This section provides a high-level overview of the components that are required to create and deploy a Citrix DaaS and/or CVAD environment. Successful deployment requires a deep understanding of the architecture when you are designing the environment.
VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere provides a flexible and secure foundation for business agility, with the following benefits for VDI applications:
- Improved appliance management—The vCenter Server Appliance Management Interface provides CPU and memory statistics, network and database statistics, disk space usage, and health data. This reduces reliance on a command-line interface for simple monitoring and operational tasks.
- VMware vCenter Server native high availability—This solution for vCenter Server Appliance consists of active, passive, and witness nodes that are cloned from the existing vCenter Server instance. You can enable, disable, or destroy the vCenter HA cluster at any time. Maintenance mode prevents planned maintenance from causing an unwanted failover. The vCenter Server database uses native PostgreSQL synchronous replication, while key data outside the database uses separate asynchronous file system replication.
- Backup and restore—Native backup and restore for vCenter Server Appliance enables users to back up vCenter Server and Platform Services Controller appliances directly from the vCenter Server Appliance Management Interface or API. The backup consists of a set of files that is streamed to a selected storage device using the SCP, HTTP(S), or FTP(S) protocol. This backup fully supports vCenter Server Appliance instances with both embedded and external Platform Services Controller instances.
- VMware vSphere HA support for NVIDIA vGPU-configured VMs—vSphere HA protects VMs with the NVIDIA vGPU shared pass-through device. In the event of a failure, vSphere HA tries to restart the VMs on another host that has an identical NVIDIA vGPU profile. If no available healthy host meets this criterion, the VM fails to power on.
- VMware Log Insight—Provides log management, actionable dashboards, and refined analytics that enable deep operational visibility and faster troubleshooting.
Citrix DaaS and/or Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
The architecture described here is based on Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and Citrix DaaS, which provides a complete end-to-end solution that delivers Microsoft Windows virtual desktops to users on a wide variety of endpoint devices. Virtual desktops are dynamically assembled on demand, providing pristine, yet personalized, desktops each time a user logs in.
Customer using Dell PowerStore can choose either of them based on whether you want a cloud-based (Citrix DaaS) Citrix setup or full on-prem (CAVD) self-managed setup.
Citrix DaaS allows us to deliver secure virtual apps and desktops to any device, leaving most of the installation, setup, and upgrades to Citrix. You maintain complete control over applications, policies, and users while delivering the best user experience on any device.
Citrix DaaS allows you to manage on-premises data center and public cloud workloads together in a hybrid deployment. You can connect to public clouds plus on-premises to host the workloads. The hybrid, multi-cloud approach gives you the flexibility to deploy different applications in different resource locations worldwide.
Components and services managed by Citrix:
- Delivery Controllers—Citrix DaaS provides the functionality to load balance applications and desktops, authenticate users, and broker or prioritize connections directly from the cloud, without the need to manage Delivery Controllers, as with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops.
- Databases—Site configuration, monitoring, and configuration logging data is stored by the cloud service, eliminating the SQL database requirement of the on-premises Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops product.
- Licensing—Manages licenses and provides usage statistics.
- Monitor interface—The Monitor interface enables IT support and help desk teams to monitor an environment, troubleshoot issues before they become critical, and perform support tasks for end users.
- Cloud Connectors—A Cloud Connector is the communications channel between the components in the Citrix Cloud and components in the resource location. In the resource location, the Cloud Connector acts as a proxy for the Delivery Controller in Citrix Cloud.
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops provides a complete virtual desktop delivery system by integrating several distributed components with advanced configuration tools that simplify the creation and real-time management of the VDI.
The core Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops components include:
- 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.
- Delivery Controller (DC)—Installed on servers in the data center, the DC authenticates users, manages the assembly of users' virtual desktop environments, and brokers connections between users and their virtual desktops. DC also manages the state of desktops, starting and stopping them based on demand and administrative configuration.
- Database—At least one Microsoft SQL Server database is required for every virtual application or desktop site to store configuration and session information. The DC must have a persistent connection to the database as it stores data that the Controller services collect and manage.
- Director—Director is a web-based tool that enables IT support teams to monitor an environment, troubleshoot issues before they become system-critical, and perform support tasks for users. You can also view and interact with a user's sessions using Microsoft Remote Assistance. Starting in version 7.12, Director includes detailed descriptions for connection and computer failures, one-month historical data (Enterprise edition), custom reporting, and notifications using SNMP traps.
- Citrix Workspace app—The Citrix Workspace app is installed on user devices, and 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. The app provides on-demand access to Windows, web, and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. For devices that cannot install the app software, the Citrix Workspace app for HTML5 provides connectivity through a HTML5-compatible web browser.
- StoreFront—StoreFront authenticates users to sites hosting resources and manages stores of desktops and applications that users access. StoreFront version 3.8 (released with XenDesktop 7.12) and later versions includes the ability to create and use multiple IIS websites each having its own domain name.
- License Server—The Citrix License Server is an essential component of any Citrix-based solution. Every Citrix product environment must have at least one shared or dedicated license server. License servers are computers that are either partly or completely dedicated to storing and managing licenses. Citrix products request licenses from a license server when users try to connect.
- Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA)—A transparent plug-in that is installed on every virtual desktop or application host (RDSH). VDA enables the direct connection between the virtual desktop and users' endpoint devices. Windows and Linux VDAs are available.
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops offers the following methods for cloning desktops:
- Machine Creation Services (MCS)—A collection of services that work together to create virtual servers and desktops on demand from a gold image, optimizing storage utilization, and providing a pristine virtual machine to users every time they log in. MCS is fully integrated and administered in Citrix Studio. This is the cloning technology that is recommended and referenced in this document.
- Citrix Provisioning (PVS)—Software streaming technology that delivers patches, updates, and other configuration information to multiple virtual desktop endpoints through a shared desktop image. It centralizes virtual machine management while reducing the operational and storage costs of a virtualized desktop environment.
Citrix Profile Management
Citrix Profile management is another piece of the overall solution that provides for dynamically assembled virtual desktops with the appearance of user persistence.