Currently, to configure the various settings required by Director, a command line tool is provided along with Director Install. With the release of XenDesktop 7 Director, which has an additional network panel utilizing NetScaler HDX Insight to provide a network view of the virtual apps and desktop, the importance of this tool has further increased as Director does not come with the default settings for the Netscaler machine and this tool is the only way to configure those settings. Without these settings the above mentioned panel will remain disabled.  However using the command line tool for administrators can be a little cumbersome as they must remember the various arguments which are required for configuring different settings. This problem can be resolved through a GUI based tool which provides the administrators with an easy and intuitive way to configure Director. So the aim here was to develop a GUI based Director Configuration Tool that is easy to navigate and operate and thus simplifies the Director Configuration process.

Requirements: Director is installed on the machine where the tool is run.

Design and Usage: The screen of our UI tool appears as shown in the below fig:-

We decided to divide the various actions that can be performed into three logical sections. They are described below.

Using the UI tool:-

  • Select the ‘Configure Director’ option for configuring the Xendesktop controller address or for configuring the IIS website. User will be able to enter either the DDC (Desktop Delivery Controller or the Broker machine) IP/Name or the Site Name (Default IIS site name for Director is Director) in their respective textboxes .One can also provide multiple comma separated DDC IPs as well if the Director is running on a multisite XenDesktop Environment.
  •  Select the ‘Configure NetScaler’ option for configuring the settings associated with the Netscaler machine. If ConfigNetscaler option is selected, a Console Window will open where the user will be asked to enter the Netscaler Machine Name, User Name and the Password. Choosing the UnconfigNetscaler option will remove all the settings related to the Netscaler machine.
  • Select the ‘Other Actions’ option if you want to perform some house-keeping operations. The following four operations can be performed :-
  1. Uninstall: All the files and folders that contain the previously saved changes done by user are deleted. These file and folders are not deleted at the time of uninstallation so user will have to delete them using this tool.
  2. Upgrade: Read user application settings and save them in the new web.config file.
  3. RegisterDotNet: Registers asp.net with IIS if not registered already.
  4. EnableRA: This command is used to enable the remote assistance.

More details about these commands can be found here or in the Director Configuration Tool Help Guide.

I have attached the tool and the source code in the post to try it out. Just copy the tool to a machine on which Director is installed and you are good to go.

Also attached are the Design Document and the Help Guide.

Note: This is a private tool written by me, Citrix doesn’t take any liability for any loss of data.