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Cabling for new DataCenter Theory Comparison

So you’re building a new data center.

There are a lot of discussions raging around about how you’re going to port your data to your patch panel.

Without getting into the debates, the following options common practices are available:

  1. Server to patch in the same rack then plugged into switch in the patch panel room/rack.
    Advantages:  Everything terminating in one point while keeping the source rack clean.
    Disadvantages: Spaghetti effect in the connection point.  Only useful in small networks, site offices. Limited growth.
  2. Server to Switch, switch is up-linked.
    Advantages: Allows for growth. Tidy. Allows for potability – especially in container data center situations. Logical and easy troubleshooting.
    Disadvantages: More points of failure.  More Expensive.

So in conclusion, at least when only comparing these two common approaches, the first solution wins the cake. It is cheaper, it requires less time time setting up, however – does have a few pitfalls looking at future expansion troubleshooting, and flexibility this should be your first decision.

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Reliable Citrix Printing

Contrary to common belief, Citrix printing CAN be reliable.

The following steps will guide you in attaining that.

The environment is Windows 2003 Server, Xenapp 4.5, and a wire array of clients; standard metaframe server.

So, probably a dumb question – what is the print spooler. Keep in mind that with this excercise we are looking to tie in the windows spooler and citrix spooler service.

The considerations are:

  1. The printing policy
  2. Native/Non-native drivers
  3. Discovering and Eliminating unreliable drivers
  4. Deleting faulty drivers
The printing policy:
  • Auto creation – Auto create all client printers
  • Print job routing: If you have a print server this will help skip another loop.
  • Native driver auto-install. This determines if your server will get cluttered with bad drivers in the long run. Do not automatically install drivers.
  • Universal driver: Use the Citrix Universal Print Driver:
Native/Non Native Drivers:
The best practice with drivers is to avoid both if Citrix was questioned. In real life, most environments will have a few native/non-native drivers which you HAVE to install. This is usually due to photocopier options, security and in general just something the Citrix Universal print driver does not handle.
BUT – We also need to make sure these drivers are safe and will not compromise stability.
This is a two part process, A. ensuring whether the driver in question is native (preferred), B. making sure the driver is reliable.
For this we need to two tools:
  1. Citrix’s Stress Tools – this will work on all windows environments and can be found in 32&64 bit flavours.
    This ZIP will need to be extracted to a local drive on the server you’re looking to test.
  2. Citrix’s Print Detective – this will also need to run locally.
Print Detective
  1. You will use this to identify what drivers are native or otherwise. Run the application from where you unzipped it. Right click and “Show Non-Native/Non-Citrix drivers only”.
  2. The main aim is to test the Drivers identified in step 1. Yes I know, there are some Microsoft printers in there, doing this exercise is adhering with Citrix’s guidelines and these drivers we “should” test.
Stressing the server
  1. Run your Stress Printer application from where you unzipped it.
  2. The options you need to look at are “The number of concurrent add events”, 5 is recommended, and “The number of times to repeat the test”, 5 as well. “Verbose mode” and “Apply these settings to all printers”  will need to be checked. The selected printers will be the ones we identified in the previous paragraph.
  3.  Ignore Warnings in the log. You are looking for 0 Errors.
Deleting Faulty drivers
  1. The identified faulty drivers will need deletion.
  2. Go to Start, Printers and Faxes, on the top right click on File, Server properties,  then choose the drivers tab. Select the appropriate driver then “Remove”

You now have a stable Citrix printing environment.

I intend on putting this up as pdf soon.

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remote access how to

remote access how to – We saw previously ONE method to log off a user, that was the clean way of gaining remote desktop.
There is another way, a dirty way but it works none-the-less, and gains your remote desktop:

This approach gives you remote access (sitting in front of the machine/console). Add the /Admin switch in the mstsc box.

Additional to this, you will approach also has the ability of allowing you to install some programs that will only install via console.

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Remotely log off a user

If you like every other sysadmin have users that simply forget to log-off, throw the following in a batch script.
This script will need to run with admin rights.

 

 

echo off
cls
echo What is the machine name?
set /p server=
quser /server:%server%
set /p session=
logoff %session% /server:%server%
quser /server:%server%