Where you can find information on Citrix Products and Accessibility (Disability) Compliance

I asked the HDX test manager if a certain kind of application was being tested (a peculiar app with reverse colours), he replied that it was covered under our “Section 508” testing…. Something I had never heard of!

So what is Section 508?

Section 508 refers to a statutory section in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that all electronic and information technology of federal departments and agencies be accessible to people with disabilities unless it would impose an undue burden on the department or agency.

Section 508 is an active statute and is being currently enforced in Governmental IT purchases.

Why isn’t my GPU being used with Citrix XenDesktop or XenApp?

I don’t know…..I’m not psychic ;-)! It’s a question that occasionally comes up so I’ve put together a trouble-shooting guide, available here:

• CTX202149 – Known Issues or Configuration Reasons: OpenGL/DirectX/GPU Acceleration Not Used

I’ve included:

• Links to tools to identify the issue
• Known common configuration errors
• Known issues with GPU drivers
• Information on applications and Operating Systems that turn GPU-acceleration off by default.

You should always consult the CTX article as it is likely I will add to it in the future, but here is what I published today! Please do add any other issues you find to this blog comments and also let me know if you came across one of the issues (and which one), so I can work out whether writing lots of CTX articles is indeed a good use of my time! 😀

Find Monitoring Products for Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop – part 2….. An enormous list!!!

Some weeks ago I published this post, listing a few of the monitoring products I saw used by XenApp/XenDesktop sys admins. It was an off-the-top-of my head list, completely uncomprehensive! Since then though I’ve had a number of people send me their recommendations and lists of similar products! The lists from a few have been vast and included many products I’ve never heard of! As such I can’t possible review them or vouch for them but for those looking to evaluate monitoring products it may be useful if they are willing to do their own due diligence!

Monitoring NVIDIA GPU usage of the framebuffer for vGPU and GPU-passthrough

Jason Southern from NVIDIA released a video this week describing how to measure and understand the framebuffer usage for technologies used by Citrix XenApp, XenDesktop and HDX, the video is available here.

Understanding Citrix Ready Certification and Thin Client Performance

Update (27/12/2015) – Citrix Ready Thin-Client Certification Improved: https://virtuallyvisual.wordpress.com/2015/12/27/understanding-thin-clients-for-citrix-just-got-a-whole-lot-easier/

A few days ago a user (Vikash Jhagroe) posted this blog about the Citrix Ready HDX Certification program. This is in fact something the Citrix Ready team are looking to re-design to clear up the confusing current situation. Vikash has to some extent done a good job of explaining the situation, the information on-line is out of date (awaiting the Citrix Ready redesign) and there is a fair bit of background missing. When partial information becomes common knowledge, I usually find it’s best to be straight with users and give them all the facts.

Where to find open source components used within Citrix products

From time to time I get asked for source code for open source components that we use. There is a handy Citrix page where you can find the third-party attributions here:

• http://www.citrix.com/buy/licensing/open-source.html

Open source code we have to ship due to license restrictions/conditions/attributions is available alongside the products it is used in. For example for the Linux Receiver the only component that needs to be shared is FFMPEG which can be found in the Receiver download page

• http://www.citrix.com/downloads/citrix-receiver/linux/receiver-for-linux-1321.html

under “Additional Components” section.