Designing a basic XenDesktop^® Site

We are just about to get started with installing XenDesktop, but before we do, we need to do some initial assessment of the design. We need to think about what the XenDesktop Site will look like when we are finished, taking into account the number of users we want to service. The resulting design will tell us how much server, hardware, and storage capacity we will need, which FlexCast model to deploy, and which user groups to start with. We will also end up with an architecture diagram of the complete solution which will show how all the components fit together.

Tip

Ultimately, you can navigate to the Citrix Project Accelerator that has a handy tool to help you to quickly assess, design, and deploy your XenDesktop Site. It is located at http://project.citrix.com.

The Project Accelerator can be complex and confusing. Don't get caught up in it too much but use it as a general guideline.

Scenario

To help guide you through the process, I have created a fictitious company called Xenpipe.com. For now, there is just one type of user at Xenpipe—normal users who require access to Microsoft Office applications. In future, we can add heavy bandwidth users who require access to design applications (HDX 3D), mobile users who require remote access, and task workers who don't require any personalization, just a locked-down desktop. After plugging this information into the Citrix Project Accelerator, we came up with the following table to help us size our deployment. We chose to implement a Hosted VDI solution because it provides the most common form of virtual computing to any device, such as thin clients, PCs, laptops, or mobile devices.

User group	FlexCast	Users	Servers	Hardware	Storage
Main HQ	Hosted VDI	10	1 physical 18 virtual	21 cores 72 GB RAM	723 GB HD 400 IOPS

The resulting architecture will look as follows: