Articles by 'Brian Wagner'

By Brian Wagner, Posted in Infrastructure, Virtualization

Gotham has been delivering secure applications to client machines for over 20 years. In the past, this was done primarily through local installs, published applications, and virtual desktops. However, the application landscape is changing, and applications are now being delivered from more sources to more destinations. This includes SaaS applications, applications delivered from multiple brokers, multiple operating systems, and policy-based variations of the above scenarios. One example of this change is t... read more.

• April 24, 2023

By Brian Wagner, Posted in Support

Due to a new security feature in both Chrome and Edge version 98 (they both share the Chromium code), EPA (Endpoint Analysis) will no longer launch through the browser. Citrix released this article: EPA fails after Chrome/Edge version 98 upgrade (citrix.com) The article states that the work around is to add your gateway FQDN to the “InsecurePrivateNetworkRequestsAllowedForUrls” policy for both Chrome and Edge. While this sounds easy enough, the change needs to be made on a remote machine (pre... read more.

• February 07, 2022

By Brian Wagner, Posted in Infrastructure, Security, Support

This is a tough time for many of our customers. We’ve been busy helping everyone expand their remote access capabilities to deliver secure apps and desktops to users working from home around the globe. While Citrix has been able to do a good job keeping up with the orders and license fulfillment, and many other vendors have been quick to offer options to help analyze and scale out other aspects of the environment, such as firewalls and VDI infrastructure capacity planning, some vendors haven’t... read more.

• March 20, 2020

By Brian Wagner, Posted in Infrastructure, Virtualization

Microsoft has officially released their Desktop as a Service (DaaS) offering, dubbed Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD). There are some standout features of WVD, and as someone who’s been helping customers deliver Windows desktops and applications for 20 years, I feel a strong market momentum behind this offering. Microsoft is making WVD very attractive, starting with a unique multi-session version of Windows 10 which is only available in Azure through this offering and continuing with extended support for... read more.

• October 01, 2019

By Brian Wagner, Posted in Infrastructure, Security, Storage

One of the most common attack vectors for cloud servers is through Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) or Secure Shell (SSH). When administrators build servers in the cloud, Microsoft and AWS had typically assigned a public IP to ease management of the servers. There is no VMware Console equivalent in the cloud, so RDP or SSH are the only way to manage a server. The problem starts when that public IP is assigned. Hackers are constantly running scans on the IP ranges owned by the cloud providers, and as soon as a... read more.

• July 10, 2019

By Brian Wagner, Posted in Infrastructure, Virtualization

To follow up on my previous blog about the Cloud First world we live in, I thought it would be helpful to highlight an area where the cloud offers a great AND low cost solution for Citrix disaster recovery. The costs of having workloads in the cloud are typically the largest obstacle for our customers to start the journey to the cloud. Citrix teamed up with Microsoft to deliver an option that reduces cost for production workloads and almost eliminates cost for disaster recovery. How does it work? The cost... read more.

• May 08, 2019

By Brian Wagner, Posted in Infrastructure, Virtualization

I remember when Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server edition was released, and the integrated capability of having more than one user access a server at a time was born. Sure, Citrix had created this already with WinFrame on Windows NT 3.51, but Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server edition brought the functionality to the native operating system. We take this for granted now, with every administrator of a Windows server environment heavily relying on RDP for their day-to-day jobs. But it was an exciting time. But the... read more.

• May 08, 2019

By Brian Wagner, Posted in Infrastructure, Virtualization

Overview Citrix acquired Unidesk in early 2017, and quickly integrated the App Layering technology into the stack. This included the ability to separate and individually manage layers for the OS, Platform Tools, and Applications. Applications can be baked in to the final image (template) or mounted elastically on demand based on user provisioning. Here is an overview diagram from Citrix: The ability to support User Layers has been in the “Labs” (previews of potential functionality for futur... read more.

• October 16, 2018

By Brian Wagner, Posted in Infrastructure, Support

As IT administrators, we are often asked how we can be more proactive to reduce exposure to issues that may arise. In Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.18, a new feature was introduced to help identify issues from user locations to the Citrix environment hosting the applications and desktops. This feature, Application Probing, has a few requirements, but is not too difficult to set up and can provide immediate value. Application Probing requires the following: Citrix XenApp / XenDesktop 7.18 or newer runni... read more.

• June 28, 2018

By Brian Wagner, Posted in

Cloud First At this time of year, we often meet with our customers and ask the question “What are your initiatives for next year?” Over the last few weeks, and really throughout 2017, we’ve been hearing a lot of cloud, cloud, cloud. The change in mentality is moving quickly. A year ago, a company may have said they have concerns around security and data, and they are going to stay where they have investment. Today’s meetings consist of our customers pushing us to figure out how they... read more.

• December 01, 2017