Citrix XenDesktop Migration & Implementation

The enterprise needed to migrate off a legacy XenApp estate — versions 5 and 6 running on persistent VMs — and onto a modern, image-managed environment. The new platform had to deliver desktops and applications to 5,000 concurrent users across geographically distributed U.S. locations, provide high availability across multiple sites, secure both internal and external access, give the helpdesk real monitoring, and scale to absorb corporate acquisitions and office relocations without interrupting the business.

IntelliSuite designed and implemented a XenDesktop 5.6 and XenApp 6.5 platform on XenServer, migrating both legacy farms to streamed Provisioning Services vDisks along the way.

• Designed and implemented XenDesktop 5.6 with XenApp 6.5 supporting 5,000 end users across multiple U.S. locations
• Provisioned two independent XenServer 6 pools of nine hosts each for virtual infrastructure and workloads
• Established a Provisioning Services 6.1 farm for single-image management across Windows 7 VDIs, XenApp 5, and XenApp 6.5 session hosts
• Created a XenApp 6.5 farm of 70 session host servers running streamed PVS vDisks
• Migrated the existing XenApp 6 farm from persistent VMs to XenApp 6.5 with streamed PVS vDisks
• Migrated the legacy XenApp 5 farm from persistent VMs to streamed PVS vDisks
• Deployed a XenDesktop 5.6 site brokering 5,000 Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit virtual desktops
• Implemented an internal StoreFront 1.2 site load balanced by Citrix NetScaler MPX 5650 appliances for XenApp and VDI access
• Deployed an external StoreFront 1.2 site with NetScaler and RSA SecurID integration for remote access
• Configured EdgeSight 5.3 to monitor the XenApp 5 and 6.5 workloads
• Established Desktop Director 2.0 for helpdesk support, troubleshooting, and VDI/controller performance monitoring
• Developed Active Directory Group Policy Objects to optimize the virtual environment
• Created complete project documentation and delivered knowledge transfer training to the client's Citrix engineering team

• The organization can acquire new companies and integrate them into operations seamlessly
• An entire office relocation was completed over a single weekend with zero business downtime the following week
• Substantially improved data security posture
• Reduced overall IT costs through infrastructure consolidation

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 / 2008 R2
• Microsoft Windows 7
• Citrix XenDesktop 5.6
• Citrix XenApp 5 / 6.0 / 6.5
• Citrix Provisioning Services 6.1 (PVS)
• Citrix StoreFront 1.2
• Citrix Desktop Director 2.0
• Citrix Profile Management 4.0
• Citrix EdgeSight 5.3
• Citrix NetScaler MPX 5650
• Citrix XenServer 6.0
• RSA SecurID