An Overview and an Alternative to Citrix Access Gateway

Citrix Access Gateway is a solution that provides administrators application-level control and, at the same time, provides access from anywhere. It provides IT administrators with a point of control to manage access and permissions based on both the user and the endpoint device. Moreover, it grants users secure access and single sign-on to their published virtual applications.

It is deployed in a physical or virtual machine and is positioned between the external and the internal network. It works by filtering the access-checking credentials and policies to redirect users to their allocated resources.

Citrix Access Gateway has been discontinued and replaced by a newer, more updated version called Citrix Gateway.

Citrix Gateway Architecture

The components which make up Citrix Gateway are:

Accounting, authorization, and identification. Users can connect on to Citrix Gateway using credentials that Citrix Gateway or authentication servers located in the secure network, such LDAP or RADIUS, recognize by configuring authentication, authorization, and accounting.
Virtualized servers. The virtual server for Citrix Gateway is an internal object that symbolizes all the specified services that are made available to users. Additionally, the virtual server serves as the users’ access point for these services.
Virtualized adapter. Applications requiring IP spoofing can be run on the Citrix Gateway virtual adapter. The Citrix Secure Access agent is installed together with the virtual adapter on the user device. Users connecting to the internal network utilize the intranet IP address as the source IP address for the outbound connection between Citrix Gateway and internal servers.
Network assets. These comprise all network services, including file servers, software, and websites, that users may access via Citrix Gateway.

Citrix Access Gateway Features

SmartAccess provides flexible control of access and actions.
Acts like a VPN solution and provides performance and scalability.
Delivers secure remote access to virtual apps and desktops.
For end users, Access Gateway provides a single point of remote access, and its single sign-on capabilities decrease the number of login attempts. Also, always-on access guarantees that sessions are automatically reconnected after a network connection failure or roaming between access points.
For administrators, Access Gateway provides swift deployment and management. The client is deployed and accessed from the web. Businesses can provide local-like access from any location to mobile and remote users.

Licensing

Citrix can provide you with either Platform or Universal license files when installing Citrix Gateway. To access available licenses and generate a license file, you go to the Citrix website and save the license file to your computer after it has been generated. After downloading the license file to your computer, you’ll need to upload it to Citrix Gateway.

Platinum License

Users can connect to published applications on Citrix Virtual Apps or virtual desktops from Citrix Virtual Desktops with the Platform license. Citrix Receiver connections do not require a Citrix Gateway Universal license. Only the Platform license is needed for these connections.

Universal License

The number of concurrent user sessions is limited by the number of licenses acquired with the Citrix Gateway universal license.

You can have 100 concurrent sessions at any moment if you buy 100 licenses.
You can have 500 concurrent sessions at any moment if you buy a Standard edition license.
A license is released for the next user when a user concludes a session.

Parallels RAS: An Alternative to Citrix Access Gateway

Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) incorporates Secure Gateways under the same license, keeping costs low and providing centralized management. No matter how small or large your organization, IT Teams have complete control of capabilities and features from the same console—no need for expensive hardware add-ons. In addition, you can deploy more than one Secure Gateway and keep them load-balanced with the High Availability Load Balancer (HALB) appliance, developed to provide high availability load balancing and is offered under the same all-inclusive license.

Parallels RAS also supports public, on-premises, and hybrid cloud deployment models.

Provide secure and load-balanced remote access to your organization’s resources!

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