Once the Terminal Services Role has been installed these are changed to:

At a very basic level, these are the correct settings to use. But why ? For CPU, this forces the CPU to allot less time to a task before switching between tasks. In a service based environment (for SQL or Exchange for example) the CPU should be optimised for services so that the CPU allots more time to a single task before switching to any different task requiring processor time. As servers hosting services tend to have multiple cores this reduces context switching and results in higher performance for long running tasks.

In a thin client environment where multiple users are competing for processor time perceived performance is enhanced if the processor provides some time to each user. That is, if it can switch between threads more quickly. To do this, we optimise for programs in the GUI.

Regarding memory, the limiting factor in a 32 bit thin client server based computing environment is not necessarily user RAM but, more often, paged pool RAM and non-paged pool RAM. These are limited to around 650MB and 256MB respectively (for Windows Server 2003 – these limits have been removed somewhat in Windows 2008). These limits also hold true for Windows Server 2003 r2 Enterprise Edition. The server may have 32GB of RAM, for example, but will still have these small amounts of RAM available for end user tasks. If we optimise the RAM for programs then this reduces the amount of RAM available for these system type processes … the above figures are reduced still further. As paged pool RAM is consumed the server may start to page, even though there is ample spare user RAM. Even more concerning, if non-paged pool RAM is depleted this cannot be paged and, in the worst case, the server may even blue screen.

I hope the above brings some understanding as to why the above are the default settings. Some items to bear in mind:

1. Mark Russinovich has an excellent article on RAM which applies to thin client environments at http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2009/03/26/3211216.aspx
2. Jeremy Saunders has written an outstanding article on Processor Scheduling at http://www.jhouseconsulting.com/2008/05/13/processor-scheduling-20
3. RAM can be set to use prefer System Cache by setting the key HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache to 1
4. Processor Scheduling can be further optimised by setting the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl\Win32PrioritySeparation to 40

Why do people change these settings to the exact opposite of the defaults ? I have no idea but hope that someone can enlighten me.

1) Connect to the devices configuration utility using a browser
2) Expand the Network node
3) Click on RPC
4) Select the NSIP (NetScaler admin IP Address)
5) Click Open
6) Tick the Secure check box
7) Click OK

This is controlled from an XML file which instructions the agent where to collect icons from (essentially the all users atsrt menu and any logged on users menu) but exclude anything on the blacklist (Outlook Express, anything in c:\windows etc) unless its included on the list of whitelisted applications (internet explorer for example). So, very easy to configure IF you know where the configuration file is …. which isn’t at all obvious.

The XML file can be found in the following locations:

Windows 7
C:\ProgramData\Citrix\Xci\Applications\XciDiscoveryConfig.xml

Vista
C:\ProgramData\Citrix\Xci\Applications\XciDiscoveryConfig.xml

XP
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Citrix\Xci\Applications\XciDiscoveryConfig.xml

You can just look in the security log in event viewer and filter down but it’s so much easier using the command line. Just open up a cmd prompt and enter

audit log

This will let you list all the sessions from the event log and even pipe them out to a text file for later analysis or reporting.

This can be accomplished by changing the folders icon and adding a tool tip so that a hint appears if a user hovers their mouse over the folder. This is relatively simple to achieve.

1. Create the folder. I have create done called “RegistryTemplates”

    

2. Mark the folder as a system folder. Open a command prompt and mark the folder as a system folder using attrib +s Path\FolderName

    

1. Create a text file and name it Desktop.ini. Use Notepad to create this file and ensure it is saved in Unicode format. Also, enclose the file name in quotation marks to ensure that the.txt extension isn’t applied.

1. Edit the Desktop.ini file created (by double clicking on it). Add a section header

    

   [.ShellClassInfo]

    

2. Then enter values to inform the file system how to display the folder.

1. A typical set of entries would look like the below.

    

   [.ShellClassInfo]

   IconFile=C:\Windows\Regedit.exe

   IconIndex=0

   InfoTip=”Registry templates for updating standard settings within the operating system”

    

    

2. The above will set the icon to be that used by Regedit. The icon index is the index number of the icon within the icon file. If a bespoke icon is to be used, this can be placed within a hidden folder underneath the folder being displayed (use attrib +h FolderName to hide the folder).

    

3. Save the file.

    

4. Now open a command prompt and set the desktop.ini file to be a hidden system file using the command attrib +s +h Path\FileName.

    

   

    

5. The folder will now display with the regedit icon to provide a visual queue that the folder contains items relating to the registry.

    

   

    

6. Hovering the mouse over the folder displays the tooltip.

    

Thomas Koetzing has the fix on his blog

Create a VM with a Windows 7 template and copy the virtual machine UUID from the general tab in XenCenter or use xe vm-list in the CLI. Next you need to run the command xe vm-param-set uuid=<VMUUID> platform:viridian=false

The installation can the proceed as normal.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2021748/en-us?sd=rss&spid=12925

Enjoy