How to Setup Work from Home (BCP) with Citrix due to COVID-19

How to Setup Work from Home (BCP) with Citrix due to COVID-19

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Article ID: CTX270555

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Description

Citrix is committed to providing the support you need to keep your employees safe and operations running throughout the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. If you are looking to provide access for additional remote users working from home in response to COVID-19, please refer to our Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Guidance.

For assistance with licensing, remote access, scalability, etc. please click here to navigate below. 

Please follow these links for rapid deployment solutions in Business Continuity:

  • Please visit the following link for quick deployment solutions.
  • For detailed technical information on business continuity please go here.
  • Follow this Citrix Blog post for tips on Business Continuity Plan and live Q&A. 

Instructions

Below are specific areas that can help address top concerns:

Quick Navigation


Licensing Information     

The following are frequently asked questions we’ve received around Citrix licensing as it relates to increasing resources to enable additional remote users:

How do I get assistance with trial/demo licenses?

  • Many of Citrix’s products are now offered as comprehensive, private, 1:1, expert-led demo experiences. Our Citrix experts will customize the demo to fit your needs, use cases and active projects. No downloads, no license or installation required and minimal set up needed to see an instant demo. After you see a demo, if you would like to proceed with a proof of concept or trial of a Citrix solution that leverages your services, our Citrix experts will be able to set that up.  You can get started with your demo today here.

How can I view my current license usage?

Virtual Apps and Desktops:
Citrix Gateway:
  • Verify number of concurrent sessions allowed for universal licensing Details

How can I quickly purchase additional licenses?

  • Citrix has launched new offerings to allow our customers to speed the adoption of remote work and fuel business continuity even in the most tumultuous of times. In order to quickly purchase additional licenses, please contact your partner or Citrix sales representative. They have the latest information on the current Citrix offerings.

Can I mix license types for Citrix Virtualization product lines and/or license models?

  • Citrix recommends purchasing the existing license types you currently own. However, you can mix license types (Concurrent and User/Device) and you can mix products (Citrix Virtual Apps with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops). You can access more information in the product documentation

Even though XenApp 6.5 is past End of Life, can I still add licenses to my existing XenApp 6.5 farm?

  • XenApp 6.5 reached End of Extended Support in 2020 as documented in the Legacy Product Matrix. In a time of crisis, customers can purchase additional Citrix Virtual Apps licenses and add them to their legacy environment. 

How do I install new/renewed licenses?

There are various ways to install a new license file for newly renewed or purchased licenses.  You can reference one of the following methods:

What does it mean if I am seeing a Citrix Director alert that says: “In supplemental grace period <displays expiration time>”?

  • This alert is letting you know that your site has more connections than number of licenses installed.  Instead of denying the extra connection, Citrix is giving you a 15-day grace period to purchase additional licenses to rectify the issue.   Detailed information on this supplemental grace period can be found in the licensing documentation.

Where can I find more information on Citrix Licensing

How many concurrent user sessions are supported by Citrix Gateway?

How to install Gateway licenses?

What are the different types of Gateway licenses?

  • The Platform license allows an unlimited number of connections to Citrix Virtual Apps, Citrix Virtual Desktops, or StoreFront by using ICA Proxy.
  • The Universal License is an add-on license on top of Citrix ADC platform licenses. This allows VPN connections to the network from the Citrix Gateway plug-in, a SmartAccess logon point, or Secure Hub, WorxWeb, or Secure Mail. For more information refer to Citrix Gateway License Types.

How to check the current concurrent user sessions licensed?

  • In the configuration utility, on the Configuration tab, in the navigation pane, expand System and then click Licenses. In the Licenses pane, you will see a green check mark next to Citrix Gateway. The Maximum Citrix Gateway Users Allowed field displays the number of concurrent user sessions licensed on the appliance.

How to check whether the licensed throughput limit is reached?

  • We can extract the real time throughput using newnslog. For example, if license throughput is 500Mbps, then we can extract the real time throughput over 500 using the following command:> nsconmsg -K newnslog -g mbits -d past -s disptime=1 -s ratecount=500 | more
reltime:mili second between two records Mon Feb  5 13:47:13 2018
  Index   rtime totalcount-val      delta rate/sec symbol-name&device-no&time
     12    7000      801130681       3701      528 allnic_tot_rx_mbits  Mon Feb  5 13:47:55 2018
     13       0      460776045       3682      526 nic_tot_rx_mbits interface(0/2) Mon Feb  5 13:47:55 2018
     14    7000      801134437       3756      536 allnic_tot_rx_mbits  Mon Feb  5 13:48:02 2018
     15       0      460779784       3739      534 nic_tot_rx_mbits interface(0/2) Mon Feb  5 13:48:02 2018
     16    7000      801138166       3729      532 allnic_tot_rx_mbits  Mon Feb  5 13:48:09 2018
     17       0      460783497       3713      530 nic_tot_rx_mbits interface(0/2) Mon Feb  5 13:48:09 2018
     18    7000      801141896       3730      532 allnic_tot_rx_mbits  Mon Feb  5 13:48:16 2018
     19       0      460787213       3716      530 nic_tot_rx_mbits interface(0/2) Mon Feb  5 13:48:16 2018
     20    7000      801145623       3727      532 allnic_tot_rx_mbits  Mon Feb  5 13:48:23 2018
     21       0      460790929       3716      530 nic_tot_rx_mbits interface(0/2) Mon Feb  5 13:48:23 2018
     22    7000      801149353       3730      532 allnic_tot_rx_mbits  Mon Feb  5 13:48:30 2018
     23       0      460794646       3717      531 nic_tot_rx_mbits interface(0/2) Mon Feb  5 13:48:30 2018
     24    7000      801153067       3714      530 allnic_tot_rx_mbits  Mon Feb  5 13:48:37 2018
     25       0      460798342       3696      528 nic_tot_rx_mbits interface(0/2) Mon Feb  5 13:48:37 2018

How to check whether packets are dropped on licensing throughput being reached?

  • Use the following command to check whether packets are dropped:​>nsconmsg -K newnslog -d current -g nic_err_rl_pkt_drops -s disptime=1 | more

reltime:mili second between two records Fri Feb  2 00:12:38 2018
  Index   rtime    totalcount-val      delta rate/sec symbol-name&device-no&time
      0 1966993         23723602          478       68 nic_err_rl_pkt_drops interface(1/2) Fri Feb  2 00:12:38 2018
      1       0         48048402          465       66 nic_err_rl_pkt_drops interface(1/1) Fri Feb  2 00:12:38 2018
      2       0       8307679782       145475    20782 nic_err_rl_pkt_drops interface(0/2) Fri Feb  2 00:12:38 2018
      3    7000         23723933          331       47 nic_err_rl_pkt_drops interface(1/2) Fri Feb  2 00:12:45 2018
      4       0         48048712          310       44 nic_err_rl_pkt_drops interface(1/1) Fri Feb  2 00:12:45 2018
      5       0       8307787105       107323    15331 nic_err_rl_pkt_drops interface(0/2) Fri Feb  2 00:12:45 2018
      6    7000         23723941            8        1 nic_err_rl_pkt_drops interface(1/2) Fri Feb  2 00:12:52 2018
      7       0         48048735           23        3 nic_err_rl_pkt_drops interface(1/1) Fri Feb  2 00:12:52 2018
      8       0       8307811163        24058     3436 nic_err_rl_pkt_drops interface(0/2) Fri Feb  2 00:12:52 2018   

How can I find out what the licensed throughput is for a ADC appliance?

How to add more users to existing Gateway licenses?

  • You would install an additional Universal License. For example, let's say you have already installed a Universal License that contains 100 user licenses and after you install the second Universal License which contains 400 user licenses the total number of user licenses now will equal 500.

Remote Access

How do I give external access to users to work from home?

How do I configure Multi-factor authentication for my external users?

How do I Optimizing Citrix Gateway VPN for Office365?

How do I easily deploy Remote PC Access to workstations to give users access from home? 

Scalability

How many Cloud Connectors do I need to have to support my increase of users?

How do I calculate the number of VDAs I need to deploy for the increase of users?

 

User logon and session analytics

How can I monitor active users to determine how to best scale?

How can I monitor various insights of the Citrix ADC instances’ data?

You can use Analytics feature of Citrix ADM to monitor Citrix ADC.
 

Troubleshooting

Issue/Introduction

Recommendations on remote work for Business Continuity.