Citrix Storefront + Netscaler GW Optimal Gateway Routing. 1 Farm - Multiple Zones

Citrix Storefront + Netscaler GW Optimal Gateway Routing. 1 Farm/Site - Multiple Zones

Purpose:
This post is to share how I setup Optimal Gateway Routing (HDX Routing) using zones. I found a lot of documentation on how to set this up for multiple farms (Noted below). However I wasn't able to really find detailed information on how to set this up for just zones.

A quick run down of the environment I'm working on here.
1 Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops Farm/Site
Delivery Controllers in 2 geographically separated datacenters
Pairs of Netscalers also in the 2 datacenters noted above
9 zones within the farm. 2 within the above mentioned datacenters and 7 in offices across the nation. 
VDI's published out of the datacenters and testing publishing out from the offices

Apps published out of all locations (Initially for local access for each office) I'm sure there may be questions about how/why we are publishing apps and desktops but I don't want to get too in the weeds about that.  

Anyway so you probably came here because you ran through the other articles you google'd and didn't get what you were looking for when you were getting ready to configure the zone portion within the Storefront HDX routing settings. If you haven't read those articles yet please go run through them. See below. They have all the prerequisites you'll need to start this process. Once you have your certificates with SAN's for each of your netscaler gateways, have applied them then this is where we will pick up.


Directions

Configure Delivery Controller Zones

In your storefront config highlight your store and manage your delivery controllers for the site. Here I've created 2 different groups of controllers -- one for each datacenter.



Once you have those separated highlight the first set and click Edit

In the Edit Delivery Controller windows choose the Advanced Settings -- Settings button

  


In the Configure Advanced Settings click on the area next to the Zones field
 


In the Delivery Controller Zone Names window click on the Add button and fill in the zone names per appropriate site.
 



Once you fill in each of the zones it should look like below. Click OK. Follow this same procedure for your other zone(s).

Configure Storefront Optimal HDX Routing (AKA - Optimal Gateway Routing)

Complete the next steps after all of your zones have been configured. 

Highlight site and then click the Configure Store Settings link on the right. 

 

At this point I'm assuming you have gone through the setup of the location specific netscalers. If you haven't yet this is a good article. (https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX215663)

In the Configure Store Settings window click on the Optimal HDX Routing tab on the left. Then highlight the location that we are configuring.Once the site is highlighted click on the Manage Zones button.

  

In the Manage Zones window click on the Add button and fill in the zone names per appropriate site. 

 

After you have filled them in they should look like below as appropriate to each location. Click Ok. (This should look familiar as we did this for the delivery controllers earlier. They should mimic those settings per location)

 

Back in the Configure Store Settings window the settings should be updated like below.

Rinse and repeat this procedure for your other location(s. When completed it should look like this. Click Apply and then Click OK.

Oh and one more thing. Make sure to turn on user mapping and aggregation on Storefront to prevent users from having multiple icons of the same published app/desktop. 
https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/storefront/current-release/set-up-highly-available-multi-site-stores.html


References:
https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX215663
https://www.carlstalhood.com/storefront-cr-configuration-for-citrix-gateway/#optimal
https://www.jgspiers.com/storefront-high-availability-optimal-routing/ 

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