Interesting…

I’ve recently installed a test XA server for a new client. Citrix told us to Profile and stream the apps. All users are accessing a virtual desktop (W2K3 x64 as they prefer the XP look to Vista) and then from the desktop they’re accessing streamed apps from another XenApp server. This client has around 90 staff, we found that streaming had such high CPU resource requirements it was just not possible, the CPU kept hitting 100% and would only go back to 0% if we killed the streaming processes.

Citrix keep telling me to profile apps as we have more control when it comes to HA and the more advanced monitoring tools but I am not convinvced.

I have been a tad scared of installing apps locally but now I feel I am left with no choice. We have another XA server with locally installed apps and the CPU usage is about half for the same apps.

George one thing you did mention about VDI is using XA servers and then using PNA. As I’m fairly new to Citrix products I’m only used to using XA5 with the XenApp plugin for the clients. Can PNA be used instead of the XenApp plugin to host apps rather than stream ?

Thanks great post

Now to app streaming. When I talk about app streaming, i think it is a great idea but still has shortcomings.
1 We can’t do every app.
2 It adds overhead.

Installing has shortcomings
1 We can’t do every app
2 Lack of seamless updates/maintenance

I could have spent an entire Citrix TechTalk session on when to stream apps and when not to. For example, you if I had dedicated XenApp servers hosting a medical app like Cerner or Epic, i would end up installing it. Easy, no overhead, gives me better scalability on XenApp servers. If i was just deploying Office on XenApp servers doing other things, I would probably install it as well.

However, i think both of these are very simple examples. Many of the environments I’m looking at are very complex enterprise deployments. Organizations what to host a majority of their apps on XenApp, but they also have mobile and offline users. This is one of the big benefits for App Streaming, which is why I use it extensively. One application profile for all my XenApp servers and offline users.

On the case for simplicity, I’ve seen people get many apps working by tweaking/hacking the system or end up with complex silo configurations. I’ve seen these same apps work out-of-the-box when they are streamed helping to reduce the # of XenApp silos. My experience tells me to go for simplicity, but simplicity is relative. You see simplicity as using installation procedures, i see simplicity as not having to go through extensive tweaking/siloing validation.

Thanks for the comments though, very useful
Daniel – Lead Architect – Citrix

In the case of VDI, i would rather just host the apps on the XenApp servers and use traditional PNA instead of streaming. Ofcourse, offline access is something that is an exception. But we are not there yet.