Improved Printing Capabilities
Over the years, MetaFrame has come a long way in printing capabilities, especially with the addition of a universal print driver in MetaFrame XP FR1. MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 continues to use the universal print driver and offers several printing enhancements, such as support for color printing and high-resolution printing (up to 600 dpi). However, the most notable printing enhancement is the feature that automatically installs network printer drivers.
In the early MetaFrame versions, adding a new network printer meant you had to manually install the network printer driver on each server in the farm. With MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0, the print driver for a network printer is automatically detected by the connecting client's machine, automatically installed, and, later on, automatically replicated to other servers. If a driver isn't on your compatibility list (which you configure), MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 blocks its installation.
Unfortunately, automated driver installation works only with network printers. It doesn't work with drivers for client printers or local printers.
In general, printing is one of the most complained about areas of server-based computing. However, because Citrix is a leader in that field, I would expect a more vigilant effort from Citrix to fix all the problems. Although Citrix has made much improvement in the printing area, running a stable printing environment, in my opinion, still requires the use of third-party software.
Remote Server Access
In the early MetaFrame versions, accessing a server's desktop for troubleshooting or maintenance was a complicated, annoying task because you had to configure an ICA connection. I found that using the Terminal Services client or Remote Desktop in Windows XP or Windows 2000 was a much quicker alternative to accessing MetaFrame servers. However, with MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0, you can access a MetaFrame server from the Management Console for Presentation Server 3.0. You simply expand the Servers node in the directory tree, right-click any server, and select Launch ICA Session, as Figure 4 shows. You can connect to the desktop through the published resource or launch an ICA session to the server's desktop. If you're using Windows Server 2003, you can alternatively connect to the server's console.
If you want to connect to the console but the Connect to Server's Console option is shaded, you need to enable remote console access. To do that, right-click your server-farm node and select Properties. In the left pane, click MetaFrame Settings, then select the Enable remote connections to the console check box in the right pane.
MSDE Support
With the early MetaFrame versions, you have to install the Independent Management Architecture (IMA) data store on a server running IBM DB2, Oracle, Microsoft Access, or Microsoft SQL Server. However, Access isn't robust enough for large farms, and purchasing DB2, Oracle, or SQL Server is expensive. With MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0, you can run MSDE, which is a lightweight version of SQL Server 2000. MSDE offers better performance and more stability than Access and it's free. Having MSDE support is definitely a boon for MetaFrame.
If you're currently using Access but want to upgrade to MSDE, the migration is a walk in the park. Citrix provides scripts to automate the migration process. You just need to follow these steps:
1. Install MSDE. You can download MSDE from http://www.microsoft.com/sql/msde/howtobuy/default.asp.
2. Place the MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 CD-ROM in the server that hosts Access and the IMA data store. Go to \Support\MSDE in the CD-ROM's root directory. You'll find three files: migratetomsde.exe, readme.txt, and setupmsdeforwindows.cmd.
3. Run setupmsdeforwindows.cmd. When the script finishes running, reboot the server.
4. Run migratetomsde.exe. This script will migrate your data from Access to MSDE. You can run it with the default settings, or you can type
migratetomsde.exe /?
and press Enter to check out the available switches that let you customize the settings.
The Mlicense Tool
I don't think I've ever met anyone who enjoyed working with licenses. Licensing MetaFrame 1.8 and earlier was particularly a hassle, but licensing has greatly improved since then. One licensing tool that Citrix has added is Mlicense, a command-line tool that lets you simultaneously manage licenses for multiple products. The way this tool works is that you place all the serial numbers from your MetaFrame servers into a text file, then use Mlicense to automatically generate an XML file from the text file. MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 uploads the XML file to the Citrix Activation System (CAS) Web site, which processes the XML file and outputs another XML file back to you for use with Mlicense again.
Now that you have a general idea of how the tool works, let's look at the specific commands to use. If you open a command-prompt window and type
mlicense /?
you'll see the four basic parameters that you can use with this tool:
mlicense [ add |
activate | backup |
extract_unactivated ]
As this syntax shows, you can add and activate licenses, back up your licenses' serial numbers, and extract the serial numbers of unactivated licenses. You can use the following switches with the parameters:
- /I, which you use to specify the pathname of the input file (i.e., the text file that contains the serial numbers)
- /O, which you use to specify the pathname of output file (i.e., the XML file that Mlicense uploads to the CAS Web site)
- /L, which you use to limit the number of serial numbers in each output file
- /Q, which you use to overwrite previously created output files
As the /I switch implies, you first need to create an input file that contains your licenses' serial numbers. I used the Management Console for Presentation Server 3.0 to obtain all the serial numbers, then copied them into a text file. Each serial number must be on a separate line.
Next, you need to use the Mlicense command with the /I and /O switches to generate an output file from the input file. For example, the command
mlicense /I C:\temp\serialnumbers.txt
/O C:\temp\filetouploadtocas.xml
tells Mlicense to use the C:\temp\serialnumbers.txt file to generate an output file named filetouploadtocas.xml in the C:\temp directory. By default, the output file can hold as many as 2000 serial numbers. If you want the output file to hold fewer serial numbers, you can use the /L switch followed by how many serial numbers you want each file to hold. For example, the command
mlicense /I C:\temp\serialnumbers.txt
/O C:\temp\filetouploadtocas.xml
/L 50 /Q
tells Mlicense to include a maximum of 50 licenses in each output file. So, if you had 100 licenses in your input file, Mlicense would create two output files. The /Q switch tells Mlicense to overwrite any existing files. So, for example, if filetouploadtocas1.xml and filetouploadtocas2.xml already exist, Mlicense overwrites these files so that the new serial numbers would be in filetouploadtocas1.xml and filetouploadtocas2.xml. Without the /Q switch, Mlicense creates new files and increments the number in the filename by 1. So, for example, if filetouploadtocas1.xml and filetouploadtocas2.xml exist, Mlicense would create two new output files named filetouploadtocas3.xml and filetouploadtocas4.xml.
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