User guide

© 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Cisco Validated Design Page 17
3.3 Citrix XenDesktop
Citrix XenDesktop is a desktop virtualization solution that delivers Windows desktops as an on-demand service to
any user, anywhere. With FlexCast™ delivery technology, XenDesktop can quickly and securely deliver individual
applications or complete desktops to the entire enterprise, whether they are task workers, knowledge workers or
mobile workers. Users now have the flexibility to access their desktop on any device, anytime, with a high-
definition user experience. With XenDesktop, IT can manage single instances of each OS, application and user
profile and dynamically assemble them to increase business agility and greatly simplify desktop management.
XenDesktop‘s open architecture enables customers to easily adopt desktop virtualization using any hypervisor,
storage or management infrastructure.
3.3.1 Citrix FlexCast Technology
XenDesktop FlexCast is an intelligent delivery technology that recognizes the user, device, and network, and
delivers the correct virtual desktop and applications specifically tailored to meet the performance, security, and
flexibility requirements of the user scenario. FlexCast for Desktops delivers any type of virtual desktop to any
device—and can change this mix at any time. FlexCast for Apps delivers any type of virtual applications to any
device. The FlexCast delivery technologies can be broken down into the following categories:
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Hosted shared desktops provide a locked-down, streamlined and standardized environment with a core set
of applications, ideally suited for task workers where personalization is not required—or appropriate.
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Hosted virtual machine–based desktops (VDI) offer a personalized Windows desktop experience for office
workers that can be securely delivered over any network to any device.
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Streamed VHD Desktops use the local processing power of rich clients, while providing centralized single-
image management of the desktop. These types of desktops are often used in computer labs and training
facilities, and when users require local processing for certain applications or peripherals,
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Local virtual machine desktops extend the benefits of virtual desktops to mobile workers who need to use
their laptops offline.
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FlexCast for Apps allows any Microsoft Windows application to be centralized and managed in the
datacenter, hosted either on multi-user terminal servers or virtual machines, and instantly delivered as a
service to physical and virtual desktops. Optimized for each user device, network and location, applications
are delivered through a high-speed protocol for use while connected or streamed through Citrix application
virtualization or Microsoft App-V directly to the endpoint for use when offline.
A complete overview of the FlexCast technology can be found on Citrix.com, but for the purposes of the testing
and validation represented in this paper only the Hosted VDI and Hosted Shared models were validated on the
Cisco UCS hardware in conjunction with NetApp storage solutions. The Hosted Shared and Hosted VDI models
provide a low-cost virtual desktop delivery solution that uses the power of existing PC resources to help
customers get started with desktop virtualization.
3.3.2 Citrix XenServer
In addition to the virtual desktop delivery options available with FlexCast, XenDesktop was intentionally designed
to be hypervisor agnostic and therefore provide a choice when selecting a hypervisor to host virtual machine-
based desktops. The open architecture of XenDesktop can utilize Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, and
VMware vSphere hypervisors for the hosting virtual desktop infrastructure. For the purposes of the testing and
validation represented in this paper only the Citrix XenServer bare-metal hypervisor was utilized to host virtual
desktops.
Citrix XenServer is an enterprise-ready, cloud-proven virtualization platform with all the capabilities needed to
create and manage a virtual infrastructure at half the cost of other solutions. Organizations of any size can install
the free XenServer in less than ten minutes to virtualize even the most demanding workloads and automate
management processes, which increases IT flexibility and agility, and lowers costs. To add a rich set of