We have been engaged in some very interesting work with our partners at SAP. SAP had some unique requirements which entailed providing one secure entry point for their customers (SSL VPN), and because they have so many customers/partners engaged at any one time in their lab's (average of 100), their users traffic needed to be secure as well. SAP Needed a secure front end for both Citrix Presentation Server and regular Application traffic through an SSL VPN, into their partner landscapes. This network diagram provides a visual context for the architecture and design we recommended for SAP.
Based on our work at SAP Co-Integration Laboratory (COIL) in Palo Alto, this Citrix SSL VPN CPS Deployment Guide walks you through deploying NetScaler SSL VPN as an ICA Proxy and authentication point. It then walks you through deploying Citrix Presentation Server and the steps necessary to connect the SSL VPN to the CPS Applications. The guide includes Session policies which direct users upon authentication to specific CPS farms on the backend of the NetScaler SSL VPN. Think of it as an authentication portal.
SSL VPN
Also, based on additional work we are doing at SAP COIL in Palo Alto, this Citrix SSL VPN Deployment Guide walks you through deploying NetScalers as an HA Pair, and then as an SSL VPN with ICA Proxy OFF. The intention was to use the SSL VPN for regular VPN traffic, and not Citrix Presentation Server traffic. Just as well, policies can be combined on the same NetScaler Application Switch to allow both non-CPS and CPS traffic to traverse the same SSL VPN.
Building new, customized solutions that support innovation is expensive and time-consuming because leveraging the functionality of your existing packaged applications is extremely difficult. Bringing Citrix and SAP Enterprise Services Architecture together reduces the dependence on customized applications, and increases flexibility and reduces time to deployment while reducing operational expenses.
This Citrix / SAP Enterprise SOA deployment guide was created out of a joint engagement between Citrix and SAP at the Co-Innovation Laboratory in Palo Alto, California, USA. This deployment guide walks through the step-by-step configuration details of how to configure the Citrix NetScaler for use as a front-end to SAP Portal for end-user traffic, that is HTTP ~ HTML. To further complement the value of the Enterprise SOA, this guide walks through the details of how to configure the Citrix NetScaler for use as a front-end to the SAP Composite Application Framework and SAP ERP Web Services platforms, providing a flexible load balancer and HTTPS encryption point for machine to machine web service traffic. With this deployment Citrix becomes an integral and flexible part of the SAP Enterprise SOA "applistructure" bringing together applications and technology for a fast, flexible and highly effective service oriented IT infrastructure.
