I have too many devices but not one of them runs Android. A good part of my job is testing, presenting and demoing, so it’s handy being able to show the user experiences across different devices. One of everything is perhaps going a bit too far, so I’d prefer to run Android as a VM.

Microsoft announced some interesting new features in Windows Server 2012 R2 at TechEd 2013 and one of those that piqued my interest is Work Folders. I’m not the biggest fan of Redirected Folders and Offline files, but it’s essentially the only enterprise solution Microsoft provides today for taking your data offline. Microsoft needs to provide a completely new method of syncing file data - one that is designed for todays use cases and computing environment.

Citrix provides a nice wizard for installing the XenDesktop 7 VDA and some pretty good documentation on using a command line installation, but the wizard does not expose all of the available options and working out what the wizard is doing in relation to the command line takes a bit of translation. Here’s how to automate a typical VDA deployment.

The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit provides a Lite Touch deployment model - typically a device requires an engineer to manually start the deployment task sequence. Using PowerShell to drive MDT offers the chance to provide a little more automation around OS deployments.

Here’s a deployment demo that I showed during my Geek Speak Live session at Citrix Synergy 2013 at Anaheim last week as well as during BriForum London 2013 when I had the opportunity to co-present a session with fellow CTP, Jim Moyle.

Here’s another demo that I showed during my Geek Speak Live session at Citrix Synergy 2013 at Anaheim yesterday.

Thanks to everyone who attended my Geek Speak Live session at Citrix Synergy 2013 in Anaheim yesterday. I’ll post details about the session and the slide deck next week for those who couldn’t attend.

At Citrix Synergy in Anaheim next month, I’ll have the opportunity to present a Geek Speak Live session - Hands Off My Gold Image! If you aren’t automating the creation of your gold images, there’s lots to learn in this session. Even if you are automating your gold images, perhaps there’s something new that I can still share with you. In this session, which will be demo heavy, I’ll show you some ways that you can deliver build automation with toolsets provided by Microsoft and Citrix.