Speeding up the new StoreFront 1.2 (CloudGateway Express)

StoreFront 1.2 was just released on 07.31.12.  After reading it’s benefits, I figure I set it up for a POC and see how it behaves with a new XenApp 6.5 environment.  You can read on the benefits here.  The one thing I noticed, it is extra slow.

The first change comes from the Citrix Forums which dictates to disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP. To disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP, open the Advanced Properties dialog for TCP/IP on each network interface as shown in the screenshot.

Apparently, the need for NetBIOS communication is a prime contributor to the slow enumeration events. Once I made this change the enumerations were lightning fast, but the initial logon page was still slow to load.

In the old days, the sloooow logon page loading was caused by the .NET Framework not  staying resident in memory; however, with Web Interface 5.4 and IIS 7, the Idle Time Out value on the Web Interface App Pool is set correctly to 0 by default, which keeps the .NET Framework loaded. So I went looking for another solution.

I found the answer at Alexander Ervik Johnsen’s website. (Later I discovered it is also a Citrix KB article.) I made the following changes on both the Microsoft.NET\Framework and Microsoft.NET\Framework64 directories:

1. Check in IIS for the ASP.net version that is in use with the Web Interface application pool, which should be version 2.0.50727
2. Edit the ASPNET.CONFIG file(C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet.config)
3. Add the following GeneratePublisherEvidence line to the runtime section of the ASPNET.CONFIG file as shown
   <runtime>
   <generatePublisherEvidence enabled=”false”/>
   </runtime>
4. Run IISRESET for force a reread of the ASPNET.CONFIG file

Once I made those changes to the ASPNET.CONFIG file, my Web Interface login page loaded in about 3 seconds. I was quite surprised at the difference only those two changes made to the response time of the Web Interface servers.

After making the changes above the darn thing is actually ready for a POC.