configurable in: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Citrix\IMA\Runtime\GatewayValidationInterval