XenApp and XenDesktop

Manage

Managing a XenApp or XenDesktop site covers a variety of items and tasks.

Licensing

A valid connection to the Citrix License Server is required when you create a site. Later, you can complete several licensing tasks from Studio, including adding licenses, changing license types or models, and managing license administrators. You can also access the License Administration Console from Studio.

Applications

Manage applications in Delivery Groups and optionally, Application Groups.

Zones

In a geographically disperse deployment, you can use zones to keep applications and desktops closer to end users, which can improve performance. When you install and configure a site, all Controllers, Machine Catalogs, and host connections are in one primary zone. Later, you can use Studio to create satellite zones containing those items. After your site has more than one zone, you will be able to indicate in which zone any newly-created Machine Catalogs, host connections, or added Controllers will be placed. You can also move items between zones.

Connections and resource

If you are using a hypervisor or cloud service to host machines that will deliver applications and desktops to users, you create your first connection to that hypervisor or cloud service when you create a site. The storage and network details for that connection form its resources. Later, you can change that connection and its resources, and create new connections. You can also manage the machines that use a configured connection.

Local Host Cache

Local Host Cache allows connection brokering operations in a site to continue when the connection between a Delivery Controller and the site database fails. It is the most comprehensive high availability feature Citrix offers for XenApp and XenDesktop.

Connection leasing

Citrix recommends trying Local Host Cache instead of connection leasing. Local Host Cache is a more powerful alternative.

Virtual IP and virtual loopback

The Microsoft virtual IP address feature provides a published application with a unique dynamically-assigned IP address for each session. The Citrix virtual loopback feature allows you to configure applications that depend on communications with localhost (127.0.0.1 by default) to use a unique virtual loopback address in the localhost range (127.*).

Delivery Controllers

This article details considerations and procedures when adding and removing Controllers from a site. It also describes how to move Controllers to another zone or site, and how to move a VDA to another site.

VDA registration with Controllers

Before a VDA can facilitate delivery of applications and desktops, it must register (establish communication) with a Controller. Controller addresses can be specified in several ways, which are described in this article. It is critical that VDAs have current information as Controllers are added, moved, and removed in the site.

Sessions

Maintaining session activity is critical to providing the best user experience. Several features can optimize the reliability of sessions, reduce inconvenience, downtime, and loss of productivity.

  • Session reliability
  • Auto Client Reconnect
  • ICA Keep-Alive
  • Workspace control
  • Session roaming

Using search in Studio

When you want to view information about machines, sessions, Machine Catalogs, applications, or Delivery Groups in Studio, use the flexible search feature.

Tags

Use tags to identify items such as machines, applications, groups, and policies. You can then tailor certain operations to apply on to items with a specific tag.

IPv4/IPv6

XenApp and XenDesktop supports pure IPv4, pure IPv6, and dual-stack deployments that use overlapping IPv4 and IPv6 networks. This article describes and illustrates these deployments. It also describes the Citrix policy settings that control the use of IPv4 or IPv6.

User profiles

By default, Citrix Profile management is installed automatically when you install a VDA. If you use this profile solution, review this article for general information and see the Profile management documentation for full details.

Citrix Insight Services

Citrix Insight Services (CIS) is a Citrix platform for instrumentation, telemetry, and business insight generation.

Manage

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