Sepa-go-go gadget profiles!

Profiles have long been the high maintenance girlfriend of Terminal Server / Citrix deployments. There's no way around it. If you run Citrix, you have at some point included user profiles as a bullet point on a suicide note.

Citrix has finally decided to listen to the million or so odd people that have been bitching for years on all manner of lists and forums about user profile management. To date, I think Citrix has turned a deaf ear to the whiners because technically that falls into the terminal server realm, and stepping on Microsoft's toes has generally not been regarded as a strategic business direction. And if Microsoft can't come up with a better way to do it then why should it be Citrix's problem? Can't argue with that, besides who the hell would want to take on profile management and all its baggage as a supported product? Fuck that noise.

So what has happened is the same thing that happened with the "Wow, printing really sucks in Citrix" movement. A bunch of third-party solutions popped up to fill the void. One of these is Sepago. Admittedly, I haven't played with it much, but Sepago has a pretty cool product for managing profiles. And surprise surprise, Citrix recently bought them.

So now Citrix has a native profile solution, or at least one that their sales people can pimp out. But why Sepago? I have a speculation. The disclaimer is that this is just me talking. This is probably going to be a half-truth at best - but here goes.

Convergence.

You see, thin computing is on the brink of a singularity. In the coming years you're going to see application and OS virtualization merge with VDI, workstations, and mobile devices. It's all going to be a huge blob that facilitates access to all the virtualized resources across platforms from a single technology or (as some have speculated) an appliance (although I doubt that). Here's where Sepago fits in. You see, it's not limited to just terminal server. It will manage profiles across the board - including your desktops and VDI instances. And... And.. it is largely managed through native GPO's! How's that for elegant scalability? Bam! What we're we're seeing is Citrix positioning itself for the coming homogeneous landscape.

Strategery.

One thing for sure, I can poke and jab at the company and have a good time doing it, but that Marky T is a sharp guy. Forward thinking and all. You tell Mark Templeton to think outside the box and he would answer that the box isn't really there to begin with. "It's running on a server somewhere else, but I get all the functionality of the box and I'm able to seamlessly think outside of it from wherever I am using any number of hardware and software platforms. We call it XenBox"

Again, that's not an actual quote. I'm just making all that up to make a point. It will certainly be interesting to watch and see what happens.

-CG

Ericom to Citrix: Chew on This!

This is big news.

In a very interesting and fuckyouCitrix-esque turn of events Ericom has stepped up and is offering a free version of Windows Power Term to be released with Windows Server 2008.

Now I haven't personally used Powerterm, but I hear it's not too bad. And hell, if it's free, then it's a no-brainer. This is a real sucker punch to Citrix in the small to medium office arena. In the present economic landscape, you can bet that a free and workable alternative to Citrix will be embraced by companies. This is especially true in the medium size sector where the company or app is just too big or important to only use terminal server, but they hate seeing that damn Citrix line item every year.

Hats off to Ericom for a very bold and I must add cunning move! But now what?

The problem is that very few decision makers are tuned into the virtualization world like us. Let's face it; they have lives and have probably never been addressed by anyone as "Dungeon Master". It's up to us as engineers to sell this thing and give it visibility. Ericom is putting itself out there and if this does well, it's going to introduce competition. That's going to force innovation on Citrix's part. That is unless of course Citrix just buys Ericom, which would be in line with their recent product launches.

See original info here.

-CG

Free TS CALs Forever!

I've given you a way to get around the Citrix licensing. It's only fair that I illustrate how to give the finger to Microsoft as well.

You'll note from my last entry, that I'm a little pissed at old Billy Gates. So I got to thinking.. As a Citrix engineer, how can I screw Microsoft? Of course the answer is licensing - the same way MS screws us. It's kinda poetic when you think about it.

There's potentially two ways to do this. Both of them are illegal, so you're on your own if you get caught.

User Mode licensing - TS User licensing with Win2003 is something that most Citrix Engineers don't mess with much. The idea is that you set up user level licensing and then you pay for each user who would be accessing a terminal server in your environment. In reality, it works much differently.

You see user level TS licensing is a new feature with Win2k3 server. Unfortunately, it's half baked. If you log on to a terminal server that's running in user licensing mode, it checks to see if there is a TS Licensing server on the network. That's it. If it finds a license server you're in. Money in the bank. So you can have a TS License server set up with only 1 CAL installed, and thousands of users would still be able to connect as long as your Terminal Servers are using user licensing. Nice huh?

Now if you opt to stay with device cals (the older win2k model that most of us are probably familiar with) the solution is a bit more extensive, but is still within reach.

The device CAL is stored on each workstation in the following registry location
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSLicensing\Store\

If the device tries to connect and doesn't have an entry there, a CAL is issued.. or if no CALs are available - a *temporary* CAL is issued. The temporary CALs expire in 120 days, which is plenty of time to get your users working. The problem of course is that after 120 days they get an error if there are no legitimate device CALs available.

So the way to get around that is to have a TS Licensing server that has a few device CALs installed, but all of them being in use. In this scenario, workstations that connect without a CAL are issued a temporary one. If the temporary CAL is deleted before it expires, it will get another temporary CAL, and so on.

It's the "and so on.." part that we're most concerned with. If you keep deleting the temporary CAL at login, they get a new one the next time they connect. This can be done over and over.

So a simple line or two in the login script to delete the license store (the registry key above) when users logon is enough to keep your entire enterprise running on temporary CALs.

Now go get busy,
-CG

TS License Server and the Chamber of Secrets

So here's the scoop. We're retiring our main TS Licensing server and replacing it with a new box. Sounds simple yes? Yeah not so much.

The basic process is this you get on the phone with the MS Licensing Clearinghouse, which is a boiler room operation somewhere overseas, give them a bunch of numbers, and if the stars line up just right, then they give you a bunch of licenses to install.

So after the myriad of mindless voice prompts:
"Please say the operating system you're caling about"

"Windows 2003"

"It sounded like you said Windows XP. Is this correct?"

"No."
"I'm sorry, please say the name of the operating .."

"Windows 2003"

"It sounded like you said Windows 2003. Is that correct?"

"Yes. Damn this is a pain"

"Are you calling about licensing for terminal server, licensing for.."

"Yes. Terminal Server"

"I'm sorry. Please say your selection again.."

"Terminal server. Terminal Server! Terminal-fucking-server. What the mickey mouse fuck is your problem? None of your other products even sound remotely like the words 'terminal server'. You blind horse fucking toaster.."

"Transferring you to an operator"

"Mother Fucker!"

---Operator picks up---

[in a very thick indian accent] "Halo and tank you fah callind microsoft lichsing. My name is Bill. How can I assist you today?"

"Your name isn't Bill is it?"

"My name is Bill, yes"

"Seriously, what's your name"

[quietly] "It is.. uh.. Prasheid"

"Uh huh.. you guys in Redmond?"

"Redmond?"

"Nevermind."

"Look I need 90 thousand TS device CALs."

"What?" [Noises of the guy shitting a golden and curry scented brick can be faintly heard in the background]

"TS CALs - 90 thousand of em"

"90?"

"Ninety .. Nine.. zero.. thousand. Nine.. Zero.. Zero..Zero.. Zero."

"Hold on"

[Shitty hold music ensues]

"Sir I can't give you that many licenses."

"Our SA agreement should cover that amount.. what's the problem?"

"I'm not allowed to give you 90 thousand licenses"

"But we paid for that many. How am I supposed to get them?"

"You need to call back."

"What?"

"I can only grant 9999 per call"

"So I have to call back 9 more times to get the licenses that we paid for?"

"Yes sir"

"That's bullshit."

"I'm sorry?"

"Nevermind.. alright then.. so let go ahead with it.

"Okay sir.."

"Buttfucker"
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F-ing rediculous.