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Citrix Storefront 2.1 Upgrade to 2.5 – Issues Experienced

 STOREFRONT 2.5 UPGRADE from 2.1 – Notesstorefront-storeweb

We were running Storefront 2.1. It was installed and working fine for all normal storefront web and support for SSON legacy clients with a 2 node storefront farm via a load balanced netscaler setup.

We decided to install the Storefront 2.5 over the top – just to see how it would behave. We downloaded the new version, took a server snapshot, and then ran the install as administrator.

First and foremost its identical to the 2.1 installation and actually looks like brand new install. During the install it mentions nothing upgrading, just simply installs and takes a good 20 minutes, with little in the way of feedback along the way.

The following problems were experienced after the upgrade of our Storefront servers.

  1.        Clients can no longer SSON through the PNAgent
  2.        Storefront webpage only displaying 1 of the 2 delivery controllers configured. (legacy xenapp 4.5, nothing from xenapp 6.5)

Solution

We ended up wiping the store configuration entirely and starting again.

No amount of changing or disabling and reenabling the existing store would work, and its not like its that difficult to recreate the same site with the same name. This would be frustrating if we had many multiple stores.

All testing was carried out without the netscalers or the LB services. This was to be sure it wasn’t adding its own complexities or problems to the setup.

During testing the local hosts file was updated so I could be sure I was targeting the individual storefront servers I was upgrading at the time.

Further details / Troubleshooting steps.

PROBLEM 1

Tried Reboot – didnt fix

Tried the PS Script to enable SSON for legacy – didnt fix

Checked the settings for the legacy clients – it was enabled and store correctly listed

Disabled legacy support

Re-enabled Legacy support (without SSON)

Online Legacy client prompts for user and password, could authenticate successfully only displaying the legacy 4.5 apps from one of two delivery controllers listed.

Run  powershell command as administrator on the Storefront server

& “C:Program FilesCitrixReceiver StoreFrontScriptsEnablePnaForStore.ps1” -SiteID 1 -ResourcesVirtualPath /Citrix/Store -LogonMethod sson – to re enable the legacy SSON

Legacy clients get error messages popup saying its authenticating,

Citrix Onling Legacy client attempting to authenticate
Citrix Onling Legacy client attempting to authenticate

Then the server could not be contacted.

 

Online legacy client unable to authenticate to upgraded storefront server
Online legacy client unable to authenticate to upgraded storefront server

Then magically refreshes a 3rd time and just logs in anyway!?

 

PROBLEM 2

Removed XENAPP65 Delivery controller and readded settings for 2 ZDC’s – Didnt work

Added just one of the ZDC’s as an IP address – still not working, website now slower and authentication takes twice as long.

Removing store entirely.

Readded the store entirely, connected XA65 first and tested – both website and PNAGENT Legacy worked (once again running the Powershell PNAgent command

& “C:Program FilesCitrixReceiver StoreFrontScriptsEnablePnaForStore.ps1” -SiteID 1 -ResourcesVirtualPath /Citrix/Store -LogonMethod sson

Powershell output from the command that enabled SSON for storefront legacy support
Powershell output from the command that enabled SSON for storefront legacy support

If the client had connected while the authentication method was reset you will see

Legacy online plugin will change the authentication method automatically
Legacy online plugin will change the authentication method automatically

It logged in! Success!

Propogate changes to the other server (also just upgraded) – DONE.

Piece of cake… *ahem*

Delete Storefront store from Citrix receiver.

Follow this one at your own risk, it hasn’t been thoroughly tested other than testing the fact the storefront site has actually been ‘removed’ so the end user is prompted to install / log in again.

Scenario: Client upgrading from 1.2 storefront, wanted to change names or url, store and cert. Wanted 2.1 storefront. Didnt want to upgrade or migrate.

Solution: We installed a separate 2.1 storefront server, configured it accordingly. Published the site, tested the site, then change the _citrixreceiver SRV record so the end users could enter their EMAIL address in the receiver login page. The existing store would still exist and duplicate icons would show and various other pain occurred unless the end users removed the original storefront store.

This could be manually done from the receiver or alternatively we ran a GPO on a per user basis (run once) to delete the following keys (we only had one site – so it didnt matter if we wiped the whole key/store)

  • HKCUSoftwarecitrixdazzle*
  • HKCUSoftwarecitrixreceiverSR*
  • HKCUSoftwarecitrixreceiverctxaccount*

This cleared the remembered store entries on the local W7 host and the users were prompted to type in their email details to connect to the storefront again – only this time because the _srv record was updated they connected to the new site.

Clunky, but so far it has worked, everytime.

Im sure there are plenty of other better ways of doing this, please do let me know if you have any advice / ideas ! We also tried the receiver clean up utility, which completely removes the receiver but somehow managed to leave some of the start menu shortcuts behind and didnt run for every user correctly..