Tuesday 6 April 2010

Installing XenApp 6 – Part 3 – Citrix Licensing v11.6.1 build 10007

This is a 5 part guide to making a simple XenApp 6 farm.  These are the other sections:

  1. Installing a server manually
  2. Creating a XenApp 6 farm
  3. Citrix Licensing
  4. Web Interface
  5. Unattended installations

This section is about installing your licensing server and configuring your farm to use it.

  • Install another Windows 2008 Server R2 machine.  Personally I would have this be my Terminal Services licensing server as well (you WILL need an R2 server for that – a 2008 R1 server will not give you the right CALs for a XenApp 6 farm) but that’s not covered here.  Just install the Remote Desktop Services Licensing components, activate the server and add your CALs.
  • For Citrix Licensing, run this MSI from the main XenApp 6 DVD:
    \licensing\CTX_licensing.msi
    The version that ships with XenApp 6 is 11.6.1 build 10007
  • Agree to the UAC prompts and generally click Next until its installed.  There aren’t any options and it doesn’t need a reboot.
  • After installation the configuration tool will launch.  Change the licensing port if you feel the need (there’s nothing wrong with the defaults) and give it a really good password.  Don’t lose it though.

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  • You can now launch the Licensing web interface from the Start Menu (or from another machine on the URL http://servername:8082/).  If you launch it from the server, turn off IE ESC from the server manager and try to get the localhost site into the Local Intranet security zone). 
  • In the exciting new licensing interface you should see there are now 4000 Start-up licenses – this is because Citrix don’t bother charging you by Citrix server anymore, just by concurrent user.  Therefore each installed license server can support 4000 citrix servers.

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  • Click Vendor Daemon Configuration to get to the import licenses button.
  • Click Import licenses and browse to the new *.lic files.

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  • This is the tricky part.  At this point it will probably tell you that the server name in the license file does not match the name of the license server.  If you are sure you got this right, you can probably ignore this.  Check the contents of c:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\Licensing\MyFiles on the license server and see if the license file is there now.  If it is, restart the Windows service CitrixLicensing and then go back to the Dashboard.  You should now see your licenses.

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  • Now you just need to enter your license server name, port and server type (Enterprise, Advanced, Platinum) in the Policies node of the XenApp Management tools (the DSC).  Its easiest to just edit the Unfiltered policy.  To start this, open the DSC, click Policies and the Computer tab.

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  • With the Unfiltered policy selected, click Edit.
  • Select Licensing on the left and click the edit buttons by the server name and port

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  • Then click Server Settings and “Add”, next to the XenApp product edition.  Select the edition you have licenses for and click Save.
  • Open a command prompt and run gpupdate.  If you have entered the wrong details you should get an error of “the licenses required by this edition of Citrix XenApp are not present on the license server”.  Correct the settings if you get this and run gpupdate again.  “gpupdate /force” is more effective as it will rebuild all policies rather than just looking for differences.  Reboot the server for the new Computer policies to take effect.

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  • After the reboot, do a “query farm /load” again in CMD.  If the server still has a value of 20000 it is still not configured right.  Check that RDP is enabled in Start > right click Computer, click Remote Settings.  Check it is set to “Allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop”.

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  • If you had this problem, correct it and reboot again.  Do a “query farm /load” again in CMD and hopefully the load has gone down from 20000 (error) or 10000 (full load).  It should be more like 100.  If you still have a problem, best check your Event Viewer to see whether there is anything useful there.

14 comments:

Helen said...

Thank you so much! That was such clear documentation for something I've been trying to get working.. and so much more informative than Citrix forum docs.

Labmouse said...

Its not always very hard to get better than the Citrix documents! :D Anyway, thanks for the feeback, glad it was useful to you.

Cheers,


LM

Anonymous said...

Excellent job! thank you so much.

Anonymous said...

thanks !

Ron said...

hey man, i can't find jack $h!t on Citrix' site regarding a step by step instruction on how to install XenApp 6. I did find their $3200 class though. Thanks to you that this is much more clear to me for the deployment that I am doing this week!

Anonymous said...

Thank you soooo much! My qfarm /load always returned 20000 and thx to "How-To" it works now.

Then click Server Settings and “Add”, next to the XenApp product edition. Select the edition you have licenses for and click Save.

This was my big Problem.

THX again sooo much!

sadetona@daynetsolution.com said...

thanks very much, i need a guide on how to install xenApp 5.0 on Windows 2008 r2, . i have been able to install all components on one server. But i need a guide on installing XenApp 5 and having the license and datastore on separate server. pls reply

Labmouse said...

XenApp 5.0 can't be installed on Windows 2008 R2 - its built for Windows 2008 (or Windows 2003, where its basically Presentation Server 4.5 under the hood). If you can't upgrade to XenApp 6 (really, its better) you'll need to downgrade to use Windows 2008 (really, its worse).

XenApp 6.5 is nearly out, there can't be many people starting XenApp 5 projects now!

As for the license services and datastore on separate servers, I would always put the license server on its own box anyway and the datastore should be on a dedicated SQL Server machine in anything but a very basic farm. I don't think this requires any special setup though, it should be fairly easy. I would build get the license server sorted (and the web interface) and establish the SQL Server database and its authentication before you build your first farm server, then you should know the answers as you go alone.

Good luck,



LM

Anonymous said...

Hi LM , i see you say xenapp 6.5 is almost out.Do recommend wait for xenapp 6.5 or just go ahead with the xenapp 6 install.

Labmouse said...

Tricky question - from the fact that the Technical Preview is so polished and only comes with a 60 day evaluation license, I would say that we could see the final release of XenApp 6.5 as soon as next month (August). Its got to be tempting to wait, use the beta in the meantime to plan, then go live with 6.5 - much less work than moving to XenApp 6, and THEN moving again to 6.5.

But that said, XenApp 6 really wasn't that stable until recently - it took a full year of patches before it was working properly, and those who went live in April 2010 had months of blue screens, random client issues, shadowing errors, etc ahead of them. XenApp 6 is the safer choice.

But then from what I've seen, 6.5 is much more of a development of XenApp 6 than a whole new version. It should be much less risky than adopting a major Citrix release with no hotfixes, because in a way it IS a hotfix.

Its your call, but personally I think its worth using the Tech Preview for a few weeks to get your environment planned and tested, then going for an early migration. If you need to go back to v6 you'll be able to keep your license server, web server, operating systems, etc but if it works, it'll save lots of time.

And who knows, maybe shadowing will work this time!

Anonymous said...

I got the xenapp instalation down but I have a few questions I really cant get an answer. 1) currently run presenation server on server2003. I have a web interface and license server on server2003 also my web interface is 4.6 can I use that same server to connect my new xenapp6 farm? 2)Im planning on deploying my setup to no more than 50 users (basic setup) we dont run a full version of SQL2005/2008 what do you think of running it on SQL 05/08 express?

Labmouse said...

Hello,

Yes, Web Interface 4.6 should be fine for connecting to XenApp 6 - as a matter of fact I've had v4.0 on Server 2003 work with it too. Well out of support of course and might not recognise a modern client, but it works. As for SQL Express, I've not used it on a live system with that many users - if you have no choice though it should work. But if you have a proper SQL Server install you can use, I'd do that.


LM

Anonymous said...

like the line "whatever Citrix call their products this week"

Chaitanyakumar said...

Hi,I have installed xenapp 6 successfully. After installation, it prompts us for configuring the selected elements like xenapp, licensing and web interface. When I click on configure at licensing tab, it opens up the first screenshot given in this page. Management console port is 8082 by default.When I give any admin pwd and click ok, it says "The management console web port number you entered is already in use. Please choose another." I enter 8083 and it is configured successfully, But I want to know why that error has come. My doubt is, I didnt configure license component at all. Then how is that 8082 port is in use?

Thanks,
Chaitanya.

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