F5 10 LTM APM with XenApp CloudGateway

This depends on what you you need/want to do. If you just want to continue load-balancing functions and not provide remote access, then you can remain on version 10 and load-balance CloudGateway Express/Storefront just fine - it will/should be transparent. If you are interested in leveraging F5 technology for secure remote access into your Citrix environment and using ICA proxy, then APM module is necessary, and we most definitely recommend you be on version 11 for any ICA proxy deployment.

 

 

CloudGateway does not fundamentally change how ICA proxy functionality works - it's just v11 is much more robust/feature-rich version of our ICA proxy solution.

 

 

Also, as a option, you can consider just using APM to replace your Web interface servers and CloudGateway Express as well - yes - you can turn your F5 device into Citrix presentation layer and remove CloudGateway/Web Interface from the infrastructure altogether.

 

 

Let us know what further questions you have on the topic.

Thanks so much for the very informative reply.

 

 

They want to pilot Storefront with our current F5 setup and it will only be for internal connections through Citrix Receiver so LTM 10 should be ok. What would be the best way to setup CloudGateway/Storefront on LTM 10? The VIP will load-balance between two members. Is there a suggested template to use or create VIP manually? These Storefront servers are currently in stand-alone mode and can work with AD certs since both servers are already in AD. Would we want the F5 to offload those?

 

 

Thanks again!

You can use the same setup/guide for load-balancing Citrix Web Interface for 10.2.x from f5.com and apply it to the StoreFront servers. Citrix officially does not document how to perform SSL offload on the StoreFront servers, although it is possible - even though you setup your StoreFront servers as https, they are listening on port 80 as well - so you CAN perform SSL offload for them if you choose to do that - it'll save you off a few CPU cycles in the grand scheme of things. Else, you can easily just load-balance and either use source IP address as persistence or decrypt/re-encrypt on the BIG-IP in order to use cookie persistence.

We have run through XenApp template and have the objects created. We are having trouble getting the health monitors for the StoreFront pool and XML Broker pool to come up. The template created HTTP monitors for each. Will we need to manipulate the send or receive strings or other settings to get the template monitors to work? Or should we not bother with the template created monitor and manually create another monitor? If so, what would be suggested? For testing, I removed the monitor from the pool. I also had to change the persistence to source_addr and removed the HTTP Profile to none. The persistence and HTTP Profile on the VIP had a template created object for both. Does it sound like we are on the right track? Not sure where to look to adjust settings on the template created objects.

 

 

Thanks.

 

 

There is a section in the deployment guide that discuss modifications needed to support storefront (aka cloud gateway express) after running the iApp which begins on page 22 of the DG. http://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/xenapp-xendesktop-iapp-dg.pdf . Essentially you have to modify the single sign on configuration to support storefront when using APM and modify the receive string of your health monitor to "Citrix Receiver".

 

We are on LTM 10 and do not have the APM so I did not use an iapp. I used the XenApp template on LTM.

I would try modifying the receive string of your health monitor to "Citrix Receiver" and see if your health monitor comes up. If that does not help, can you post the send string used?

 

 

I had tried "Citrix Receivere" and health monitor would not come up. Send string is as follows, GET /Citrix/XenApp/ HTTP/1.1\nHost: xxx.xxx.com\nConnection: Close\r\n\r\n

 

I have commented out our dns name as xxx.xxx.com.

 

 

Thanks.

I had tried "Citrix Receiver" and health monitor would not come up. Send string is as follows, GET /Citrix/XenApp/ HTTP/1.1\nHost: xxx.xxx.com\nConnection: Close\r\n\r\n

 

I have commented out our dns name as xxx.xxx.com.

 

 

Thanks.

try: GET /Citrix/storename/ HTTP/1.1\nHost: xxx.xxx.com\nConnection: Close\r\n\r\n

 

 

where storename is the name you used when creating your store (I believe the default is storefront)