Citrix Workspace Service Setup

by Carl Behrent, CTA

As I am going through my first Citrix Cloud/Workspace/CVAD deployment, I thought I’d blog the process I go through to configure Workspace. This blog post will get updated as I go and discover more about Workspace.

After authenticating into your Citrix Cloud instance, browse to Workspace Configuration

Access

Enable the Workspace URL and then click Edit. Choose a relevant name for your Workspace URL, once it has been Saved, it can take 10 minutes to become available as mentioned below.

Authentication

Select the authentication method used to sign into Workspace. Configuration of each of these authentication methods is done via the Identity and Access Management section.

Customize / Appearance

  • Upload your Sign-in Appearance logo
  • Upload your After Sign-in Appearance logo
  • Content Branding (colour scheme)


Customize
/ Preferences

Configure the following:

  • Allow Favourites (Enabled/Disabled)
  • Automatically Launch Desktop (Enabled/Disabled)
  • Workspace Timeout (20mins is default)
  • Citrix Workspace Preferences (In a browser / In a native app / Let subscribers choose)
  • Enabled Microsoft Teams (Enabled/Disabled)

Manage Services Integrations

By default, Virtual Apps and Desktops is enabled. To configure Workspace for an On-Prem Virtual Apps and Desktops or XenApp 6.5 site, on ‘Virtual Apps and Desktop On-Premises Sites” click Add Site.

[I will document the On Prem site connections later.]

Configure Workspace with On-Prem ADC Gateway

Browse to Access, under the required Resource Location select Configure Connectivity.

  • Click Edit and enter in the FQDN of your On-Prem ADC Gateway.
  • Select Test STA, this is likely to fail as they are behind the ADC Gateway
  • Click Save
  • Under Access and your Resouce Location you should now see:
    Gateway: Gateway_FQDN:443

To validate the Citrix Gateway is now handling the ICA traffic via Citrix Workspace, log into your Citrix Gateway > select Citrix Gateway > ICA Connections

Because the user authentication is handled by Citrix WorkSpace via the Citrix Cloud Connectors to Active Directory, the Citrix Gateway will show ‘anonymous’ as the username.

To validate that the Citrix Gateway is being used I SSH’d into the ADC and run:

  • shell
  • nstcpdump.sh host <Gateway VIP> or <Content Switch VIP> (if using Citrix Unified Gateway)


You will see hits on this once applications are launched from Citrix Workspace.

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