Hotfix Rollup Pack 1 for XenApp 6 released (finally)

After fixing both killer and smaller bugs on XenApp 6 one at a time for what seems like a year and a half (no, wait, actually its over that…) Citrix has released the first rollup pack of hotfixes for the product. 

This is not a feature pack, so there is nothing “new” as such.  Although if you are running a live XenApp 6 farm with no hotfixes installed the “new” thing will be that it will work.  XenApp 6 had a few new features and importantly was tied to Windows Server 2008 R2 (which was much better for Terminal Services than Server 2008 and a hell of a lot more modern than Server 2003) but frankly was not that stable at release.  There are about 22 public hotfixes out at the moment if you don’t install the Rollup Pack but the hotfix apparently includes all of them.  In fact there are 105 hotfixes listed as being included, many of which were only previously released to those who paid for support and had a specific problem, though since they often replaced each other that overestimates the size of it.  Actually, its only about 28mb but if it has the effect on a XenApp 6 farm that the public hotfixes had it will be essential.

Rollout is per server – every farm server from the Data Collectors down (but not Web Interface, License, etc) needs the install.  Advice from Citrix is to start with the Data Collectors and rollout very quickly from there, and if you have a test server (or better a test farm) you should test there before installing it anywhere else. 

Installation of Hotfixes should be uniform across your farm – the last thing you want is users landing on servers with different patch levels.  Installation Manager is basic but will do just fine as it understands MSP files, which is what you have.

We’re testing now – benchmarking shows no real CPU or Memory difference (positive or negative) between a server with all the public hotfixes vs with the rollup pack – at least on a simple tests of about 50 Office 2010 users.  But experience on XenApp recently would show it is best to take the risk and install patches early – personally I’ll have all servers patches to Rollup Pack 1 in a week.  Just in case.  If you are not convinced, check out the list of fixed issues…

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130473

Creating a low disk space alert with EdgeSight

EdgeSight is most useful when it actively alerts you about issues with your farm, rather than keeping it to itself and waiting for someone to notice.  By default it will take in lots of Alerts but not have any useful actions.  If you have not already done this, consider going to Configure > Alerts > Actions and creating an Alert for each event you are bothered about (in Configure > Alerts > Rules), sending an email if nothing else.

By default Edgesight DOES monitor disk space, even in Basic mode.  You can pull off a nice report on free disk space in Browse > System Disk Usage, which is lovely as long as you do this on a regular basis.  If you don’t, and don’t have any other monitoring software, you could have Citrix servers operating with almost no space free. 

This is how to monitor for disk space alerts using the Event Log record a full server will generate anyway:

• In EdgeSight, log in as an Admin and click Alerts (under Company Configuration) > Rules
  
• Click New Alert Rule
• Select System Alerts and click next
• Select Windows Event Log and click Next
  
• Give the rule a name (“Disk Space Alert”?), enter System as the Event Log Name, with Type as “Warning”, Source as “srv” and Event ID as “2013”.  This should match alerts you will get on a Windows system with a full drive.
  
• Click Next and Next (not Finish – you need an Action too), then select the part of the server tree you want to monitor – probably “All” at the top to select everything.  You might need to click this again on the next screen to select it properly.  Do this and click Next again.
• Select “Create a new Alert Action” and click Next. 
• Now you decide what to do – SNMP might be useful here, or sending an alert MS SysOps.  I’m just sending an email, so select “Sent an Email notification”
   
• Enter a name for the Action and a subject, then select an address to send to.  Click Test Action to check you get something.
  
• Click Next and Finish and you should see your new alert under Rules and Actions
• You should now get emails when someone fills your servers up!