Is Citrix Cloud Enterprise Ready? Best Practices to Get the Most Out of Citrix Cloud Deployments

© eG Innovations, Inc. | www.eginnovations.com
Is Citrix Cloud Enterprise Ready?
Best Practices to Get The Most Out of Citrix Cloud Deployments

Know Your Speaker
David Wilkinson
Citrix Expert and EUC Architect
Vinod Mohan
Sr. Product Marketing Manager,
eG Innovations
Moderator
Speakers
Srinivas Ramanathan
Founder and CEO,
eG Innovations
Over 15 years of experience working with Citrix
technologies.
srinivas@eginnovations.com | www.eginnovations.comdavid@wilkyit.com | www.WilkyIT.com | @WilkyIT

Agenda
 Introducing Citrix Cloud: Architecture, Benefits
 What's New in Citrix Cloud?
 Deployment Considerations
 Migrating to Citrix Cloud
 Costing Calculator for Azure Workloads
 Is Citrix Cloud Enterprise Ready?
 Best Practices for Performance Assurance

A Traditional Citrix Deployment
Physical, virtual, on-premises deployment

Citrix Evolution to the Cloud
Physical  Virtualization  Public Cloud  Citrix Cloud
Physical
Server
VMware,
Hyper-V,
XenServer,
Nutanix
Azure,
AWS
Citrix
Cloud

Introducing Citrix Cloud

Citrix Cloud Architecture
Control Plane
Resource Plane

Benefits of Using Citrix Cloud
 Simple: Upgrading Citrix components is easier – managed by Citrix
 Fast: Deploy Virtual Apps and Desktops in hours, not weeks
 Flexible: Hybrid cloud deployment model
 Secure: Keep apps, desktops and data under your control
 Scalable: Easy to scale up and scale down
 Cost-effective: Lesser hardware footprint on-premises

What Changes in Your Citrix Environment?
• You no longer manage the control plane components
– Deployment, upgrade and maintenance are owned by Citrix
• You are responsible for the upkeep and performance of the resource plane
– Core Citrix components (Virtual Apps Servers and Virtual Desktop VMs) are under your
control
– You still manage the hypervisor and other supporting IT infrastructure components
(network, AD, etc.)
– New component to manage: Citrix Cloud Connector
• Serves as a channel for communication between control & resource plane
• Typically deployed in pairs for high availability/failover

What’s New
In the Latest Release of
Citrix Cloud

Local Host Cache
• Local Host Cache now available
• GA End of Sep ‘18
• BYO StoreFront required!
• Critical for Enterprise size adoption
• Improved Pooled Desktop
• Set-BrokerSite -ReuseMachinesWithoutShutdownInOutageAllowed $true Set-
BrokerDesktopGroup -Name "name" -ReuseMachinesWithoutShutdownInOutage $true

Improved Delegated Administration
• Improved Delegated
Administration to Citrix Cloud
• Now available as of End of
Sep ‘18

Improved Delegated Administration
• Roles & Scopes same as
Virtual Apps & Desktop
on-premises
• Users must be added by
Identity & Access
Management from
Hamburger menu in
Citrix Cloud

Configuration Logging
• Configuration Logging now available!
• GA End of Sep ‘18

Workspace Environment Management
• WEM Cloud was added in
early Aug’18 updated
release
• Same Management
Console as on-premises
• No Local Infrastructure/DB
required

Workspace Environment Management
• New WEM Agent ADMX to allow Cloud Connectors to manage agents
• Leave Infrastructure Servers/Agent Port as “Not Configured”
Old New

Deployment Considerations
for Citrix Cloud

Deployment Types
• Buying Citrix Cloud due to cost reduction vs. renewal of licenses with support now
included
– 2-year hybrid usage rights
• Deploying Citrix Cloud control plane, but leaving workloads on-premises
• Deploying Citrix Cloud control plane and migrating gradually to cloud providers
(Azure, AWS, GCP) as hardware needs replacing
• Deploying Citrix Cloud control plane, moving virtual apps to cloud, and hosting
virtual desktops on premises (due to VDI cost)

On-Premises vs. Citrix Cloud Comparison
• The feature gap is reducing, especially over the past month
• Limitations:
– Gateway Service has a number of limitations
• Customisation is limited
• No logging available
• EDT not available, standard ICA/HDX only
• No Smart Access
– No Microsoft App-V Integration
– No Custom role for Delegated Administration
(rumoured to be coming later in the year)
*Citrix Gateway is most often deployed
to resource location (BYO Citrix ADC) to
remove these limitations. Enterprises
will most often like to control entry
points for security posture.

Cloud Connector – Placement
• Placement within your environment
– Security Zoning
– External SSL to Citrix Cloud but Netscaler
Service uses this connection to provide
users access to VDA
• Identify the Risks involved per Zone
– Opening AD ports in DMZ
– Semi-Trusted

Cloud Connector – Firewall
• Outbound SSL to Citrix Cloud
– Don’t enable SSL Decryption or add
bypass for *.citrixworkspacesapi.net
• Cloud Connector to AD (Allow AD
Ports)
• StoreFront to Cloud Connector
• NetScaler STA to Cloud Connector
• Cloud Connector VDA
• Cloud Connector to Hypervisor
Management

Cloud Connector – Recommendations
• SSL is not enabled by default for STA/XML Communication: Please Enable!
– Similar to enabling SSL for delivery controllers
• Recommendation to reduce the
"bypassduration" setting in the BYO
Storefront store advanced setting to 0
to accommodate small network blips
– Default 60 min exclusion if XML fails
from storefront to cloud connector, if
multiple listed it will move to next on list

• Internet connection needs to be highly available
– Consider load balancing proxies, across multiple data centres/internet
connections
– SD-WAN to combine different paths/connection to reduce reliance on one
• Force Local Host Cache when network is unstable

• Deploy at minimum 2 per Resource Location
– Use high availability sets for Azure
– Use Affinity Rules on Hypervisor
• Exclude processes/databases files/Logs files for Cloud Connector
just like a delivery controller for Antivirus

Local Host Cache – Force Outage

Cloud Connector – Active Directory
• Consider placement of cloud connectors using the following decision tree

Cloud Connector – Sizing
• 5,000 Desktop OS VDA’s/500 Server OS VDA’s per Cloud Connector
• 7-9% Increase in CPU, 6-7% Increase in RAM when LHC is active on BYO StoreFront
• Local Host Cache Additional Requirements on top of Minimum requirement:
– 1.2GB RAM required for LHC Database
– 1.0GB RAM required by HA Service if running for extended period of time
– Needs to be accommodated on all Cloud Connectors
• Recommended Server Size (Up 5,000/500 + LHC)
– 4vCPU, 4GB RAM Virtual Machine (Azure VM –General Purpose A4_v2 = 4vCPU & 8GB RAM)
Review Citrix Scalability in a Cloud World – 2018 Edition

Gateway Service to VDA
• Route via Cloud Connector
– Additional compute needs allocated to
handle network traffic
– 75 concurrent users has been indicated
per cloud connector
– Additional compute resources

Gateway Service to VDA
• Route Direct
– More scalability
– Load removed from cloud
connectors

Gateway Service – Enabling Direct
• Allow “Rendezvous Protocol” in Citrix policies
• You must be on VDA 1808

Migrating to Citrix Cloud

Migration to Citrix Cloud
• Citrix Cloud Migration Tool
– Used to assist recreating your farm structure in Citrix Cloud.
– Scans your current farm and record all information required to recreate your
machine catalogs, delivery groups and hosting connections.
– Info exported to a JSON format and can be imported to a farm in Citrix Cloud.
• Citrix Policy Migration Tool
– Used to export and import Citrix policies between farm, both on-premises and in
Citrix Cloud.
Shane O’Neil (CTA) citrixtips.com

Updates to Citrix Cloud
• Two Environments (identical)
– Updates applied to Release A first, then
customers migrated to this environment
– Then update applied to remaining
environment (Release B)
• You can opt in to be Early Adopter (i.e
–Customer 1)

Costing Calculator
for Your Azure Workloads

Three Main Pricing Factors
• Compute
– Type of VM selected (F16s_v2, D2_v2 etc)
– Users/Servers will impact total number of servers required
– Num of Server/VDI x Num of Hrs VM is on x Per-Hr Unit cost for Compute in Azure
• Storage
– Standard Storage - No of Users x IOPS Expected x 3600 (3600 is 1 hr) / 10,000 (Storage Access
Measure) x Storage Access Cost per 10,000 (There is a scaling per GB cost depending on usage)
– Premium: Set charge for size of Storage per month
• Network
– Num of Users x Outgoing Bandwidth x 3600 (3600 is 1 hr) x Hrs per month x Per GB Network Cost
(There is a scaling per GB cost depending on usage)

Pay-and-Go vs. Reserved Pricing Models
• For VDA uptime with 17+ hrs, reserved pricing will be more cost
effective

Recommended Azure Sizing
• F16S_v2, previously D2_v2
• Although most effective per user, shutting down VM’s with higher number of users
may increase daily uptime. Tight Idle/disconnect timers need to be implemented.
• Each environment is different! Test various different VM combinations!

Citrix Cost Calculator
• Based on Standard General Purpose Storage
NOT Premium
• If MCSIO is used, then an additional 127GB
storage is added , this is an additional cost
• Licensing included as part of azure compute
cost (but not Citrix licenses or RDS)
• Network Connectivity to Azure needs to be
factored into costs

Citrix Cost Calculator
• Sizing of each components for Citrix
Cloud & Citrix on Azure
• Smart Scale
– 10% Virtual Desktop
– 30% Virtual Apps

Self-Developed Cost Calculator
• Freely available spreadsheet for download
– Citrix Cloud + Azure & Citrix on Azure
• Adjustable input
– VM , Network & Storage pricing
– Smart Scale percentages
– Storage types/sizes
– Disaster Recovery
– More granular detail of calculation & how calculation was done
• Callout to Community for help to move off Excel & automate azure pricing:
david@wilkyit.com
https://wilkyit.com/2017/12/20/cost-calculator-
for-citrix-cloud-azure-citrix-on-azure/

Is Citrix Cloud
Enterprise Ready?

Challenges to Citrix Cloud Adoption
1. Not everyone has migrated to Citrix Virtual
Apps and Desktops 7.x to take advantage of
Citrix Cloud
2. Familiarity with cloud deployment model is less
3. Cloud services are more expensive
4. Fears of security and compliance
5. Reliability and performance concerns, missing
features

1. Not everyone has migrated to Citrix Virtual Apps and
Desktops 7.x to take advantage of Citrix Cloud
─ Because of XenApp 6.5 EOL, more customers are
upgrading to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7.x. And
with that, Citrix Cloud adoption is also increasing.
5%
14%
31%
50%
Yes, currently using cloud services
Yes, considering cloud services
Plan to look at cloud services in the future
No plan for cloud services
2018 Citrix Migration Survey ― eG Innovations & DABCC
www.eginnovations.com/Citrix-Migration-Trends
45% of Citrix customers are considering
using Citrix Cloud Services
─ Attractive proposition for renewing traditional licenses
─ Shifting expenses from CAPEX to OPEX
─ Citrix Cloud Success Program included in Cloud Subscription

2. Familiarity with cloud deployment model is less
– Not a huge variation from the management console
– Citrix is trying to make cloud deployment simpler and easy for admins to
evaluate/try
– Feature comparison between Cloud/On-Premises reducing
– Multi-cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) supported as well as traditional DC deployment

3. Citrix Cloud Services are more expensive
– There are different pricing options available:
https://www.citrix.com/products/citrix-cloud/subscriptions.html
– Organizations can also try Virtual Apps Essentials and Virtual Desktop Essentials
services on Microsoft Azure
– Speed of deployment vs transitional (Hrs vs Weeks)
– Alleviates short-term burst requirements when additional workloads is needed
– Citrix Smart Scaling developed to save on cost on cloud compute (shutting down
VM’s when workload is not required)
– Shifting expenses from CAPEX to OPEX

4. Fears of security and compliance
– Citrix Cloud Regions (Americas, European Union, and Asia Pacific and Japan)
– Metadata only exchanged between Cloud Connector & Citrix Cloud, data still
resides with Customer
– Citrix Cloud Government (US Only) to meet regulatory and compliance
requirements
5. Citrix Cloud has introduced new features to help improve performance
and reliability
 Built on Azure Platform (99.5% SLA)
 Delegated Administration
 Local Host Cache
 Configuration Logging
 Citrix WEM (for US
region)

• Ultimately, this depends on each customer’s requirements.
• But, in general, Citrix Cloud is here to stay. With every
release, Citrix is trying to address customer concerns and
making the cloud offering more reliable, secure and easy
to use.
• While it may not replace the on-prem installations
completely, there is growing interest in Citrix Cloud and it’s
certainly something to try and evaluate.

Citrix Cloud Performance
Assurance Through
End-to-End Monitoring

Monitoring Using “status.cloud.com”
Performance Management Challenges
• Citrix provides an availability guarantee, not performance SLAs
• Need to know about downtime by looking at status.cloud.com. Issues reported only when many
customers are impacted.
• Performance issues need to be reported to Citrix Support and wait for their response and resolution

Monitoring Using Citrix Director
Performance Management Challenges
• Mainly session-level data
• Limited visibility into infrastructure
and cloud-connectivity issues
• No root cause diagnosis
• Limited troubleshooting

What eG Enterprise Delivers for Citrix Cloud
Synthetic and
Real User Experience
Citrix and Supporting
Infrastructure
End-to-End
Performance Correlation
Reports, Analytics,
Machine Learning
Monitor Every Layer,
Every Tier
Pinpoint Root Cause
of Problems
Right-size & Optimize for
Maximum Performance
Measure All Aspects of
Citrix User Experience
1
2
3
4

Proactive Logon Monitoring with The Citrix Logon Simulator
Launch app/desktop on
StoreFront
Enumerated apps/desktops
on StoreFront
Log into session via
StoreFront / Citrix Gateway

Control Plane
Resource Plane
Monitoring Using eG Enterprise
eG Enterprise
Web Console
 Agentless monitoring of the
Delivery Controller in the control
plane through Citrix APIs
 Agent-based monitoring Virtual
Apps Server, Cloud Connector, AD,
hypervisor in the resource plane
 Agentless monitoring of Virtual
Desktops VMs

Monitoring All Aspects of Citrix Cloud Performance
• Logon time
• Profile load time
• Application launch time
• Screen refresh latency
• User network quality
• StoreFront response time
• EDT performance
User Experience
• Bandwidth speed
• Line speed
• Audio bandwidth
• Video bandwidth
• Printer bandwidth
• Drive bandwidth
• Framehawk fps
HDX Channels
• Active/idle time
• Top users by CPU, memory,
IOPS, GPU
• Top applications by CPU,
memory, IOPS, GPU
• URLs accesses by users
User & Application Activity
• Who logged in and when
• What applications did they
access
• When disconnects happen
• Idle time in session
• Top users by session duration
Virtual Apps and Desktops
Sessions
• ADC, Gateway
• StoreFront
• Provisioning
• Delivery Controller
• License Server
• Microsoft SQL Server
Supporting Tiers
• Virtualization platform
• Storage
• Network in data center
• Network to user terminals
• Infra services – AD, DNS
• Cloud
Supporting Infrastructure

• Is it on the client side?
• Is it the user’s network?
• Is it due to the control plane?
• Is there a Citrix server-side problem in the resource plane?
• Is it due to the user’s workload?
• Is it due to the virtual platform/hypervisor?
• Are any of the on-premises infrastructure components
(network, AD, storage, etc.) affecting Citrix performance?
Why is the Application Slow? Pinpoint the Root Cause

Before
Migration
After
Migration
Cloud Migration Analysis

+1 (866) 526 6700 www.eginnovations.cominfo@eginnovations.com
Contact eG Innovations

Q&A

Thank You
For more information on Citrix Cloud performance monitoring,
contact eG Innovations:
www.eginnovations.com | info@eginnovations.com
Visit David Wilkinson’s blog for informative articles on Citrix Cloud and EUC:
www.wilkyIT.com

Is Citrix Cloud Enterprise Ready? Best Practices to Get the Most Out of Citrix Cloud Deployments

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