Features & Benefits

Summary

With Centralis Harvester, Citrix administrators are given access for the first time to a management tool which operates at a farm-wide level, making global changes simple and easy to implement. Harvester 5 builds on this by adding compatibility with Citrix XenApp 4.5 & 5.0 and support for farms based on Advanced Edition (as well as Enterprise and Platinum).

Audit -
Give "read-only" access to helpdesk and support staff - improving diagnostic capabilities
Reporting -
Create and run standard reports including hot-fixes, printer drivers & load evaluators
Farm Management -
Move published applications between Citrix XenApp / Presentation Server farms
Published App Management -
Discover settings and change Published Applications across the farm 
Server Management -
Discover settings and change Server configurations across the farm
 

Audit

"Centralis Harvester is a breath of fresh air as it allows both SMB and Enterprise customers to easily and cost effectively manage and audit Citrix farms in seconds. In terms of farm-wide Citrix audit, reporting and standards, Harvester has defined itself as a top tier solution that also has the ability to pay for itself in weeks! I highly recommend giving it a try" Douglas A. Brown President and CTO, DABCC, Inc.
 

If you have staff who need access to diagnostic and reporting information, but who are not authorised to make farm-wide changes, the Auditors Edition (supplied free with the Managers Edition) provides a read-only version of Harvester.

Read-only information available to help-desk staff

Reporting

Centralis Harvester can report on a wide range of settings across the farm, including published applications and servers.  You can also search for a particular value to see where it exists, or look for all settings that don't match a particular value.  You can also save reports to be run again and again.

You can also create a list of your standard printer drivers - then create an automated report that runs each day to check every server in the farm and ensure no new drivers have been added, or check the hotfix settings on any group of servers to make sure they are consistent with your standards.  A range of sample reports is available to demonstrate what can be produced.

Reporting Options for Servers in Harvester

Farm Management

"Fujitsu Siemens Computers is using 64bit technology for the internal Citrix Presentation Server Farm. Centralis Harvester has been successfully implemented in order to manage this Enterprise environment easily, to detect inconsistencies and to backup and duplicate the farm configuration. The flexible and fast support is particularly good."  Andreas Schulz, System Engineer, Fujitsu Siemens Computers

• Copy published applications between Citrix farms

• Save the entire farm configuration to an XML file

• Restore a complete Citrix farm configuration

• Carry out a historical comparison against the reference XML file

Farm Management Options

Published App Management

"In the case of a recent major application upgrade, Harvester allowed us to remove applications quickly and smoothly from servers, ensuring that users could not connect to them whilst still allowing administrators on the servers to complete upgrade work and then add applications back again quickly afterwards using the saved XML files. The reporting element of the tool is also proving very useful and provides farm-wide information in seconds." Citrix Administrator, UK Police Force

• Display all the Published Applications on a selected Citrix XenApp Server

• Select one, several or all Published Applications on the Server and store the selection

• Stop publishing the selected Published Applications on the Server

• Restore the Published Applications to the Server from the saved list

• Add / remove lists of applications to multiple users or servers in one operation

• Display all the Published Application settings by Application, including:

  • Name, Location & Limits

  • Program Neighbourhood Folder, Window Size & Colours

  • ICA Client Options (Audio, Encryption & Printing)

  • Servers (Command Line, Parameters & Working Directory by Server)

• Change a selected setting across all Published Applications

Published Application Management

Server Management

"Ensuring new server builds comply with existing standards is always a challenge; especially when these standards move each month with the release of new hotfixes and printer models. Harvester's features give us the ability to ensure each server complies with our reference build quickly and simply. This gives us added confidence our build is correct and as a result has decreased our server time-to-deployment by an enormous margin. Without Harvester we'd need substantial manual effort to finalise each build. Harvester saves us valuable time." Roy Farr, Principal Wintel Specialist, Centrica IS
 

• Display all the Servers which are Publishing a selected Published Application

• Select one, several or all Servers from the list and store the selection

• Stop publishing the selected Published Application on all the Servers

• Restore the Published Application to the Servers on the saved list

• Store and apply standard MetaFrame settings, including:

  • Information (Citrix MetaFrame, Server o/s & Network)

  • ICA Settings (Display & Auto client reconnect)

  • MetaFrame Settings (ICA Browser)

Managing Citrix Servers using Harvester

To find out more please download an evaluation copy or visit  More Information which includes a selection of screenshots and videos.