NetScaler load balanced StoreFront server throws the error: “Cannot complete your request.”

I’ve noticed that I’ve been asked about the following error quite frequently over the past year so I thought writing a blog post may help anyone who might be searching for an answer to this problem.

Problem

You’ve configured a Load Balancing Virtual Server on your NetScaler appliance which you use to direct NetScaler Gateway Virtual Server requests to your StoreFront servers:

Accessing the StoreFront portal and authenticating through the NetScaler works fine but you notice the following error if you try to access the URL of the Load Balancing Virtual Server internally to bypass the NetScaler Gateway authentication page:

Cannot complete your request.

Clicking the OK button will cycle through the previous prompts and end with the same message.

Solution

While there are many reasons why this error would be thrown as outlined in the following KB:

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX133904 http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/storefront/3/integrate-with-netscaler-and-netscaler-gateway/load-balancing-with-netscaler.html?_ga=1.149961662.983477202.1446337615

Two of the most frequent reasons I’ve seen is either the need to create a host record on your StoreFront servers to resolve the FQDN URL you are using to send traffic to your NetScaler’s Load Balancing Virtual Server to resolve to itself or that Integrated Caching is enabled on the NetScaler:

Try turning this feature off if you are experiencing this issue: