8. Personalization Analysis Interactive reports and graphs provide visibility into personalization activity across the enterprise. Personalization analysis identifies trends, showing how often applications are personalized. Personalization Rollback Reduce support costs, time to repair damaged profiles and preserve user personalization settings by ‘rolling back’ to a previous known good profile on a per application or user basis. Offline Mode Personalization data is stored in a virtual cache within the user’s desktop and remains available to disconnected users. The user now has a fully portable, follow-me personality, which is re-synchronized with the latest, centralized settings when the user comes back online.
9. Rules and Actions Define events that are used to implement business policies. Rule examples include “when user X logs on to the desktop with an IP address of Y”, “when a user opens an application named Y” or for complete flexible control, any combination of multiple conditions. Actions resulting from these rules include file, folder, registry, ADM, drive and printer mappings. Self Healing Automatically self heal files, folders, registry keys, services and processes, application and system components in real time to prevent user introduced changes or actions from compromising system integrity. AppSense Configuration Templates AppSense Environment Manager is able to import an unlimited number of configuration files and use these policies in combination. A selection of Configuration Templates, such as default Outlook Profile, MS Office feature lockdown and XP Control Panel Item Removal are available from www.myappsense.com. This Template Library is maintained and updated frequently.
14. Passive Monitoring Monitor application usage without preventing users from running applications. Passive monitoring can be managed on a per user, device or group basis, providing an extremely useful tool to accurately track user behavior prior to implementation or to understand application usage for software license management. Digital Signatures Assign SHA-1 digital signatures to applications and files to ensure application integrity. Modified or spoofed applications are prevented from executing. White & Black List Configurations Lists can be used in conjunction with Trusted Ownership to control known applications which pass the NTFS owner check such as administrator owned tools like cmd or ftp. Or, create white lists to guarantee only known and trusted applications can execute on a system.
15. Self Authorizing UsersUsers can authorize their own applications without relying on IT. An audit details information such as application name, time and date of execution and device. A copy of the application can be taken and stored centrally for examination. Application Limits & Time Restrictions Control the number of application instances and at what times it can be run. Also enforce licensing models by controlling application access on a per device basis. Extensive File Support In addition to controlling .exe files, scripts, batch and registry files are also controlled. Digital signatures can also be applied to scripts to ensure content remains unaltered. AppSense Configuration TemplatesTake full advantage of pre-built corporate policy best practice by importing AppSense Configuration Templates. AppSense Application Manager is able to import an unlimited number of configuration files and use these in combination. A selection of templates such as ‘common prohibited item’s or ‘End Point Analysis’ is available from www.myappsense.com. This Template Library is maintained and updated frequently.
20. Virtual Memory OptimizationOptimizing the way Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) are loaded reduces virtual memory overheads and system paging is significantly reduced. Optimized DLLs are stored in a separate cache and loaded dynamically, leaving the original applications intact. Virtual Memory LimitsUser memory limits restrict the amount of virtual memory utilized. Users can be warned, or prevented from launching additional applications. Application memory limits can also be applied to individual applications giving greater control over virtual memory consumption. CPU Application Limits Define hard processor limits to control an applications access to the CPU. For example, an application limit of 70% ensures it cannot use more than 70% of the CPU. CPU Reservations Ensure applications are guaranteed CPU resource. For example, an application allocated 20% of CPU will get priority access to the CPU while it is using 20% or less of the CPU.
21. Processor Affinity Assignment On multiprocessor systems policies can bind specific users and applications to processors allowing mission critical applications to run exclusively on a dedicated CPU. Statistical Analysis and Reporting Report on CPU, Memory and Disk usage at the process level on a per user or application basis. Tabular reports and graphs are used to report on defined events to show resource consumption and optimization. AppSense Configuration Templates Take full advantage of pre-built corporate policy best practice by importing AppSense Configuration Templates. AppSense Performance Manager is able to import an unlimited number of resource policy configuration policies and use these policies in combination. A selection of Policy Templates, such as “BoostOffice” to prioritize resources to the MS Office application set, is available from www.myappsense.com. This Template Library is maintained and updated frequently.
22. Managing The User Environment Proven enterprise scalability Centralized management of user environment Provides visibility in the user environment Ensure continuous communication and fail over capabilities
23. Active Directory Authentication Tight integration with existing Microsoft Active Directory ensures all managed devices are authenticated before communications are established. Client Communications Agent (CCA) The CCA securely handles all communications between device and Management Server, adding the device to the correct deployment group, managing package installations and collecting and transferring audit data. Automatic Client Registration New devices automatically registers itself with the Management Server via the CCA. The properties of the device are used to automatically add it to the correct deployment group and automatically deploy the correct policy. Reporting An interactive set of reports are used monitor and audit user environment actions. Flexible options enable customization to show specific information, enabling forward planning and a move away from a reactive management approach.
24. Role-based Access Control Granular control of access rights on all objects such as deployment groups, packages, reports and alerts. Management Server Administrative users can be granted different access rights to each object on a per user or group basis. Secure Web-based Communications Built on WinHTTP, BITS and IIS technologies, data transfer and communications between the Management Server and device are securely managed across HTTPS or HTTP protocols. Watchdog Agent Should an AppSense agent stop unexpectedly or become unstable, the Watchdog will automatically audit the detected error and if configured, raise and alert and take corrective actions to restart the agent.
25. Configuration Check-out Process Support multiple administrators simultaneously opening or editing configurations. Once an administrator is granted access (via role based access control), already open configurations can be opened as read only. Metadata tags can be added as a description to a configuration. Management Server Configuration The Management Server installation provides the configuration of the Microsoft IIS and SQL Server. If configuration conflict arises during configuration, repair functions are presented. Support reports can be generated for AppSense Technical Services to initiate your case. Failover Support The CCA supports multiple Management Server URL’s. Should the link to the current Management Server fail, the CCA will re-connect to a different server allowing for full failover support and continue communications between the end point and the Management Center.
26. User environment management Solution AppSense Management Suite AppSense user environment management Policy and Personalization Management Consistent and contextual user environment Protected user environment Application Entitlement Resource Entitlement Responsive user environment
During good times, cost reduction is not always top of mind for many organizations. However, during economic downturn or recessions, we hear the request to “do more with less” from management way more frequently. Many Citrix customers are not aware of the optional cost savings that you have within your environments today. Cost savings will vary from organization to organization, but I can safely assume that many of you in the audience have opportunity to save your company money through infrastructure cost savings, improved automation and management, user productivity savings, and IT staff efficiencies. Here are just a few cost savings associated with user environment management. Faster logon times Reduce profile corruption Fewer “gold” images to manage Avoid unused licenses Increase the number of Citrix users per server Avoid support and end user impact for server lockup issues(70-90 seconds)