Hey Folks. Citrix recently released a tech preview of Citrix StoreFront X1 aka StoreFront 2.7. The UI feels a lot more modern and Citrix are making it easier to make the branding of the page easier to do. More information about the new features can be seen here but I will hopefully be going through these in future blog posts.
The X1 stands for eXperience 1st which explains where Citrix are going with this. They want to provide a consistent brilliant user experience across all devices which I think most people will agree is what most VDI projects should aim to deliver.
In this post i will show you how to deploy to a single server solution, but in future posts I will show how to integrate with NetScaler 10.5. So lets get going!
1) First step is to download the tech preview from the Citrix Download site. The link is http://www.citrix.com/downloads/storefront-web-interface/betas-and-tech-previews/storefront-x1-technology-preview.html?_ga=1.156428280.256533298.1426411787
2) Once you had downloaded the tech preview we can begin the installation
3) Select Next to continue to the next screen. If IIS is not installed already it will be automatically installed.
4) Let the installation continue and eventually it will complete. Note that the version number will probably change in the future as this is just a tech preview and is not to be used in a production environment
5) After the installation has completed we need to perform the initial configuration of the StoreFront configuration. Select “Create a new deployment” from the StreFront MMC console
6) When prompted type in the base URL that will be used to access the StoreFront page. At this stage since we are only deploying a single server I will just use the servername, but in load balanced environments, you would enter the VIP. Select Next to continue
7) StoreFront will now create the deployment as requested
8) Next step we need to create the Store which the end users will be connecting to. Enter a suitable name and press next to continue
9) In this next section we will enter the Delivery Controllers
10) As you can see from the screenshot below you can select what type of Delivery Controller is in your environment. Note I selected HTTP as its only an internal test environment but for production environments you should always select HTTPS for which you will need a SSL Certificate for which I will cover in another post.
11) Since we are only configuring for an internal deployment we do not need to configure Remote access so select None and press Create to continue
12) The store should now be created successfully and the URL required to connect to the store displayed
13) After entering the URL you should see the funky new logon page!! Enter your credentials to access your assigned resources
14) And if everything is working as expected you should be able to connect successfully 🙂
This post only covers the vey basic configuration of StoreFront. In future posts I hope to delve much deeper into customisations and NetScaler Integration. Until next time!!