Introduction

The Leostream Connection Broker is a robust and flexible session management tool that performs policy-based assignment of users to computing resources. Using this Connection Broker, you can provide end users with access to data and desktops from a wide range of clients.

In the Connection Broker, you first define:

• Desktops: Virtual machines, physical machines, and Microsoft Terminal Services that you want to make available for assignment to end users.
• Applications: Applications hosted in a Citrix XenApp farm, that you want to assign to end users.
• Centers: A group of desktops or applications registered with the Connection Broker from external systems.
• Pools: Collections of desktops or applications, gathered from a single or multiple centers.
• Policies: Rules that assign desktops and applications to users and define what happens when the assignment is done.
• Roles: Permissions that control the level of access an end users has to different features in the Connection Broker interface.

Then, you create rules that map end users to roles and policies, which in turn determine which Desktops the user is assigned and what level of access the user has to the Connection Broker interface. The Connection Broker maps users to rules via their authentication server attributes, allowing you to authenticate users against existing Active Directory, Novell eDirectory™, or OpenLDAP™ directory services.

Figure 1 : Assignment of desktops and applications from a pool to a user via assignment rules

The users of today are intolerant towards access delays, regardless of how rarely it occurs, or where they are accessing the data/desktops from - whether from a thin client, fat client, Web browser, or from within or outside a firewall. The result? Even the slightest of deviations in the performance of the Leostream Connection Broker would result in considerable loss of reputation and revenue. For instance, say, the Connection Broker is used in a virtualized environment to provide users with access to virtual machines. In such an environment, if the Connection Broker is unavailable, or is available, but processes jobs very slowly, the user experience with the virtualized infrastructure as a whole will suffer. To avoid such adversities, continuous monitoring of the Leostream Connection Broker is imperative. eG Enterprise helps administrators in this regard!