Citrix across subnets? 1

[Zracer03]

Today we were forced to re-subnet one of our buildings due to a lack of IP addresses. Our old subnet remains with our building 1 which is right down the road. it's a 252.0 subnet ranging from 192.168.108.0 through 192.168.111.254. Our newer building, call it building 2, is not a 240.0 subnet with IPs ranging from 16.0 through 31.254. All of our Metaframe XP servers still reside on the 108 network, and this building on a 116, can no longer connect to the farm through PN. We can make direct connection by name to the servers, but they only helps us admins and not the users. They all connect through Thin Clients, or through PN to a Published Application. Currently, we have to touch every user in this building and enter a server address so it's able to connect to the farm. I know in MF 1.8, you could use ICA Gateway so it would see across the gateway. Is there any easy way to do it in MF XPe? Just to get everyone going, we are touching every box, but this obviously cant be a long term solution. Any help would be great. thanks

 

[terrywilson]

What are you changing on the clients to get it working? Are you just adding the IP address for the meataframe server, and did you previously just have a name like citrix1.mybusiness.com set in there?
If thats all thats different then I would be picking that the DNS server options arent set in your new scope; but let us know.

 

[Zracer03]

We are changing the server location on Thin Clients to the IP of a certain term server, so in turn it can see the farm. Same deal in Program Neighborhood, have to get rid of auto locate, and enter the IP of a term server. We can't possibly do this with every client, but auto locate does not seem to work. All clients are on the local area network, no external or remote clients. The DNS servers are correct in the new scope as well. We're still trying to figure a way around it, with no luck.

 

[terrywilson]

So you're clients are setup to Auto-locate and have no entries in the address list? Try adding a new record on your dns server that resolves to the name ica and get it to point to your data collector; I think this is talked about in either the Administrators guide, or the Advanced Concepts one.

 

[Zracer03]

Yes all client are on auto locate, and we have never had a problem before. I don't know if it won't automatically span a seperate subnet or what? I can try to make a DNS pointer, but i'm not sure how adding the name "ica" would help.

 

[terrywilson]

The reason it wont work across subnets with auto-locate like you are used to is because your router is probably not set to forward the UDP broadcasts that are sent out from your clients - you would need to enable UDP braodcasts to be forwarded between the subnets.

What I forgot to ask was do you have them set to use TCP/IP or TCP+HTTP - I'm not sure if auto-locate using the ICA dns entry will work for straight TCP/IP

Reconfiguring your Program Neighborhood will be quite easy on your fat clients; use a tool like AutoIt in your login scripts to do it and to do your thin clients will depend on what flavour they are.

I would recommend using a dns name (I just stick with ica) to do the resolution; this way if you ever change your servers IP's you dont have to reconfigure all the clients again.

Another idea could be to move one of your servers onto the new subnet; that would be a quick fix until you get all your clients reconfigured.

From the Citrix PN Help

Network Protocol

TCP/IP+HTTP
Some network configurations restrict broadcast and UDP packets across routers or gateways. To retrieve server farm and published resource information across a firewall, use TCP/IP+HTTP.
If you select TCP/IP+HTTP, the default address list value is "ica." Program Neighborhood attempts to resolve the name "ica" to an IP address. If you do not add servers to the address list, you must have a server running MetaFrame Presentation Server mapped to the default name "ica" on your network.

Program Neighborhood contacts the specified server for a list of all servers and published applications in its server farm.

 

[Zracer03]

All of the clients are set to auto locate with straight TCP/IP. Whether I just enter the address of the data collecter, or change it to include HTTP and add a DNS entry is the same difference. It would still require touching all the clients, but I guess that would be a better long term solution. If I forward UDP on the router, or cisco switches would work as well, that would be an easy solution. I'll give it a try. thanks