Neils personal site

A recent Microsoft blog post highlights a small but significant change to the RTM of Windows 2008 R2

The DirectX remoting - being able to render DirectX natively on the client using the local GPU, won't now be included in RDP7. This is technology Microsoft purchased from Callista, and WAS present in the recent release candidate, but has been removed from the RTM build.

Citrix have quietly pushed out version 5.1 of provisioning server, which appears to have had a slight re-branding (yes, nothing is sacred!) and now appears to be called Provisioning Services.

Available for anyone with active subs from the mycitrix page.

NIC teaming appears to be finally supported, along with read-only storage for vDisks. Will post a more indepth look when I've had a play.

I'll be blogging from iForum in Edinburgh over the new few days reporting on any noteworthy items not already covered from Synergy last month.

This will be the final iForum in Edinburgh - next year will see a single Synergy event for Europe held in Berlin in the Autumn. Kind of makes sense for Citrix to consolidate their various European iForums a la VMWorld.

The recession does appear to be taking its toll on the conference circuit with both exhibitor and delegate numbers much reduced from previous years, so reducing the number of events was a logical step.

If you still haven't registered for Citrix iForum Edinburgh (what are you playing at?) then Citrix have kindly provided a 50% discount code. Enter "CERT1" when completing your registration form to get 50% discount on the conference fees!

Thanks Citrix!

RES Software have kindly provided a 20% discount code for Citrix iForum Edinburgh

Take the 1Y0-A08 Advanced Administration of Citrix XenApp 5.0 exam for FREE at Pearson VUE centers world wide. Just use promo code TakeA08 on the payment page.

Space is limited and offer good only until June 5, 2009.

Citrix have recently released a hotfix to XenApp (HRP04) that allows their Branch Repeater products to cache certain aspects of ICA across users sessions.

Citrix have released SP1 (strangely named SP1a - are they expecting a SP1b??) of Provisioning Server 5

Talk to any Citrix administrator about printers and before long (s)he'll break out in a cold sweat and start mumbling about drivers, blue screens of death and replication issues. Count yourself lucky if they havn't broken down sobbing "why me, why me" within five minutes.

I've been aware of the HP Universal Drivers for some time, but it's been one of those things thats always been a "I must give that a try one day" and more important things have come along (like those pesky new XenApp versions and OS upgrades...)

So, with my latest implementation, I decided to dedicate some development time to give it a serious try - and the results so far have been very favourable.

Citrix have announced a new initative "Take two" where you can pay an additional "insurance" fee when taking an exam and get a second retake if you fail the first time.

See this link for more details.