Welcome to Kraft Kennedy

Wyse unveiled the “Xenith” thin client device last week at Synergy.  And unlike Wyse’s other thin client devices for Citrix that run Windows XPe or Windows CE, the “zero” client runs an ultra thin firmware (<5 Mb).  This thin firmware means the device boots up instantly and has minimal management.   A demo at Synergy last week showed the thing boot up in less than 5 seconds.  What else separates the Xenith from traditional thin client devices?   Full HDX support including HDX MediaStream (including Flash), HDX Plug-n-Play (USB redirection) and HDX RealTime (bi-directional audio). The expectation being that as Citrix upgrades and improves HDX features in the future, the Xenith’s firmware will be able to be upgraded to provide this support.  Firmware and asset management can be done through Wyse Device Manager and availability is expected in June with a price point at around $330.

The Xenith isn’t out yet, but seems very promising with HDX support, thin firmware, minimal management and an attractive price point.  If a firm is considering a VDI environment with XenDesktop in the next 6 months, the Wyse Xenith is definitely worth a look.

A couple of months back I posted on Citrix’s HDX Media Stream, as well as my first hand results with the trial release of HDX Media Stream for Flash.  Today, I wanted to follow up on that post with the newly released betas of XenApp 4.5/5.0 Hotfix rollup pack 5 (HRP) and Citrix Online Plug-in 11.2 (formally called ICA Client).

To start, both of these releases feature the typical bug fixes on both the client and server.  The 11.2 plug-in will also replace both the XenDesktop receiver client (11.1) as well as the XenApp plug-in (11.0).  Citrix has finally unified the XenApp and XenDesktop clients into a single installation.

This client/HRP combo provides some significant functionality to enhance user experience in existing XenApp environments.  It will add HDX Flash redirection support in XenApp.  The functionality is disabled out of the box, but can be enabled and controlled granularly in GPO with a supplied ADM template.  Testing this in a lab environment checks out.  Very straightforward and the functionality works as advertised.

The other new feature as part of this client/HRP is and addition to what Citrix calls “HDX Plug-n-Play“.  I don’t care for the terminology, but this finally brings dynamic USB redirection to XenApp.  Previously, USB devices on the client needed to be connected prior to XenApp session creation.  If a USB device was plugged in after a session was already created, the user would be required to logoff and login for the newly added USB device to present itself within the ICA session.  This was not intuitive and very annoying to users. (Also, would generate a helpdesk call.) Citrix has a dynamic USB tool that provided some functionality around this, but it was never officially supported and buggy.  Like the Flash redirection, this functionality is enabled with little configuration.  Simply running the 11.2 client on a server with HRP5 will enable the functionality.

Both of these enhancements coming to XenApp are not surprising, however it is a pleasant surprise that Citrix will roll this functionality into a hotfix rollup and client release.  This will allow existing 4.5 and 5.0 environments to take advantage of these new features.  These enhancements also echo Citrix’s focus on continually improving the user experience amongst their solutions.

Grab the betas here: (Requires a My Citrix login)
HRP5 for XenApp 4.5 and 5.0
Plug-in 11.2

Media playback within a XenApp or XenDesktop session has always been a challenge when designing a server based computing solution. The user’s experience is degraded through choppy playback and the host server is taxed processing the audio and video playback. Administrators have typically addressed this challenge by educating users to leverage their local client browser and media player whenever media functions were required. Not only does this introduce obvious training challenges in educating users, the experience is less than ideal having users switch between the “server” and “client” environments. Not to mention any new application integration issues that this generates.

Over the last few years Citrix has made incremental improvements to its HDX (formerly called SpeedScreen) technology to improve Flash and general media to solve this challenge. The improvements are significant over RDP, but playback overall is still not even close to “local” speed. Along with traditional improvements to HDX, Citrix has quietly included media redirection in XenApp and XenDesktop for certain media types. This is the mechanism in which media playback is offloaded to the client workstation for a more seamless experience. The server passes instructions to play the media to the client and the local audio and video codec is used for the actual playback. Media plays back seamless and the server processor is not taxed in the process. At the moment, XenApp and XenDesktop support DivX, XVid, MP3, among other media types. Check out this Citrix technote on all of currently supported media. From an administrator’s perspective, the requirements to enable this functionality are very straight forward. Enable SpeedScreen and ensure the client and server have codec installed and it will just work (given that the media type is supported).

As of last month, Citrix released a trial to enable Flash redirection (currently not officially supported). Flash has become the de facto standard for streaming video and multimedia on the internet, so the full release will be highly anticipated (tentative for Q3). Not that most users are doing this, but to test the technology, I was able to play back a 720p video through a XenApp server without any skipping or lag. Impressive stuff.