Administrator Guide: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Limitations

  • No video communication support
  • Limited support for keyboard shortcuts such as alt+q (depending on focus management)

Requirements

As desktop virtualization adds a layer of complexity, and each environment can be somewhat different than another, Escaux will only support desktop virtualization if it has been validated before the system goes in production. The time required for validation is 8 weeks. Please contact your project manager for more information.

Citrix

The market leader when it comes to desktop virtualization targeted to businesses is Citrix.

Supported Escaux products

  • Escaux net.Desktop 2.26.4 (with Video disabled in the resource).
  • Escaux net.Console 3.4.1.

Unsupported Escaux products

  • Escaux net.Supervisor
  • Any other Escaux desktop products

Supported Citrix platform(s)

In the overview below you can find an overview of the setups that have been tested, validated and are supported by ESCAUX. If your desktop virtualization infrastructure is different from the list described below, please contact your account manager.

Bare Metal

  • Citrix XenApp 6.5
  • Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 (on bare metal hardware)

Xen Server

  • Citrix XenApp 6.5
  • Microsoft Windows 2008 R2
  • Xen Server 6.0

VMWare

  • Citrix XenApp 6.5
  • Microsoft Windows 2008 R2
  • VMWare 4 or VMWare 5

Configuration

net.Desktop

net.Desktop doesn't work with virtual IP configuration. net.Desktop will increment the port numbers it uses for communication.

Note: If virtual IPs are configured, the net.Desktop connection will 'flap' and you will not be able to log let alone use any net.Desktop function.

net.Console

net.Console depends on the configuration of these virtual IP settings in order to operate correctly. These are explained in detail on the following pages:

In a nutshell:
  • On the operating system level, Remote Desktop IP Virtualization has to be enabled.
    • Note: You must enable this setting on a Per Program base and ONLY for net.Console.
  • On the Citrix level, these options need to be enabled or set:
    • Virtual IP enhanced compatibility: Enabled
    • Virtual IP compatibility programs list: Needs to contain the name of the executable of the Escaux product which is going to be executed. This name can be found by starting the application and using the Windows Task Manager and looking in the process list.
    • Virtual IP loopback support: Enabled
    • Virtual IP virtual loopback programs list: See "Virtual IP compatibility programs list"

Known issues

There are known issues regarding IP address virtualization when running a desktop or application virtualization product such as Citrix on top of an operating system virtualization product such as VMWare. Specifically, Citrix XenApp 6.5 on VMWare ESX 4: Although the IP virtualization options can be configured, they are not correctly activated when the desktop virtualization session starts, causing failure of the applications requiring this feature. Solution: Upgrade VMWare 4 to VMWare ESX 5.

- To increase CPU load on Citrix server please apply Logging Configuration for each 'net.Desktop X500 client', This code fix the Max File Size log to 1 MB, default is 100Mb.

(this part : log4j.appender.Roller.File , is depending on you architecture and the file management, so you need find the right path to the Log ) (log4j.appender.Roller.File=\\CFS1501\CBCUtilisateursHomeDir$\%username%\.escaux\ndesktop\logs\nd.log) 

log4j.appender.Roller=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.Roller.File=\\CFS1501\CBCUtilisateursHomeDir$\%username%\.escaux\ndesktop\logs\nd.log
log4j.appender.Roller.MaxFileSize=1MB
log4j.appender.Roller.MaxBackupIndex=1
log4j.appender.Roller.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.Roller.layout.ConversionPattern=%d %-20.20c %-5p %m [%t]%n

log4j.rootLogger=ERROR,Roller
log4j.logger.com.jcraft.jsch=ERROR,Roller
log4j.logger.com.escaux=ERROR,Roller
log4j.logger.api=ERROR,Roller
log4j.logger.events=ERROR,Roller
log4j.logger.KeyboardPresenceManager=ERROR,Roller

Other resources

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