june, 2013 remote pc v2 excalibur - xendesktop 7 mick glover worldwide support readiness

June, 2013

Remote PC v2Excalibur - XenDesktop 7

Mick Glover Worldwide Support Readiness

© 2013 Citrix | Confidential – Do Not Distribute

Remote PC v1.0Background - Pre XenDesktop 7

• Although not promoted as a remote PC solution, several customers successfully used XenDesktop for remote access to office PCs

• This worked very well with Windows XP but caused issues with Win 7 due to a WDDM driver conflict (Citrix & local)ᵒ Local WDDM driver is disabled when installing VDA on physical machine

• Result: Local experience is degraded (SVGA driver installed)


Remote PC v1.0Goals

• Main Goalᵒ Performance: To Provide XenDesktop customers with the ability to give their users

secure remote access to physical PCs in the office without degrading or impacting their experience locally i.e. provide the same user experience when using a physical machine locally and remotely

ᵒ Automation: Automatically add physical PCs to a XenDesktop site, and create the association between local physical PCs and users

ᵒ Flexibility: Provide built-in alternative to GoToMyPC & other 3rd party products

• Secondary Goalᵒ Help drive VDI adoption


Remote PC v1.0Overview

• Project Nighthawk

• First introduced and still available as separate component with XenDesktop 5.6 FP1 ᵒ Note: XD Plt & Ent feature ONLYᵒ Custom downloadᵒ Remote PC Services

• https://www.citrix.com/downloads/xendesktop/product-software/xendesktop-56-feature-pack-1-platinum.html

https://www.citrix.com/downloads/xendesktop/product-software/xendesktop-56-feature-pack-1-platinum.html




Remote PC v2.0New Features

• Citrix Studio Integration

• Multiple Catalogs to Machines or Users

• Support for Windows 8

• Enhancements for MS Lync

• XenClient Enterprise Integration

• GPU Remoting of DirectX Apps

• GPU Transcoding of Windows Media redirection

• 3rd party Credential provider support

• Support for legacy VDA 5.6


Remote PC v1 vs. v2Key Differences

Configuration Controlling Service Execution

v1

v2




v1 RemotePCAccessConfig.xml

v2 Citrix Studio\PoSH (PowerShell)




v1 RemotePCAccessConfig.xml Remote PC Access Service


Broker Service




v1 RemotePCAccessConfig.xml Remote PC Access Service RemotePCAccess.ps1


Broker Service New Remote PC Deployment Wizard\Broker Service


Remote PC v2Citrix Studio Integration

• Top level workflow wizardᵒ Uses Pre-built PoSH scripts

• Automatically creates Catalog and Desktop Groupᵒ Remote PC Access Machinesᵒ Remote PC Access Desktops


Remote PC v2Configuration

• Through Citrix Studio and or PoSH (PowerShell)…

• Citrix Studioᵒ Limited config

• PoSHᵒ Advanced config


Catalogs, Desktop Groups & Users…

• Remote PC v1ᵒ Single Catalog\Desktop Group combination

• Remote PC v2ᵒ Multiple Catalog\Desktop Group combinations can be configuredᵒ New DB table will map the associations and make this possible

• Note: In v2, the Broker service will not restrict the assignment of a single user to a desktopᵒ A valid domain logon session from a second user will additionally assign that second

user to the desktopᵒ This behaviour can be changed by setting a new DC registry key: See next slide…


Disabling Multi-User to single DesktopRemote PC v2

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Citrix\DesktopServer\[AllowMultipleRemotePCAssignments]Type: REG_DWORDDefault: 1ᵒ Change value to 0 to disable Multi-User to single desktop

feature


User account assignmentsRemote PC v2.0

• Add specific user a/c’s or security groups to be assigned to Desktops automatically…

• Required for auto-assignment to work


Machine account FilteringRemote PC v2.0

• Add specific machine a/c’s to be discovered

or

• Select OUs containing machines to be discovered


Manual Creation through Citrix Studio

• Create new Machine Catalogᵒ Select Remote PC Access

• Advantage over workflow wizard?ᵒ Name the Machine Catalogᵒ Create multiple Remote PC

Catalogs


Changes to the DBRemote PC v2.0

• Changes to Broker service DB Schema to store additional dataᵒ Chb_Config.RemotePCAccountsᵒ Chb_Config.RemotePCMappings


RemotePCAccounts TableDatabase Schema

• Contains multiple relationships between OUs and Remote PC Catalogs


RemotePCMappings TableDatabase Schema

• Contains multiple relationships between Remote PC Catalogs and Groups


Broker Service ActionsRemote PC v2.0

• The Broker will perform the following each time a VDA registers…ᵒ (both CBP 1.0 and 1.5 to be supported)


Discovery\Registration processAdd Machine to Catalog

If • Machine is NOT in a Catalog• Machine is NOT in maintenance mode• Soft Registered Successfully


Discovery\Registration processAdd machine to Catalog

If• Machine is NOT in a Catalog• Machine is NOT in maintenance mode• Soft Registered Successfully

Then• Resolve the name of the OU in which the machine

exists• Find matching rows in the RemotePCAccounts table• Add the machine to the Catalog from the most

specific matching RemotePCAccounts row


Discovery\Registration process in action…Step 1


Discovery\Registration processAdd unassigned machine to 'temporary' Desktop Group

If• Machine is in a RemotePC Catalog

• Machine is NOT in a Delivery Group• Machine is NOT in maintenance mode• Machine is NOT assigned to a user


Discovery\Registration processAdd unassigned machine to 'temporary' Desktop Group

If• Machine is in a RemotePC Catalog

• Machine is NOT in a Delivery Group• Machine is NOT in maintenance mode• Machine is NOT assigned to a user

Then• Select a RemotePC Delivery Group associated with the

catalog in the RemotePCMappings table• Pick the Delivery Group/Catalog association with

the highest priority (by default, the first created) and add machine to this Delivery Group


New Remote PC Site ServiceRemotePC

• Polls registered VDAs every 30 seconds to repair any side-effects of configuration changes that would normally only occur during machine re-registration


Login processAssign user to Machine

If• Machine is in a Remote PC Catalog• Machine is not in maintenance mode• Machine is NOT assigned to this user

(AllowMultipleRemotePCAssignments=1 (default))• Machine is NOT assigned to any user

(AllowMultipleRemotePCAssignments=0)• Session is NOT in a disconnected state• Machine is in a 'temporary' Desktop Group


Login processAssign user to Machine

Then• Find top matching Desktop Group• Order the resulting Desktop Groups by priority (default:

Creation Order)• Select the top Desktop Group from the ordered results• Assign the user to the machine• Set the Machine Published Name to the Machine NETBIOS

name• The desktop is now available for remote brokered access by

the user


Advanced Configuration through PoSHGet-BrokerRemotePCAccount

• Returns RemotePC configuration for Siteᵒ Complete contents of RemotePCAccounts DB Table


Advanced Configuration through PoSHSet-BrokerRemotePCAccount

• Can be used to change normal values i.e. OU and advanced filters such as MachinesExcluded & MachinesIncluded


Limitations Remote PC v2

• The service will not exclude machines based on OS type: Win XP, Vista and Win 7 will all be discovered and added, if meeting the configured machine-name/OU criteria for Remote PCs

• The service will not exclude machines that are VM-hosted, as the broker cannot conclusively determine if a registering VDA is installed on a physical PC or a VMᵒ OU Filtering will have to be used (Studio\PoSH)

• The OU entries in RemotePCAccounts could become stale if the OU is moved or deleted

• http://mindtouch.eng.citrite.net/Releases/Jasper/Features/Remote_PC_Access_v2/Remote_PC_Access_v2_-_Functional_Spec

http://mindtouch.eng.citrite.net/Releases/Jasper/Features/Remote_PC_Access_v2/Remote_PC_Access_v2_-_Functional_Spec




Upgrade Options

• In-place upgrade supported with additional tasksᵒ Remote PC Access (v1) will need to be removed. This needs to occur during the in-

place upgrade of the DC via the Meta-installerᵒ Configuration data from the v1 service should be read from Global Site Metadata, and

used to configure the v2 feature by adding settings directly to the specified Catalog and Desktop Group objects

• This will occur during the site DB schema upgrade performed by Desktop Studio

• Note: The Citrix Remote PC Access v2 service is an integral part of the broker service for Excalibur, and is not separately installable/removable


Help And Diagnostics

• Configuration Logging Serviceᵒ Configuration changes to Remote PC-related Broker objects by Citrix Studio and the

PoSH SDK

• Windows event log messages using the FMA EventLog SDKᵒ Application event log


Resources

• RemotePC v2 mindtouch pageᵒ http://mindtouch.eng.citrite.net/Releases/Jasper/Features/Remote_PC_Access_v2

• Remote PC Access v2 - Functional Specᵒ http://mindtouch.eng.citrite.net/Releases/Jasper/Features/Remote_PC_Access_v2/Re

mote_PC_Access_v2_-_Functional_Spec

http://mindtouch.eng.citrite.net/Releases/Jasper/Features/Remote_PC_Access_v2

http://mindtouch.eng.citrite.net/Releases/Jasper/Features/Remote_PC_Access_v2




june, 2013 remote pc v2 excalibur - xendesktop 7 mick glover worldwide support readiness

Documents

remote pc v1

citrix confidential

remote pc solution

remote pc v2 configuration

users secure remote

vdi adoption slide

local physical pcs

xendesktop customers