Stupid Citrix Trick #9: Deploying A Delivery Group With Powershell

Problem: You're deploying a Delivery Group to a XenApp farm using Powershell.

Solution: NOT AS SIMPLE as you'd expect!

Citrix had done a really good job of integrating Powershell automation into their system.  Anything you can do in the GUI, you can do in Powershell, and I have heard that the system itself uses Powershell to make its changes.  Still, there are a few gotchas here and there that you have to look out for.

One gotcha in particular nearly made me lose my mind.

All I wanted to do was to create a delivery group and publish some applications to it.  Pretty simple, right?  There's a straightforward Powershell function that does just this:

New-BrokerDesktopGroup
-Name $GroupName
-Description $GroupDescription
-DeliveryType DesktopsAndApps
-DesktopKind Shared
-IsRemotePC $false
-SecureIcaRequired $false
-SessionSupport MultiSession
-TimeZone $TimeZone

As you can see from the options we're applying, this group is delivering both desktops and applications and its servers are used by multiple simultaneous sessions - basically an old-school Citrix server.  The information specified is pretty much what you'd need to supply when using the GUI, so you should be able to add some servers and start firing up your apps, right?

Not so fast, buckaroo.  If you published applications to that delivery group, no one would ever see them, and that's because you have to create another object, a Broker Entitlement Policy Rule.  Here's what the code looks like:

New-BrokerAppEntitlementPolicyRule

-Name $GroupName

-DesktopGroupUid $GroupUid

-Enabled $true

-ExcludedUserFilterEnabled $false

-IncludedUserFilterEnabled $false

-LeasingBehavior Allowed

-SessionReconnection Always

The $GroupName and $GroupUid are for the group you just created, natch. We're naming the rule the same as the group; you can name it something else if you prefer.

I'm not really sure why this rule is required.  It's created silently when using the GUI, so why couldn't it be automatically configured when the DeliveryType is "DesktopsAndApps" or "AppsOnly"?  I suspect it's because that XenApp 7 grew out of the XenDesktop product, not from XenApp 6.5 (at least that's my understanding).  Support for publishing apps was more or less bolted on, and some of the joints are still visible.

In addition, and more aggravating, the documentation for New-BrokerDesktopGroup does not tell you that there's another step before you can publish apps.  If you don't create it, everything will look as though it's configured properly but the apps will not be visible.

Let me know in the comments if this helped you. 'Til next time...