RES Software

By Dave Bryant, Senior Product Manager Introduction: RES Folder Synchronization is an enhancement of Microsoft’s File and Folder Synchronization Framework.  RES adds context awareness and filters around the default Microsoft solution in order to enable better control over what is synchronized and under what conditions. Microsoft Encrypting File System (EFS): RES Folder Synchronization works seamlessly with Microsoft EFS if EFS is enabled on both the client and the backend.  EFS, by default, is enabled on Windows XP and higher, including Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2.  Microsoft EFS is a file level encryption and therefore can dynamically encrypt and decrypt files and folders on demand when they are accessed.  To enable EFS, select either the file or folder, right click … READ MORE >>

When you live in Boston, and it’s the middle of January, how do you tell your wife and the mother of your 4 sons that you have to go to Orlando, Florida, Disney World, for work? If you’re like me, you don’t. You send her a text and leave in the middle of the night. Recently I had the pleasure of teaming with my fellow RESonians Gene Bonacci and Josh Goodstein to sponsor the Citrix annual Sales Kick Off (SKO) in the Peabody hotel and convention center in the heart of sunny Orlando, Florida. The weather was pleasant but certainly not what I would call balmy. Given this, I was shocked when, sitting by the pool grill in my shorts … READ MORE >>

In one of my previous blog articles I promised to give you a closer look at the Dispatcher Discovery process. It took me a while but now I will fulfill that promise. Together with my colleague Bas van Goor I created an overview of the discovery process and in this article I will walk you through it. Why do we actually need a discovery process? The RES Automation Manager Agent doesn’t communicate directly with the database. It does so by means of one or more Dispatchers and for an uninterrupted communication process it needs to have a list of functional and reachable Dispatchers in its memory. Building an initial list of Dispatchers in memory is what we call the discovery … READ MORE >>

Today RES Software announced an exciting new addition to the RES Software portfolio that answers one of the biggest challenges users and IT face today — securing and compliant access to user data.  Without an enterprise-class solution, users have adopted their own “Follow Me Data” solutions, and brought personal, public and cloud-based services into the office, bypassing structured corporate services with personal, consumer services.  This has created risk for the business, and unless IT can provide seamless solutions to the user, the trend will continue. RES HyperDrive is a secure way to deliver Follow Me Data and file-sharing with the enterprise-class security of on-premises technology. Available on any device, anywhere, RES HyperDrive empowers IT organizations to better serve an increasingly … READ MORE >>

Since I like this way of providing information more and more, encouraged by very positive feedback from our partners and customers, here a short addition to my last performance tuning blog. Recently we run into an alarm state 1 at the beautiful orange colored RES Suppport floor: two reports of a slow responding RES Workspace Manager environment, could not be a coincident, although…. Performance blog 1 didn’t help, part 2 is born by that. Luckily the issue has been sorted out quickly, check out the first one below. Remove RES Workspace Manager full install from Database/SQL and File server With a full installation of RES Workspace Manager the security drivers are being installed on the system. Although RES is not active within a session, the filterdrivers are … READ MORE >>

Are you certifiable? As I sit in my hotel room at the Park Hotel in the heart of beautiful Amsterdam, pondering my “Tim Tebow-ian” lifestyle, my mind turns to the subject of certifications. What else would I think about in Amsterdam? This is a subject I have gained a lot of experience in over the past 20 years. 20 years? Did I just type “20 years?” I cannot believe I am able to say that I have been in the software industry for two decades. I could have sworn I was only 29 years old! Anyway, while at the RES Sales Kick Off event here, one of my new colleagues from the USA and his counterpart from Germany asked me … READ MORE >>

In 2011 RES Software released RES VDX and RES Subscriber for VDX. These are the next generation applications of Workspace Extender and RES Subscriber. By using this software, it’s possible to use locally installed applications in a remote desktop. At the Support department we receive questions regarding several different aspects of this product. In this article I will mention some best practices and FAQ’s of RES VDX. The configuration can be different when using RES VDX in a standalone configuration from a configuration when it’s integrated into RES Workspace Manager. Both configurations will be mentioned in each section. How the RES VDX Engine is started In a standalone configuration, the RES VDX Engine will be started in a user session … READ MORE >>

Happy New Year. Recently I guest blogged on VMBlog.com about the upcoming year in our industry and what it means to the RES portfolio. Here are some highlights. With the increasing adoption of devices such as smartphones, tablets, touch sensitive screens and sub compact, ultra portable hardware, enterprises are going to realize that their employees are using these to access data and applications throughout the day. Android, Windows 7 (with the launch of Windows 8) and iOS all have enterprise and consumer experiences people desire. The biggest point of disruption to the IT department is Christmas, as new technology floats into the hands of corporate users. Where IT does not have a solution, niche point providers found across the internet … READ MORE >>

Since RES PowerFuse 2010 SR1 a new option has been introduced within the RES PowerFuse / Workspace Manager Console: Disable Active Setup. Still a lot of questions arise around this subject. Let me try to explain a bit more and give a nice example from a current customer case. The purpose of this blog? Disable Active Setup is more and more used as a logon-speed-up feature. Fact is that Active Setup takes some valuable time from the user at logon. These days more Local Profiles are being used, customers hate to see the Active setup at each logon. It is so easy to enable this feature, but think about the possible consequences. What is the Microsoft Active Setup Feature? When a … READ MORE >>

By Sean Donahue, Senior Director Global Alliance Marketing I have been with RES Software for 6 months now,  and while sitting in my room at the Marriott at yet another Citrix user event,  my thoughts turn to somewhat reflective and even melancholy. You see, when someone leaves the sanctity of Microsoft, it is not done on a whim or without careful analysis and consideration. There is usually much due diligence and research involved in the background of the company one thinks of taking wing and flying away to. I say usually because that was not necessarily the case in my chosen path away from the largest software vendor in the world. One of the first challenges I took on when … READ MORE >>

There are three different applications that can be used to run local applications on remote desktops like Citrix Published Desktop, Microsoft Remote Desktop or VMware View:    1. RES Subscriber 2010    2. RES Workspace Extender 2010    3. RES VDX 2011 There is a fourth application involved which I will describe in the end of this article:    4. RES Subscriber for VDX Regardless of which application is used, in the RES PowerFuse Console or the RES Workspace Manager Console there is no difference in configuring an application to run as Workspace Extension. All you have to do is select “Run as Workspace Extension” in the General Properties screen for a managed application.                       … READ MORE >>

This post describes some random performance tips, triggered by some issues reported at RES Software Support. When you are busy in maintaining everything for your users, you might ‘forget’ to plan some maintenance within your RES Workspace Manager Console. After changes within your IT infrastructure you probably have to make some cleanup actions within your RES WSM environment. This blog is based on RES Workspace Manager 2011. Create a RES Datastore backup and Building Blocks to have a proper fallback scenario. The next steps can positively influence your RES WSM environment. These are sorted like the order within the RES Console. 1.  Context 1.1  Clean up Directory Services (Context – Directory Services) Check for Directory Services or Microsoft Windows domains which … READ MORE >>

Hi everyone, we wanted to make you aware of a great webcast panel discussion coming up this week. On Nov 10th, 11AM ET (4PM GMT) we will be joined by 451 Group’s Rachel Chalmers, Research Director of Infrastructure Management; an analyst well known for her research on desktop virtualization. This session is hosted by BrightTALK, and will cover trends faced by IT today and how context aware computing can answer the challenges brought to organizations through Consumerization, BYoPC, BYoT, BYoD and more. Context aware ‘IT as a Service’ is all about managing the user in the way they want to work, in the location they prefer, using the applications they choose. ‘Context’ can be defined at the basic level by … READ MORE >>

Hi everyone, this week we are announcing the launch of RES Automation Manager 2012 at Citrix Synergy Barcelona. Automation Manager 2012 delivers the automation of tasks beyond the traditional command line. It bridges client, datacenter, physical, virtual and cloud services with centrally managed, relationship-oriented tasks and runbooks. Automation Manager 2012 also provides the ability to consistently provision complex tasks across an unlimited number of repositories by a range of IT staff levels with centralized automation, auditing and delegation of control. Automation Manager 2012 provides lifecycle management to network resources. It allows administrators to provision new services, maintain production resources with simplified automation, and reflect the ever changing needs of IT. The new release allows organizations to increase their capacity through an efficient tiered dispatcher hierarchy, … READ MORE >>

By Sean Donahue, Senior Director Global Alliance Marketing Hello again from another Synergy. This one, however, is Synergy EMEA in Barcelona. The clouds have parted, the torrential downpours from earlier in the week have ended, the sun is shining and so is a new day in hosted desktops from Citrix. Today, I am pleased to say that RES Workspace Manager is a flagship part of the Citrix Service Provider Program (CSP). We are in a small circle of ISVs who are integrating their products into the newly announced CloudPortal Services Manager straight away. We have been working very closely with the Dev and Support resources at Citrix. (And when I say closely, I mean daily meetings and a steady stream … READ MORE >>

By Grant Tiller, Senior Product Manager Citrix is announcing updates to their CSP (Citrix Service Provider) program this week. CSP is a hosting model designed to aid hosting companies and Desktop as a Service providers. From a product perspective, Citrix launched its CloudPortal Services Manager this morning at the event. This is looking like a great initiative to really give the service providers out there what they are crying out for. The Portal will undoubtedly help ease the management pain associated with complex, multi-tenanted cloud-based environments. I’m pleased to confirm that RES Workspace Manager is integrated into the CloudPortal, right out of the box.  Several service providers were informed about the CloudPortal announcement prior to Synergy (and some even got … READ MORE >>

By Grant Tiller, Senior Product Manager Hi All, I am writing this just prior to leaving for Barcelona to attend Citrix Synergy. We have been busy, and I wanted to share some things with you! RES Software have been working very closely with Citrix over the last few weeks, leading to some great announcements that will be coming from both of us at Synergy in sunny Barcelona. You’ll have to wait in suspense because some of that news will remain “top secret” until Synergy. What I can tell you about is that leading up to Barcelona, we have been working with Peter Blum (Director Product Management for Citrix XenClient) and David Wagner (Principal Product Manager, focusing on User Profile Manager) … READ MORE >>

By Bob Janssen, CTO and Co-Founder of RES Software When you truly believe that a technology can benefit every IT admin and every end user, how do you turn that vision into a reality? How do you lower the barriers to that technology so users can be the most productive and empowered? How do you help IT get their hands on that technology and implement it in their organization, regardless of their budget limitations? With the release of RES Workspace Manager Express, we at RES Software would like to think that we’ve come up with a way to accomplish a very powerful vision – a vision to provide a personalized workspace for absolutely everyone.  Every desktop transformed into a workspace, … READ MORE >>