Centralized site management (Preview)

As a Full Administrator of multiple sites, you can designate a primary site and link other sites for centralized management. This feature lets you improve the overall operational efficiency across various aspects:

• Aggregated user access. End users log on to one Citrix Workspace URL (primarycustomer.cloud.com) and access all their app and desktop, regardless of the site in which those resources are deployed.
• Aggregated help desk operations. Help desk administrators can view helpdesk-related information for all sites through a unified Monitor console.
• Easy Full configuration administration. Administrators can easily switch between multiple sites in their organization. They can switch sites through the Full Configuration interface dropdown list in the upper right corner of the interface.

Note:

When you switch between sites, each site’s full configuration information is handled separately. One site configuration is not combined with another site configuration in the Manage console.

This article provides a step-by-step guide on configuring centralized site management using the Full Configuration interface. For more information about the PowerShell approach, see Preview: Aggregate multiple Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service instances.

The following diagram illustrates the hierarchical primary-secondary architecture.

Primary and secondary in the diagram represent the following:

• Primary (also known as hub) - The site where centralized site management is configured.
• Secondary (also known as spoke) - The sites added to the primary site for management.

Preparation

Before you begin, you need:

• Designate a primary cloud account - Determine the primary cloud account or the primary site and ensure that you have Full Administrator access to the site.

• Ensure you have full admin permissions - Ensure that you receive the Full Administrator invites for other sites (cloud accounts) managed by your organization. For more information, see Invite individual administrators.

Configure centralized site management

As a full administrator of multiple sites (cloud accounts), associate the primary site with secondary sites for centralized site management.

1. Sign in to Citrix Cloud. All sites (cloud accounts) where you have the Full Administrator role appear.
2. Select the account that you want to use as the primary site.
3. In the DaaS tile, click Manage.
4. From Manage > Full Configuration, select Settings in the left pane.

5. In the Centralize site management section, click Add.

   

6. On the Add DaaS sites page, all accounts where you have the Full Administrator role appear. Select the cloud accounts that you want to add as secondary sites, and then click Save.

   

   Note:

   • For a Citrix Cloud account to appear here for selection, you must be a full administrator on that account. For information about how to add the current account to an account as an administrator, see Add new administrator.
   • For optimal centralized site management, we recommend adding no more than four secondary sites. This limit is mandated by the scalability constraints of the Workspace platform. See Workspace platform scalability limits.

7. To add or delete secondary sites, go to Settings > Centralize site management, and click Manage. The Manage button is enabled only for the primary site.

Tip:

To add subsecondary sites to a secondary site, you must switch to the corresponding customer using Change customer.

Refresh your browser for the site configuration changes to appear. The site selection box appears at the top right corner of the console.

Manage sites from a single interface

1. Select a site as needed from the dropdown list.
2. From the left pane, select a node for site management. For example, select Machine Catalogs to start creating or managing catalogs for this site.

3. On the Settings page, select the site from the dropdown list at the right corner.

   

   Note:

   If you sign in using the user account that has the Full Administrator role of the primary site, you can manage the primary site and its secondary sites without changing customers.

When you are on the secondary site configurations on the Full Configuration console, the Manage button on the Centralize site management workflow on the Settings page is disabled. From the secondary site or cloud account, you can only view and manage the corresponding site configurations. You do not have the permission to add or manage other sites.

For more information on the primary and secondary permissions, see the example configuration given below:

Example scenario

The company XYZ is headquartered at H and has branches at S1 and S2, each with a dedicated DaaS site and distinct administrative access:

• The user account Admin 1 is the Full Administrator of sites H, S1, and S2.
• The user account Admin 2 is the Full Administrator of sites H and S1.
• The user account Admin 3 is the Full Administrator of site H.
• The user account Admin 4 is the Full Administrator of site S.

As Admin 1, to centralize site management for H, S1, and S2, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to Citrix Cloud and select the cloud account H.
2. Access the Full Configuration console, go to Settings > Centralize site management, and then click Add.
3. On the Add DaaS site page, select the cloud accounts associated with S1 and S2 as the secondary sites.
4. Click Save.
5. Refresh your browser. The site selection drop-down list appears in the top right corner, displaying the options H, S1, and S2.

6. To create and manage resources for a site (for example, S1), follow these steps:

   1. Select the site from the site selection drop-down list.
   2. Select the corresponding node from the left pane to proceed (for example, select the Machine Catalog node to create VMs; select the Settings node to configure global settings for this site).

After the completion of centralized site management, user experiences of different roles within the H, S1, and S2 sites are as follows:

• Full Administrator of H. After accessing Full Configuration, you can view a secondary site (S1 or S2) in the site selection drop-down list only when you are the Full Administrator of that site. For example, Admin 2 can view the sites H and S1 while Admin 3 can view only the site H.

• Full Monitor administrator. You can use the universal search feature to search for users, machines, endpoints, and transactions across all aggregated sites (H, S1, and S2) in the Monitor interface. For more information, see Aggregated Search across multiple DaaS instances (Preview).

• End user of H, S1, or S2. When signing in to the workspace URL using the headquarter’s workspace URL, h1.cloud.com, you can view all assigned apps and desktops, regardless of their deployment site (H, S1, or S2).