What is a VPN Used For

SSL Certificate chaining and - through authentication

SSL authentication mandates the server before establishing the session and this is done in SSL handshake initial. Each resource that is in the service of any content or service must have its SSL server certificate that is used for authentication with the client. This may sound weird to start if the client initiates the connection still server must authenticate his identity necessarily the customer. Here's how the SSL trust model has been defined and managed today ...

Now the question is where you get the server certificate from? Well, you can create your own certificate using OpenSSL base and use to service tools. But how customer authenticates and approves the certificate ?? A certificate created by self has a transmitter (local), which is certainly not known to the customer and therefore the chain of trust can not be established. Thus, we have global certification authority issuing the final certificate and accumulate trust model that customers trust these CAs. If you check your client browser, there are a trusted certificate store where you will find ROOT and Intermediate CA certificates that customers trust.

So what is a chain of trust? This is the key ingredient of the full SSL authentication model. A customer said that if I know and trust the issuer of the server certificate, I can not establish the chain of trust so it can not trust the server certificate. A client can choose to ignore the chain of trust, but then you end up compromising the whole value offered by SSL. Anyone can forge a certificate for a different service and get connect to customers if the chain of trust is not validated.

You might wonder why I call trust "string" all the time. When the first trust model started each certificate was issued by the root or top-level Intermediate CA. Thus, the customer can trust your server certificate if it was issued by a CA level best because it has the CA in the trusted store. As the need and requirement of server certificates have increased, most of the key authorities created several levels Intermediate CA and end server certificate can be issued via CA at all levels. Now, customers only have high-level certificates and your certificate has been questioned by an intermediate CA that is five levels in the chain of trust. Unless you have the server certificate and the intermediate CA can complete the chain with this customer, confidence will not be established. This becomes a case scenario and common use since the certificate request.

On NetScaler you can add the server certificate and any intermediate CA certificates manually and then connect them to create a chain. This string must be manually created, which mostly is in configuration issues as:

- Server Separation and intermediate CA from flat file

- not the Certificates right format PEM

- one of the intermediate CA is placed in the wrong order

more, it is a tedious exercise to link the certificate to NetScaler. What we have done recently is to allow you to specify a package certificate that the server certificate and any intermediate CA certificates to complete the chain of trust. This improvement makes it very easy to get all the certificates together in a single flat file, and you chose to group them with a new option " YES -bundle" command in "add ssl Certkey". This new option reduces the effort and combines the following steps:

- Added a server certificate and key

- Added more intermediate certificates CA

- Bind the server certificate to the intermediate CA issuer

- Creating another link between the intermediate CA

More configuration, it takes a lot of effort to ensure that you build the correct channel so that the control of the trust is on the client end. This improvement allows you to get this complicated configuration performed in easy and simple steps ...

Citrix XenClient - Swisscom technical whitepaper on Smartop, a managed service offering -

Some of you may have attended Citrix Synergy EMEA of 17 October ^e to 19 ^e , 2012 in Barcelona, ​​Spain. Citrix XenClient team had a special guest in her New XenClient session on October 17 ^e . Heiko Timmerkamp Swisscom joined us to talk about Smartop company managed services offering.

Following a thorough process of testing and evaluation, Swisscom IT Services has chosen Citrix XenClient Enterprise * (XC-E) running on smart client powered by Intel® Core ™ processors vPro ™ technology as the basis for its new solution Smartop * workplace -. a Truly Modern Workplace managed for the company

"We were inspired by the new possibilities Intel® Core ™ vPro ™ processors and Citrix XenClient Enterprise * offered, and are extremely pleased his proven preparation business . We chose an aggressive way for the implementation and support of technology suppliers allowed us to mature services at an early stage of this relatively new technology. We look forward to many interesting projects Smartop *. "

Heiko Timmerkamp, ​​Portfolio Product Manager Workplace, Services, Swisscom IT Services

Swisscom and Intel have released a technical white paper on which you Smartop can access here. For those of you who have not yet tried XenClient you can download a free trial here.

Join the conversation by connecting with Citrix XenClient team online!

• View XenClient Page
• Follow us on Twitter
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• Visit our XenClient Technical Forum

What's new with Provisioning in Excalibur -

Excalibur Technology Preview provides a first glimpse of some upcoming enhancements to XenApp and XenDesktop. While the unification of XenDesktop and XenApp deployment and management of unique architecture and adding support for Windows operating systems next generation are undoubtedly the most obvious changes, we made some number of other improvements in the entire product. Among those are improvements in both service creation machine (MCS) and procurement services (WPV) characteristics.

Provisioning for XenApp servers via PVS or MCS

One advantage of FlexCast Management architecture is updated as XenApp farms can now be deployed and managed from the studio. It also means they can be provisioned using the linked clone delivery model Machine Creation Services that was available in XenDesktop for some versions. One of the main benefits of MCS is the ease with which new catalogs machines (virtual desktops and XenApp virtual servers now) can be created. Updates Catalog Studio wizards guide you in if the initial deployment of a virtual farm XenApp. The model MCS provides many of the same benefits of managing the unique image of Provisioning Services, but works directly on the storage managed by your hypervisor, so there is no need to deal with PXE or build-deploy Provisioning Services. However, this is limited to the new Excalibur version of XenApp.

PVS streaming batteries for XenApp and desktop catalogs is always an option in Excalibur, providing improved image management capabilities and storage IO optimizations beneficial in larger, more complex environments, although infrastructure management Provisioning services remains in a separate management console. Procurement services continue to provide a centralized library of images for mixed environments where multiple "sites" or "farms" of XenDesktop and XenApp are used.

Support for New Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Storage capacities

Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Release 3 add new and improved facilities for access storage for virtual machines, and you can try some of these features in the Tech Preview Excalibur with both PVS and MCS.

Hyper-V Version 3 adds support for a new virtual disk format, VHDX. The new format can solve some performance and alignment issues VHD formats / from AVHD. MCS catalogs created on Windows Server 2012 / Hyper-V 3 hosts will automatically take advantage of this new format. Similarly, the secondary disks attached to virtual machines for write caches PVS or personal vDisk will benefit VHDX. Provisioning Services vDisk of which are accessible and managed directly from PVS servers themselves continue to use the base VHD format because you can still run the PVS servers on Windows Server 08 R2.

Another new feature in Hyper-V Volume 3 is the shared cluster support (CSV) read caching. This capability is integrated in the clustering mechanism failover in Windows Server and allows clusters of Hyper-V 3 hosts to use RAM host as a read cache for disk of the virtual machine (VHDX files) on the block storage. In Excalibur we can take advantage of this ability to reduce the IO storage for MCS catalogs at startup and opening session storms. The effect is similar to caching that occurs on PVS hosts, except that the blocks are delivered once each Hyper-V host and shared between virtual machines on that host. CSV collection makes use of RAM to host this cache so there will be a compromise between the cache size and the amount of RAM available for VM.

Bottom line? There are some major enhancements to the Hyper-V platform in Windows Server 2012 and Excalibur takes good advantage of them to offer a combined solution that is robust, efficient and scalable.

Coming

The Excalibur Technology Preview provides some, but not all, of the provisioning enhancements currently under development. Other improvements that we work include: MCS support for KMS support Windows Server 2012 SMB storage 3, and significant performance and usability enhancements in image capture and creation tools PVS catalog. Stay tuned ...

Poll: Is a heavy laptop computer insurance for travelers with tablets -

It seems that even in tablet form have become more popular, the majority of travelers now bring their more tablet? their laptop (guilty myself ..). The result is heavier bags, more cables, chargers and other issues or losing.
As well as applications for the iPad and other tablets have achieved and even virtual desktops used to access work applications, they are still not always good enough not to worry about leaving you the laptop at home. If you are like me now I prefer my iPad on a plane, in meetings and in a hotel, but the laptop is often along just in case ...

Follow @chrisfleck

Learn more about Synergy 2012

What keeps you lug your laptop? What would solve this problem?

TechEdge Close-up - Interview with Ed Targonski -

A Citrix TechEdge San Francisco 2012, you'll get to meet some of the best Citrix engineers. One of them is Targonski Ed. Ed is a Technical Lead Relationship Manager based in our office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Check out his video interview below.

Learn more about San Francisco TechEdge 2012 http://citrix.com/techedge and stay tuned for closer weekly interviews with presenters Techedge

Registration for the Summit and Synergy -. San Francisco 2012.

Either Ed knows all thoughts, questions or comments you might have for his session by leaving a comment below

David
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