Citrix Virtualization Design & Implementation
A XenDesktop 5.6 and XenApp 6.5 design supporting thousands of end users across hospital shifts and multiple locations.
A multi-location hospital system supporting over 4,000 end users
The Challenge
The health system needed a virtualized infrastructure capable of serving more than 4,000 concurrent users across multiple hospital locations and shifts without introducing a single point of failure. It required redundancy across geographically distributed data centers to guarantee continuity during a site failure, while securing electronic protected health information and optimizing performance across the enterprise.
The Solution
IntelliSuite designed a fully mirrored, active-active Citrix environment across two data centers, with every tier duplicated and load balanced so either site could carry the full clinical workload.
- Two independent active-active XenDesktop 5.6 sites in separate data centers for workload redundancy and disaster recovery
- Two independent XenApp 6.5 farms distributing Windows applications to the hosted desktops
- Two independent Web Interface 5.4 sites, load balanced by Citrix NetScaler MPX 7500 within each data center and by F5 GSLB between sites for a single unified URL
- Citrix NetScaler MPX 7500 XML load balancing between the XenApp and XenDesktop controllers
- Two independent Provisioning Services 6.1 farms for single-image management of Windows 7 VDIs and XenApp session hosts
- Two independent Desktop Director 2.0 sites for VDI performance monitoring behind a single load-balanced URL
- EdgeSight 5.3 monitoring for XenApp 6.5 workload performance tracking
- Active Directory Group Policy Objects to optimize the virtual environment
- Citrix and Remote Desktop Licensing servers deployed redundantly across both data centers
- Entire infrastructure deployed on two independent VMware vSphere 5 clusters using distributed EMC VPLEX SAN and EMC VNX NAS
- Knowledge transfer sessions conducted with the client's staff
The Results
- Every location gained consistent access to unified clinical information systems, enhancing quality of patient care
- Single points of failure eliminated — active-active failover between data centers keeps patient care uninterrupted
- Centralized virtualization optimized ePHI security across the network
Technologies Used
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
- Microsoft Windows 7
- Citrix XenDesktop 5.6
- Citrix XenApp 6.5
- Citrix Web Interface 5.4
- Citrix Provisioning Services 6.1 (PVS)
- Citrix NetScaler MPX 7500
- Citrix Desktop Director 2.0
- Citrix EdgeSight 5.3
- VMware ESX vSphere 5
- EMC VPLEX SAN
- EMC VNX NAS
- F5 GSLB