The Citrix Blog

Ed York

  1. XenDesktop 5 PowerShell SDK Primer – Part 4 – Creating Pooled Physical Catalogs

    By Ed York · Published on 1 year ago · 10 Comments

    Many of you may have seen my last blog on how to automate the creation of pooled catalogs that leverage Machine Creation Services. In XenDesktop 5 terminology, we automated the "Pooled-Random" catalog type. That type of catalog is very commonly used in POCs/Pilots where you own the hypervisor that you are leveraging and you want to automate the creation of the virtual desktops ...

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  2. XenDesktop 5 PowerShell SDK Primer – Part 3 – Creating Pooled Catalogs that Leverage Machine Creation Services

    By Ed York · Published on 1 year ago · 8 Comments

    Machine Creation Services (MCS) is a new feature in XenDesktop 5 that is used to simplify XenDesktop deployments in POCs and Pilots in hypervisor-based environments. It generates virtual desktop VMs on the fly based on a "master" virtual machine image. It also manages the Active Directory accounts for these machines using an Identity Pool and performs other tasks within XenDesktop as well. ...

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  3. XenDesktop 5 PowerShell SDK Primer – Part 2 – Creating Hypervisor Connections and Hosts

    By Ed York · Published on 1 year ago · 2 Comments

    One of the new changes that you will see in XenDesktop 5 is the configuration of hypervisor connections and hosts. In order to create the "pooled", "dedicated", or "existing" catalog types in XenDesktop 5, XenDesktop needs to know details of the hypervisor that will be hosting the virtual desktops. Hypervisor connection details are also required in order to manage virtual desktops from within ...

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  4. XenDesktop 5 PowerShell SDK Primer – Part 1 – Getting Started

    By Ed York · Published on 1 year ago · No Comments

    Many of you may have seen my blog series last year on the XenDesktop 4 PowerShell SDK. Ever since XenDesktop 5 was released, I've been itching to take a peak at the new release, and in particular, the new SDK. I've had several recent projects where I had to create scripts with the XenDesktop 5 SDK. The majority of these projects involved ...

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  5. Tech Talk Q&A – Essentials for using Windows PowerShell with XenApp and XenDesktop – XD SDK Questions Answered

    By Ed York · Published on 1 year ago · No Comments

    Thank you to all those that attended the Essentials for using Windows PowerShell with XenApp and XenDesktop Tech Talk on August 24, 2010 - we had a fantastic turnout! For those of you that missed it, both the recording and presentation have been posted.Tech Talk Recording Tech Talk PresentationMike Bogobowicz and I co-presented this session where I led the XenDesktop PowerShell SDK side, ...

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  6. XenDesktop 4 PowerShell SDK Primer – Part 9 – Restarting Virtual Desktops

    By Ed York · Published on 1 year ago · 2 Comments

    The last task that we'll discuss in this blog series is how to automate the restarting (rebooting) of virtual desktops within XenDesktop. I've provided two different scripts in this article - one for restarting a single virtual desktop, the second for restarting multiple virtual desktops at the same time. As you'll find in the scripts, they look almost identical, making this one of ...

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  7. XenDesktop 4 PowerShell SDK Primer – Part 8 – Disconnecting and Stopping Virtual Desktop Sessions

    By Ed York · Published on 1 year ago · No Comments

    So far in the blog series I've mainly focused on how to automate configurations for XenDesktop desktop groups. For example, how to create new desktop groups, how to add new virtual desktops to a desktop group, and how to update the idle pool settings for a desktop group. But what does the XenDesktop PowerShell SDK let us do with the virtual desktop sessions ...

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  8. XenDesktop 4 PowerShell SDK Primer – Part 7 – Adding Active Directory Users and Groups to a Desktop Group

    By Ed York · Published on 1 year ago · No Comments

    A common configuration change that you might need to make on a XenDesktop farm is to change which users/groups are assigned to which desktop groups. For example, a new employee is hired, they need a virtual desktop, so you need to add their Active Directory account to an existing desktop group. Alternatively, you can add their Active Directory account to an Active Directory ...

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  9. Upcoming Tech Talk – Essentials for using Windows PowerShell with XenApp and XenDesktop

    By Ed York · Published on 1 year ago · 2 Comments

    Update We have delivered the Tech Talk on Essentials for using Windows PowerShell with XenApp and XenDesktop and both the recording and presentation are now available for viewing. We also have a separate blog for the Q&A from the session.Tech Talk Recording Tech Talk Presentation XenDesktop SDK Q&A Blog PostSession Description Learn how to simplify your XenApp and XenDesktop administration using simple but effective PowerShell scripts. ...

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  10. XenDesktop 4 PowerShell SDK Primer – Part 6 – Adding Virtual Desktops to a Desktop Group

    By Ed York · Published on 1 year ago · No Comments

    As you manage your XenDesktop farm, you may notice that you have spikes in virtual desktop use every so often. In some cases the spikes could exceed the supply and some users could be rejected from receiving a virtual desktop. To deal with the spikes, you want your XenDesktop environment to be elastic - that is, as the threshold of what can be ...

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