Citrix XenApp

What is Farm?

Farm is a collection of citrix servers which provide published applications to all users. It also prevent singel of failure of all citrix servers due to load balanced capabilities.

What is the default ICA Port number?

Connections without session reliability 1494

Connections with session reliability 2598

Citrix License uses - 27000 , License management console port - 8082
IMA communication 2512 , Xenapp Advanced console - 2513

What is an .ICA File, What is contained inside an ica File?
Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) file used by Citrix application servers; contains configuration information for connecting to different servers.

What is the purpose of the Data Collector?
The zone data collector is simply a Presentation Server which is performing the data collector role in a particular zone. The Presentation Server maintaining the data collector roll is responsible for directing all requests from ICA clients launching published applications

Difference's between ICA and RDP?
1. RDP works only under TCP/IP, while ICA works on many protocols.
2. RDP doesn't permit applications to run in a browser, while works for ICA
3. Session Reliability will be there in ICA,it is not in the RDP
4. Encryption is possible in ICA,it is not present in RDP
5. ICA also supports non windows like DOS, UNIX, MACOS, mobiles
6. RDP supprots only desktop or server console.
7. ICA supprots published applicaion, Desktop, Content, and it will work under 10kb- 20kb

ICA- Independent Computing Architecture (Citrix Protocol) 1494
RDP- Remort Desktop Protocol (Microsoft protocol) 3389

What is the use of Citrix IMA Service?
Independent Management Architecture Service (or IMA) provides the communication between servers in your Citrix environment. IMA is also your local cached data store. You can stop IMA if needed to do things like recreate local host cache without effecting users that are logged in.

Ports used by IMA?
2512: Used for Server to Server Communication
2513: Used for CMC to Data store Communication

How to Recover when IMA failed?
1. Check connectivity to data store. 
2. Try recreating lhc using the command dsmaint recreatelhc. 
3. Check for the .dll which is failing to load. (This can be found in HKLM\Software\Citrix\IMA\Runtime\CurrentlyLoadingPlugIn)