Deyda.net – Page 2 of 6 – Citrix and Microsoft Blog

Update to Virtual Apps and Desktops Version 1909

On September 19, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) version 1909 was released. Following a little guide to the update to the latest version.

Link to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Documentation

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops EOM EOL Matrix

Activation of Azure AD Seamless Single Sign-On

For quite some time (Beginning of 2017) it is now possible to solve SSO scenarios with Azure even without ADFS infrastructure. However, it is only recently that companies has started to not insist on ADFS. Now one may finally also point out the alternative solutions of Microsoft.

The possible scenarios for Seamless SSO are:

Pass-through authentication (PTA)
Password Hash Sync (PHS)

Pass-through authentication (PTA)

Disadvantages

No automatic detection of leaked login data
Azure AD DS requires enabled Password Hash Synchronization feature in tenant to work
Is not part of Azure AD Connect Health

Password Hash Sync (PHS)

“Disadvantage“

Password is synchronized to the cloud (as hash value)

SAML Authentication with Azure AD as IdP and Citrix as SP

Since Citrix XenApp / XenDesktop 7.9 the Federated Authentication Service (FAS) is available. Via Citrix FAS it is possible to authenticate a user via SAML and thus connect Citrix as a service provider to existing identity providers, such as Azure-AD.

Sequence of SAML authentication

The user browse the FQDN (e.g. citrix.deyda.net) of the Citrix Gateway vServer (Service Provider) to start his VA / VD resources
The Citrix Gateway vServer directs the unauthenticated user directly to the Identity Provider (Azure-AD) to authenticate itself (saml: authnRequest)
The Identity Provider points to its SingleSignOnService URL (e.g. login.microsoftonline.com) and the user must authenticate
The user enters his AD credentials and these are checked by the Identity Provider against the user database
Upon successful verification in the user database, the IdP is informed
The IdP issues a token (SAML assertion) and sends it to the Citrix Gateway (saml: response)
Citrix Gateway checks the token (assertion signature) and extracts the UPN from the assertion token. This allows access via SSO to the VA / VD farm via FAS (The SP does not have access to the user’s credentials)

SAML Auth Azure AD & Citrix Gateway with FAS

Copy a Citrix ADC configuration to a new machine

In one of my recent projects, I had to build several Citrix ADCs in a new data center. After consultation with the customer, the same services and functions should be configured as in the old data center. The only difference was that the new data center should use different IP ranges and therefore all network settings of the Citrix ADCs and the connected services had to be adapted.

Requirements

Same version and build on all Citrix ADC
Same Citrix ADC license version on all Citrix ADC
IP addresses of the new Citrix ADC should be defined and free (NSIP, SNIP & VIP).
IP addresses of the connected machines should be known (server or server groups)
Basic configuration of the new Citrix ADC should be done (NSIP, SNIP, DNS, Timezone & License)

NVIDIA vGPU Licensing

Through various recent projects, I had to work through the clutter of information regarding NVIDIA vGPU licensing.

Here is a small summary of this information.

NVIDIA vGPU Architecture

Under the control of the NVIDIA GPU Virtual Manager, running in the hypervisor, the NVIDIA Physical GPU can operate multiple virtual GPU devices (vGPUs), that can be assigned directly to the Guest VM.

Diagram showing the high-level architecture of NVIDIA vGPU

The Guest VMs use the NVIDIA virtual vGPUs in the same way as a physical GPU would come from the hypervisor by direct passed through. The NVIDIA Driver loaded into the guest VM provides Direct GPU Access for high-performance operations. The NVIDIA Virtual GPU Manager paravirtualized interface performs the non-performance management operations for the NVIDIA Driver.