Product Details
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 focuses on defining the deployment process for Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Citrix ADC, formerly NetScaler. It includes information on setting up basic deployment, authentication and optimization.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 defines the process for deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Citrix ADC. Citrix ADC is a application delivery controller (ADC) with the proven ability to load balance, accelerate, optimize and secure enterprise applications. Deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Citrix ADC brings the application acceleration and optimization capabilities of Citrix ADC, improving transaction speeds, making operations quicker and providing a faster user experience. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on sales, marketing, and service (help desk) functions. It is part of the Microsoft Dynamics family of business applications.
Dynamics CRM is a client-server application. Like Microsoft SharePoint, it is primarily an IIS-based web application that also supports extensive web services interfaces. Clients access Dynamics CRM by using a browser or a thick client plug-in to Microsoft Outlook. Besides Internet Explorer, the solution (as of Dynamics CRM 2011 update rollup 12) fully supports Chrome and Firefox browsers. It is available as a cloud or on-premises solution, or a hybrid. For the purposes of this guide, our basic Dynamics CRM deployment consists of the following server roles:
Features
Load Balancing
Citrix ADC load balancing evenly distributes requests to backend servers. Multiple algorithms (such as LEASTCONNECTION, ROUNDROBIN, etc.) are supported to provide efficient load balancing logic for every application server.
HTTP Compression
Compression of HTTP traffic using standard GZIP/DEFLATE compression methods.
Front End Optimization (FEO)
Advanced optimization feature, FEO enables Citrix ADC to significantly accelerate web content with various acceleration methods such as image compression etc
Integrated Caching
Content caching allows Citrix ADC to serve frequently used content without requiring round trips to the source webserver.
AAA
The AAA feature set controls authentication, authorization and auditing policies for Citrix ADC. These policies include definition and management of various authentication schemas. Citrix ADC supports a wide range of authentication protocols and a strong, policy-driven application firewall capability.
Several additional features can help improve the enterprise user experience. Rewrite, responder, SSL Offloading and other features can help improve the user experience with this deployment. However, the use case described here can be deployed using the five features described above; this guide will not describe the benefits that can be achieved with these additional features. This guide assumes that you have your CRM system setup for standard Windows/LDAP authentication.