How to build a Citrix

infrastructure in the Amazon

cloud (AWS)

Denis Gundarev, Senior Consultant, Entisys Solutions

May 8, 2014

Tweet about this session with hashtag #SYN514, #CitrixSynergy and

#GeekSpeak

All links available at http://bit.ly/CitrixOnAWS

About me

Windows PowerShell

Copyright (C) 2014 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

PS C:\Users\Denis> [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()

AuthenticationType : LiveSSP

IsAuthenticated : True

IsGeek : True

IsSystem : False

IsAnonymous : False

Name : ENTISYS\Denis

User : S-1-5-21-1126498620-3681631189-227381393-500

Groups : {Bay Area Citrix User Group, Citrix Technology Professional, ...}

Email : DenisG@entisys.com

Twitter : @fdwl

XenApp on AWS

http://bit.ly/XA65onAWS

Agenda

What should you know about AWS

Use cases and architecture

What Citrix gives you

What you can and can’t do

Q&A

What should you know about AWS

Global infrastructure

10 Regions

28 Availability Zones

51 Edge Locations

How to fit more text on a slide?

AWS Services

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AWS Services

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Compute

•Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

•Auto Scaling

•VM Import/Export

Networking

•Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

•Elastic Load Balancing

•AWS Direct Connect

Storage•Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

•AWS Storage Gateway

Databases •Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Deployment & Management

•AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

•AWS CloudFormation

•Amazon CloudWatch

AWS Services

EC2 Instance = Virtual Machine

Amazon Machine Image (AMI) = VM Template or Snapshot may be shared or private

Two types of storage available:

Elastic Block Store (EBS) Volume = Virtual Disk, support provisioned IOPS, could be snapshotted,

SAN-based

Instance Store = Local Host storage, SSD option

EBS vs IS? - http://bit.ly/EBSvsIS

EBS Story - http://bit.ly/EBSStory

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Basics

Amazon EC2 Amazon EBS

Availability Zone = Amazon Datacenter (http://bit.ly/AWSDataCenters)

VM Import/Export = Import VMWare vmdk, XenServer/Hyper-V VHD

(http://bit.ly/VMImport)

Instances may run on dedicated hardware

EC2 Compute Unit = equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon

processor (http://bit.ly/EC2ComputeUnits)

Instance could retrieve the metadata (http://bit.ly/EC2Metadata)

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Basics

Amazon EC2 Amazon EBS

EC2 Config Service

33 EC2 Instance Types

M3 - General Purpose

•SSD-based

•Sandy Bridge

•1-8 vCPUs

•3.75-30 GB RAM

C3 - Compute Optimized

•SSD-Based

•SRV-IO

•Support for clustering

•Ivy Bridge

•2-32 vCPUs

•3.75-60 GB RAM

R3 - Memory Optimized

•SSD-Based

•2-32 vCPUs

•15-244 GB RAM

G2 – GPU

•NVIDIA GPU

•4GB of video memory

•8 vCPUs

•15 GB RAM

•SSD-Based

I2 - Storage Optimized

•800 GB – 6.4 TB SSD Storage

•4-32 vCPUs

•30-244 GB RAM

•SRV-IO

Special Types

•HS1 – 16 vCPU, 117 GB RAM, 48 TB HDD

•t1.micro - 1 vCPU, 0.613 GB RAM

•m1.small - 1 vCPU, 1,7 GB RAM

http://bit.ly/EC2Instances

VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) = Logically Isolated

Network

Subnet = VLAN

Security Group = Set of Stateful Firewall Rules

Elastic IP address (EIP) = Static “reusable”

public IP address

Amazon Networking

Elastic network interface (ENI) = “reusable”

NIC with assigned internal IP addresses, EIP,

MAC and Security Group mapping

NAT is used for public IP mapping

Dedicated NAT instances

Network ACL = *stateless* firewall between

subnets

Virtual private gateway (VPG) = Amazon

side of VPN connection

Amazon Direct Connect

Amazon Networking

CloudWatch

Basic Monitoring – CPU, Disk, Network at five-minute frequency – Free

Detailed Monitoring - Basic + Status Check at one-minute frequency – for an additional charge

EBS Volumes – Read/Write Bytes, IOPS, Queue, Throughput and Consumed IOPS -Free

Custom Metrics - i.e. any perfmon metric, submitted by a scheduled script

Alarms

Graphs/Statistics

Auto Scaling

CloudWatch

import-module AWSPowerShell

Add-PSSnapin Citrix.XenApp.Commands

$dat = New-Object Amazon.CloudWatch.Model.MetricDatum

$dat.Timestamp = (Get-Date).ToUniversalTime()

$dat.MetricName = "Server Load"

$dat.Unit = "Count"

$dat.Value=(Get-XAServerLoad -ServerName $env:COMPUTERNAME).Load

$inst= New-Object Amazon.CloudWatch.Model.Dimension

$inst.Name = "InstanceId"

$inst.Value=(Invoke-WebRequest http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id).content

$dat.Dimensions = $inst

VWrite-CWMetricData -Namespace "XenApp" -MetricData $dat -AccessKey EYXUYIVKPHQ -SecretKey 9yqSuAuQciCj -Region us-west-2

mon-put-metrics-mem.ps1 —Collects system metrics on an Amazon EC2 Windows

instance (memory, page file utilization) and sends them to Amazon CloudWatch.

mon-put-metrics-disk.ps1 —Collects system metrics on an Amazon EC2 instance (disk

space utilization) and sends them to Amazon CloudWatch.

mon-put-metrics-perfmon.ps1 —Collects PerfMon counters on an Amazon EC2 instance

and sends them to Amazon CloudWatch.

mon-get-instance-stats.ps1—Queries Amazon CloudWatch and displays the most recent

utilization statistics for the EC2 instance on which this script is executed.

http://bit.ly/CWPowerShell

CloudWatch Monitoring Scripts

Launch Configuration

Auto Scaling Groups

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) = Preconfigured VM with Microsoft SQL or

MySQL managed by Amazon

Amazon Route 53 = DNS Hosting

Identity and Account Management

Other AWS Services

Management

Web-based AWS Console https://console.aws.amazon.com

ElasticWolf – Windows, Mac, Linux, FireFox http://www.elasticwolf.com/

AWS Console Mobile App – iOS, Android http://aws.amazon.com/console/mobile/

CLI, PowerShell, Python, Java

AWS Management Pack for Microsoft System Center -

https://aws.amazon.com/windows/system-center/

Hybridfox – FireFox https://code.google.com/p/hybridfox/

Management Consoles

Use cases and architecture

Customer Web Services

XenApp workers

XenApp workersSQL

SQL

DC

DC

DC

DCXenApp

Controller

XenApp

Controller

NetScaler/

Access Gateway

NetScaler/

Access Gateway

XenApp workers

XenApp workersSQL

SQLXenApp

Controller

XenApp

Controller

NetScaler/

Access Gateway

NetScaler/

Access Gateway

User

Zon

eB

Zon

eB

Zon

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Example Deployments

Administrator

Internet

User

NetScaler01

NetScaler02

EIP

NAT Gateway

Pu

blic S

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ty G

roup

, TC

P 8

0, TC

P 4

43

, IP

SE

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DMZ (10.0.1.X)

Pri

vate

Secu

rity

Gro

up

, TC

P 8

0, 4

43

, 1

49

4, 2

59

8, 3

38

9, 5

3, 3

89

Private subnet (10.0.1.X)

Domain Controllers

SQL

XenApp Controllers

StoreFront

XenApp Workers

Example Deployments

Availability

Zone A

Availability

Zone B

Asia/Singapore

Availability

Zone B

Availability

Zone A

Asia/Tokyo

AWS Firewall AWS Firewall

AWS Firewall AWS Firewall

WebInterface WebInterface WebInterface WebInterface

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

XenAppXenApp XenApp XenApp

Domain Controller

Domain Controller

Domain Controller

Domain Controller

XenApp SQL XenApp SQL

SQL Mirroring

Configuration

App

Configuration

App

Configuration

App

Configuration

App

Availability

Zone A

Availability

Zone B

US West

Availability

Zone B

Availability

Zone A

US East

AWS Firewall AWS Firewall

AWS Firewall AWS Firewall

WebInterface WebInterface WebInterface WebInterface

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

XenAppXenApp XenApp XenApp

Domain Controller

Domain Controller

Domain Controller

Domain Controller

XenApp SQL XenApp SQL

SQL Mirroring

Configuration

App

Configuration

App

Configuration

App

Configuration

App

Availability

Zone A

Availability

Zone B

EU/Ireland

Availability

Zone B

Availability

Zone A

EU/???

AWS Firewall AWS Firewall

AWS Firewall AWS Firewall

WebInterface WebInterface WebInterface WebInterface

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

NetScaler/Access

Gateway

XenAppXenApp XenApp XenApp

Domain Controller

Domain Controller

Domain Controller

Domain Controller

XenApp SQL XenApp SQL

SQL Mirroring

Configuration

App

Configuration

App

Configuration

App

Configuration

App

Example Deployments

Example Deployments

• Who are the users and what are our requirementsUser Layer

• How do users gain access to our resourcesAccess Layer

• What resources will we deliver Resource Layer

• How will we manage and maintain the solutionControl Layer

• What do I need to make this happenHardware Layer

Citrix’s 5-layer model

Citrix’s 5-layer model

What Citrix gives you

CloudFormation Templates

http://bit.ly/AWSVisualStudio

XenDesktop/XenApp 7.5

http://bit.ly/XAXD75onAWS

Sizing Documentation

http://bit.ly/XA65onAWSCalculator

http://bit.ly/XAonAWSEconomics

Product Documentation - http://bit.ly/NSonAWS

Netscaler High Availability Failover does not Occur in AWS Environment

http://bit.ly/NSonAWSHA

Deployment practices and guidelines for NetScaler on Amazon Web Services

http://bit.ly/NSonAWSGuide

Don’t be confused, there is CloudBridge VPX (NetScaler) and Citrix Branch Repeater for

CloudBridge (WanScaler)

NetScaler on AWS

What you can and can’t do

Citrix on AWS

Limitations

No Capacity management in XA/XD 7.x

No Client OS

No Windows Server 2012 R2

No L2, IPV6 on NetScaler

Slow HA on NetScaler

No PVS support

Guidelines

Use XA6.5 with PCM and EC2 Auto

Scaling for dynamic workloads

Use Amazon VPN for site-to-site

connections

Start with basic config

Size instances properly

Be careful with VPC planning and

Security Groups

Email me – denisg@entisys.com

Connect with me – http://j.mp/gundarev

Get all reference materials - http://bit.ly/CitrixOnAWS

Join BayCUG http://baycug.meetup.com