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Connect an on-premises Citrix Gateway as an identity provider to Citrix Cloud

September 21, 2023
Contributed by: 
J E C

Citrix Cloud supports using an on-premises Citrix Gateway as an identity provider to authenticate subscribers signing in to their workspaces.

By using Citrix Gateway authentication, you can:

  • Continue authenticating users through your existing Citrix Gateway so they can access the resources in your on-premises Virtual Apps and Desktops deployment through Citrix Workspace.
  • Use the Citrix Gateway authentication, authorization, and auditing (AAA) functions with Citrix Workspace.
  • Use features such as pass-through authentication, smart cards, secure tokens, conditional access policies, federation, and many others while providing your users access to the resources they need through Citrix Workspace.

Tip:

Learn more about supported identity providers with the Introduction to Citrix Identity and Authentication education course. The “Planning Citrix Identity and Access Management” module includes short videos that walk you through connecting this identity provider to Citrix Cloud and enabling authentication for Citrix Workspace.

Supported versions

Citrix Gateway authentication is supported for use with the following on-premises product versions:

  • Citrix Gateway 12.1 54.13 Advanced edition or later
  • Citrix Gateway 13.0 41.20 Advanced edition or later

Prerequisites

Cloud Connectors

You need at least two (2) servers on which to install the Citrix Cloud Connector software. These servers must meet the following requirements:

  • Meets the system requirements described in Cloud Connector Technical Details.
  • Does not have any other Citrix components installed, is not an Active Directory domain controller, and is not a machine critical to your resource location infrastructure.
  • Joined to the domain where your Site resides. If users access your Site’s applications in multiple domains, you must install at least two Cloud Connectors in each domain.
  • Connected to a network that can contact your Site.
  • Connected to the Internet. For more information, see System and Connectivity Requirements.
  • At least two Cloud Connectors are required to ensure a highly available connection with Citrix Cloud. After installation, the Cloud Connectors allow Citrix Cloud to locate and communicate with your Site.

For more information about installing the Cloud Connector, see Cloud Connector Installation.

Active Directory

Before enabling Citrix Gateway authentication, perform the following tasks:

  • Verify that your workspace subscribers have user accounts in Active Directory (AD). Subscribers without AD accounts can’t sign in to their workspaces successfully.
  • Ensure that the user properties in your subscribers’ AD accounts are populated. Citrix Cloud requires these properties to establish the user context when subscribers sign in. If these properties aren’t populated, subscribers can’t sign in to their workspace. These properties include:
    • Email address
    • Display name
    • Common name
    • SAM account name
    • User Principal Name
    • OID
    • SID
  • Connect your Active Directory (AD) to your Citrix Cloud account. In this task, you install the Cloud Connector software on the servers you prepared, as described in the Cloud Connectors section. The Cloud Connectors enable Citrix Cloud to communicate with your on-premises environment. For instructions, see Connect Active Directory to Citrix Cloud.
  • If you are performing federation with Citrix Gateway authentication, synchronize your AD users to the federation provider. Citrix Cloud requires the AD user attributes for your workspace subscribers so they can sign in successfully.

Requirements

Citrix Gateway advanced policies

Citrix Gateway authentication requires the use of advanced policies on the on-premises Gateway due to deprecation of classic policies. Advanced policies support multifactor authentication (MFA) for Citrix Cloud, including options such as Identity Provider Chaining. If you currently use classic policies, you must create new advanced policies to use Citrix Gateway authentication in Citrix Cloud. You can reuse the Action portion of the classic policy when you create the advanced policy.

Certificates for signature

When configuring the Gateway for authenticating subscribers to Citrix Workspace, the Gateway acts as an OpenID Connect provider. Messages between Citrix Cloud and Gateway conform to the OIDC protocol, which involves digitally signing tokens. Therefore, you must configure a certificate for signing these tokens. This certificate must be issued from a public Certificate Authority (CA). Using a certificate issued by a private CA is not supported as there is no way to provide Citrix Cloud with the private root CA certificate. So, the certificate chain of trust cannot be established. If you configure multiple certificates for signature, these keys are rotated for each message.

Keys must be bound to vpn global. Without these keys, subscribers can’t access their workspace successfully after signing in.

Clock synchronization

Because digitally signed messages in OIDC carry a timestamp, the Gateway must be synchronized to NTP time. If the clock isn’t synchronized, Citrix Cloud assumes that tokens are stale when checking their validity.

Task overview

To set up Citrix Gateway authentication, you perform the following tasks:

  1. In Identity and Access Management, start configuring the connection to your Gateway. In this step, you generate the client ID, secret, and redirect URL for the Gateway.
  2. On the Gateway, create an OAuth IdP advanced policy using the generated information from Citrix Cloud. This enables Citrix Cloud to connect with your on-premises Gateway. For instructions, see the following articles:
  3. In Workspace Configuration, enable Citrix Gateway authentication for subscribers.

To enable Citrix Gateway authentication for workspace subscribers

  1. From the Citrix Cloud menu, select Identity and Access Management.
  2. From the Authentication tab, in Citrix Gateway, click the ellipsis menu and select Connect. Gateway authentication option with Connect menu highlighted
  3. Enter the FQDN of your on-premises Gateway and click Detect. Gateway FQDN dialog with Detect command highlighted After Citrix Cloud detects it successfully, click Continue.
  4. Create a connection with your on-premises Gateway:
    1. Copy the Client ID, Secret, and Redirect URL that Citrix Cloud displays. Connection dialog with generated information Also, download a copy of this information and save it securely offline for your reference. This information is not available in Citrix Cloud after it’s generated.
    2. On the Gateway, create an OAuth IdP advanced policy using the client ID, Secret, and Redirect URL from Citrix Cloud. For instructions, see the following articles:
    3. Click Test and Finish. Citrix Cloud verifies that your Gateway is reachable and configured correctly.
  5. Enable Citrix Gateway authentication for workspaces:
    1. From the Citrix Cloud menu, select Workspace Configuration.
    2. From the Authentication tab, select Citrix Gateway.
    3. Select I understand the impact on subscriber experience and then click Save.

Troubleshooting

As a first step, review the Prerequisites and Requirements sections in this article. Verify you have all the required components in your on-premises environment and that you have made all required configurations. If any of these items are missing or misconfigured, workspace authentication with Citrix Gateway does not work.

If you experience an issue establishing a connection between Citrix Cloud and your on-premises Gateway, verify the following items:

  • The Gateway FQDN is reachable from the Internet.
  • You have entered the Gateway FQDN correctly in Citrix Cloud.
  • You have entered the Gateway URL correctly in the -issuer parameter of the OAuth IdP policy. Example: -issuer https://GatewayFQDN.com. The issuer parameter is case sensitive.
  • The client ID, secret, and redirect URL values from Citrix Cloud are entered correctly in the Client ID, Client Secret, Redirect URL, and Audience fields of the OAuth IdP policy. Verify that the correct client ID has been entered in the Audience field of the policy.
  • The OAuth IdP authentication policy is configured correctly. For instructions, see the following articles:
  • Verify the policy is bound correctly to the AAA authentication server as described in Binding Authentication Policies.

Global catalog servers

In addition to retrieving user account details, Gateway retrieves users’ domain name, AD NETBIOS name, and the root AD domain name. To retrieve the AD NETBIOS name, Gateway searches the AD where the user accounts reside. NETBIOS names are not replicated on global catalog servers.

If you use global catalog servers in your AD environment, LDAP actions configured on these servers do not work with Citrix Cloud. Instead, you must configure the individual ADs in the LDAP action. If you have multiple domains or forests, you can configure multiple LDAP policies.

AD search for single sign-on with Kerberos or IdP chaining

If you use Kerberos or an external identity provider that uses SAML or OIDC protocols for subscriber sign-in, verify that AD lookup is configured. Gateway requires AD lookups to retrieve subscribers’ AD user properties and AD configuration properties.

Ensure that you have LDAP policies configured, even if authentication is handled by third party servers. To configure these policies, you add a second authentication factor to your existing login schema profile by performing the following tasks:

  1. Create an LDAP authentication server that performs only attribute and group extraction from Active Directory.
  2. Create an LDAP advanced authentication policy.
  3. Create an Authentication Policy Label.
  4. Define the Authentication Policy Label as the next factor, after the primary identity provider.

To add LDAP as a second authentication factor

  1. Create the LDAP authentication server:
    1. Select System > Authentication > Basic Policies > LDAP > Servers > Add.
    2. On the Create Authentication LDAP Server page, enter the following information:
      • In Choose Server Type, select LDAP.
      • In Name, enter a friendly name for the server.
      • Select Server IP and then enter LDAP server’s IP address.
      • In Security Type, select your required LDAP security type.
      • In Server Type, select AD.
      • In Authentication, do not select the check box. This check box must be cleared because this authentication server is only for extracting user attributes and groups from Active Directory, not authentication.
    3. Under Other Settings, enter the following information:
      • In Server Logon Name Attribute, enter UserPrincipalName.
      • In Group Attribute, select memberOf.
      • In Sub Attribute Name, select cn.
  2. Create the LDAP advanced authentication policy:
    1. Select Security > AAA - Application Traffic > Policies > Authentication > Advanced Policies > Policy > Add.
    2. On the Create Authentication Policy page, enter the following information:
      • In Name, enter a friendly name for the policy.
      • In Action Type, select LDAP.
      • In Action, select the LDAP authentication server you created earlier.
      • In Expression, enter TRUE.
    3. Click Create to save the configuration.
  3. Create the Authentication Policy Label:
    1. Select Security > AAA – Application Traffic > Policies > Authentication > Advanced Policies > Policy Label > Add.
    2. In Name, enter a friendly name for the authentication policy label.
    3. In Login Schema, select LSCHEMA_INT.
    4. Under Policy Binding, in Select Policy, select the LDAP advanced authentication policy you created earlier.
    5. In GoTo Expression, select END.
    6. Click Bind to finish the configuration.
  4. Define the LDAP Authentication Policy Label as the next factor, after the primary identity provider:
    1. Select System > Security > AAA - Application Traffic > Virtual Servers.
    2. Select the virtual server that contains the binding for your primary identity provider and select Edit.
    3. Under Advanced Authentication Policies, select the existing Authentication Policy bindings.
    4. Select the binding for your primary identity provider and then select Edit Binding.
    5. On the Policy Binding page, in Select Next Factor, select the LDAP Authentication Policy Label you created earlier.
    6. Click Bind to save the configuration.

Default password for multifactor authentication

If you use multifactor authentication (MFA) for workspace subscribers, Gateway uses the last factor’s password as the default password for single sign-on. This password is sent to Citrix Cloud when subscribers sign in to their workspace. If LDAP authentication is followed by another factor in your environment, you must configure the LDAP password as the default password that is sent to Citrix Cloud. Enable SSOCredentials on the login schema corresponding to the LDAP factor.

More information

Citrix Tech Zone: Tech Insight: Authentication - Gateway

Connect an on-premises Citrix Gateway as an identity provider to Citrix Cloud
September 21, 2023
Contributed by: 
J E C
September 21, 2023
Contributed by: 
J E C

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