by Serdar Göksu, Sr. Solutions Architect
If you have a Citrix environment or are planning to create a Citrix environment, Citrix WEM has become one of our essentials besides the main roles of Citrix. Now we make user settings, profiles, optimizations and some other options via WEM. But can we use WEM software with load balancing method, as in DDC and SF?
This article explains how to configure requests from WEM management console and WEM agents with Citrix ADC load balancing feature.
LAB setup for LB:
| Role | Hostname | IP |
| SQL Server 2019 | Citrixsql01.assista.local | 192.168.2.15 |
| WEM Broker + Console | Citrixwem01.assista.local | 192.168.2.50 |
| WEM Broker | Citrixwem02.assista.local | 192.168.2.51 |
| WEM LB VIP | Citrixwem.assista.local | 192.168.2.52 |
- We’ll configure the SPN for the Citrix WEM servers to use the service account.
- We’ll install the Citrix Workspace Enviroment Management role on the servers.
- We’ll connect the servers to the central SQL server environment. (We need to use Windows Domain user as a service account in this environment)
- We’ll make WEM configurations on Citrix ADC.
- We’ll perform our tests, which is our favorite part.
Create A SPN
Do not create multiple service principal names (SPNs) for separate domains that reside in the same forest. All the infrastructure services in an environment must be run using the same service account. If you use Windows authentication or load balancing (requiring Windows authentication), use the following command:
setspn -U -S Norskale/BrokerService [accountname]
Citrix WEM Infrastructure Services Installation and Configuration
First set up the “Infrastructure Services” role on the servers and then set up the “Console” role. We will do these on both servers. Let’s start installing “Infrastructure Services” file with Run-As-Admin.
Click on the Next button and continue.
Agree to the License Agreement and continue.
Click on the “Install” button and start the installation.
Do the same installation process within the second WEM server.
We will configure the database only on the first WEM server. So, let’s create a database with “Start the Database Management Utily” on the first WEM server.
On the “Database Creation Wizard” screen, enter the information on which database server the WEM database will be located.
Select “Use integrated connection” option and click Next button.
Enter the administrator group that will manage the WEM structure, and the service account information. In the last step, we can create the database.
Now click the “WEM Infrastructure Service Configuration” tool on the WEM servers. Let’s enter the WEM database information we created on both WEM servers, Citrix license server information, and the service account information we will use. Click on the “Save Configuration” button and save the settings.
Citrix WEM Console Installation and Testing
Install the WEM console software on both WEM servers (or just one if you want) and run the connection tests.
After the installation(s) is/are complete, connect to both servers on the WEM console and check if the system is working properly.
Citrix ADC LB Configuration
Go to the “Traffic Management – > Load Balancing – > Servers” section on Citrix ADC and add both WEM servers.
Go to the “Traffic Management – > Load Balancing – > Service Groups” section. For both WEM servers that we add, we will create service groups for the ports that we will use in WEM.
We will use the following ports on Citrix ADC for WEM.
- Administration port (TCP(8284))
- Agent service port (TCP(8286))
- Cached data synchronization port (TCP(8288))
Create the group for the Administration and configure servers as to use port 8284.
Create the group for the Agent Service and configure servers as to use port 8286.
Create the group for the Cache Sync and configure servers as to use port 8288.
Let’s move on to the step for creating a load balancing server. Go to the “Traffic Management – > Load Balancing – > Virtual Servers” section and create LB servers by using the same IP for each port.
When creating LB servers, according to Citrix’s suggestion, we only need to configure persistence settings on the Admin LB server.
WEM Admin LB configuration:
WEM Agent LB configuration:
WEM Sync LB configuration:
In the last step, enter A record for the load balancing IP on DNS.
When we come to the testing phase; we will see that our system works successfully, when we enter the newly created A record on “Console”. Now we can configure our agents by giving them the new LB name and use our WEM environment in a load-balanced way.
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