By Paul Wilson
office is your XenDesktop Hosted-shared (XenApp) farm in the Cloud? Have you thought about putting it there? If it only took a few hours to create a XenApp farm in the cloud, would you consider the delivery of cloud services for your applications and desktops?
If you are new to Amazon Web Services (AWS), you should know that Citrix recently released a white paper and a model CloudFormation can get up and running with your own XenApp farm as little as three hours. This model uses CloudFormation the public Amazon Machine Images (AMIS) and snapshots to build a base in a firm AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This way, you can raise a motion on delivery clouds. Of course, you need to bring a few things along, like XenDesktop licenses and applications.
Environment Overview
When using CloudFormation script in its default configuration, a core XenApp farm will be created in the Availability Zone AWS US-East, which costs about 3 $ 25 / hour to run. The graph and table below outline the components of the XenApp farm.
| host [Internal IP] | role | notes |
| Bastion [10.0.0.6] | Provides access to a private network | Bastion works as a jump box access via RDP to the elastic IP address assigned |
| access Gateway (AG) VPX [10.0.0.170] | Provides remote access to applications hosted on the private network | uses an elastic IP address for external access points and on the site's internal Web Interface |
| NAT gateway iNet | Provides Internet access to all hosts on the private network | uses an elastic IP address to all outbound Internet traffic |
| AD domain controller [10.0.1.5] | Provides authentication and authorization services and DNS services for public and private subnets | This is set up as a new domain in a new forest using the domain name provided when the instance is created |
| XenApp [10.0.1.6] XenApp-BDC [10.0.1.7] | Provides data collector and XML services for the farm and the Web interface queries | Two hosts are configured for fault tolerance. Use these to administer the farm |
| Web Interface [10.0.1.8] | Provides Web Interface sites for internal and external access | http: // wi-xenapp / Citrix / InternalXenApp (internal XenApp) http: // wi-xenapp / Citrix / XenApp (Access Gateway) |
| install the server [10.0.1.9] | Provides the installation media XenApp 6.5 and accommodates the execution of PowerShell scripts that build the farm | May also be operated as a server files for roaming profiles |
| servers workers [DHCP] | workers are user connections servers hosting published applications | AMI default working server has not installed applications. All workers will receive random server names and IP addresses assigned by DHCP in the range 10.0.1.10 to 10.0.1.254 |
what you need
for CloudFormation template to complete successfully, you will need the following:
- Amazon AWS account (http://aws.amazon.com)
- at least three elastic IP addresses available (Amazon limits each account for 5) for the NAT host, AG, and Bastion
- at least ten instances available (Amazon limits each account to 20)
to actually connect to remote applications, you also need the following:
- Citrix XenApp or XenDesktop licenses (demo licenses are available via your MyCitrix account)
- Microsoft RDS licenses (if you want to go beyond the trial period)
- domain name and SSL certificate for the AG
usage model
This post outlines the steps required to use the template and build CloudFormation the XenApp farm - adventurous users can try the procedure on their own. Otherwise, the installation guide contains step by step instructions. The installation process includes general steps: ...
- Log in to the AWS console
- Select the tab CloudFormation
- Select Create new stack
- Specify the name of the stack and the location of CloudFormation template, or download a copy of the model.
- Fill the model parameters section and the steps in the remaining wizard.
notes the number of job servers is the number of servers that will be still running. Even if you stop these servers down, AWS restart.
- Wait 30 minutes for the instance creation in the end.
Build Farm
At this point, all instances in the figure above have been fully built. The iNet NAT gateway, AD domain controller, install server and host Bastion are fully configured. (Not bad -. 40% you through the process after only 30 minutes) Once the bodies have been created, the next step is to configure the XenApp components, including data collectors XenApp Web Interface and workers servers. To do this, connect to remote host Bastion. From there, you use the RDP client to connect to the installation server (10.0.1.9) to complete the following steps:
- Open a PowerShell prompt
- Change the directory C .: Program Files (x86) citrix App delivery configuration Tools.
- Run the model. AWS-Farm-Build.ps1.
- answer a few setup questions and type YES.
- Wait about 2 hours.
If this process fails, you can try to troubleshoot, or in most cases, it is faster to simply remove the battery and AWS again. The scripts are quite robust and provide useful troubleshooting messages. If nothing goes wrong (Sometime errors can occur due to wait times, not unexpected on a public cloud), all XenApp servers are installed and joined to the farm, and the Web Interface server roles and license are installed. This means that the firm is 0% configured with only licenses, published applications, and Access Gateway components left to complete.
Licensing and Administrative Tasks
To configure licenses and publish applications, use the host Bastion to RDP to 10.0.1.6, the Data Collector XenApp. The Role Manager wizard starts automatically and you must configure the service license for the server. It is probably also best to launch AppCenter and configure a policy to set the license server 10.0.1.6 for all servers in the farm. At this point, you can publish applications to the working group and test access by visiting the site of one http://xenapp-wi.domain.com/Citrix/InternalXenApp XenApp servers.
Remote Access Configuration
The Access Gateway AMI is an AMI that we reuse existing for this configuration. As such, the device must be configured to point to our cloud resources. You can log in to the administration console (using the admin credentials / admin) by going to https://10.0.0.170/lp/adminlogonpoint~~V from an internal host (such as Bastion host or the external interface via the elastic IP address instead of 10.0.0.170 in the previous URL). Once connected, update the following sections:
- Secure Ticket Authority - Drop existing and add the FQDNs and XenApp.domain.com XenApp-BDC.domain.com on 8080.
- XenApp or XenDesktop - Set the IP address range to be XXX5 - xxx254 and enable session reliability protocol
- Logon Points - Point interface website at http :. //xenapp-wi.domain. . com / Citrix / XenApp
- Licensing - Provide a valid license file. Without it, the connections through Access Gateway fail
- Admin Password -. Please change the admin password immediately. Do not do it leaves open a point that can that can lead to a breach of safety input
- Name Service Providers - .. Updating DNS name servers if the VPC system IP subnet of address was changed from the default
- networking - Updating the IP network address and the default gateway if the IP subnet VPC addressing system was changed from the default value
- Certificates - .. Add a valid SSL certificate to the device AG
- Restart Access Gateway.
once the configuration tasks are complete, you should be able to successfully connect to the elastic IP address assigned to the access gateway and launch an application.
Wrapping it up
If you want to watch these steps in action, follow the blog CitrixTV available on video, we are in the editing process. We will update this blog with the URL Citrix TV when we finished.
And of course, you could read the installation guide that comes with the model that guides you through the installation as well.
now you have a new XenApp farm in the cloud. Take the opportunity to:
- Application Testing
- Business Continuity
- Proof-of-Concept
- Performance Testing XenApp in the cloud
- Learning to manage AWS resources
comments and comment CloudFormation model are welcome. In the next blog articles, I'll discuss how to create your own images to use with AMI model CloudFormation and a little more on some of the secret sauce that we used that makes this possible. Moreover, as the model evolves CloudFormation, I'll post new versions.
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