Using the Citrix Farm

 

What is the Citrix Farm?

The Citrix Farm (Citrix), is a centralised series of servers that allow you to run computational tasks remotely, in a user-friendly environment, without choking your local PC.

In contrast to a Linux/Unix Cluster, where a series of servers work "in parallel" (i.e. share their CPU as if it were a single system), by connecting to the main server of the Farm you are automatically assigned to the first free server of the series or to the machine with most available resources. From then onwards, you will use the full power of the resources which have been assigned to you by the centralised system.

The main advantage of a Citrix MetaFrame Farm, compared to a Linux/Unix Cluster, is that it runs on MS Windows-based operating systems in a user-friendly environment as you run remote applications exactly as you would locally on your EUI PC.

 

Starting a Citrix Session

The Citrix client (the Citrix Web Interface) is available on-line and can be accessed using your browser.

To start a Citrix Session double click on the "Citrix Web Interface". You can find this link on the CS Homepage or it can be launched from within Start – Programs – Citrix - Citrix Web Interface on any EUI PC.

 

 

You will be asked for your Username, Password. Fill in the fields with your username and password.

 

 

Finally, you will get to the list of Applications you may run:

 

 

(Note: The list of applications shown in the screenshot above may be different from one user to another.)

 

Running an Application, Managing your Jobs

You can start any of the available applications by clicking on its icon.

Once you have done this your application will be launched:

 

 

Depending on the application you may also be asked to choose the Security Level. Select "Full Access" and "Never ask me again":

 

 

 

Use your Application as you would locally on any EUI PC.

 

 

If you need to open or save files, do as you would locally: your Private Storage Area (Drive G:), and other commonly used network drives [1], will be mapped under Citrix. Use it as you would normally to load or save jobs:

 

 

N.B. If your Job needs to access a dataset, this should be stored remotely on the Citrix Server and NOT on your local drives, or else once you disconnect, Citrix will be unable to reach it.

A special "storage$" S: Drive area is available specifically for this purpose: use it to upload your data to Citrix.

WARNING: The S: Drive is a common drive accessible by ALL Citrix users. Anybody connecting to Citrix will be able to read, modify and even delete your data!

 

Closing your Citrix Session

Once your Job is running, you may disconnect from Citrix while letting the Application run remotely or, if the Job has already finished, you may close the Application and logout from Citrix.

If you want to disconnect from Citrix while letting your Application go on running, click disconnect on the Citrix web interface.

 

 

 

If you disconnected from Citrix while keeping the Application running remotely, next time a Citrix Session is started, you will be presented directly with the open Application and its results (if any).

 

Once your application has finished close the application and click logout on the Citrix web interface.

 

 

[1] The drives available within your Citrix Applications:

• C$:, D$: and E$: drives: Local machine's drives;
• G: drive: Local machine's network drives;
• S: drive: Citrix server's storage area (use it to save large datasets).