| As mentioned, the goal of any successful implementation is to make life as easy on the end-users as possible and if that eases the administration roll in the process then what a bonus. With the goal of easing the process for upgrading the ICA clients, Citrix has created the ICA Client Update Configuration Utility that enables you to schedule the download and installation of the latest ICA Client software from MetaFrame XP Servers to a wide range of ICA client devices. The ICA Client Distribution wizard places copies of ICA Clients in the database used by Client. The following sections describe how to mange ICA Clients through the ICA Client Update Configuration Utility.  When Citrix released a new product or Feature Release, Citrix also releases a Components CD which contains the latest ICA Clients. It gives you the ability to import all the ICA clients in to the ICA client database through the Citrix ICA Client Distribution Wizard. The latest image of all the ICA Clients can be downloaded from: http://www.citrix.com/download. At publication of this document 7.0 is the latest ICA client image package. Note: The ICA Client Distribution wizard also installs the pass-through ICA Win32 Client on the server. If you are utilizing the ICA Pass-through client then you will need to perform the following on all the MetaFrame XP server but you are only required to select the ICA Pass-through client. The following details how to update the ICA Client database from a MetaFrame XP with Feature Release 3 Component CD. 1. Insert the MetaFrame XP with Feature Release 3 Components CD. 2. Click Start click Programs click Citrix click MetaFrameXP click ICA Client Distribution Wizard 3. Click Next  4. Click Next to continue and copy the 7.0 ICA Clients from the CD-ROM drive.  5. Select the Custom radio button and click Next  5. Select the appropriate installation options and click Next to continue.  6. Click to select the appropriate ICA clients to install and click Next when finished.  7. Click to select the ICA Client(s) you would add to the ICA Client Update Database and click Next to continue. Note: If you know you will be supporting a particular client then I highly recommend not installing it. What happens is when a client logs on to a MetaFrame XP server MetaFrame will analyze it to see if it has the latest ICA client and compare it to the client listed in the ICA Client Database and hence the larger the list the longer it takes to login.  8. Click Finish.  You have now successfully updated the ICA Client database with the latest clients. Now you will want to keep your eyes posted to Citrix.com for any more recent ICA Client images that might need to be added. When Citrix releases updates to their ICA Clients that are newer than the ones located on the Components CD then you will need to download the update ICA clients from http://www.citrix.com/download and import them in to the ICA client database. The following details how to update the client database: 1. Obtain the latest ICA client. 2. Extract the ICA Client to you local C: drive. You can use a program like WinZip to extract the .exe version of the chosen client. 3. Click Start Programs Citrix MetaFrameXP ICA Client Update Configuration 4. Click Client New  5. Browse and select the update.ini file from the ICA client you extracted in step 2. Click Next  6. Select the desired configurations and click Next.  7. Click Next.  8. Click the Enabled check box in order to enable the new ICA Client software. Click Finish  The following details how to configure how the ICA Client Update Configuration Utility deals with client updates. 1. Right Click on the ICA Client that you want to configure and click Properties.  2. Check or Uncheck the Update to this version checkbox in order to enable the ICA clients. Note: If you will not be supporting a particular client version then I suggest you disable it to cut down on the amount of clients that will be parsed during the logon process. This will speed up the login process.  3. The Update Options tab gives you the ability to specify how the ICA client will be installed. Select the desired configuration and click OK.  8. 6. 4 How to Create a Central ICA Client Update Configuration Database Now that you have added the latest ICA clients and have configured which clients are active and how they will be updated, you will be ready to move the ICA Client database to a central location and configure all MetaFrame XP Servers to pull from the central database. The following details how to configure multiple MetaFrame XP servers to share a central ICA client database. 1. Browse to the ICA ClientDB folder. (by default it is located on C:\Program File\Citrix\ICA\CLIENTDB\)  2. Select all the files and folders (Ctrl + A). Right click on a blank area of the windows and click Copy.  3. Browse to the ICAClientDB share the you create above and right click on a blank area and click Paste.  4. Open the ICA Client Update Configuration Utility and from the menu bar click Database click Open.  5. In the File name text box enter the UNC path to the ICA ClientDB folder you copied the ICA Client files to in step 3 and click to open dbconfig.ini.  6. Click Database Click Set Default  7. Select the Set as Default Database on Local Machine checkbox and select all MetaFrame XP Servers and click OK.  8. You have now copied the the ICA client database to a centrally stored location.  With the release of MetaFrame XP with Feature Release 2, Citrix has given you the ability to enable automatic ICA Client updates on a per user and or group basis. This is very useful in rolling out new ICA client versions to a selected group of users to prevent against large numbers of clients wanting to upgrade at the same time which could severely affect a network due to a large amount of uses trying to download the updates all at once. By default, automatic ICA client updates occurs for all users. In order to enable ICA Client updates on a user by user basic I recommend to create a policy that disables ICA client updates, assign the all Citrix users to it and create another that enables client updates and assign only the users you want ICA clients updated for and set it to a higher priority than the disabled policy. The following defines how to create a MetaFrame XP policy to enable client polices on a user and or group basis. 1. Create a specific user global group to enable ICA Client updates. i.e., Enable ICA Client Updates 2. Open the Citrix Management Console, right click on Policies and click Create Policy. 3. First we are going to disable client updates for all users. Enter a name for the new policy. I recommend something like Disable ICA Client Updates. Click OK when finish. 4. Right click on the newly created policy and click Properties. 5. Click to select the Turn Off Auto Client Update policy Click to select the Rule Enabled radio button in the Auto Client Update box to turn off automatic client updates. Click OK to enable the policy.  6. Right click on the policy created in the above steps and click Assign Users. 7. Select a group to reflect all users. i.e., Domain Users, CTX Users. Click OK when finished. 8. Now we need to create a policy to enable Auto Client Updates for users and groups assigned. Right click on Policies and click Create Policy 9. Enter a name for the new policy. I recommend something like Enable ICA Client Updates. Click OK when finish 10. Right click on the newly created policy and click Properties. 11. Click to select the Auto Client Update policy Click to select the Rule Disabled radio button in the Auto Client Update box to turn on automatic client updates. Click OK to enable the policy.  12. Right click on the policy created in the above steps and click Assign Users. 13. Select the users group you created in step 1 and click OK when finished. You have now successfully created MetaFrame XP policies to enable automatic ICA Client updates. If you would like to enable client updates for a select user and or group, all you will need to do is add their users and or group to the Enable ICA Client Updates global group. |