Project Avalon Excalibur (aka XenDesktop 7) Technology Preview: Installation and Configuration Using Windows Server 2012 Exclusively! Part 5

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If you’ve just stumbled upon this article, I recommend you start from the beginning by clicking the Part 1 link below.  For easy reading, I’ve broken this blog post into five parts:

Part 1: Installing the Delivery Controller(s) Components and Creating the Site
Part 2: Preparing the Master Server for Imaging
Part 3: Creating the Hosting Infrastructure Connection and Deploying a Catalog from the Master Server
Part 4: Creating the Delivery Group and Publishing an Application
Part 5: Configuring StoreFront 1.3 Services and Launching a Published Application < YOU ARE HERE!

Now we are ready to configure StoreFront. I’ve covered this in greater detail using StoreFront 1.0 which you can find here. For this demonstration, I will perform a very simple configuration of the newest release of StoreFront 1.3 just to give us a platform for connecting endpoint devices. You will notice major enhancements in this release, namely the requirement for a SQL Server Database has been eliminated! This is a huge step in the right direction and was actually a major prohibitor for many of my customers who still are running Web Interface 5.4.

From the Start interface, I’ll launch Citrix StoreFront.

Click Yes to the User Account Control prompt.

Select Create a new deployment from the first delivery controller:


In the article previously mentioned, I describe how to create a load balanced StoreFront deployment. For this demonstration, I’ll use a simple CNAME record, pointing to the first Delivery Controller. Additionally, a production deployment would use trusted SSL certificates throughout for encrypting user authentication traffic. Enter http://excalibur.domain.com and click Create:


The first/default store name is typically Store. Click Next:

Click Add:

Provide a site name, select XenApp, FQDN of XML brokers (two delivery controllers), and select HTTP for the transport type. Click OK when complete.

Review and click Next to proceed.

For now, select Remote Access: None. Click Create:

Click Finish to complete the store creation process:

At this point I’ll go ahead and join my second Delivery Controller’s StoreFront instance to the first. Before I do that, I need to obtain an authorization code (a token that’s used during the server pairing). This can be found under Server Group. Click Add Server:


Copy the Authorization code. This will be pasted into the second controller in just a moment:

On the second server, go to the Start interface and launch Citrix StoreFront.

Click Join existing server group:

Enter the Autorizing Server’s DNS name and paste the Authorization code. Click Join.

Confirm that the delivery controller successfully joined the server group:

On the first server you will also see a confirmation message:

First thing we need to do after pairing is synchronize the configuration. From the first server, click Propagate Changes:

Click OK to confirm:

Upon completion, click OK.

The StoreFront deployment group could easily be load balanced using NetScaler, NLBS, F5, or any other hardware load balancer. Now we are ready to start accessing applications from http://excalibur.demo.entisys.com/Citrix/StoreWeb! Optionally, you could create an IIS HTTP Redirect to eliminate the need to type this full URL.

After logging in, you should see any applications presented based on the user access credentials. Navigating through the left bar and clicking Microsoft Outlook 2013 will add the application to the favorites location:

Clicking the application from the favorites location will launch the published application:

At this point Outlook 2013 can be closed.

That just about covers all the components for getting a multi-server XenApp deployment setup using Project Excalibur! In future posts I will be diving a little bit deeper into providing Windows 8 VDI desktops and addressing some of the single points of failure for a production deployment.

To review any section, please choose from the following:
Part 1: Installing the Delivery Controller(s) Components and Creating the Site
Part 2: Preparing the Master Server for Imaging
Part 3: Creating the Hosting Infrastructure Connection and Deploying a Catalog from the Master Server
Part 4: Creating the Delivery Group and Publishing an Application
Part 5: Configuring StoreFront 1.3 Services and Launching a Published Application < YOU ARE HERE!

If you have any questions, comments, or just want to leave feedback, please do so below. Thanks for reading!

–youngtech

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  1. RavindraRavindra06-02-2013

    Hi Eric,

    Great. Was just Checking on Excalibur product and found this site. Really Great work with ScreenShot.

    • Dane YoungDane Young07-10-2013

      Thanks! Glad you liked the blog series.
      –youngtech (Dane not Eric) 😀

  2. EricEric11-02-2012

    Hi Dane, very nice work, a fantastic detailed blog series. Saw you played with it at PTEC, used to be part of it as well in Europe, but decided to drop out since I had do decline all invites since I’m now living in Brasil.

    See you next year in LA. Will post a link on my Members News board, should drive more traffic to this post.

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