Chapter 3: Citrix Access Suite 4

OVERVIEW

Citrix Access Suite is a complementary product suite to Microsoft's Terminal Services (included with Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Services Edition, Windows 2000 Server, and Windows Server 2003). Today, Citrix serves nearly 180,000 customers worldwide, facilitating a seamless user experience in heterogeneous computing environments, as well as application delivery across bandwidth-restricted connections. Citrix Access Suite 4 is the most significant update from Citrix in over five years , with over 50 new features compared with Access Suite 3.0.

Citrix Access Suite includes the following products:

• – Citrix Presentation Server (Enterprise Edition) for virtualized application delivery for both Windows and UNIX applications

• – Citrix Access Gateway (Advanced Edition) for universal SSL VPN remote access

• – Citrix Password Manager for enterprise single sign-on

In this chapter, we discuss the new features in version 4 as well as the enhancements that the Access Suite brings to Terminal Services, including:

• – Application support Access Suite 4 provides several tools, including Application Isolation Environment, which allows the access platform to support applications that won't run with just Terminal Services, and to support a larger number of applications running on the same server.

• – End-user experience Access Suite provides a myriad of features such as Citrix Web Interface, Speed Screen, and Universal Print Driver. These features dramatically improve the user experience and reduce administrative costs.

• – Enterprise management tools The included tools provide better manageability. Citrix provides Resource Manager, Installation Manager, and Network Manager, as well as a host of embedded management tools that present administrators with critical information as well as the automation of enterprise server environments.

• – Scalability Companies who have tried to use Terminal Services without Citrix for more than 100 concurrent users understand the tremendous challenges with Microsoft's Network Load Balancing, and lack of memory or CPU management. Citrix provides true Application Load Balancing, along with CPU and Memory utilization management. Citrix tests all releases and tools at the 1,000+ server farm Citrix e Labs.

• – Security Access Suite 4 provides encrypted access for all enterprise users from any location, without having to open firewall holes. Citrix provides and supports two options for secure remote access: Secure Gateway (included as a software component of Citrix Presentation Server) and Citrix Access Gateway (a SSL VPN appliance). Both provide a secure platform by which users can access the environment literally from anywhere , anytime , and anyplace, regardless of the firewall configurations ( assuming the environment allows SSL [port 443] traffic). Although Terminal Services RDP traffic is encrypted, it requires that port 3389 be open on the Data Center firewall as well as at the user's location(s). The Citrix Access Gateway is their robust SSL VPN appliance solution, and offers connectivity not just to Citrix Presentation Server, but to any corporate resource. And the Citrix Access Gateway provides advanced user access policies for granular control of data and application access.

• – Connectivity Universal access to applications from any client device, to applications on Windows or UNIX platforms. Although Microsoft now supports client access from Macintosh OS X and Windows clients , Citrix not only provides support for Mac and Windows, but also support for over 200 client operating systems, including most flavors of UNIX and Linux, DOS, and embedded devices.

Table 3-1 details the Citrix Access Suite value-add features compared to Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services.

Table 3-1: Citrix Access Suite Value-Add Features

Application publishing	One-to-many shadowing	Customized billing reports	User collaboration
Program Neighborhood	Cross-server shadowing	Track user access to applications	Panning and scaling (handhelds)
Anonymous user support	Shadowing indicator	Centrally install applications	Pass-through authentication
Content publishing	Auto client update	Distribute service packs	Seamless windows
Content redirection	Universal print driver	Package customized install	Multimonitor support
Novell NDS support	Web-based client install	Web Interface for MetaFrame	Application save position
Delegated administration	Support for multiple farms	Non-Windows client access	End-to-end security
Centralized management console	Auto client printer detection	Integration with MetaFrame Secure Network Management Gateway consoles	MetaFrame Secure Gateway
Connection control	Resource-based Load Management	Support for direct asynch	SSL/TLS 128-bit encryption
CPU prioritization	Schedule application availability	Client drive remapping	Support for digital certificates
Support for 1000+ servers in farm	Specify client IP range	Text-entry prediction	Socks 4 and 5 proxy support
Many-to-one shadowing	Application monitoring	Instant mouse-click feedback	SpeedScreen 4 browser acceleration