Over the last two years or so we have published a myriad of XenDesktop related white papers, which can be found within the well-known XenDesktop Design Handbook. All of these papers focus on topics from within the first four phases of a XenDesktop project (Assess, Design, Build&Test, Rollout).
One topic, which was not at the center of our attention and was therefore left open so far, is the operations phase. This fifth phase starts in the moment an infrastructure is transitioned from pilot/rollout stage to normal operations. During this phase, which is by far the longest one, topics such as support structures, maintenance tasks or monitoring configurations become important.
Since we received an increasing number of questions from customers and partners in regards to the operational aspects, we decided it’s time to provide some guidance. Therefore we recently published the following white papers:
- Operations Guide – Support and Maintenance Citrix Desktop and Datacenter. This paper covers a sample support structure, a support tool matrix, sample delegated admin configurations, a sample test infrastructure, testing and change control workflows and recommended operations tasks, which should be performed on a regular schedule.
- Operations Guide – Monitoring Citrix Desktop and Datacenter. This paper describes which aspects of a XenDesktop/XenApp infrastructure should be monitored, sample thresholds, recommended tasks in case a certain threshold is exceeded and what impact the outage of a Citrix component has (risk matrix).
- Managing Citrix Virtual Desktops with Splunk. This paper outlines how Splunk works, which monitoring information it provides, how this data helps admins running a Citrix infrastructure, as well as two sample architectures.
In case you think we missed something important or you feel the need for some guidance around the aforementioned topics or other aspects, please leave a comment below.