Musings of a sysadmin
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Local printing through MSTSC from a Citrix Xenapp 6 Fundamentals Server
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If you have published mstsc as an application and then also wanted local printing to work you would have more than likely come across a slight issue. The issue being that no printers are mapped due to the mstsc target not knowing about the Citrix universal printing driver (CUP).
Now the CUP driver is not really a driver as such so you cannot simply locate it and install it on the mstsc target (if only it were that simple). But If you really need to use MSTSC and local printing then you need to disable CUP and manage printing in a slightly modified old skool way.
I’ve only found this method out due to my own fiddling and it works on our current set up but obviously it may be the cure for all instances of this problem or it may cure only ours, (if you read this and try it out then feedback on its result would be great).
Firstly you have to disable CUP on the xenapp server to do that open up the LGPO tool (gpedit.msc) on the xenapp server. You will notice that it has a couple of different entries than you would normally expect to see. Click on the Citrix Policies under User Configuration and click on the Settings Tab. Scroll down top Printing\Universal Printing and click Add on the Universal Printing Setting. Then edit the setting to say “use only printer model specific drivers”. I’ve blogged about setting this previously but the bare bones of the instructions still apply.
After you have set the driver usage then reboot the server for the changes to take effect. The next bit is the bit that had me scratching my head for a while.
There are 3 links in the chain for the drivers to correctly map. Client/xenapp/ts target
Firstly the client must have the driver installed (kind of obvious)
Secondly the Xenapp server must have the same driver installed, if you can get at the clients installation media then alls the better otherwise download it from the usual sources. Now the xenapp server needs to have the x64 driver installed and not the 32 bit (because server 2k8 R2 is x64 only), It does not make any difference to have both installed but I’ve found installing the x64 driver is the required bit!
The TS target also needs to have the driver installed (whatever is suitable for the targets platform be it 32/64 bit. Once all three of these are catered for then printing should map correctly and work as expected.
Now if you’ve managed TS printing for any length of time then you will be aware that for drivers to work the drivers must have the same name, so if you goto the printers and faxes control panel applet then goto file/server properties the actual name of the driver is the same across all the three steps (So do not get confused with the name of the logical printer object the servers do not need to have logical printers created for each driver you add).
Disabling Citrix Universal Print Driver in Xenapp 6 Fundamentals
0311 days
I needed to disable CUP in our environment because we use Terminal Servers for most user desktops and it was not really viable to install all the normal software the users use onto the xenapp server. Also if you publish Remote Desktop (mstsc.exe) as an application through xenapp you will more than likely find that remote printing fails to work as the TS server has no knowledge of the CUP driver and there is no way of installing it onto any server other than the xenapp server/s you have on your site.
In order to disable universal printing logon to your xenapp server and run gpedit.msc. You will now notice that there are citrix policy nodes under computer and user configuration policies.
Click on the Citrix Policies under User Configuration and click on the Settings Tab. Scroll down top Printing\Universal Printing and click Add on the Universal Printing Setting. Then edit the setting to say “use only printer model specific drivers”.
Reboot the server and you should now notice that it no longer uses CUP, although you now have the fun and games of loading printer drivers and testing them, but it is a way round printing through an MSTSC published application.
Xenapp 5 Data Collectors
0Configuring the Data Collector Service
The data collector service is the hub of a citrix farm, the data collector responsibilities include but are not limited to:-
Information on published applications
Connected Users
Sessions
Licencing
Server Load
Distribution of the above Information to other data collectors in the farm.
Data collectors operate within “ZONES” inside a farm. Zones are groups of servers that are usually grouped by geographical boundaries. Zones are created to minimise WAN traffic. If for example we had offices in Iceland and one in australia, each would have a seperate zone so that users in iceland connect and lanuch published applications from the iceland zone. This would stop them connecting to the australia zone and incuring WAN costs.
In the above configuration you would still get WAN traffic however it would be minimal as only the datacollectors would be relaying information on their status to each other.
Another interesting thing about data collectors is the “election” process. This is the automated process where a data collector is elected as the primary collector and others as backups. This process is completely automated and can be explained in the following.
You have 2 zones (Iceland and Australia) each has 5 servers within their own zone (so the farm has 10 servers in total) . If all servers allowed their data collectors to chat across the WAN it would increase the amount of WAN traffic and potentially cause confusion. So within each zone the election process takes place. This allows one server to communicate the zones status/info etc to the other zome. However also elected are backup data collectors. This will then become the primary data collector should anything happen to the original primary data collector.
Although this is completely automated there are configuration settings you can change to assist the choice of the primary data collector.
MOST PREFFERED
The first choice for the data collector only assign this to ONE server in each zone. For information this is normally automatically assigned to the first xenapp server installed in a zone.
PREFERRED
The second choice for a data collector, more than one PREFFERED data collector can exist.
DEFAULT PREFERENCE
Default settings for servers, if no settings have been manually chosen for the servers then they go into this level of preference. Also in the event of a MP server failure and no manual preference settings have been configured then elections will occur at this level (simply because the PREFERRED option for a server must be manually chosen.
NOT PREFFERED
This is the runt setting for the servers. Servers in this level will only become data collectors if no others are available.
If you leave all the preference settings alone and let the farm get on with it by itself then when we installed the servers in the iceland zone the first server to come online will automatically be designated the MOST PREFFERED server, the other 4 will get the DEFAULT PREFERENCE.
Publishing an Application in Citrix Xenapp 5
0Publishing an application in Citrix is the act of making an application/desktop available either through the web interface or through the programme neighborhood.
There are quite a few settings to think about when publishing an application that affects not only security but performance of an application.
Applications are published to the access management console and rather than walking through the wizard clicks I will explain the various options you could choose on the way.
So once you have opened the access management console and chosen new/publish application in the application folder you will get to choose the following:-
Name
The first tab where you need to enter information is the name tab, all this requires is a friendly name and description of the app you are publishing.
Type
This tab allows you to specify what you are publishing. You can publish an application (i.e. adobe reader) , a complete desktop (good for using with thin clients) or content (i.e. web page or document).
Location
This is the file path to the applications exe or document.
Server
This allows you to select the server(s) that the application is installed on and you want users to have access too. For example a Citrix Farm consisting of 5 servers may all have adobe reader installed but for whatever reason you may only want users accessing adobe reader on 3 of the 5 servers.
Users
This is where you can specify users/groups that will have access to the published application. You can also specify to allow anonymous access which means all users will have access to the application. In real world Citrix deployments access is controlled by groups as administering individual users access to every application you publish will quickly become a nightmare.
Citrix Application Installations
2Heres A short tutorial on how to install applications in a citrix or terminal services environment. Quite basic stuff but its always good to revisit!
LINK!
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