Citrix XenApp® 7.5 Desktop Virtualization Solutions

Citrix XenApp® 7.5 Desktop Virtualization Solutions

by Andy Paul
Released October 2014
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781849689687

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Book description

Plan, design, optimize, and implement your XenApp® solution to mobilize your business

In Detail

In this age of cybernation, Citrix XenApp® has emerged as a prolific application virtualization product. This powerful solution enables users or enterprises to have centrally hosted and managed applications on corporate servers that can be accessed remotely from a wide range of computer and mobile devices. To deliver shared hosted virtual desktops and applications, XenApp® synchronizes with Citrix® tools such as NetScaler Gateway?. You will start off by assessing your desktop environment and understanding its design needs. You will proceed to efficiently design and optimize your server infrastructure and customize your Access layer for quality performance. You will understand why XenApp® is considered among the leaders of virtual application delivery by exploring methods to design your Application Delivery layer and its virtual image delivery. Finally, you will gain hands-on experience in using XenApp®-compatible components such as MS SQL and move on to successfully implement your own XenApp® solution.

What You Will Learn

  • Plan your virtualization infrastructure
  • Develop your application and desktop delivery strategies
  • Design your user Access layer
  • Implement Citrix solutions effectively by performing Capacity planning and Load testing, and User Acceptance Testing
  • Design your Citrix XenApp farms
  • Manage your image delivery and control change process

Table of contents

  1. Citrix XenApp® 7.5 Desktop Virtualization Solutions
    1. Table of Contents
    2. Citrix XenApp® 7.5 Desktop Virtualization Solutions
    3. Credits
    4. Notice
    5. About the Author
    6. About the Reviewers
    7. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more
        1. Why subscribe?
        2. Free access for Packt account holders
        3. Instant updates on new Packt books
    8. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Introduction to the XenApp® 7.5 platform
        1. Benefits of using Citrix XenApp®
        2. Citrix XenApp® 7.5 feature comparison
        3. Comparing Citrix XenApp® 7.5 with previous versions
        4. What's new in Citrix XenApp® 7.5
      5. Conventions
      6. Reader feedback
      7. Customer support
        1. Downloading the color images of this book
        2. Errata
        3. Piracy
        4. Questions
    9. 1. Planning Desktop Virtualization
      1. The building blocks of VDI
        1. Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD)
          1. Hosted Shared Desktop (HSD)
          2. Session-based Computing (SBC)
          3. Application virtualization
      2. Understanding VDI layers
        1. Analyzing your user data
        2. Planning your personalization layer
        3. Understanding your applications
        4. Planning for operating system delivery
        5. Anticipating device management
        6. Infrastructure planning
      3. Determining the right fit
      4. The road map to success
      5. Project management in the real world
        1. Managing your project
      6. Summary
    10. 2. Defining Your Desktop Virtualization Environment
      1. Understanding your end users
        1. Use case – clinical physicians
        2. Use case – data entry clerks
        3. Use case – office workers
        4. Use case – hospital administration clerks
        5. Use case – call center customer service representatives
        6. Use case – business executives
        7. Translating the user workflow
      2. Understanding applications
        1. Making a questionnaire for an application
        2. Automated application data collection
          1. Using Stratusphere FIT
          2. Utilizing Network Inventory
          3. Using Baseline Desktop Analyzer
          4. Leveraging AppDNA
          5. Implementing Lakeside Software SysTrack
        3. Completing your software inventory
      3. Understanding devices
        1. Endpoints
        2. Peripherals
      4. Defining your use cases
      5. Planning your strategy
      6. Summary
    11. 3. Designing Your Infrastructure
      1. Creating a reference architecture
        1. A reference architecture diagram
        2. Understanding the Access tier diagram
        3. Understanding the Delivery tier diagram
        4. Understanding the Supporting Systems tier diagram
        5. Understanding the Backend Data Systems tier diagram
        6. Understanding the Monitoring tier diagram
        7. Understanding the Virtualization Infrastructure tier diagram
        8. Designing highlights
      2. Designing your virtual infrastructure
        1. Resource requirements
        2. Virtual machine requirements
      3. Determining your virtualization platform
        1. XenServer
        2. VMware vSphere
        3. Microsoft Hyper-V Server
        4. Virtualization cluster design decisions
      4. Designing your hardware infrastructure
        1. Selecting between the rack and blade options
        2. Understanding converged platforms
        3. Reconsidering the cloud
      5. Designing your network infrastructure
        1. Planning network options
      6. Designing your storage infrastructure
        1. Capacity planning
        2. Measuring throughput
      7. Completing the architectural blueprint
      8. Summary
    12. 4. Designing Your Access Layer
      1. Determining your portal presence
        1. Comparing Web Interface and StoreFront
        2. Reviewing the Access tier diagram
      2. Designing with StoreFront
        1. Requirements for StoreFront
        2. Design decisions for StoreFront
        3. StoreFront recommendations
        4. Customizations
          1. Speeding up StoreFront
          2. Using the application subscription model
          3. Using keywords for StoreFront applications and desktops
          4. Creating sticky applications for StoreFront
          5. Filtering or hiding applications from StoreFront
          6. Enabling discovery for mobile clients
          7. Setting the default IIS page
          8. Rebranding the Receiver for Web site
          9. Using the HOST file to ease setup
      3. Designing with NetScaler Gateway™
        1. Requirements for NetScaler VPX
        2. Configuring the base settings for NetScaler
        3. Configuring load balancing services
        4. Configuring NetScaler Gateway services
      4. Tying it all together
        1. Identifying the base requirements
        2. Gathering all the prerequisites
        3. Installing NetScaler appliances
        4. Installing and configuring StoreFront servers
        5. Configuring load balance virtual servers on NetScaler®
        6. Configuring the NetScaler Gateway™ virtual server
      5. Summary
    13. 5. Designing Your Application Delivery Layer
      1. Welcome to XenApp® 7.5
        1. What's new in XenApp 7.5?
        2. Updated concepts in XenApp 7.5
        3. What's missing in XenApp 7.5?
      2. Designing your XenApp® deployment
        1. Requirements for XenApp
          1. Delivery controller
          2. Studio
          3. Database
          4. Director
          5. Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) for the Windows desktop OS
          6. Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) for the Windows server OS
        2. Design decisions for the XenApp site
      3. Creating your XenApp® site
        1. Quick start guide to deploy a XenApp site
        2. Configuring your first XenApp delivery controller
        3. Configuring your XenApp site
        4. Configuring additional delivery controllers
        5. Configuring your XenApp session hosts
      4. Managing your XenApp® site
        1. Getting started with Machine Catalogs
        2. Getting started with Delivery Groups
        3. Application delivery models
        4. Getting the most out of Machine Catalogs and Delivery Groups
          1. Planning your Machine Catalogs and Delivery Groups
          2. Leveraging PowerShell
          3. Moving machines between catalogs
          4. Additional Delivery Group properties
          5. Publishing multiple applications at a time
          6. Additional application properties
          7. Publishing resources to multiple Delivery Groups
          8. Making sure machines are available
      5. Summary
    14. 6. Designing Your Virtual Image Delivery
      1. An overview of image management
      2. Determining the right fit for your environment
      3. Understanding Citrix® Machine Creation Services
        1. The storage impact of MCS
        2. Preparing a master image for MCS
        3. Creating an MCS catalog using Studio
        4. Updating an MCS catalog that reflects changes to the master image
      4. Designing Citrix® Provisioning Services
        1. The storage impact of PVS
        2. The network impact of PVS
        3. Designing your PVS farm
          1. Requirements for Provisioning Services
          2. Key design decisions
        4. Preparing a master image for PVS
        5. Creating a Machine Catalog using the PVS deployment wizard
        6. Managing images using PVS
        7. Additional PVS tips and tricks
      5. Summary
    15. 7. Designing Your Supporting Infrastructure Components
      1. Planning your license server
        1. The role of the license server in the environment
        2. The requirements for installing the license server
        3. High Availability considerations for the licensing server
        4. Design decisions for the license server
      2. Designing your database platform
        1. The role of the database in the XenApp environment
        2. Planning your SQL server requirements
        3. High Availability considerations for databases
        4. Planning and sizing your Citrix® databases
        5. SQL Server design decisions
        6. Managing your databases
      3. Configuring your file services
        1. The role of file services in the environment
        2. The requirements for file servers
        3. High Availability considerations for file services
        4. Design decisions
        5. Configuring file share permissions
      4. Implementing monitoring for your XenApp® environment
        1. The role of monitoring in the environment
        2. The requirements for installing Director
        3. The requirements for installing the Insight appliance
        4. High Availability considerations for Director
        5. Monitoring design decisions
        6. Using Director to monitor user experience
      5. Summary
    16. 8. Optimizing Your XenApp® Solution
      1. Managing user profiles
        1. Types of profiles
        2. Why we need to manage profiles
        3. Planning Citrix Profile Management policies
        4. Planning Microsoft folder redirection
          1. Folder redirection and exclusions
          2. What about home drives?
          3. What about AppData?
      2. Configuring Citrix® policies
        1. Understanding the role of the Citrix policy engine
        2. Using Citrix template policies
        3. Planning your Citrix policies
          1. Defining Citrix policy settings
          2. Applying Citrix policy filters
          3. Recommendations for Citrix policies
      3. Planning Active Directory policies
        1. Understanding the role of Active Directory group policies
        2. Common Group Policy settings for Citrix environments
        3. Best practices for Group Policies
      4. Controlling printing
        1. Understanding the different printing models in a Citrix environment
        2. Using Citrix Universal Print Server
      5. Summary
    17. 9. Implementing Your XenApp® Solution
      1. Building your production-ready workload server images
        1. Initial build
        2. Optimizations
        3. Deploying your server images
      2. Testing the preproduction environment
        1. Reviewing the design plan
        2. Final system validation testing
        3. Using capacity planning tools
        4. Performing load testing
      3. Conducting User Acceptance Testing
        1. Defining your criteria
        2. UAT process
        3. UAT feedback
        4. Production rollout
          1. Communication plan
          2. Pilot rollout
          3. Phased production rollout
      4. Supporting your environment during normal operations
        1. Delegated administration
        2. Using Director
        3. SQL queries for monitoring/reporting
        4. Additional troubleshooting tips and tricks
          1. Troubleshooting the VDA registration
          2. Troubleshooting Active Directory
          3. Troubleshooting PVS performance
          4. Troubleshooting storage performance
          5. Troubleshooting Windows system performance
          6. Troubleshooting application performance
          7. Using Citrix troubleshooting tools
        5. Soliciting user feedback
      5. Summary
    18. Index

Product information

  • Title: Citrix XenApp® 7.5 Desktop Virtualization Solutions
  • Author(s): Andy Paul
  • Release date: October 2014
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781849689687