Citrix Secure Developer Spaces™

Network connections for Citrix SecurSpaces™ Flex

This article describes how Citrix SecurSpaces™ Flex workspaces connect to customer-owned systems, the available connectivity options, and what each option enables.


Overview

Citrix SecurSpaces Flex workspaces run in a Citrix-managed Azure tenant. To enable developer workflows, workspaces typically need access to customer-owned systems — such as identity providers, Git repositories, CI/CD pipelines, artifact stores, and secrets managers.

Connectivity between the Citrix-managed execution plane and customer-owned systems is established through an integration layer. This layer uses standard Azure networking primitives. The customer is responsible for configuring their side of the connection.


Connectivity options

Citrix SecurSpaces Flex supports two connectivity options for connecting workspaces to customer-owned infrastructure.

Azure virtual network (vNET) peering

Azure vNET peering creates a private, low-latency network path between the Citrix-managed Azure virtual network and a virtual network in the customer’s Azure subscription.

Use this option when:

  • Your customer-owned systems (IdP, Git, CI/CD, secrets manager) are hosted in Azure.
  • You want private, high-performance connectivity without traffic routing over the public internet.

What the customer configures:

  • A virtual network in the customer’s Azure subscription.
  • A peering request from the customer vNET to the Citrix-managed vNET (Citrix provides the resource identifier during setup).
  • Network security group (NSG) rules and routing to allow workspace traffic to reach the target systems.

VPN gateway

A VPN gateway connects the Citrix-managed Azure vNET to the customer network using an IPsec/IKE VPN tunnel.

Use this option when:

  • Your customer-owned systems are on-premises or in a non-Azure environment.
  • Azure vNET peering is not available or is not suitable for your network architecture.

What the customer configures:

  • A VPN device or gateway at the customer network boundary.
  • An IPsec/IKE tunnel configuration (Citrix provides the remote gateway endpoint during setup).
  • Routing rules to direct workspace traffic to the appropriate on-premises systems.

What workspaces can reach

Once connectivity is established, workspaces can reach any system accessible within the connected network, subject to the routing and security group rules you configure. Common integration targets include:

System type Examples
Identity providers Azure Active Directory, Okta, any SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect provider
Source code repositories GitHub Enterprise, GitLab self-managed, Bitbucket Server, Azure Repos
Artifact repositories Artifactory, Nexus, Azure Artifacts
CI/CD systems Jenkins, Azure DevOps, CircleCI
Secrets managers HashiCorp Vault, Azure Key Vault
Internal data sources Databases, data lakes, internal APIs

No connectivity (default state)

By default, before any connectivity option is configured, workspaces have access to:

  • The public internet (subject to egress policy rules you define in the Citrix SecurSpaces console).
  • Citrix-managed platform services (required for workspace operation).

Workspaces do not have default access to customer-owned private networks. Connectivity must be explicitly configured using one of the options above.


Responsibility summary

Task Responsible party
Providing the Citrix-managed vNET resource identifier or VPN endpoint Citrix
Configuring the customer-side peering or VPN tunnel Customer
Configuring NSG rules and routing on the customer network Customer
Managing access to customer-owned systems once connected Customer
Enforcing egress policy within workspaces Citrix (platform) + Customer (policy configuration)

More information

Network connections for Citrix SecurSpaces™ Flex