Launch the presentation server console. We need to login to the presentation server
console as an administrator, enter the password.
Citrix farm (E.g., testfarm, name of the farm), is where we configure all of the farm
settings. When we right click of the citrix farm (i.e., testfarm) we get the farm properties.
If we need to check the properties of the server we right click on the server and choose
properties of the server. In some cases we want to set the farm settings and we can
configure each individual server to default to the farm settings. Below are the various
settings in a farm.
1. Connection access control, allows you to define how users can connect to your
farm. Now if you have a web interface server configured, you will force users to
come into the web interface. In our case we can choose any connection.
2. Connection limits, has the ability to limit the number of times a user can
connect to a metaframe server. With this setting, we can limit the maximum
number of different published applications or published desktops, or users
connected to at the same time. We can also force the setting to administrators.
This is if we are conscious of the amount of licenses. If we don’t have the amount
of licenses, we may want to limit the connections that the user can have.
Note: If a user connects multiple times to a same metaframe server, they will
consume only one license. If they connect to multiple servers, they can use multiple
licenses.
3. ICA keep alive, when a user is connecting to a server, ICA keep alive are a little
ping that occurs from server to client, which keeps the connection alive or the
network tunnel alive.
4. ICA Settings: Under, ICA display we see, discard redundant graphic operations
and alternate caching method. This involves in tuning the ICA protocol. If you
have the same graphics coming again and again inside the ICA stream, it’s going
to discard the redundant ones. Alternate cache, is an improved caching method
than the previous versions of metaframe.
5. Auto client reconnect: At times our client would have problems connecting to
our servers, because of some transient network connections, when that happens
we decide if we require user authentication or user can login as automatic
reconnect since our clients are disconnecting a lot.
6. Connection information: Gives some basic information about our server,
current session count, servers in the farm, published resources we have and
zone information,
7. Isolation settings: Isolation environment is out of scope for this particular
environment, it is the concept of taking applications that will be installed on our
citrix server, and putting them in an isolation bubble, that can’t conflict with other
applications on that server.
8. License server information: We specify the license server, and the default port
no. 27000.
9. Memory/CPU utilization management: In situations when your user load
or resources are higher than the resources that you have in hand, you may
want to enable memory optimization or CPU utilization management. Memory
optimization is rebasing of DLLs in the system.
10. CPU utilization management: If you have a lot of people in the system, and one
particular user causes a processor spike, CPU utilization management says, that
every user has an equal size of processor time, if any particular user uses more
than their available slice that will not affect our system, probably a good idea to
avoid CPU spikes.
11. Metaframe settings: Shows how data collectors and RAS servers respond to
client broadcast messages. It also tells about how the clients handle the time
zone information. The latest citrix clients have the ability to display the local time
zone, rather than the server time. This feature says to use the time zone of the
local client, enables remote connection to the console, allows remote connect to
the console.
12. Session reliability: Enable users to view their session during broken
connections. If you do enable session reliability, it’s going to change your TCP/IP
port no. for metaframe. The default port no. for metaframe in 1494. If you enable
session reliability, it encapsulates that port to TCP/IP 2598.
13. SNMP: You can enable SNMP agent on all the servers, all at once.
14. Speed Screen Browser Acceleration: It is enabled for high latency
connections, where there is a lot of time when the traffic has to move from
the server to the client and back. It compresses the JPEG images to improve
bandwidth and is also used for flash acceleration for flash animations and
multimedia. It buffers up a number of seconds of multimedia on the client.
15. The next three setting addresses the Virtual IP address and Virtual Loopback
addresses. There are some applications that have restrictions such that the
client has to be in a particular IP address for the application to function, some
older applications, and some proprietary applications. This is a new feature
that says ok if this application requires a particular IP address or a range of IP
addresses we can add in those virtual IP addresses here.
16. Zones: Currently we have a single citrix server, which is connected to a
database. We have a single citrix server, single data store, single data collector.
We only have a single location where this dynamic information is kept. That’s the
data collector. Data collector keeps and stores of data for a particular zone. Let’s
go to the configuration screen. You will see here that I have a zone with a server
involved with it. I can create a new zone, but I don’t have to name it after the
subnet, but I can call It Zone2. And in the Zone2, I can add additional servers.
This is difficult to show with a single citrix server. Let’s add another citrix server.
Pretend that this citrix server, CTXserver2 is in Zone 1, and my CTXserver1 is
also in Zone1.We have 2 citrix servers, and the Zone2 still has nothing in it. For
me to move these citrix server into the new zone, I have to click on this server
tab, we will get an error warning, you need to reboot each server that you move
between zones, that’s because the data collector in each zone needs to get
additional information, and reboots is going to be required to do that, be aware of
that, if you plan on to move servers. I am going to move the new CTXserver2 to
the target zone (Zone2). I select the CTXserver2 and then select the target zone
and hit OK. Now you have the original zone and then the new zone. You will
notice a check mark; this check mark has to do with elections. All the servers or
all the workstations that are sitting on a particular subnet have election and each
server tallies up its votes and the server with the most no. of votes needs to be
the most preferred server. If I want a server to be the most preferred, I choose
the most preferred button. I can also choose preferred, default or not preferred
option. The reason why I need a particular server to be a data collector is that the
data collector process consumes a lot of resources on the server. The one with
the dedicated data collector is the most preferred. There has to be at least one
system in a zone as the data collector.
Below you have the options, to check - only zone data collectors enumerate
program neighborhood and share load information across zones. Older versions
of zone data collectors used to share load information between zones. If the zones
are connected through a WAN link it could saturate the zones. If you have high
speed connection between your zones, you can enable to share load information. Its
defaulted to not sharing the load information.
Configuring Server Settings
The properties of the farm are similar to the properties of the server. The check box
which says, use farm settings for ICA keep alive, whatever my farm says, that’s what
the configuration I need for my server. You see that for ICA keep alive; ICA settings,
for isolation settings and many of the settings have this capability. ICA printer
bandwidth is setting in server which allows configuring how much of bandwidth you
need for the client, whether unlimited or limited.
