As I was personally genuinely interested in the technical preview for Citrix Gateway Service for StoreFront, I registered for it. I quickly got in touch with the Citrix team on this topic and would like to thank Abhishek Singh in particular for his great cooperation. This article is intended to clarify which deployment scenarios this solution is suitable for and what else can be expected from it in the future.
For which problem is Citrix Gateway Service for StoreFront useful? The answer to this question will quickly clarify whether it is worth reading on at all.
Prerequisites:
- You use or want to use Citrix Cloud and DaaS in the future. You have heavily customized the design and / or functionality of Citrix Storefront or the Netscaler Portal theme.
- You have very specific authentication on Citrix Netsclaer for HDX connections, i.e. Citrix StoreFront in the backend.
- You use HDX connections through the Netscaler Gateway.
In short, for all those who have a special authentication method On-Prem and / or have a strong customization of StoreFront or the Netscaler Portal side, the Gateway service for StoreFront is something.
Overview
Once the user has logged in via the on-prem Netscaler Gateway, the application/desktop is started. The StoreFront server uses the cloud STAs via the Citrix Cloud connectors and the gateway that was set in the environment variable. The gateway service uses Points-of-Presence (POP) to use the nearest gateway for the user.
An example:
One of my customers uses the "ASG Cloud Cockpit" product, which is a comprehensive portal solution based on Citrix StoreFront. The customer has taken the first steps towards Citrix DaaS, but has strong concerns about user acceptance because Citrix Workspace has hardly anything to offer here. To continue using ASG Cloud Cockpit, but at the same time use Citrix Gateway Service for HDX connections, Citrix Gateway Service for StoreFront is just the thing!
Advantages:
- Complex customizations or authentications can be retained. Users use the "old familiar".
- Optimized gateway routing is guaranteed by the gateway service.
- The availability and security of the gateways are the responsibility of Citrix.
- Existing configurations can be easily and quickly converted to use the gateway service.
The Citrix team around Abhishek Singh has a roadmap for further functionality such as: Utilization of own STAs, Local Host Cache (LHC) etc. I would like to have HDX-Insight for my connections through the gateway service, but unfortunately another team is responsible for this.