Introducing the Sentinel LDK License Configuration Helper Service. This new tool I’ve created uses registry values and/or XML files to configure the client-side Sentinel LDK License Manager (hasplms) service, which updates the configuration in the License Manager Configuration File (hasplm.ini) found under the “C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Aladdin Shared\HASP” folder on a 64-bit Windows machine. It achieves the same outcome as using the Configuration option from the Sentinel Admin Control Center (ACC) web interface via http://localhost:1947.
CVAD
Best Practice for the Windows Client Side Caching (CSC) kernel driver in VDI workloads
It’s been a best practice for a long time to disable Offline Files in both RDSH and VDI workloads. However, this has only ever been based around the Offline Files (CscService) service and some registry tweaks.
What people don’t realize is that you must properly disable Offline Files in all VDI workloads by also disabling the Windows Client Side Caching (CSC) kernel driver as outlined by Ned Pyle here.
Even with the Offline Files (CscService) service disabled, the Windows Client Side Caching (CSC) kernel driver is still loaded at Windows startup, creating unnecessary noise and potentially impeding performance when users access a network share.
The following example is a screen shot of Process Monitor monitoring a zpaq64.exe process extracting a file to a network drive. Note how it’s continually attempting to access the CSC (Client-Side Caching) area before the network share, even though Offline Files is disabled. This creates a large number of NAME NOT FOUND errors, and adds a potential delay to the execution time.
Best Practice for the Windows Time (W32TIME) Service for RDSH and VDI workloads
When using image deployment mechanisms for RDSH and VDI workloads, such as Citrix PVS, Citrix MCS and VMware View Composer, it’s extremely important to reconfigure the Windows Time (w32time) Service to ensure that the LastBootUpTime is accurate. If it’s not accurate, it effects monitoring, the correlation of log data, event triggers, etc.
The default Manual trigger of the Windows Time service is based on domain membership, which seems to cause issues as the image boots and changes name to the correct target name. Without having a deep enough understanding on the inner workings of these technologies, I can only assume that the default trigger of the Windows Time service is not compatible with the way the imaging mechanisms work on boot up to change the computer name and join to an Active Directory computer object. There may be a point during startup where Windows detects that it’s not domain joined and therefore stops the Windows Time service, which seems to throw the time out.
XDPing PowerShell Function
I wanted to write valid PowerShell function to do an XDPing the same way Citrix do with their Health Assistant tool. I was struggling a little to get the PowerShell code working as expected, so in the end I used the JetBrains dotPeek .NET decompiler to decompile the VDAAssistant.Backend.dll, which is a component of the Citrix Health Assistant Tool. This allowed me to reverse engineer and understand how Citrix does it in C# .NET, which is then easy for me to convert to PowerShell. Yeah…okay, so I cheated at little 😉 I also released a C# (csharp) function I wrote back in 2020.
I used this PowerShell function in two scripts:
- Controlling the Starting of the Citrix Desktop Service (BrokerAgent)
- The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops & Desktops as a Service Health Check Script on Steroids
To test if the Broker service is reachable, listening and processing requests on its configured port, you can issue blank HTTP POST requests at the Broker’s Registrar service, which is located at /Citrix/CdsController/IRegistrar. If the first line displayed/returned is “HTTP/1.1 100 Continue“, then the Broker service responded and is deemed to be healthy.