Rebuilding a Desktop Delivery Controller

After a windows update, a desktop delivery controller was BSOD. After other resources rebuilt the server and reintroducing the server back to the XenDesktop 5.6 farm, it didn't work fully as you expect. The broker service wasn't starting and things weren't quite right. So rebuilding the server is what needs to be done.

The high-level planned steps are below:

1. Backup XenDesktop farm database
2. Run evict script http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX134486
3. Turn over server for Wintel rebuild
4. Install DDC software

I'll update with results.

Application virtualization: any good training classes?

I was recently tasked with finding a training class for the technology group I work within regarding application virtualization. After some quick looking, I found Timothy Mangan's site (http://www.tmurgent.com/appv/). I thought to myself, "Is this really the only training resource that the tech industry has produced? This can't be, as the technology has been around for 5+ years now." However,  further searching has produced limited results. I'm in contact with our vendors to see if there is product-specific training they can offer.

There seems to be a generally accepted basic methodology, seen on resources like http://www.itninja.com/software, but has no one advanced that to the IT community via training? Does anyone else have any leads on a training class both for basic and advanced application packaging?

Changing permissions on several folders

Today's tweet reminded me of a large issue I tackled last year working with folder permissions which were improperly setup. There were over 3000 user profile folders with the User group with inherited read.

Basically, I tackled it as such:
1. Run ICACLS to remove inheritance on the folders and setup proper permissions.
2. Remove undesirable permissions on the root folder via the NAS command-line, setting up proper permissions for newly created folders.

This worked really well, and I was able to multi-thread several scripts running on different groups of user folders. It took a few days, but we got the errant folder settings corrected, without service interruption.

Great blog post

Not a huge fan of just linking to other articles with not much added. However, this is a great contribution discussing what may or may not be best practice. http://blogs.citrix.com/2014/01/02/new-citrix-best-practices/