Tech Briefs

Overview Local Host Cache and Service Continuity should be at the forefront of conversations when building a resilient Citrix environment. Local Host Cache and Service Continuity are Citrix technologies that can maintain end-user access to business-critical workloads during potential service disruptions.  While they function differently, both features serve the same purpose: to keep users launching their apps and desktops regardless of service health. Let's start by differentiatin

Overview This article examines the concept of policy labels and gives a few examples of how they might be useful. If you have ever used nFactor authentication, most likely, you have been exposed to policy labels. However, they can be used in more places. Some examples are together with responder, rewrite, and content switch policies.  What are policy labels? A policy label can be seen as a container where one or more policies are bound. The policy label is invoked when a poli

Organizations’ IT environments are becoming more complex as they begin to adopt SaaS, cloud, and mobile applications. Administrators need the visibility into their environment not only to protect it from malicious users, but also to improve the user experience proactively. Citrix Analytics pulls together the entire Citrix portfolio to provide visibility into the status and context of individual users. Unlike some of the other monitoring tools that Citrix provides, Citrix Analytics gives you proa

In recent years, we have seen an increase in advance persistent threat (APT) attacks in all industries. Instead of a typical select & run attack (for example ransomware), the goal for attackers is to stay inside your network and remain undetected for an extended period. According to research from FireEye, mean dwell-time for 2018 in the Americas is 71 days, EMEA is 177 days, and APAC is 204 days. 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report concludes that most security breaches took months or long

Overview A poorly designed power-management scheme can increase cloud computing costs by 70%+ over what the organization requires to support the users. Cloud-based services often use a pay-as-you-go model where organizations are billed, sometimes every second, for compute time, network throughput, storage consumption, and transactions. To minimize costs, organizations need to intelligently utilize, allocate, and deallocate resources, which are in stark contrast from a traditional, on-premises m

Overview Migrating on-premises Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops environments to Citrix DaaS or migrating information between different cloud regions or tenants has been tedious and daunting for many Citrix Administrators over the years. Many migrations tend to be case-specific, so Citrix administrators must write their automation scripts or tools to accomplish their migration. Citrix developed the Citrix Automated Configuration Tool, which was designed to ease this process by providing a tool t

Introduction Digital transformation initiatives are currently top of mind for a large section of enterprises. Moving their apps and desktops delivery infrastructure to the cloud is one of the major considerations of CIOs. Cloud providers are bringing cloud-only solutions or cloud-based resources bundled with attractive pricing, with the added benefit of simplified operations and lower management costs. A couple of the first things to evaluate for the IT departments, when considering a move to

Overview MSIX is a Windows app package format that provides a modern packaging experience to all Windows apps. MSIX packaging brings guaranteed clean installs and uninstalls, creates isolation between apps, and offers higher security for users’ environments. Combined, the ease of MSIX and the robust functionality of Citrix DaaS can significantly improve your app management experience and deliver benefits including: Familiar publishing paradigm – Treat packages like seamless apps. Ease of dep

Citrix DaaS Standard for Azure is a turnkey Microsoft Azure hosted solution to deliver virtual desktops and apps. The admin can deliver Windows 11 or Windows 10 multi-session desktops, Windows 11, or Windows 10 Enterprise single-session desktops and Ubuntu Linux. Also, Windows Server 2016, 2019 and 2022 OS sessions or apps running on any of the above OS using a GUI interface in just a few clicks. Remote PC Access is also an option that can be delivered by this service. Admins can extend the org

Overview Citrix Desktops-as-a-Service (DaaS) enables you to securely deliver a high-performance virtual apps and desktops experience to any device. Run by a Citrix-hosted management service, this solution delivers end user access to Windows and Linux applications and desktops securely from a central location, regardless of the operating system on which the endpoints run. Users get flexibility and consistency. They are no longer tied to a specific endpoint. IT gets benefits from this hybrid c

About Citrix Endpoint Management Citrix Endpoint Management is an industry acknowledged Unified Endpoint Management aka UEM solution offered through the Citrix Cloud as a Service. Unified Endpoint Management solutions offer a single uniform over-the-air management interface for mobile, laptops, PCs, and other devices like wearables and IoT endpoints. Citrix Endpoint Management provides a flexible choice in platform management, ownership models (Bring Your Own Device, Choose Your Own Device, Com

Overview Citrix Gateway is the best secure remote access solution for Citrix Workspace. It provides a myriad of unique integrations that enhance security and user experience. Moreover, Citrix Gateway consolidates access to any app from any device through a single URL. Citrix Gateway enables encrypted and contextual access (authentication and authorization) to Citrix Workspace. Its NetScaler ADC-powered load balancing distributes user traffic across the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops

Overview Hybrid multi-cloud image management is a challenge many Citrix administrators face because it is complicated. Several platforms, tools, and complex workflows are trying to solve the challenge of hybrid multi-cloud image management. This image management challenge creates a situation where these tools and complex workflows don’t fit well, and many are vendor-specific. For Citrix administrators, it is challenging to map the right tools to the proper purpose. Citrix developed the Citrix I

Overview Citrix Provisioning (PVS) is different from traditional imaging solutions, fundamentally changing the relationship between hardware and the software that runs on it. A shared disk image is streamed over the network rather than copied to virtual machines. This single shared-disk image (vDisk) is created by imaging a machine called the master target device. Administrators need to determine the type of machines (OS, Software, and so forth) to deploy for the user base in their organization

Overview The Citrix VDA Upgrade service is a cloud-based feature of Citrix DaaS. With the VDA Upgrade service, administrators can improve operational efficiency by shifting VDA updates from manual or complex processes to automated processes that Citrix manages. With the VDA Upgrade service, administrators can: Quickly push VDA upgrades to persistent machines via Web Studio or PowerShell. Reduce time and manual work by automating VDA upgrades without the need for SCCM or custom scripts. Choo

Introduction Enterprises continue to migrate their web apps and APIs to the Cloud to better support work from home employees, fueled by the pandemic. At the same time, they still support business-critical web apps hosted On-Premises or in Private Clouds. Along with the growth in these internet-facing services, there has been growth in internet-borne threats. Bad actors continue to develop new ways to compromise them to support their illicit activities. Protecting applications from attack requi

Overview Citrix Workspace is a digital workspace solution that delivers secure and unified access to apps, desktops, and content (resources) from anywhere, on any device. These resources can be Citrix DaaS, content apps, local and mobile apps, SaaS and Web apps, and browser apps. Citrix Workspace allows you to deploy applications and desktops faster and helps you organize and automate the most important details that your users need to collaborate, make better decisions, and focus on their work.

Introduction This guide demonstrates how to configure SaaS and internal web apps with single sign-on (SSO) in Citrix Workspace. The following is what the reader is able to accomplish using this deployment guide: Learn the step-by-step process in configuring VPN-less access to internal web apps in Citrix Workspace Learn the step-by-step process in configuring secure access to SaaS apps in Citrix Workspace Learn the configurations required to enable second factor authent

Overview Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is a platform in Microsoft Azure to host and manage virtual machines. It is not just a set of operating systems that can be run in Azure but a set of services that can be used to deliver the virtual desktops to users. Staying true to Citrix’s track record, our solutions add unique value to this platform. The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service allows our customers to deploy hybrid-cloud environments, making the most of their on-premises investments whil

Citrix Gateway service for HDX Proxy provides users with secure remote access to Citrix DaaS without having to deploy a NetScaler Gateway appliance in the on-premises DMZ or reconfigure firewalls. Citrix Cloud Services hosts a suite of services provided by Citrix DaaS, Citrix Gateway service, and so forth. All these services are delivered in a single pane using Workspace experience. On-Premises vs. Cloud On-Premises Citrix Gateway is a hardened appliance (physical or virtual) that proxies and

Overview This Tech Brief provides insights into Citrix’s client app service called Global App Configuration service. The document explains the use cases of the services, the features, and capabilities enabling IT organizations to manage their end user’s app management. The app management capabilities comprise Citrix Workspace app end-user settings, agent management (across Citrix and third party agents), and app version update management. The service manages access to the Citrix Workspace ap

Overview The Global App Configuration Service (GACS) provides a centralized mechanism for enterprise IT admins to easily configure, distribute, and manage user settings for Citrix Workspace app across all devices - managed and unmanaged devices. The service can be used to manage settings on both cloud and on-premises environments, that is, Citrix Workspace and Citrix StoreFront settings via the GACS User Interface on Citrix Cloud portal or the GACS APIs. For more details on the service, read

Overview Local Host Cache (LHC), in the context of the Citrix Desktops-as-a-Service (DaaS), can be thought of as an insurance policy. This insurance policy comes into play when, for whatever reason (outages, connection issues, internet blackouts and so on.), the Citrix Cloud Connectors are not able to communicate with the Citrix Brokering service (part of Citrix DaaS and from now on referred as the Cloud Broker). A communication breakdown between a Resource Location and the Cloud Broker can

As users consume more SaaS-based applications, organizations must be able to unify all sanctioned apps and this fact is true on the traditional mobile device. With many SaaS-based applications originally written for a web browser, this unification does not offer the best user experience. So, many of these SaaS service providers decided to go with native applications on the iOS and Android platform. Mobile SSO provides organizations the ability to simplify login operations while still enforcing a

Introduction Weak or stolen passwords are a leading cause of breaches in Enterprise networks. They can lead to loss of Intellectual Property, loss of Personally identifiable information (PII) and result in a significant impact on the business. Multifactor Authentication (MFA) is one of the best security measures to guard against identity vulnerabilities. Typically there are three types of authentication used to identify users: 1) Something you know (for example, password) - this t