The IT Melting Pot!

Hi again!

If you haven’t read Part 1 then I highly recommend doing so prior to going directly to the upgrade that we’re covering in this post!

Prepare for a journey in this post about Citrix StoreFront upgrade, uninstallation, console and how messy it could be! NOT all the time, sometimes it “just works”! 😉

My little NetScaler is already upgraded to 10.1 so unfortunately I couldn’t take you on that journey as well, so we’ll start with the StoreFront upgrade from 1.2 to 2.0 in this post. These are the steps that we need to cover as highlighted in the migration guide that seems very short and straight forward:

Upgrade StoreFront 1.2 to 2.0.

1. Logon to the StoreFront server console.
2. Upgrade StoreFront by running the StoreFront 2.0 installer as an administrator.
3. When the upgrade is completed, open StoreFront administration snap-in, remove CloudGateway controller from each store as this will be moved in the migration solution.
4. Open NetScaler Gateway Properties and for each gateway defined and change the version field in settings from 9.x to 10.0.x or later.
5. Test the configuration by logging on through web browser or Citrix Receiver.
6. Verify if the users are able to login and authenticate to StoreFront defined stores configured.

Is it this easy?

Ok, I’ve downloaded the 2.0 installer, and I’m logged on to the server.

Before we even start the upgrade there are things that could go wrong in removal or upgrades of StoreFront. And one that I’ve seen cause a lot of headache for a lot of people out there is that they have the Windows Firewall service disabled. Though the installation and removal wants to delete or add these rules the installation will fail unless this service is running. As you can see in this picture below you see the FW rule added in StoreFront 1.2:

So let’s verify that the Windows FW service is started, and it is!

I’ll now start the installation by double-clicking the StoreFront 2.0 installer!

What is this popup that came directly after starting the installer?

Wait, ok so you guys at Citrix couldn’t ask me whether you could do this for me? My plan is to upgrade, so please just add a little step in your upgrade program that does this for me… change request #1 for the next SF release and it’s upgrade process! Verify pre-requisites or deal with them!

For more info about the HDX Engine and config of the HTML5 client look at this page: Installing and Configuring Receiver for HTML5. If you need to download it you can do that here if you haven’t already installed it but think it’s a good idea to add after we’re done with the upgrade: Receiver for HTML5.

Now we need to figure out how to open the tool and remove the Receiver for HTML5 from all RfW (Receiver for Web) sites…. I couldn’t for some reason find it, must be that we ran a tech preview version I guess so it’s not in the start menu, or under “add/remove programs”… so let’s try and install this new 1.1 version and see what happens, can we remove it then after that?

Ok, what now? Can we uninstall it and remove all site config? Let’s open the config tool from the Start Menu:

The tool is open but it says that no sites are configured, great! Yet another tool that isn’t backwards compatible…

What shall we do now… hmm…. read the page again to see if Citrix has a note in there about “upgrading”… and yes, they do mention this of course:

Upgrading from Receiver for HTML5 1.0
Receiver for HTML5 does not currently support in-place upgrades. To upgrade from Citrix Receiver for HTML5 1.0, first make a note of any Receiver for Web URLs configured for Receiver for HTML5 that you want to retain. Then, uninstall Citrix Receiver for HTML5 1.0 and install Citrix Receiver for HTML5 1.1.

Now I then have to find version 1.0 of the tool, install that version and see if that one will see my sites that are configured with the HTML5 Receiver… but it’s NOT that easy to find that downloader on the site. It’s not on the download page for version 1.1 of course! And its not under the Legacy client section either!!!

Aaarghhh…….!!! Can google find it for us? First page I find is Mr Poppelgaards site where he has a blog post of it, and also a link to the download page! Yes, but nooooo.. Citrix has removed the page! Back to square one…

Hmm.. now I’m really getting irritated! Let’s skip this whole upgrade b**lsh*t! I’ll ensure that we keep all the settings of the stores that we have today and then let’s uninstall StoreFront 1.2 instead and all its files etc.!!! Then install StoreFront 2.0….

Conclusion = upgrading is NOT always that easy (especially in this case where the server has had more than one (1) version of the product before and already has gone through an upgrade!

Ok, so now I’ll make a note of which IIS site it’s using, ports, SSL certs that are bound to it etc:

Then let’s make a copy of the folder structure (yea I know I could have just taken the web.config files that are in there but I’ll make it easy for me)… let’s make a copy of the whole site folder so we know we have all config of farms, gateways, STA’s etc.

Now let’s uninstall StoreFront 1.2 (and remember that I’m actually doing this over an ICA session that was initiated from this StoreFront server though I’m sitting home this late Sunday evening…) 😉

I’ll accept it and hope that it works otherwise I’ll not be able to get back in until when I’m at the office tomorrow morning 😉

Now we can only wait… and see if it goes through..

Wow… not expected but I’m not surprised…

Ok, even the backup of uninstalling 1.2 and then install 2.0 failed, this is just great! Once again I turned to our friend Google and found this post that actually had the same event id that I have: Thread: Need manual uninstall instructions. Started to follow steps highlighted:

Closed PowerShell and ran it as admin again and did step 2:

Closed PowerShell and now tried to uninstall again through the control panel:

thinking… thinking….

Yes, yes oooooh yes!!!! Finally…. not what I intended but now StoreFront 1.2 is REMOVED!

What I’m not going to do is to directly go and install SF 2.0, because I wan’t to clear files etc… just to ensure that I can go to bed sometime tonight and not get any more errors in the case that the uninstallation left stuff! I renamed folder under wwwroot folder….

Let’s kick of the StoreFront 2.0 installation now and see what happens!

Yeah, we’re there! finally StoreFront 2.0 is installed, not through and upgrade but we managed to do it over the ICA session that was started from the StoreFront 1.2 instance that we removed along the way… Of course I have to do all the config again though I gave up on the upgrade…

Nooooooo.. another error!!!! But I’ve seen this one before during another installation at a customer site.

Error:

An error occured running the command: ‘Set-DSNewClusterEnvironment’

A couple of resource “out there” says that this could be because the account you logged in with doesn’t have permissions to “Manage auditing and security log properties”, but this I have:

I now remember that I forgot to rename the Program Files folder of the SF 1.2 installation…. so have to uninstall SF 2.0 first…..

And now delete the “C:\Program Files\Citrix\StoreFront folder, and ensure that the FULL version of .NET Framework 4.0 is installed on the server and not just the Client version as also highlighted here in this thread.

The IIS Application Pools where not deleted by the uninstaller either.. remove those!

So first I uninstalled the client version and “extended” that we had on the server, rebooted the server. Now downloaded and kicked off the installation of the Full version of .NET 4 Framework:

Ok, let’s reboot the server and then start the StoreFront 2.0 install again and see if it works this time as according to the Citrix forum thread!

And this time the installer halted AGAIN!

Ran the ClearUp1.ps1 PowerShell script, then restarted the console and tried again, AND NOW IT WORKED!

So then it was just to add all the details back and REMOVE the AppController from the list of “Farms” under the store. And after clicking “OK” on the last step of the Store and Gateway settings it of course got to this error:

Sigh…. what now then? Checking the event log I found event ID 0 with this message that it didn’t have permissions to the Receiver StoreFront folder.. what?

I restarted the console and started it again to see if it had configured anything (like the store and RfW but failed on gateway etc..).. but no. It’s back to the original config state:

I once again checked the NTFS permission on the folder highlighted in the event Id, but those where fine. I definitly have permissions to it… but perhaps the PowerShell script cannot do it for some reason which I assume is called to configure the stores etc from the GUI. So lets’ check the execution policy of PowerShell, it’s set to:

Let’s change it to Unrestricted and try to relaunch the console and try again!

And this time it was interesting that the GW settings where written to the web.config file before though I can now just select it… but the store was not there.

Same thing *again*…

Let’s now then remove all config by running both ClearUp1 and ClearUp2 PowerShell scripts…. should have done that before… hmm… Ok, that is done! Let’s uninstall and install StoreFront again… check!

Now let’s see what happens!!!!! Installation went through without issues! Loading console….. clicking “Create a new deployment”…. loading loading… setting Base URL (selecting IIS site etc.)… trying to create it… takes too long…. NO!!!!! Same error again!!!

What is this!?!?!

Restarted the console and tried again, now it got further.. can now enter Store name:

This doesn’t seem stable.. should have installed SF 2.0 on a separate server a looong time ago and would have been done by now! 😉 And it failed again to create the Store… hmm.. complaining again about permissions to C:\Program Files\Citrix\Receiver StoreFront and subfolder… now gave EVERYONE Full Controll to it and all subfolders and files ( I know this is NOT something U want to do, but for this test I’m just not keen on finding out the exact permissions required, it worked with SF 1.2 on this same box a couple of HOURS ago!). Logged of and back on to get a new token and let’s see what happens now!

Ok, this time it went through!!! We’re almost there!!

Now let’s see if we can create the Gateway settings and then give it a try, have to get this up and running so that I can use it to do Part 3 of this blog series remotely (AppController 2.6 to 2.8 upgrade and NS config for it)!

Yeah, GW added:

Ok, so now I’m back to square one! I can launch my apps again externally! 🙂

Lessons learnt…. I think that Citrix could check and verify that the server settings are ok and that all pre-requisites are there before trying to allow us to click the upgrade button, and also that they correct stuff along the way…

CITRIX NEEDS A “STEVE JOBS” person to simplify their whole product portfolio!!!

Wow.. that took a bit longer than expected but now StoreFront 2.0 is there and we can move on to the AppController upgrade. That’s for Part 3 of this blog series!

But that one I’ll not do tonight, so stay tuned for part 3 where we try to upgrade AppController 2.6 with all the apps to 2.8!

//Richard