Citrix questions

Mishra

I have a couple more Citrix questions...

I have another server in the Citrix environment that I need to do testing on. I want to somehow make a few users be the only ones forced to use the testing server. That way I can apply changes to the testing server and see if I receive any complaints from the users testing (but doing production work).

The only way I could think of doing this is creating a second identical test published application and make them use that to log in and only point it using the test server... However I don't really want to create the test application because it will just confuse them and cause me more work... I want to make it seem less on the user end.

Any ideas?

Questions 2, What hotfixes do you all recommend? Should I only install the critical ones? Are there any other patching needs for Citrix aside from hotfixes at http://support.citrix.com/product/ps/v4.0/hotfix/w2k3/

astorrs

Unless your users have static IPs (then you could create a new load evaluator) the only way to do this is by creating a second published app. I would just recruit some users to use "My Application - Test" instead of the usual one.

Sie

Just an thought but could you publish the test servers, disable the users access to the Production Servers and only allow access to the Test Server for these users? Then when they log in it will push them over to these servers?

Thinking though it may cause issues when they hit the Production Servers instead.....

A Second Application would be easier though!!

Mishra

Thanks for the reply. I ended up just rolling out changes to 1 server and letting half of my Citrix users do production work on that server. In the event of a problem I could send out a message telling everyone to log out and shut the server down after that. A rough way to go but I was giving way too many security changes to try and educate users to use a 2nd application and I made a decision that the security changes probably wouldn't have any effect on the servers.

ajs1976

I usually apply the updates to one server and if everything is OK I apply them to the other servers the next night.

When installing updates, I install all of the citrix updates and then the MS updates. I lot of times the Citrix updates will fix something that an MS update breaks.

astorrs

I would install the latest Citrix hotfix rollup pack and then the applicable security hotfixes since then and any non-security hotfixes that are actually *relevant* to the environment.

As for Microsoft patches, its always good to check Citrix's test results before applying (can save you a headache - even to only a test server): http://support.citrix.com/pages/microsoft/