Citrix Connector appliance on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) – step by step guide

For my 2022 new year resolution, I am going to focus on writing a series of blogs on how to integrate Citrix and Google. In this blog, I will be discussing how to deploy Citrix Connector Appliance on GCP in no more than 20 minutes.

Citrix Connector appliance will provide Secure Workspace Access taking the Gateway connector role which has these capabilities. (https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-cloud/citrix-cloud-resource-locations/connector-appliance/secure-workspace-access.html)

The connector appliance can be deployed in any on-prem hypervisor like Hyper-V, Citrix Hypervisor(Xenserver), VMWare, as well as in any cloud HyperV, Azure, AWS, GCP.

There are 2 ways to configure a Connector Appliance

1. Uploading manually the disk, build an image and create a VM using the previous image on Google cloud Platform Console.
2. A PowerShell script (you need Google Cloud SDK – https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/quickstart) – It will provide the same outcome but everything will be automatized.

1 – Google Cloud Platform

First, we need to deploy the Connector appliance files to upload to our GCP deployment. Under Resource locations on Citrix cloud, we add a new connector appliance and select Google cloud platform

We download the file connector-appliance-gcp.zip.

• On your local system, extract the contents of connector-appliance-gcp.zip. (contains the file connector-appliance.tar.gz, which is the disk image of the Connector Appliance, and a PowerShell script that can be used to automatically deploy the Connector Appliance)
• In your Google Cloud Platform project, create a storage bucket. (Alternatively, you can use an existing storage bucket.)

• Inside your storage bucket, select Upload files and choose the file connector-appliance.tar.gz. Select the uploaded file to view its details. Copy the value of gsutil URI to the clipboard.

• Open the Cloud Shell by clicking the Activate Cloud Shell icon in the header bar.

• In your Cloud Shell, run the following command to create an image:
• gcloud compute images create “Image name” –guest-os-features=MULTI_IP_SUBNET –source-uri=”gsutil URI of uploaded connector-appliance.tar.gz file“

• From the main menu, select Compute Engine > VM Instances.
• Select Create Instance. In the pane that opens, specify the following information:
  1. In the Name field, specify a name for the Connector Appliance instance.
  2. Choose a region to locate the Connector Appliance in.
  3. Choose the machine configuration. Minimum requirements are 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM

• In the Boot disk section, click Change.
  1. In the section that opens, go to the Custom images tab.
  2. From the Image list, select the image you just created.

• In the Firewall section, enable HTTPS traffic to allow access to the Connector Appliance administration page.
  1. Specify any additional configuration required. For example, you might not want to use the default networking configuration.

Click Create.

10. In the VM Instances section, select your newly created VM to view its details.

If the Connector Appliance has only an internal IP address, use a bastion host (https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/connecting-advanced#bastion_host) or any VM inside the same subnetwork to go to the Connector Appliance administration page from your browser and continue the installation process.

Next step: Register your Connector Appliance with Citrix Cloud.

2 – PowerShell script

Using the PowerShell script is easier if everything works at the first time but if you have issues requires more knowledge in GCP and PowerShell to fix it. To use the provided PowerShell script to deploy the Connector Appliance, you must have the Google Cloud SDK installed on your system (https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/quickstart).

1. On your local system, extract the contents of connector-appliance-gcp.zip to a folder.
2. In PowerShell, change directory to the folder where the extracted files are located.
3. Run the command .\connector-appliance-upload-GCP.ps1.
4. In the browser window that opens, authenticate with the Google Cloud SDK with an account that has access to the project you want to deploy the Connector Appliance to.
5. In Google Cloud Tools for PowerShell, when prompted by the PowerShell script, select the project to use. Press Enter.
6. Follow the prompts in the script, which guide you through uploading the disk, creating an image, and creating a virtual machine.
7. After you have created the first VM, the script asks if you want to create another VM from the uploaded image.
   • Type y to create another VM.
   • Type n to exit the script.

After the Connector Appliance is deployed and has successfully started up, the script displays the internal IP address of the Connector Appliance. Alternatively, you can go to the Google Cloud Platform console to find the Connector Appliance internal IP address. The Compute Engine > VM Instances section displays the Connector Appliance IP address.

the Next step is mentioned above: Register your Connector Appliance with Citrix Cloud.

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