XENAPP 7.6

Concepts and components

This illustration shows the key components in a typical XenApp or XenDesktop deployment, which is called a Site.

The components in this illustration are:

• Delivery Controller — The Delivery Controller is the central management component of any XenApp or XenDesktop Site. Each Site has one or more Delivery Controllers. It is installed on at least one server in the data center. (For Site reliability and availability, install the Controller on more than one server.) The Controller consists of services that communicate with the hypervisor to distribute applications and desktops, authenticate and manage user access, broker connections between users and their virtual desktops and applications, optimize use connections, and load-balance these connections.
  Each service’s data is stored in the Site database.
  The Controller manages the state of the desktops, starting and stopping them based on demand and administrative configuration. In some editions, the Controller allows you to install Profile management to manage user personalization settings in virtualized or physical Windows environments.
• Database — At least one Microsoft SQL Server database is required for every XenApp or XenDesktop Site to store all configuration and session information. This database stores the data collected and managed by the services that make up the Controller. Install the database within your data center, and ensure it has a persistent connection to the Controller.
• Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) — The VDA is installed on each physical or virtual machine in your Site that you want to make available to users. It enables the machine to register with the Controller, which in turn allows the machine and the resources it is hosting to be made available to users. VDAs establish and manage the connection between the machine and the user device, verify that a Citrix license is available for the user or session, and apply whatever policies have been configured for the session. The VDA communicates session information to the Broker Service in the Controller through the broker agent included in the VDA.
  XenApp and XenDesktop include VDAs for Windows server and desktop operating systems. VDAs for Windows server operating systems allow multiple users to connect to the server at one time. VDAs for Windows desktops allow only one user to connect to the desktop at a time.
• StoreFront — StoreFront authenticates users to Sites hosting resources and manages stores of desktops and applications that users access. It hosts your enterprise application store, which lets you give users self-service access to desktops and applications you make available to them. It also keeps track of users’ application subscriptions, shortcut names, and other data to ensure they have a consistent experience across multiple devices.
• Receiver — Installed on user devices and other endpoints, such as virtual desktops, Citrix Receiver provides users with quick, secure, self-service access to documents, applications, and desktops from any of the user's devices, including smartphones, tablets, and PCs. Receiver provides on-demand access to Windows, Web, and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. For devices that cannot install Receiver software, Receiver for HTML5 provides a connection through a HTML5-compatible web browser.
• Studio — Studio is the management console that enables you to configure and manage your deployment, eliminating the need for separate management consoles for managing delivery of applications and desktops. Studio provides various wizards to guide you through the process of setting up your environment, creating your workloads to host applications and desktops, and assigning applications and desktops to users. You can also use Studio to allocate and track Citrix licenses for your Site.
  Studio gets the information it displays from the Broker Service in the Controller.
• Director — Director is a web-based tool that enables IT support and help desk teams to monitor an environment, troubleshoot issues before they become system-critical, and perform support tasks for end users. You can use one Director deployment to connect to and monitor multiple XenApp or XenDesktop Sites.
  Director shows session and Site information from these sources:
  

  • Real-time session data from the Broker Service in the Controller, which include data the Broker Service gets from the broker agent in the VDA.
  • Historical Site data from Monitor Service in the Controller.
  • Data about HDX traffic (also known as ICA traffic) captured by HDX Insight from the NetScaler, if your deployment includes a NetScaler and your XenApp or XenDesktop edition includes HDX Insights.
  You can also view and interact with a user's sessions using Microsoft Remote Assistance.
• License server — License server manages your product licenses. It communicates with the Controller to manage licensing for each user's session and with Studio to allocate license files. You must create at least one license server to store and manage your license files.
• Hypervisor — The hypervisor hosts the virtual machines in your Site. These can be the virtual machines you use to host applications and desktops as well as virtual machines you use to host the XenApp and XenDesktop components. A hypervisor is installed on a host computer dedicated entirely to running the hypervisor and hosting virtual machines.
  Citrix XenServer hypervisor is included with XenApp and XenDesktop, but you can use other supported hypervisors, such as Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere.
  Although most implementations of XenApp and XenDesktop require a hypervisor, you don’t need one to provide remote PC access or when you are using Provisioning Services (included with some editions of XenApp and XenDesktop) instead of MCS to provision virtual machine.

These additional components, not shown in the illustration above, may also be included in typical XenApp or XenDesktop deployments:

• Provisioning Services — Provisioning Services is an optional component of XenApp and XenDesktop available with some editions. It provides an alternative to MCS for provisioning virtual machines. Whereas MCS creates copies of a master image, Provisioning Services streams the master image to user device. Provisioning Services doesn’t require a hypervisor to do this, so you can use it to host physical machines. When Provisioning Services is included in a Site, it communicates with the Controller to provide users with resources.
• NetScaler Gateway — When users connect from outside the corporate firewall, this release can use Citrix NetScaler Gateway (formerly Access Gateway) technology to secure these connections with SSL. NetScaler Gateway or NetScaler VPX virtual appliance is an SSL VPN appliance that is deployed in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) to provide a single secure point of access through the corporate firewall.
• Citrix CloudBridge — In deployments where virtual desktops are delivered to users at remote locations such as branch offices, Citrix CloudBridge (formerly Citrix Branch Repeater or WANScaler) technology can be employed to optimize performance. Repeaters accelerate performance across wide-area networks, so with Repeaters in the network, users in the branch office experience LAN-like performance over the WAN. CloudBridge can prioritize different parts of the user experience so that, for example, the user experience does not degrade in the branch location when a large file or print job is sent over the network. HDX WAN Optimization with CloudBridge provides tokenized compression and data deduplication, dramatically reducing bandwidth requirements and improving performance. For more information, see the Citrix CloudBridge documentation.

Setting up and assigning resources: machine catalogs and Delivery Groups

With XenApp and XenDesktop, you set up the resources you want to provide to users with machine catalogs, but you designate which users have access to these resources with Delivery Groups.

Machine catalogs

Machine catalogs are collections of virtual or physical machines that you manage as a single entity. These machines, and the application or virtual desktops on them, are the resources you want to provide to your users. All the machines in a machine catalog have the same operating system and the same VDA installed. They also have the same applications or virtual desktops available on them. Typically, you create a master image and use it to create identical virtual machines in the catalog.

When you create a machine catalog, you specify the type of machine and provisioning method for the machines in that catalog.

Machine types

• Windows Server OS machines — Virtual or physical machines based on a Windows server operating system used for delivering XenApp published apps, also known as server-based hosted applications, and XenApp published desktops, also known as server-hosted desktops. These machines allow multiple users to connect to them at one time.
• Desktop OS machines — Virtual or physical machines based on a Windows desktop operating system used for delivering VDI desktops (desktops running Window desktop operating systems that can be fully personalized, depending on the options you choose), and VM-hosted apps (applications from desktop operating systems) and hosted physical desktops. Only one user at a time can connect each of these desktops.
• Remote PC Access — User devices that are included on a whitelist, enabling users to access resources on their office PCs remotely, from any device running Citrix Receiver. Remote PC Access enables you to manage access to office PCs through you XenDesktop deployment.

Provisioning methods

• Machine Creation Services (MCS) — A collection of services that create virtual servers and desktops from a master image on demand, optimizing storage utilization and providing a virtual machine to users every time they log on. Machine Creation Services is fully integrated and administered in Citrix Studio.
• Provisioning Services — Enables computers to be provisioned and reprovisioned in real-time from a single shared-disk image. Provisioning Services manages target devices as a device collection. The desktop and applications are delivered from a Provisioning Services vDisk that is imaged from a master target device, which enables you to leverage the processing power of physical hardware or virtual machines. Provisioning Services is managed through its own console.
• Existing images — Applies to desktops and applications that you have already migrated to virtual machines in the data center. You must manage target devices on an individual basis or collectively using third-party electronic software distribution (ESD) tools.

Delivery Groups

Delivery Groups are collections of users given to access a common group of resources. Delivery Groups contain machines from your machine catalogs and Active Directory users who have access to your Site. Often it makes sense to assign users to your Delivery Groups by their Active Directory group because both Active Directory groups and Delivery Groups are ways of grouping together users with similar requirements.

Each Delivery Group can contain machines from more than one machine catalog, and each machine catalog can contribute machines to more than one Delivery Group, but each individual machine can only belong to one Delivery Group at a time. You can set up a Delivery Group to deliver applications, desktops, or both.

You define which resources users in the Delivery Group can access. For example, if you want to deliver different applications to different users, one way to do this is to install all the applications you want to deliver on the master image for one machine catalog and create enough machines in that catalog to distribute among several Delivery Groups. Then you configure each Delivery Group to deliver a different subset of the applications installed on the machines.

XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6 differ from XenApp 6.5 and previous versions

If you are familiar with XenApp 6.5 and previous versions of XenApp, it may be helpful to think of XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6 in terms of how they differ from those versions.

Although they are not exact equivalents, the following table helps map functional elements from XenApp 6.5 and previous versions to XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6:

Instead of this in XenApp 6.5 and before:	Think of this in XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6:
Independent Management Architecture (IMA)	FlexCast Management Architecture (FMA)
Farm	Site
Worker Group	machine catalog Delivery Group
Worker	Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) Server OS machine, Server OS VDA Desktop OS machine, Desktop OS VDA
Remote Desktop Services (RDS) or Terminal Services machine	Server OS machine, Server OS VDA
Zone and Data Collector	Delivery Controller
Delivery Services Console	Citrix Studio and Citrix Director
Publishing applications	Delivering applications
Data store	Database
Load Evaluator	Load Management Policy
Administrator	Delegated Administrator Role Scope

XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6 are based on FlexCast Management Architecture (FMA). FMA is a service-oriented architecture that allows interoperability and management modularity across Citrix technologies. FMA provides a platform for application delivery, mobility, services, flexible provisioning, and cloud management.

FMA replaces the Independent Management Architecture (IMA) used in XenApp 6.5 and previous versions.

These are the key elements of FMA in terms of how they relate to elements of XenApp 6.5 and previous versions:

Delivery Sites

Farms were the top-level objects in XenApp 6.5 and previous versions. In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, the Delivery Site is the highest level item. Sites offer applications and desktops to groups of users.

FMA requires that you must be in a domain to deploy a site. For example, to install the servers, your account must have local administrator privileges and be a domain user in the Active Directory.

Machine catalogs and Delivery Groups

Machines hosting applications in XenApp 6.5 and previous versions belonged to Worker Groups for efficient management of the applications and server software. Administrators could manage all machines in a Worker Group as a single unit for their application management and load-balancing needs. Folders were used to organize applications and machines.

In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, you use a combination of machine catalogs and Delivery Groups to manage machines, load balancing, and hosted applications or desktops.

Virtual Delivery Agents

In XenApp 6.5 and previous versions, worker machines in Worker Groups ran applications for the user and communicated with data collectors. In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, the VDA communicates with Delivery Controllers that manage the user connections.

Delivery Controllers

In XenApp 6.5 and previous versions there was a zone master responsible for user connection requests and communication with hypervisors. In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, Controllers in the Site distribute and handle connection requests.

XenApp 6.5 and previous versions, zones provided a way to aggregate servers and replicate data across WAN connections. Although zones have no exact equivalent in XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, you can provide users with applications that cross WANs and locations. You can design Delivery Sites for a specific geographical location or data center and then allow your users access to multiple Delivery Sites. App Orchestration with XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6 provides capabilities for managing multiple Sites in multiple geographies.

Citrix Studio and Citrix Director

Use the Studio console to configure your environments and provide users with access to applications and desktops. Studio replaces the Delivery Services Console in XenApp 6.5 and previous versions.

Administrators use Director to monitor the environment, shadow user devices, and troubleshoot IT issues. To shadow users, Microsoft Remote Assistance must be enabled; it is enabled by default when the VDA is installed.

Delivering applications

XenApp 6.5 and previous versions used the Publish Application wizard to prepare applications and deliver them to users. In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, you use Studio to create and add applications to make them available to users who are included in a Delivery Group. Using Studio, you first configure a Site, create and specify machine catalogs, and then create Delivery Groups within those machine catalogs. The Delivery Groups determine which users have access to the applications you deliver.

Database

XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6 do not use the IMA data store for configuration information. They use a Microsoft SQL Server database to store configuration and session information.

Load Management Policy

In XenApp 6.5 and previous versions, load evaluators use predefined measurements to determine the load on a machine. User connections can be matched to the machines with less load.

In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, use load management policies for balancing loads across machines.

Delegated Administrators

In XenApp 6.5 and previous versions, you created custom administrators and assigned them permissions based on folders and objects. In XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6, custom administrators are based on role and scope pairs. A role represents a job function and has defined permissions associated with it to allow delegation. A scope represents a collection of objects. Built-in administrator roles have specific permissions sets, such as help desk, applications, hosting, and catalog. For example, help desk administrators can work only with individual users on specified sites, while full administrators can monitor the entire deployment and resolve systemwide IT issues.

The transition to FMA also means some features available in XenApp 6.5 and previous versions may be implemented differently or may require you to substitute other features, components, or tools to achieve the same goals.

Instead of this in XenApp 6.5 and before:	Use this in XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6:
Session prelaunch and session linger configured with policy settings	Session prelaunch and session linger configured by editing Delivery Group settings. As in XenApp 6.5, these features help users connect to applications quickly, by starting sessions before they are requested (session prelaunch) and keeping sessions active after a user closes all applications (session linger). In XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6, you enable these features for specified users by configuring these settings for existing Delivery groups.
Support for unauthenticated (anonymous) users provided by granting rights to anonymous user when setting the properties of published applications	Support for unauthenticated (anonymous) users provided by configuring this option when setting user properties of a Delivery Group.
Local host cache permits a worker servers to function even when a connection to the data store is not available	Connection leasing enables users to connect and reconnect to their most recently used applications and desktops, even when the Site database is not available. The connection leasing feature supplements the SQL Server high availability best practices.
Application streaming	App-V delivers streamed applications, managed using Studio.
Web Interface	Citrix recommends you transition to StoreFront.
SmartAuditor	Use configuration logging to log all session activities from an administrative perspective or use a third-party, Citrix-ready tool to record sessions.