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Exam Experience – Cisco CCNP Datacenter – 642-998 Designing Cisco Data Center Unified Computing (DCUCD) – #vDM30in30

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Evening,

Sorry for the long title.

There is two reasons as to why you would be taking this exam. The first is because you want to achieve the CCNP Datacenter title, or the second is because your company requires you to, so they can achieve the Unified Computing Technology Specialization.

My reason was the second, but the Cisco Datacenter track is something I am interested in in the long run.

If your going for the partner route like me, you are not required to have the CCNA DC under your belt. But if you want to achieve the CCNP DC, you need to complete the correct pre-reqs, which can be found here.

The exam is 90 minutes with around 70 questions. The recommendation is to undertake the Designing Cisco Data Center Unified Computing course from an authorised Cisco Learning Partner. Which is exactly what I did, and then sat the exam straight after.

I will blog about the course separately.

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Exam Experience

So the exam was the usual Cisco, its made of majority multiple choice questions, and I also had two small testlets.

Continue reading Exam Experience – Cisco CCNP Datacenter – 642-998 Designing Cisco Data Center Unified Computing (DCUCD) – #vDM30in30 →

Using Command Prompt to log off terminal / Remote User – #vDM30in30

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A quick post. I had an issue the other day where I had to remotely administer a server on another site. When I logged in I was greeted by a white screen.

I needed to boot off this account and then log back in as the same user. Unfortunately this was the only administrator account available.

So I logged as a power user, opened up a command prompt by holding down “Shift” + Right Click to display the “Run as different user” option.

I then used the following options to view the logged in users and their session ID’s and used that information to log off the troublesome account.

SET PATH = %PATH%;C:WindowsSystem32DLLCache;
quser /Server:Localhost

This allows you to query the user  sessions on the local server or a remote device.

C:\>quser /?
Display information about users logged on to the system.

QUERY USER [username | sessionname | sessionid] [/SERVER:servername]

  username            Identifies the username.
  sessionname         Identifies the session named sessionname.
  sessionid           Identifies the session with ID sessionid.
  /SERVER:servername  The server to be queried (default is current).

From here, I take the Session ID and execute the “logoff” command pointing to the localhost.

logoff /Server:localhost 6 /v

Below are the options available with this command, the 6 represents the sessionID, and /v outputs the details to the console

C:\d.lewis>logoff /?
Terminates a session.

LOGOFF [sessionname | sessionid] [/SERVER:servername] [/V] [/VM]

  sessionname         The name of the session.
  sessionid           The ID of the session.
  /SERVER:servername  Specifies the Remote Desktop server containing the user
                      session to log off (default is current).
  /V                  Displays information about the actions performed.
  /VM                 Logs off a session on server or within virtual machine. The unique ID of the session needs to be specified.

Finally hears a screenshot of my console window.

command line log off user.JP

Regards

Dean

XD7.6 logo

Citrix XenDesktop – Password Reset not working on Wyse Terminals

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The Issue

Users password has expired

When logging onto a Wyse Client (in this case a C10LE or Dx0D running the latest firmware), you are told your password has expired. You are given the option to change your password, once you click OK, you are presented with the following message;

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The Cause

Turning on Verbose mode on the Storefront server and running Microsoft DebugView Tool to view the output files (C:\Program Files\Citrix\Receiver Storefront\Admin\Trace)

Here is the Citrix KB on setting up verbose logging and reading the trace files.

Add-PSSnapin Citrix.DeliveryServices.Framework.Commands

Set-DSTraceLevel –All –TraceLevel Verbose

Get-Service "CitrixConfigurationReplication" | Restart-Service
Get-Service "CitrixCredentialWallet" | Restart-Service
Get-Service "CitrixDefaultDomainService" | Restart-Service
Get-Service "CitrixSubscriptionsStore" | Restart-Service
Get-Service "Citrix Peer Resolution Service" | Restart-Service

Set-DSTraceLevel –All –TraceLevel Off
  • In the debug we could see that when the password reset tokens were sent;
[21620] <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE AdminProtocol SYSTEM "Admin.dtd">test.user</UserName><Domain type="NT">STUDENT</Domain><OldPassword>oranges</OldPassword><NewPassword>apples</NewPassword></RequestChangePassword></AdminProtocol>

Here you can make out that the above highlighted words are the user credentials and the old and new password.

  • There was a response stating;
[21620] PnaAuthenticationLogic: Authenticate response status: FailedInvalidDomain, isSuccess: False, password expired: False
  • We also seen a “Charlotte” error as well;
[21620] PnaAuthenticationExplicitController: PnaAuthenticationException from change password Citrix.DeliveryServices.PnaProtocol.Authentication.PnaAuthenticationException: CharlotteErrorBadCredentials

Below is a dissection of the debug output;

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The Fix

The fix was to change the Wyse configuration file (WNOS.ini) for the line that puts in the available domains to the FQDN rather than the NETBIOS name for each domain.

Our old configuration was;

  • DomainList=”Student,Admin”

Our new configuration was;

  • DomainList=”Student.educationalcentre.co.uk,Admin.educationalcentre.co.uk”

We could then see that in the debug file, the line describing the domain details, includes the FQDN.

<Domain type="NT">STUDENT.Educationalcentre.co.uk</Domain>

This issue was not apparent when using Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 and Citrix Web Interface, only when we migrated to XenDesktop 7.6 and StoreFront Services, which I imagine uses a higher level of security, meaning passing the NETBIOS name through is unacceptable now.

Regards

Dean

podcast

Guest appearance on the AdminAdmin Podcast

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This is a little of a late post but back in June I was invited by the amigos over at AdminAdmin Podcast to chat about my favourite subject. Me!

This was prompted after they mentioned my How to document posts, and I reached out to say thanks as it had generated extra traffic for my blog.

You can click this sentence to listen to the episode.

So thank you for having me guys and keep up the great work.

You can add them on twitter as well.

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Citrix StoreFront – Creating a Public SSL Certificate

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The latest versions of Citrix receiver require that you use HTTPS for the server bound connections, otherwise you cannot connect.

Citrix reciever https error

And the information on the Citrix website can be a bit thin when it comes to using a Public CA SSL Certificate. Here is the documentation link to using certificates for the Storefront component.

Here I am covering;

  • Workaround – Bypassing the HTTPS SSL warning when adding a store to Citrix Receiver
  • Creating the Public SSL Certificate request for your StoreFront Server
  • Importing the Public SSL Certificate onto your StoreFront Server
  • Exporting the SSL Certificate for use on additional servers
  • Linking the SSL Certificate in IIS to the StoreFront Website

Continue reading Citrix StoreFront – Creating a Public SSL Certificate →