Citrix Cloud Connectors are like the on-site representative for the Citrix Cloud control plane — the intermediary between your datacenter and Citrix Cloud. They are responsible for the communication between your VDAs and Citrix Cloud. Once the ICA session has been established, there are scenarios where they are removed from that final link, but even then they are passing along the busyness of your VDAs.
The Cloud Connector install is accomplished by simply browsing to your company’s Citrix Cloud instance from your intended Cloud Connector server, authenticating, and adding your data center as a Resource Location. The technology works seamlessly if you’ve covered all the pre-requisites detailed in our product documentation. Most of the time, when you install Cloud Connector on the server, the happy result is this:
You’ve done your due diligence and made sure all is configured as it should be. You’ve even run the Citrix Cloud Connector Connectivity Check Utility and the result was all green checks! But what happens when the result isn’t that happy success message?
That is exactly what happened on a recent customer engagement. We successfully installed Cloud Connectors in several datacenters. Then we ran into the error message below for our next datacenter. After troubleshooting we engaged Citrix Support and with their help found the cause and resolution to our issue. I hope this post can save you time and help you to avoid frustration!
Don’t Forget the BITS!
So you’ve received a result that isn’t so happy. Without the Cloud Connector install, the VDAs cannot communicate with Cloud Studio and the build work grinds to a halt. Where should you turn first for troubleshooting? In this post I’ll share some tips and resources to make troubleshooting as quick and painless as possible.
Start with our product documentation on troubleshooting the Cloud Connector. To troubleshoot common issues with installing or using the Cloud Connector, check out our Citrix Cloud Connector Troubleshooting Guide. One of my good habits is to always run the Citrix Cloud Connector Connectivity Check Utility on the server to verify all is well. This tool will help you find the domains that are being blocked and verify that you have all the necessary certificates. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used this tool to discover that someone forgot to install the DigiCert SHA2 Assured ID Code Signing certificate!
Next, check to make sure the server proxy settings are correctly configured for your network. Again, Citrix has excellent documentation on how to configure Cloud Connector to support a web proxy. On the Cloud Connector server, to configure your proxy server settings, select Internet Options in Internet Explorer, click on the Connections tab, select LAN settings, and input your proxy server IP address and the port number used.
Once the IE configuration is completed, open an elevated prompt and run the command:
netsh winhttp import proxy source =ie
This lets Windows know that you want it to use the Internet Explorer settings for a proxy server connection in the environment. Restart the OS to make the changes effective.
In most cases, this resolves the issue and you can resume your install.
But what happens when that same, unwelcome error message appears, after re-running the Cloud Connector installer?
That is when we may need to look a little BITS deeper. Citrix uses BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) to download these installer packages, and, in some cases, BITS also needs to be configured to use the proxy server. To do this, open an elevated command prompt and run the command listed below.
bitsadmin /util /setieproxy networkservice MANUAL_PROXY “proxy:port” “bypass list”
To ensure that BITS is using the proxy properly, replace the “proxy:port” information with the actual proxy server and port in use.
Wait 10-15 minutes and then retry the install. Viola! The Cloud Connector install succeeds and you can move on with your build.
Learn more about BITS and Citrix Cloud Connector.
I hope this saves you time and helps you to avoid frustration on your next Cloud Connector installation!
