Getting familiar with the VDA launch process

The VDA launch process involves enumerating, brokering, and connecting to XenDesktop resources. There are multiple communication checkpoints in this process and it can be a challenging task, for someone who isn't familiar with the product, to troubleshoot or pinpoint problem areas.

In order to understand logon issues better, we should first understand the logon processes shown in the following diagram. The following diagram illustrates the logon process that is focused on internal users. There are some additional steps that are required for external remote access via NetScaler Gateway.

We have listed the steps that explain the VDA logon process and the flow of communication as follows:

1. The user enters credentials to the StoreFront web URL to log in.
2. StoreFront passes the credentials to Active Directory, which then does the validation check and passes it over to the Delivery Controller to enumerate applications.
3. The Controller queries the Microsoft...