The following content is a brief and unofficial prerequisites guide to setup, configure and test StoreFront 2.0 prior to deploying in a PoC, Pilot or Production environment by the author of this entry. The views, opinions and concepts expressed are those by the author of this entry only and do not necessary conform to industry descriptions or best practises.
Shortened Names
STOREFRONT SERVICES – SFS
FULLY QUALIFIED DOMAIN NAME – fqdn
NETSCALER ACCESS GATEWAY – nsag
NETSCALER GATEWAY – nsg
CERTIFICATE – cert
Certificates
1: What type of certificate do you require for your SFS deployment depends upon weather the server is (a) internal only (b) deployed in-line with the AppController internally (c) deployed in the DMZ (d) deployed in-line with the AppController fronted by a nsg.
2:Another important consideration re what certificate to use includes weather you have an Enterprise CA with in your organisation to sign your CSRs or do you use self-signed certificates or do you generate and publicly sign your certificates (standalone or wildcard) externally?
StoreFront 2.0 Overview
1: StoreFront is replacing Web Interface 2015 ref Bitly link to Citrix EOL web page indicating WIF EoL. Why? StoreFront is the next generation platform which provides a great and seamless user experience across any type device supporting Citrix Receiver. StoreFront aggregates Windows & Mobile Apps*, Desktop, Web-links, SaaS and can with a single click can propagate configurations changes between all the StoreFront servers within your environment.
2: No more MS SQL database requirements with the SFS 2.0 release.
3: Improved login performance.
4: Bind your SSL certificate within IIS prior to installing or configuring SFS 2.0 and remove HTTP unless required to OS harden your SFS server. By binding the SSL cert prior to configuration of SFS it will ensure that the configuration wizard uses HTTPS over HTTP. In addition where possible use your organisations Enterprise CA to sign your StoreFront servers CSR instead of using the self-assigned SSL certificate option to generate a SSL cert in IIS as this will causes secure (SSL) communication issues between SFS and the delivery controller(s) if using HTTPS and when you attempt to access published resources from the configured delivery controller the resources will not be available as the servers cannot successful communicate with one another over HTTPS.
5: Beacons enable Citrix Receiver to understand intelligently wether a user is connecting to your organisations Citrix resources is internally or externally, by attempting to access the internal or external SFS FQDN’s within the StoreFront MMC snap in e.g storefront.axendatacentre.local (Internal) or sfs.axendatacentre.com (External and resolvable).
###
* Worx Home is now responsible for the delivery or mobile apps delivered via the XenMobile AppController 2.8
###
6: This Citrix blog article sums up the Receiver for HTML 5 – http://blogs.citrix.com/2012/08/31/receiver-for-html5-is-now-available/ and you can learn how-to install and configure it at – http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/receiver-html5-11/receiver-html5-install.html.
Subscription Database Where Is It?
The release of Citrix StoreFront 2.0 from 1.2 brought with it a change in where and how follow-me apps subscription data is stored. Historically this was stored in an MS SQL database in 1.2 now this data is actually stored in a EDB file check out. – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX139037 which is automatically replicated if a SFS cluster. You can also adjust the subscription synchronising period by following this eDocs article which requires some PoSH cmdlets – http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/dws-storefront-20/dws-configure-ha-sync.html.
Customising Receiver for Web
This blog article goes into great detail about to customise Receiver for Web from the logos, background image, connecting from IP addr of the user to adding in additional elements e.g click here to contact your IT Helpdesk. Check it out at – http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/06/26/customizing-receiver-for-web-in-storefront-2-0/.
HTML 5 Receiver Configuration & Support
Coming Soon!
Citrix StoreFront 2.0 – Implementation Guide
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX133185