Access layer
The access layer in a Citrix environment is the infrastructure that connects users to their applications and desktops on a corporate network. In a typical deployment with external, internal, and a DMZ network, users coming in from the outside connect to a NetScaler Gateway vServer on the DMZ, which, upon successful validation of credentials, sends the connection over to a load-balanced StoreFront vServer on the NetScaler (again in the DMZ). The HTTP or HTTPS vServer then uses a SNIP to connect to the internal network where the actual StoreFront servers are, and through a load balancing algorithm it chooses which StoreFront server to hand the connection to, so that the user can be presented with their assigned resources. In the case of a user who's requesting access from the internal network, the browser (Receiver for Web) or Receiver stores URLs hit by the user. These can be set up to resolve to the load-balanced HTTP or HTTPS StoreFront vServer on the NetScaler directly...