Installing XenApp with Wisdom

From the Sharing-is-Caring dept. In our ongoing efforts to provide value to the community, we here at RESug strive to provide you with  goodies and documents well worth reading. This time around it’s a document which describes how you can use RES Wisdom to install Citrix XenApp servers automagically. As stated in the document, it’s not a best practice guide – it’s a training guide, which will provide a working example, however you may very well have to adapt it for usage in your own environment. It is however very comprehensive and will teach you by example on how to get the most out of RES Wisdom

The document was authored by and kindly shared with the RES UserGroup by Brian Casselman at RES Software, US. Thanks Brian – you rock!

To download the PDF, click here: 

Cache This! (Technote)

Here’s a solution to an annoying little problem which has been bugging more  than a few people out there recently. This was originally posted in the Guru’s Forum but it seemed to make sense to make an article out of it. Here’s the skinny: You’ve just installed PowerFuse 2008 for the first time and everything seems hunky-dory in the console. Then you try to log into a session as a user and get this little number (click it to enlarge):

Click here to read the full article.

Integrating InstallFree with PowerFuse

Here’s something really useful. Sylvester de Koster over at CDG,  did some crunch time together with the nice folks over at RES to find a way to integrate PowerFuse with InstallFree, which is an application virtualzation technology vendor. Until now it’s been somewhat difficult to get stuff to run inside the virtual bubble of this platform. Together these  awesome guys managed to figure out how to integrate Installfree’s Full Bridge with PowerFuse! What follows is the no-frills how-to.  Later we will perhaps make a nice article with screenshots and everything. For now her is just  the raw info – Just as you like it! :)

Click here to read the full article

SR1 Wisdom update

Okay, this is some old updates which have been sitting in the queue for a while without getting published. Nevertheless, there’s some good info in here on how to upgrade Wisdom.

March 27th, RES Software released an update package for RES Wisdom. The Service Release 1 package for Wisdom 2009 is available for download from the RES Portal. The update can be downloaded here (this requires you to have a valid SA logon).  So, what’s new in this update you might ask? There’s a good deal of fixes:

Have a look here for more info:  

If you havent’ tried upgrading Wisdom before, don’t worry. It’s piece of cake (really, it is! :) Essentially, you fire up your console and point to the update package, which is automagically uploaded and distributed thereafter. All the agents, dispatchers and consoles will upgrade themselves without you having to do anything.

1) You download the .WUP file (Yes, WUP is short for Wisdom Update Pack :). Start your Wisdom console and go to Infrastructure | Datastore | Setup | Components.

2) Here you use the button, and it’s pretty much a next, next finish job from there.

The mere thought of having a production system upgrade itself on a massive parallel scale,  may scare the  living daylights out of you. If it does, it just proves you’re still sane! :) Seriously, Wisdom is one of the most stabile platforms out there and it handles itself very safe and sanitary. One of the very little known facts of the product is that you can actually downgrade to an earlier update package version. So, if something isn’t working right, it’s possible to do a rollback. The version range where this is possible has yet to be determined, but we will ammend this post as soon as this has been clarified.

Happy upgrading

/TRG

Secret Tools of the Common Crow…

In case you wondered where this article went a couple of weeks ago, it had to be pulled and revised at the request of RES, as we incorrectly stated that you could get the tools at RES support. This is not currently the case.  Anyway, this posting was really supposed to have be called Secret tools of the RES Engineer, but then all of a sudden, an old Gary Larson cartoon came to mind, and ruined everything… Damn you Mr. Larson!! ;-)

Okay… so maybe a spatula isn’t gonna make the 10 o’clock news, but perhaps some other tools which are little known, which are really nice to know about would peak your interest. There is just one catch to this. You’ll have to ask around for the utilities in this article as they were really only written for internal use, but several customers and integrators got copies of them. Please do NOT contact RES Support for these tools.

Nevertheless, you ought to know about them as they can help you speed up a troubleshooting session by having the information available. Perhaps RES will make these things downloadable in the future. If this happens, stick around, RESguru will let you know.

Click here to read the article.

How to make a grAvatar

First of all, what’s a grAvatar, and why the heck would I want one, you might ask. Second, if I decide to agree with that, how do I get one? And what does this have to do with RESguru in the first place? All valid questions, which is we will have a look at here.

An Avatar in general is just a way of enhancing your appearance if you comment on blogs, such as this swell one. Out of the box, WordPress (on which RESguru.com is built) will automagically generate an auto-avatar (the icon which is next to your screen name) The auto-avatar, as seeen on the right, is calculated from your screen name, hence it will be unique to you, but you’d proably prefer something else to look at.

The idea with a grAvatar (Globally Recognized Avatar), is to create an Avatar which will work across many blogs where you might decide to leave your comments. So in short, it’s just a little global eye candy, which will spiff up your postings here. That’s all.

To get one, all you have to do is to sign up for free at www.gravatar.com All you have to do is to use the same email address which you supplied to RESguru.com when registering. Chose some snazzy logo and you’re done. In a mater of minutes, your newly created grAvatar will be visible next to your postings when you create one. Note, this is not applicaple to the Guru Forum, as it’s a seperate webapp.