Friday, April 14, 2017

Getting started with Citrix Essentials on Azure


Earlier this month two Citrix Essentials products hit the Azure Marketplace;
XenApp Essentials and XenDesktop Essentials. https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2017/04/03/xendesktop-essentials-xenapp-essentials-now-available-in-azure-marketplace/

In this short period of time, there has been  customers who have purchased the services or are kicking the tires.
While I didn't give a number, I can say that it has been a pretty exciting first two weeks, and the interest from customers has been great.  Really great.

Both Essentials offerings run on Azure (exclusively) and are managed through Citrix Cloud.

Since these are new services, the documentation is constantly coming on-line. Here are some references that should get you over the initial hurdles of understanding how to implement it all.

The newly updated XenDesktop Essentials guide: http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-cloud/xenapp-and-xendesktop-service/xendesktop-essentials.html

If you were wondering if you could take advantage of Azure Active Directory Domain Service? Yes, you can: https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2017/04/11/xenapp-xendesktop-services-support-azure-ad-domain-services/

If you are in a hybrid cloud scenario (user workers in Azure with a VPN back to the datacenter where they need Kerberos or Windows pass-through authentication) you will need to setup up an Active Directory replica server in Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/active-directory-install-replica-active-directory-domain-controller

Are you setting up Windows Desktops in Azure? 
Be aware that you must implement Azure Active Directory. More details on the way.

And take advantage of the Hybrid Use Benefit Windows 10 image in the Azure Gallery if you create a new golden desktop image.

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