Remote PC

Navigation

• Remote PC Catalog and Delivery Group
• Disable Multiple Users per PC
• Install VDA on PC
• Remote PC Maintenance

Remote PC Catalog and Delivery Group

1. In Citrix Studio, Create a machine catalog.
   
2. In the Operating System and Hardware page, select Remote PC Access and click Next.
   
3. In the Machine Accounts page, click Add OUs.
   
4. Browse to an OU containing office PCs and click OK.
   
5. Then click Next.
   
6. In the Scopes page, click Next.
   
7. Name it Remote PC or similar and then click Finish.
   
8. Create a Delivery Group.
   
9. Highlight the Remote PC catalog and click Next.
   
10. Add users that can access the Remote PCs and then click Next.
    
11. In the StoreFront page, click Next.
    
12. In the Scopes page, select a scope and then click Next.
    
13. In the Summary page, enter a name for the Delivery Group and then click Finish.
    

Multiple Users per PC

By default, when using Remote PC Access in XenDesktop, console session on the physical machine can be started to assign multiple users to the same Remote PC desktop, provided they conform to the relevant assignment policies. This gives all these users the ability to start remote sessions on the machine.

This article describes how this feature can be disabled, so only the first applicable user to log on to the machine after it has registered with the Citrix Broker service that gets assigned to the machine.

How to Switch Off Remote PC Access Multiple User Assignment in XenDesktop 7.x – configured on the XenDesktop Controllers.

Install VDA on PC

1. Install .NET Framework 3.5 or 4.0.
2. Disable power saving options (e.g. Hibernate, Sleep, etc.)
3. Download Virtual Delivery Agent 7.6.300 from XenDesktop Platinum, XenDesktop Enterprise, depending on your license .
4. Install Virtual Desktop Agent 7.6.300. Since Remote PC is typically installed on many distributed PCs, use a software deployment tool to install the VDA package using CLI parameters. See Install VDAs using the standalone package at docs.citrix.com for more information.

   VdaWorktationSetup.exe /quiet /components vda,plugins /controllers "Contr-East" /enable_hdx_ports /exclude "Citrix User Profile Manager" /enable_real_time_transport /noreboot
   

5. Install VDA hotfixes. Note: there currently are no hotfixes for VDA 7.6.300.

By default, a remote user’s session is automatically disconnected when a local user initiates a session on that machine (by pressing CTRL+ATL+DEL). To prevent this automatic action, add the following registry entry on the office PC, and then restart the machine.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Citrix\PortICA\RemotePC\SasNotification=dword:00000001

After the registry change and machine restart, if a local user presses CTRL+ALT+DEL to log on to that PC while it is in use by a remote user, the remote user receives a prompt asking whether or not to allow or deny the local user’s connection. Allowing the connection will disconnect the remote user’s session. See the Citrix Blog Post Remote PC Access – UI Messaging for Console Users for more information.

Remote PC Maintenance

Assign/Un-assign users – There are four methods of assigning users to desktops:

• Let Remote PC do it automatically. The first user that logs into the physical machine will be assigned to the desktop. If single user mode is not enabled then all other users that log into the machine will also be assigned to the desktop.
• In Studio, find the machine, right-click it and click Change User.
  
• In Director, go to machine details and click Manage Users.
  
• Use PowerShell:

asnp citrix.*
Remove-BrokerUser -Machine 'CORP\WIN701' -Name 'CORP\user01'
Add-BrokerUser -Machine 'CORP\WIN701' -Name 'CORP\user01'

Rename desktop icon – For Remote PC, the icon displayed to the user is the actual machine name. This sometimes is not very intuitive. The name displayed to the user can be changed by running a PowerShell command.

asnp citrix.*
Set-BrokerPrivateDesktop CORP\VDI001 PublishedName "Users Desktop"

Display last login time for the machines – Use the following PowerShell to display desktops sorted by when they were last used. Adjust the date filter as desired. You can manually remove the older machines or pipe the results to Remove-BrokerMachine.

asnp citrix.*

Get-BrokerDesktop -CatalogName "Remote PC" -filter {LastConnectionTime -le "2015-02-28"} 
-property AssociatedUserNames,MachineName,LastConnectionTime | Sort-Object LastConnectionTime

The above PowerShell command uses the -filter and -property switches. These switches process the filtering on the server-side, which improves performance.