If you run the Citrix Director Web-based management console well keep Citrix Director Plugin Model - XenDesktop and XenApp sites, you might want to add customized fields for monitoring tool. Why?

For most companies, it is often necessary to add a few custom fields to the monitoring tool. For example, you can expose the SNMP traps information by Director Server as a JSON API. Or maybe you want to show additional information on Director User Details page.

This post explains how to write the Director of plugins.

Citrix Director is designed to allow us to add our own plugins. There are 2 types of plugins, plugin backend and UI plugin. If we expose any additional information as JSON API calls, back-end plug-in mechanism can be used. If we want to be displayed on the UI Director additional information or if we want to show to other Director Console, the UI plug-in is used.

Director plugin architecture

As the diagram shows, can invite Director Internal and external plugins. For the internal plugins plug-in code is loaded and hosted by director webservice. External plugins are those that are hosted on a separate Web server and embedded in Director.

As a Director Backend Plugin add

director is hosted as a web service that makes several APIs for trends, Dashboard and other pages. For suspend our own APIs by Director, we need to write a Director backend plugin.

a plugin Director to write back, is very simple. All we need is a DLL file and place it to create the folder "C: inetpub wwwroot Director plugin" in Director Server and restart the IIS server

Here Code as we is sample. can write a backend plugin. You can directly use this code to write the business logic in test function. Then build a DLL and use it, you are your plugin. There are comments from the code to make it easier to understand. We recommend using Visual Studio for development and the creation of the dll.

Just to have an insight into the code, we first need to import the namespaces. There are three major classes must we import, webservice, Plugin. Inetpub wwwroot Director bin

We need to define a return class that is returned by a Web service request: You can find these DLLs in C , Ensure DataContract and DataMember properties to add. This is to register these classes and property as public.

Then you need to create an interface with plug-attributes property. It should contain the prototype of the function that is exposed as a web service. In this case, "MakeOdataQuery" is the API that is exposed.

Finally, the interface should be implemented in a class. Have to get the complete code a look at the OdataQuery.cs.

How to write Director UI plugin

Director supports our own UI plugin on dashboard add Trends, endpoint details, Equipment details, user details page. For the plugin to show, we need to follow two steps.

• to create a plugin config file

a configuration file for creating plugin and place them in a folder in the location " C: inetpub wwwroot Director displayconfig "

If you want the external side load, as would the config file .:

http://www.citrix.com

http : //www.citrix.com

649

[1945003[

the Config file looks like this when you want to load the file into Director Server:

plugins / MyPLugin.html

plugins / MyPLugin.html - the HTML file should be / Plugins folders are stored

649

Note: you can copy the content above and as mypluginConfig .xml

• Edit page config file

dashboards, trends and UserDetial side have their own configuration file. ": Inetpub wwwroot Director displayconfig C" in Director Server We can find in the folder. Inorder to add the plugin, we have the following lines in each file.

By adding the above lines to the configuration file, we will see a new line on the Add each page. In this line, the plugin is loaded. If you want 2 plugin page like to add on the same line of page, you can do this by adding the following lines

[1945040HieristdieHTMLsamplejavascriptCodedesUIplugin]

, which calls the backend service and is a the JSON response to the text box.

test

[1945057speichern]

the above code as MyPLugin.html in the folder "C :.. inetpub wwwroot Director "Now restart the server and plug-in will be charged the Director user interface

example

Let's look at a have sample. We have implemented a plugin for creating custom report via XenDesktop.

customer report plugin

This plugin has two parts. UI plugin and backend plugin. You can download from here complete code and executables.

Custom Reports code

Custom Report Installer XD 7.6

GiHub Repository

Add

UI plugin, unzip the downloaded file. Full logic of the user interface to be loaded into index.html file in custom reports folder

steps Director configure UI plugin on trend page .:

• Location Custom Report folder in c: inetpub , wwwroot Director Plugins directory
• you have to edit TrendspageConfig.xml within c: inetpub wwwroot Director displayconfig. Replace the file with the in zip folder
• Create a Custom Report folders inside C: .. Inetpub wwwroot Director displayconfig and copy XDCustomreportConfig.xml file into

This will load UI plugin director. It sees this

add a backend plugin, you must OdataQuery.dll and start to copy IIS. , Director service will import this DLL and expose the API of this DLL as WebService

Just to have a little taste, in the dll, provides template code as follows:

// Director namespaces we have to use

with Citrix.Dmc.Common;

with Citrix.Dmc.Common.Utilities;

with Citrix.Dmc.Common.Plugin;

with Citrix.Dmc.Connector;

Citrix.Dmc.WebService.Utilities used;

with Citrix.Dmc.Connector.Broker;

with Citrix.Dmc .Resources.Service;

using System.Diagnostics;

with Citrix.Dmc.WebService;

// the namespace that you implement

namespace OdataQuery

{

[DataContract]

public class OdataReturn

{

[DataMember]

public string [] [] response;

public OdataReturn (string [] [] res)

{

response = res;

}

}

[PluginAttribute]

public interface pluginDllInterafce

{

[OperationContract]

[FaultContract(typeof(DmcServiceFault))]

[WebInvoke(ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json, BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.Wrapped)]

string MakeOdataQuery (string Report, string SITEID, string query);

}

// Class

public class Plugin Test: pluginDllInterafce, IDisposable

{

public string MakeOdataQuery (String Report, string SITEID, string query)

{

/ * Login * implementation?

}}}

Configuring and Managing Alerts and Notifications Director With -

With Director 7.7, you have the option of configuring policies, rules and conditions that reminds you when the reaches configured threshold your XenDesktop 7.7 environment. to proactive alerts and notifications either through the Director UI or using PowerShell cmdlets.

configure and manage in this post, we will take a look at how to configure your alerts, visualize, manage, analyze their details and to track historical trends Alarm.

configuration

Suppose that you are a XenDesktop Admin and try to use your understanding XenDesktop deployment. They need to be warned if the number of concurrent sessions exceeds a threshold.

Before you even get the configuration of alerts and notifications, you must configure your Notification subscription. With this you can add an SMTP Exchange Server, which can be used later to send emails from, if there is a warning.

For this you must navigate to the E-mail server configuration page. On the dashboard, click the Alerts tab at the top and then in the Alerts page, click the E-mail server configuration subtab to get there.

Once on the page, you must enter all the required values select

log .: , the protocol supports your e-mail server. Director supports multiple protocols with your SMTP server to connect to. These include SMTP, SMTP-SSL and SMTP TSL

-Host : The host name or IP address of the SMTP server

Port: the port with which you want to connect to the server with your SMTP

sender e-mail: the e-mail address from which you email from incase a warning should be sent. It is recommended best to create a separate e-mail address on the E-mail server and rename it as CitrixDirectorAdmin@xyz.com and use it to send

[youralertemails1945001] If the SMTP server requires authentication . In case your SMTP server does not require authentication,

username and password .: authentication data can set the value to NO, and you would a username and password do not need required, SMTP Server connection to authenticate

Before you save the best advice it your settings, it is to test by sending a test email. Click the "Send Test Email" and check if a test email to the email address you obtained in Test send email wizard.

If you do not receive e-mail configuration parameters, check use again and "Edit" button to change any incorrect values ​​

. Note: , you can not configure as an SMTP server.

If you want to remove an existing notification subscription, click on the Remove button settings.

policy configuration

Since you create a notification subscription done in the previous step, let's focus on creating a policy. The first thing you need to do is navigate create the page directive. On the dashboard, click the Alarm tab, and then click the Policy sub Create tab. If you do not see this tab, you do not have permission to create a new policy. Let's start with an example of. You want to create a policy that has a condition that, if the number of "peak Connected Sessions" goes over 10, an alert is generated and when the number of "peak Connected Sessions" on 15 a critical alert is generated. [Now

let's see how we can configure such a policy!

The main components are a policy:

Name: the name of the policy that you want

[Create Description: a brief description about the policy and its terms. Limit your description to less than 50 words

Scope: The company, in which the policy is applied to. For e.g.:- If my policy is a condition; "Notify me when tips related meetings hits 0 on all machines in my delivery group xyz", then here is the delivery group xyz the scope is. be for all machines throughout the site and the alert threshold are included in the total value of all equipment used [-

1. Site:

   In general alarm policy focuses on three different areas. will apply to all machines in the entire delivery group and the alarm threshold is included in the total value of all equipment used

2. Server OS -
3. delivery group is applied -. will apply to all machines in the delivery group, but the alarm threshold will be applied to individual machines

notification settings.? Who should be notified by e-mail when a warning for this policy there are

conditions: to create a list of conditions that you can select a policy , A policy can have multiple conditions or only one.

state type	condition checks
tips Connected Sessions	detected when a momentary (one minute sample) number of peaks associated sessions for the entire site of a particular delivery group exceeds a configured number threshold.
tips Disconnect Sessions	Detected when a momentary (one minute sample) number of peaks separate sessions for the entire site of a particular delivery group exceeds a configured number threshold.
Peak Concurrent Sessions	Detected when a momentary (one minute sample) number of peak concurrent (total) exceeds sessions for the entire site of a particular delivery group a configured number threshold.
Connection Failure Count	Detected when the number of connections in a configurable period of time throughout the site a certain delivery group does not exceed a configured count threshold.
Connection Failure Rate	Detected when in a configurable period of time throughout the site a certain delivery group exceeds the ratio of connection drops to connection attempts a configured percent threshold.
Error desktop OS machines	Detected when a momentary (one minute sample) number of desktop OS machines in an error state for the entire site of a particular delivery group exceeds a configured number threshold.
Server OS machines failed	Detected when a momentary (one minute sample) Number of Server OS machines in an error state for the entire site of a particular exceeds delivery group configured count threshold.
average Logon duration	Detected when the average session login time in a configurable period of time over the entire site or for a particular delivery group a configured time exceeds threshold.
RDS Evaluator Index Load	is recognized when the configured threshold value load index is consistently maintained for 5 minutes. For example, When we configure a threshold of 68%, then an alarm will be triggered only if the threshold above or = 68% for 5 minutes without a bathroom in between.

Because you understand the components of a policy, we want to try to create a. Go ahead and click Create policy and choose a site policy and enter the name, description, notification setting and the state of your choice. The scope by default the name of the site would be and therefore it would be pre-selected for your ease.

Note: Alert policies are site-specific! A warning policy can not be applied across multiple XenDesktop sites

Note: While adding the notification setting, the user's name can choose the the email and the email want to send address are automatically added. If you want to add an email address of a user simply enter outside your domain the entire e-mail address in the search box and click the Add button

Note: you are can not add, if you configure an email SMTP server notification setting

when it comes to the conditions Remember to follow these binding rules, without which you can save to your policy not.

1. The warning threshold should always be less than that of the critical threshold
2. are both the warning and critical thresholds
3. not be mandatory
warning and critical thresholds zero or negative can.
4. Certain terms as "Peak Connected Session" not accept fractions or decimals
5. The Alert Re-notification and alarm re-notification periods would be indicated by default. If you want to change it, go ahead. You can access the default values, the "Reset Value" button later with

• Alert Re-notification -. Period after which the alarm will be triggered again
• Alarm Re-notification - are permanent, after the critical message is triggered again

6. Once completed all mandatory rules are a green checkmark is obtained in addition to the state and if not you get a red cross next to the conditions that are incorrect

. Note: in cases where there are several conditions in a policy that none of the conditions are met, the error until all are rescued are corrected.

Once you hit the Save button you've created your first policy.

Get Notified

Visualizing your notifications

Once you create do the set of rules and conditions for you XenDesktop environment, it is time to sit back and relax. If your environment meets rough sea, you will be immediately notified to the Director Web Console and you would receive an e-mail.

The message tip and slide

Once issues a warning, it can warn or may be critical, an administrator will be notified of the release tip. The message will tip the called on all except on the User Details page.

The message tip available gives you the number of active alarms. If you configure SCOM with proactive alerts and notifications, you will receive a sum of both active alerts on the notification bar.

When you click the message tip you click the notification Dia obtained. The message Dia gives you the opportunity, your warnings of classification based on the source's Director or SCOM and also based on the severity is Critical or Warning. If you know more about how to configure SCOM alerts on Director, see this blog.

The Communication slide bar will you as the time to give a list of all active alarms including details if it has occurred, and the rule and condition as it has triggered.

email

If you subscribe to the notification setting a condition that triggered an alarm, then you would receive an e-mail. The email will be localized and you are there in the language you will prefer.

administration

[1945014verwalten] Your policy

Once you guidelines Create done you have to know how to manage it now. In case you modify a policy, the policy navigate site, and for the policy name search using the search box and click the Edit button.

If your XenDesktop site is in a maintenance period and you do not want warnings, you can use the DISABLE button to disable the policy. This prevents the new warnings will be created. Once you are done with the maintenance work, you can go ahead and make these guidelines.

If there are any old policies that you want to get rid of, select the policy, and click the Delete button.

Note: Clear a policy will not erase the history of alerts that have been triggered before. You can still them on the Alert Summary page

Manage alerts

When there is a warning that the notification tip notification. You can click on the notification bit to get a scroll bar, have a quick reference of notification. You can also group them in warning and critical warning

If you know more about an alarm, simply click on it and you want the alarm details page. The Alarm Details page gives you an image of the warning, its history and its current state. You can edit the policy to create the alert on this page.

If you so active not this warning to be displayed, then you can go ahead and dismisses it. Dismissing a warning is an irreversible action. Only if the condition is healthy and then cancels the warning or critical thresholds, see receive an active alert. Until then you will not be notified

. Note: If you close a critical alert, you will not get any warning. But if you close an alert to be notified if the condition, the critical threshold exceeds

If you want to display triggered the story or the summary of warnings, then you can set the alarm to use overview page. The alarm summary page, you can filter alarms based on the length of time, the scope and the current state of the alarm. To navigate to the alarm summary page, click the Alert tab on the dashboard and then on the Citrix Alerts sub-tab

Note . If a delivery group is deleted, you will not find it listed under. This is to ensure that the history of alerts make triggered with this particular delivery group will not be lost as a frame .

In the Alert Summary page, you can set an alarm DISMISS, scroll to the details of the alarm ( Alert detail page) and also export the data.

for history of alerts search you can by using the provided filter

Source :. you get to choose the extent to which the rule was applied. For delivery group or server operating system, you get to search for the relevant application and apply to your condition to them.

Category: The category of directives for which the warnings want to see

State : you will receive between four different types of severity to choose; Critical, Warning, dismissing and healthy. This will help you group your alerts and actions of the necessary ones.

period : select to a time frame of the last 2 hours , the last 24 hours, last 7 days, and even in the past month. When you select the end date, as now , you are just the active alerts are displayed to the moment you are hit.

You can also select a custom end date and time.

let us now to the grid in the alarm summary page displays a glance.

Time: time and date when the alarm was triggered, first

action: Any action that must be performed. e.g. Dismissed

Status: The current status of the alarm. Is it healthy, critical and warning or it is rejected. If the policy is triggered the alarm is cleared, then the history of the alerts will still be available, but will be shown in the released state

Notification Policy Name .: The name of the alert policy that was given when the policy was created

Scope: Where was applied the policy on? Was it on a delivery group level it was at the level of the site or was it on a server OS level

Source :. The torn source that actually triggered the alert

Category: What was King of the policy? It reflects the template that you took during the alert rule or edit

Description: .. gives you a brief of what the exact condition that caused the alarm

That's all, folks!

Hope this helps you easily configure policies to visualize your notifications, manage, analyze their details and to track historical trends Alarm.

XenApp 7.7 is ready for Microsoft Azure -

Last week Loay Shbeilat and I presented a session packed with Citrix Partner at Citrix Summit in Las Vegas "As architect a multi -Tenant XenApp solution on Microsoft Azure. "

for Citrix partners who could not make Summit there, I got a summary of the main points of discussion and resources to help you successfully be.

1. As of Brad Anderson mentioned during the keynote, Microsoft Azure is growing rapidly. With 0,000 customer subscriptions every month, in more than 140 countries, more than 500 service releases on the platform every year and new data centers each month is added, Microsoft is fully on producing the world's Azure scalable and reliable public cloud.
2. most enterprise customer volume license agreement have some sort of Microsoft as Enterprise Agreement or Software Assurance, you are discounted rates or credits for Azure. This makes the value proposition in Azure in providing more compelling.
3. Citrix has a complete reference architecture as XenApp to build on Azure, including NetScaler VPX in Azure. It also includes a valuable cost calculator that helps you estimate the cost of hosting Citrix infrastructure on Azure.
4. In the newly released XenApp 7.7 and in the apps and desktops Service within Citrix Workspace Cloud, Microsoft Azure (Classic) is now a first-class platform for VDA workloads along with traditional hypervisors such as XenServer, Hyper-V and ESX and cloud hosting platforms like Amazon EC2 hosting. That is, you can now provide machine catalogs in Azure right of Desktop Studio! All you need to bring is your Azure subscription and an image of gold (VDA template) for your app workloads, we take care of the rest will.
5. We are working on activating support in XenApp for Azure Resource Manager - stay tuned

for further updates.? Follow me on Twitter! Follow @prasannacitrix //

"Who can my CIS access data?" -

First of all, thank you for everyone who participated in our meetings Summit and flooded us with questions and suggestions! We received a ton of them. Thank you !!

One of the questions that we had to listen to over and over again "that can see my data?" A fair question.

diagnostic data is sensitive material and we want to assure you that there are only people from your organization is all safe and, with the proper credentials, it can see.

In this post I'll try to demystify it.

If you have a My Citrix account, you are ready to take full advantage of the CIS and easy to self-diagnose problems in your area

Log at https :. // Cis.citrix.com. you will end up on the " range " page. You can then to load on " uploading data " diagnostic files. If you are not sure how to collect them, click on the " How to collect data " link; there are specific instructions for each product.

When multiple users upload to the same organization diagnostic data, it easily each diagnostic bundles and analysis results by "can see View all user uploads " in the " filtering " drop-down menu. To make this possible, ensure that:

1. All users have the same Organization ID for their MyCitrix account
2. The "option All market "is activated

NetScaler and the recent OpenSSL advisory: What does it mean for me mean -

OpenSSL recently by an advisory two new themed along with an update on an earlier issue-less than two months disclosure the last release in early December. We want to assure our customers that NetScaler is not affected by these vulnerabilities.

CVE-2016-0701 allows man-in-the-middle attacks against a vulnerable client or server, the DH uses parameters based on uncertain primes the case with X9.42 style parameters such. OpenSSL 1.0.2 from - X9.42 support was recently added. NetScaler make use of X9.42 and is not affected.

CVE-2015-3197 is not an issue for the vast majority of NetScaler deployments. SSLv2 is not supported by NetScaler MPX FIPS. On all other platforms, the currently supported versions SSLv2 is disabled by default. However, if you are a customer who SSLv2 busy, we recommend it off and turn the switch to TLSv1.1 to a minimum.

When logjam (CVE-2015-4000) was first disclosed its NetScaler SSL implementation future proof when negotiating TLS connections 1024 bit DH parameters to use

. NetScaler has not adopted the update of OpenSSL to absorb 1024 bit DH parameters of the minimum to make permissible length.

Citrix and the world's finest chocolates: Keeping Valentine Sweet -

Valentine's Day is just around the corner and love is in the air turns for some of the sweet holiday everything to find the perfect gift for their perfect someone, but for others? Let's face it ... it's all about the chocolate!

So what it takes to create a perfect luxurious chocolate?

For Pierre Marcolini, Chocolatier Haute, means creating the world's best chocolate beans Hand selection of fine cocoa from around the world. While Pierre Inspiration collects from its Italian origins and uses his imagination to add creative flair to any chocolate, Citrix supports its thirty branches in Belgium, Paris, London and Japan with a secure and reliable IT infrastructure.

Pierre is accompanied passion and dedication delicacy for providing Citrix passion and dedication sure to deliver business applications and data. with Citrix XenApp in, Pierre and his team of chocolate artisans are able to access vital retail-business applications with ease. Thus they focus on what they do best, producing sweet artisanal chocolate dominate the craft.

safety, reliability, simplicity. For Pierre Marcolini and Citrix, which is very sweet, indeed!
Read more extra feature customers here!

NetScaler VPX hits a new high 100Gbps! -

When NetScaler VPX was an opera singer, glass would be all shocking to us now. This week we broke a new barrier - err, glass - we propose a new power up with the virtual edition of NetScaler, the NetScaler VPX, which held data center operators as service providers, large enterprises and clouds with a large scale, with network function virtualization (NFV resonate).

How feverishly pin this contribution that I report on a live demonstration of a fully virtualized NetScaler VPX sing (scream?) To more than a hundred Gbps.

You read that correctly. 100 gigabits per second. Fully virtualized. Full-function. Fully equipped ADC (Application Delivery Controller). Running our standard unmodified performance benchmark. I could go on here certain vendors love for tuning benchmarks instead of products to meet the power bars. But let me save for another day

Today we are announcing the availability of NetScaler VPX 25G and 40G VPX - our 25 and 40 Gbps ADCs respectively. follow with NetScaler VPX 100G action in the first half of this year.

If the Mobile World Congress next week are, and want a power output of these sopranos, to see, to stop by and with the Citrix team in Hall 2 Upper Level Room 2EMR.J10 meet

We have raised the bar.

The NetScaler VPX 40G and 100G VPX virtualized these power levels to deliver on commodity hardware to support the first fully functional, industry ADCs secure delivery of applications and data. These new performance levels are the key to unlock flexible, scalable and highly optimized application and infrastructure deployment patterns for major infrastructure operators and service providers, cloud providers and large enterprises.

been a compromise between flexibility and performance Previously introducing virtualization into the network. They could only have one. Select brings the flexibility of virtualization and compromising performance and scalability ... or the performance of bare-metal selection, at the expense of flexibility, which could have brought a software-defined networking infrastructure.

This compromise has all the unsavory with the insatiable need for both higher performance and greater agility in large networks, such as the service providers those want to build with NFV , NFV promises much better agility and cost savings.

But the migration networking capabilities of dedicated high-performance physical devices practically used virtualized network functions (VNFs) was easier said than done. While some of these features will now be moved, take another time. To be successful for this migration, service providers need to find ways to support mass scale at a much lower cost per unit of capacity, while the ability to ensure to develop different elements in the network at different speeds.

and that's exactly where NetScaler VPX 25G, NetScaler VPX NetScaler VPX 40G and 100G fill with their performance as VNFs at a crucial part of the puzzle.

No more compromise.