Load Balancing withing a Farm

[PU36]

I currently have Citrix 4.0 running on Windows 2003. I want to add another server to the farm and either Load Balance or use for Failover. The Farm is named Citrix and the server is named Citrix. Is that going to be an issue?

The clients point to Citrix (Server) to connect to.

What do I need to do to implement Load Balancing or for the failover server?

What do I need to do to the clients?
Any recommended links to view would be great as well.

Thanks

 

[enigma99]

Magnum1976,
In order to use load-balancing on Citrix you have to use either the Metaframe Presentation Server (A) or (E). If you installed version (S) the server will not support load-balancing.

Adding the additional server to the farm will not be hard. Simply run the setup for Citrix Presentation Server and follow the wizard.
It should ask you if you want to create a new farm or join an existing one.
Click "join an existing farm" and then provide the farm name (in your case it will be "Citrix"). Finish the wizard and then reboot after the installation.

After that, you want to open your Citrix Management Console and go to your applications folder. Open the properties of your published application and go to the "Servers" option. Highlight your newly added Citrix server and click on "Add" to the Configured servers side.
This will load-balance the application across those 2 servers.

If either one of those servers fails...any new connection to that application will be routed to the other server.

Here are some load manager links:

http://support.citrix.com/servlet/KbServlet/download/6280-102-12973/Load_Manager_Guide.pdf

Here is the admin guide for Citrix MPS 4.0:

http://support.citrix.com/servlet/KbServlet/download/6338-102-14087/Administrators_Guide.pdf

Hope that helps.

 

[PU36]

That is good to know and thank you for the comment.

What do I need to do to the client software? The current setup points to the Server? Do I point it somewhere else?

If this is in the documents you sent me.. sorry about that. Haven't had a chance to read them, but will soon.

Thank You

 

[enigma99]

Magnum1976,
If it's the full Program Neighborhood you won't have to do anything. Since this will only be the second server in your farm the first server is considered your Zone Data Collector.
This server will be keeping track of all of the active sessions on what servers.
So you should be good. If you want redundency in your configuration I would add the additional server in the "Primary" server list.

Hope that helps.

 

[PU36]

Ok. I have figured out that I have to "Publish Applications" to effectivly use the Load Balanacing Feature in Citrix 4.0

So, I have an Published Applications named "Remote Site" that published the Desktop. I have added a Group Called "Citrix_Users" to the list and added both servers to the list.

Each client has the Citrix Program Neighborhood installed.

What do I have to do so the clients connect to the Published Application?

When I create a new ICA Connection and choose Publish Application instead of Server it does not find any Applications (through the drop down box). When I type in the Published Applications name and attempt to connect it give me the following error,

Cannot connect to the Citrix Metaframe Server.

An I/O (Input/Outplut) error occured while your request was being processed.

Try to connect again. If yo continue to receive this message, contact your Citrix Administrator

Note: When I create an ica file for this application and drop it on the users C: drive and they double click it, it takes them directly to the server. So the applications actually works but not through the Citrix Program Neighborhood.

Any help or thoughts would be very appreciative.

 

[PU36]

I figured it out.

For anyone else having the same issue, the resolutions was to change the Server Location Network Protocol from TCP/IP +HTTP to just TCP/IP and then add an "A" Record to DNS for ica.domainname.

Thank You for everyone help.