Introduction

The first part of this series describes the installation steps of the first server (which will create the XenApp environment) and the following server that will join the XenApp environment afterwards.

Preparations
Citrix XenApp needs to have a database in which the (static) settings are stored. For a small environment an SQL express can be used, which will be located at the first server you install. This works fine, but has some disadvantages. First of all, this server is important and should be available as much as possible (Citrix XenApp servers have the ability to work without a database for 96 hours). Secondly, the server also has the SQL database role, so should always have resources available to carry out the tasks for this role. Therefore a dedicated SQL server is advised, when one is available. When you are planning to have more than 10 Citrix XenApp servers, Citrix advises to use this dedicated SQL Server even if one is not available. When using a dedicated SQL server, the database should be created in advance via the normal SQL steps. Both SQL and Windows Authentication can be used.

Figure 1: Creating the SQL database for the XenApp 6.5 environment.

Installation Part 1
If you have installed an earlier release of Citrix XenApp you probably remember that you have to provide a lot of configuration settings during the installation phase. From XenApp 6 Citrix changed this behavior by separating the actual installation and the phase to set-up or connect to the XenApp environment. Also with previous versions several prerequisites should be installed in advance before the XenApp installation could be performed. Nowadays, all these prerequisites are embedded in the installation phase. In other words if a prerequisite is not available it will be installed

automatically. However, this requires some additional reboots, so depending of the infrastructure you could install some of those prerequisites in advance (like the RD Session Host role and .Net Framework). In this article, I will not install these in advance as to show you the full installation process. The installation process can be started either using the autorun functionality or starting the setup.exe from the folder XenApp Server Setup.

Figure 2: Starting the setup using the Autorun functionality. As mentioned earlier on, install will detect if any prerequisites are not available yet. Because I did not configure anything in advance a message will be shown that .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 is not installed. Choose OK to install .Net Framework 3.5 SP1.

Figure 3: .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 is not installed. The installation process will install .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 automatically. After this installation the actual XenApp installation will be started showing the XenApp Server Role Manager. Via Add Server roles the installation wizard continues.

Figure 4: The first XenApp installation Window The first setting is about the version of XenApp you are using. Depending of the version, some options in XenApp will not be available and some components/products are (not) shown. In this article I will use the Enterprise version.

Figure 5: Choosing the XenApp edition. The license agreement is shown next, accept the agreement and continue.

Figure 6: Accepting the license agreement Depending of the selected edition of XenApp, you can choose which components you would like to install. The options you choose during the installation should depend on the size of the infrastructure. License server: This component is needed once per organization. Normally this will be installed separately on an existing IIS server (which is a requirement), and on a dedicated server or combined with the Web Interface. The License server is there to make sure that the XenApp product (and other Citrix products) can function with the correct licenses. XenApp: This is the actually XenApp component, publishing applications and/or desktop to the end-user. Web Interface: This is a component that provides end-users access to the Published Applications/Published Desktop using a portal website and/or Service site (formerly known as PNAgent). Secure Gateway: The software based solution to provide secured access to the XenApp environment via SSL. Power and Capacity Management Administration: the software package to manage the option to shut down and start-up Citrix XenApp servers depending on the amount of users connecting to the farm. EdgeSight server: The back-end component of the Citrix Monitoring product. For larger infrastructures the components will be installed separately on different servers, but in very small environments the various components can be shared. I would like to advice to separate the XenApp role whenever possible. The License server and Web Interface can be combined perfectly. If a Secure Gateway SSL solution is deployed, it can be combined with Web Interface and so on. Because this article is about installing and configuring XenApp, I will select the XenApp role only.

Figure 7: Choose XenApp Roles After choosing the XenApp role several sub components can be selected. XenApp Management: This is the administrator console for the XenApp farm. This can be installed on every server or just one. I personally prefer to install the console on all servers. Windows Desktop Experience Integration: This component is related to Published Desktop and makes the look and feel of this desktop look like Windows 7. XML Service IIS integration: In small environments and where the Web Interface is installed (which requires IIS), this option should be selected so that XenApp can share ports with IIS. EdseSight Agent/Single Sign-On Plug-in/Power and Capacity Agent. When deploying/using one of these functionalities, the XenApp server should have the agent software installed, and can be accomplished by selecting the corresponding agent in this selection window. In this article, I will not use any of the agents or the IIS integration feature; however, I will install the console and the Windows Desktop Experience feature.

Figure 8: Choosing sub roles of XenApp As stated before, the installation will take care of the prerequisites. The installation wizard will show all prerequisites that will be installed and any related reboots if required.

Figure 9: Review prerequisites. Before the actual installation process starts, a simplified view will be shown, displaying the prerequisites, sub-components and roles that will be installed by the installation process.

Figure 10: Enumeration of the components that will be installed. A reboot is required which is shown in the progress window. After closing the progress window using the Finish Button, the required reboot will be shown in the XenApp Server Role Manager. Choose this reboot option to really restart the server and choose Yes to the prompt if you really want to reboot the machine.

Figure 11: A reboot is required to continue with the installation.

Figure 12: Reboot the server using the XenApp Server Role Manager. The XenApp Role Server Manager will load and shows that the installation can continue. Choose the option to continue the installation.

Figure 13: After the reboot, the XenApp Server Role Manager shows that the installation can be resumed. Again the components that will be installed are shown (the components that were installed before the reboot are not shown anymore). Click the Install button to continue.

Figure 14: Components can be installed. After a while all components are installed and the Finish button will be shown.

Figure 15: All components are installed. The last step of the installation is specifying the license server. Independent of where you installed the license server, you need to specify this part.

Figure 16: Specify Licensing question Enter the name of license server. Note, that the default communication port is 27000.

Figure 17: Specify the license server name and communication port. Next step is about the type of licensing used. In this article, I will use XenApp but the choice depends on the licenses you have purchased.

Figure 18: Select the correct license model. The above shown steps are exactly the same for all XenApp servers. When the license configuration is selected, a configure option will be shown. This configuration will start the process to create or join farm with all corresponding configuration settings. This part of the configuration will be described in the next article of this series.

Figure 19: Licensing configured, its time to configure the XenApp server to create or join a farm.

Conclusion

It you would like to read the first part in this article series please go to Installing and Configuring Citrix XenApp 6. 5 (Part 1).

Creating a XenApp Citrix Farm

The first server you install (well actually the first server you start the configuration process) will always create the Citrix XenApp farm for your infrastructure. We ended the first article with the figure showing the configure option in the XenApp Server Role Manager. When you choose configure the XenApp Server Configuration Wizard will be started. Sometimes you need to minimize the XenApp Server Role Manager window, because the XenApp Server Configuration window will be placed behind that window.

Figure 1: Choose Configure to start the XenApp Server Configuration. The first step in the XenApp Configuration wizard is to choose to set-up a new server farm or add the server to an existing farm. Because this is our first server, we choose Create a new server farm.

Figure 2: Create a new farm or join an existing farm. Every farm should have a (unique) name, so the first step in the farm creation is to give the farm a name. Also the account that will be the first Citrix Administrator needs to be specified. By default, the user which is logged in and starting the wizard will be filled in automatically, but the user can be changed when needed. Afterwards, more accounts/groups can be added via the XenApp AppCenter console.

Figure 3: Providing the XenApp Farm Name and the first Citrix administrator account. The next question is about the database. As explained in part 1 use a normal SQL server when possible, only use the SQL express option when the farm is relatively small and you dont have an SQL server available. I will choose Existing Microsoft SQL Server database.

Figure 4: Choosing the SQL database After choosing an existing Microsoft SQL Server database, we need to provide the settings for the SQL server like the SQL server name, the name of the (predefined) database, and if you are using Windows or SQL authentication for the database. For this article Im using SQL authentication.

Figure 5: Specifying the SQL details. The next step is to specify the account which will be used to access the database. As I selected SQL server authentication in the previous step I need to fill in the account created on the SQL server. Dont forget to add the domain name when you are using Windows authentication.

Figure 6: Providing the username and password for access to the database. Because Shadowing of users is forbidden in some countries you can enable or disable shadowing during the initial configuration process. When disabling shadowing here, there is no possibility to enable it again (only by reinstalling the whole server). So if regulations allow it enable shadowing here, but configure it later using Citrix policies.

Figure 7: Enable or Disable Shadowing The next window actually consists of four configuration options. The first tab called Data Collection is always grayed out for the first server. For the second and following server this option is configurable and I will describe it later on in this article. At the XML Service tab you can change the XML port if you want to change the default port. On the third tab Receiver you can configure the Service Site, it can be useful if you publish a desktop and have some silos for specific applications. With the Service Site this application can be shown within the desktop. But for other use cases you can leave this part empty. On the last tab you define which users will be added to Remote Desktop Users group and which are able to access the server later on.

Figure 8: Configure Advanced Server Settings All necessary information is collected and the process of creating the farm will be started by pressing the Apply Button.

Figure 9: Start the process of creating the farm During the process the progress is shown. At the end the server configuration a successful message is displayed and via the Finish button the process will be ended.

Figure 10: Configuration successfully After this wizard you will see that within XenApp Server Role Manager a reboot option will be shown. After the reboot the XenApp farm is functional and you could configure the farm using the consoles.

Figure 11: Reboot the server to apply the configuration. But before we start the consoles and configure the Farm, in this article series we will first add a

second server to the farm. Because Citrix splits the installation and initial configuration, the installation steps are the same as the first server as described in part one. After the installation, Figure 1 of this article will be shown at this server to perform the initial configuration of the server. Also Figure 2 will still be shown, however then we need to choose the option Add this server to an existing server Farm.

Figure 12: Choosing Add this server to an existing Farm. Next, we need to select which database we are using. Logically this depends on the decision made when configuring the first server. As we used a dedicated SQL for the first server I chose Existing Microsoft SQL Server Database.

Figure 13: Choosing the SQL server to use. Next step is providing the information of the SQL server and the name of the database used for the XenApp Farm on this SQL server. Also the way the database will be accessed (using an SQL account or Active Directory account via Windows Authentication). Logically the same information needs to be filled in and used by setting up the farm.

Figure 14: Providing SQL information. To access the database using the selected authentication method, the username and password need to be provided. Be sure to test the connection in advance, otherwise you can get an error message later on.

Figure 15: Providing SQL logon credentials to access the XenApp datastore. Just like installing the first server you need to specify if you would like to enable or disable shadowing. Only select disable if regulations state that shadowing cannot be used. In other circumstances select allow shadowing and configure the behavior later using the Citrix policies component.

Figure 16: Enable or Disable the possibility to shadow a session. When installing the second or following server you can decide to configure the server to act as Session-Host only server. When configured as Session-Host only server, the server can never get the Data Collector role, so it will only host Published Applications and/or Published Desktops. This can be configured on the tab data collection of the XenApp Configuration. On this tab you can also configure a Zone Name. When you enter a non-existing zone name, this zone will be automatically created within the farm. The other three parts are already described earlier in this article, so I will not mention these again here.

Figure 17: Configuring the server as a session-host mode only server and specify a custom zone name. Before the real configuration starts, all configured settings are shown once again, so you can check if everything is filled correctly. By pressing Apply the configuration will be set.

Figure 18: Summarizing all configured settings, before applying them to the server. Via the below shown window the progress will be shown. When the complete configuration is applied you can press Finish.

Figure 19: Configuration is applied. You will return into the XenApp Server Role Manager, after a few seconds the view will be updated and the reboot option will be shown. Choose the reboot, so that the configuration will become active. A restart confirmation will be shown, choose Yes to really restart the server.

Figure 20: Choose reboot to activate the configuration and join the Farm.

After the reboot the server is joined to the farm. When you have many servers to install, it is a good idea to automate the installation and configuration process of the Citrix XenApp servers. I already wrote an article series about it published on VanBragt.Net Virtualization Centre if you are interested in reading more about the possibilities to install and configure XenApp silently.

Conclusion