Lab: Part 28 – Getting started with Citrix Cloud

Step-by-step quide to help you getting started with Citrix Cloud

This article follows Lab: Part 27 – Getting started with Microsoft Azure and will focus on getting Citrix Cloud ready.

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What is Citrix Cloud?

Citrix Cloud can be confusing at first and it is mostly due to the marketing around it. Citrix Cloud is not a cloud provider like Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS but a cloud management platform. Citrix Cloud will help you manage your Citrix workloads located on public clouds such as Microsoft Azure(preferred partner), Amazon AWS or Google Cloud and more. Citrix started to develop this platform in 2015 now supports most of its products. Citrix Cloud enables cloud services for Citrix products such as Citrix Virtual Apps (XenApp), Citrix Virtual Desktops (XenDesktop), Citrix Endpoint Management (XenMobile),  Citrix Content Collaboration (ShareFile), and Citrix ADC (NetScaler). You can check all products available in Citrix Cloud via this link.

See below the subscriptions available in Citrix Cloud (per user/year):

Architecture

Getting started

In this article you will learn the following:

• Create a Citrix Cloud account
• Install Citrix Cloud Connector on Microsoft Azure virtual machines
• Configure Citrix Cloud Connector to link to your Citrix Cloud account

You need to have:

• An email account
• At least 1 Windows Server available and domain joined to install Citrix Cloud Connector. In this lab, we are following the Citrix best practices and we created 2 virtual machines in Microsoft Azure. See Lab: Part 27 – Getting started with Microsoft Azure
• Administrative rights on the virtual machine(s)
• Connectivity to Citrix Cloud from the virtual machine(s)

Create your Citrix Cloud account

Go to cloud.com and register as below:

Select Sign in on top and then Sign up and try it free located at the bottom.

Register with an new account. If you already have a Citrix account, you can use it to register to Citrix Cloud. Here we will create a new account.

Then select you location. Here we will pick the US.

Note: you cannot change it later.

Then you will get an email with a link to confirm the registration. And then you will be prompted to set a password for your account.

Citrix Cloud Dashboard.

Add a new Resource Location

For this step, connect to CC01 previously created in the Part 27 – Getting Started with Microsoft Azure. You can also download the file locally and transfer it to the Cloud Connector server.

The first thing to do with your Citrix Cloud account is to create a new Resource Location.

Note: by default it says 1 Resource Location even if you don’t have any.

Select Edit or Add new under Resource Location.

Select Download and run the .exe as Administrator on the Cloud Connector server.

The first thing that the Connector will do is to check the connectivity with Citrix Cloud services.

If Citrix Cloud is reachable, you will be prompted for Citrix Cloud credentials.

Logon with your Citrix Cloud credentials.

If you have multiple Citrix Cloud account associated with your account, you will be prompted to select your organization. Here it is citrixguru.com.

Then click on the install button.

Citrix Cloud Connector will perform connectivity checks at the end of the installation. It can take up to 10 mins to perform this step.

Citrix Cloud Connector was successfully installed.

Back to Citrix Cloud. Refresh and you will see your new location available.

Note that Citrix Cloud recommends to have at least 2.

For this lab, we have a 2nd server available in Azure where Citrix Cloud Connector will be installed. For availability purpose, it is recommended to put that server in a different location. Once installed on both servers, the error message will disappear and you will see both connectors in Citrix Cloud.

That’s all. Your environment is ready on Citrix Cloud. In the next lab, we will review how to setup XenApp and XenDesktop Service (or called XenApp/XenDesktop Essentials on Microsoft Azure Marketplace) via Citrix Cloud.

Stay tuned.

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