Summary

With XenApp 7.5, Citrix adopted the new FlexCast Management Architecture that was previously introduced for XenDesktop, and now your solution might include both published applications and virtual desktops, leveraging on the same management infrastructure.

A XenApp architecture is made by several components: StoreFront servers, NetScaler Access Gateways, Delivery Controllers, license servers, worker servers, and database servers. All contribute to the correct working of the solution. In this chapter, you learned how to correctly size them based on your business requirements and how to design an infrastructure based on the five-layer model.

If you need to deploy several worker servers, you should consider using Citrix Machine Creation Services. With this tool, you can create a master virtual image of your server and use it to provision as many servers as you need. Day-by-day management is also made easier; updates, patches, and changes have to be applied to the master image only.

If you're an experienced XenApp administrator and have worked with previous versions of XenApp, the new FlexCast Management Architecture may be confusing; at the end of this chapter, I have included a table comparing the terms and technologies of the older versions with the new ones introduced in XenApp 7.5.

In the next chapter, you'll learn how to monitor and optimize the infrastructure when in production.