__gVirt_NP_NN_NNPS <__ last week on Citrix blogs, Cris Lau announced that Excalibur technology preview is available for download. Hopefully by now, many of you have downloaded and installed the technology preview Excalibur in your laboratory. Besides practical evaluation, we know that many of you also want to learn more about new features, capabilities and changes in this version. Thus, in the coming weeks, architects, like myself, as well as engineers and product managers will share with you some interesting topics on Excalibur.
To begin, I want to start a blog on FlexCast 2.0. For those unfamiliar with the Citrix FlexCast delivery technology, you can learn more about it here (http://flexcast.citrix.com/). FlexCast 2.0 allows our customers (administrators) simplicity and flexibility to deliver applications and desktops from servers and OS'es office from a single Excalibur infrastructure. This means that there is no need to have management and delivery infrastructure for XenApp, and a similar, but separately managed, for XenDesktop infrastructure. In Excalibur, two key elements are feasible FlexCast 2.0: the executing agency and the Delivery Controller. In this blog, we will see the delivery agent and how it compares to XenApp and XenDesktop today.
FlexCast 2.0 Delivery Agents
Excalibur accomplishes this feat by supporting two types of delivery agents: one for Windows Server OS and Windows Desktop OS machinery machinery . As shown in the diagram below, the two implementing agencies communicate with the same set of delivery controllers and share the common management infrastructure in Excalibur
This is fundamentally different from the way XenApp 6.5 and XenDesktop 5.6 currently operate. Although each has distinct roles for machines running as controllers against workers (Session Hosts in XenApp 6.5 alias and virtual agents office in XenDesktop) or controllers nor the workers of the two products shared a set common work. Deploying a mixture of VDI desktops and hosted shared desktops required the establishment of an infrastructure IMA XenApp and XenDesktop controller controller based infrastructure FMA, with separate databases and separate management consoles.
Excalibur exchange by providing a single controller can operate with workers (aka delivery agents) on both servers or desktop operating systems you can even mix and match the two in one site to deploy desktops and applications hosted on both.
Benefits of delivery agent
Although Excalibur delivery agent for Windows Server machine is very similar to the concept of Hosts session in XenApp 6.5, it also offers some improvements and significant advantages:
- the delivery agent Excalibur for Windows Server machine is designed from the ground up for dynamic provisioning with machine Creation services and Citrix provisioning services. Unlike XenApp, the delivery agent only communicates with the controllers of the website and does not need direct access to the database server or a site license. Agents
- delivery should not run the same version or OS that controllers. This simplifies the upgrade process sites and provides support Excalibur six Windows operating different systems all in a single farm: Server 08 R2, Server 2012, XP, Vista, 7 and 8.
- While XenApp session host only mode disabled features and performance benefits to XenApp controllers, it includes the same binary installed and same services as controllers. The delivery agent for Windows Server Excalibur Machine is a lighter weight, and consists of the elements necessary to accommodate the sessions. He does not share all the common components installed with controllers.
Delivery Agent Install
Unlike XenDesktop 5.6, where the VDA consisted of a single XdsAgent MSI, Excalibur delivery agents now consist of a collection of individual components MSIs, such as ICA protocol stack, profile management, and Personal vDisk. Most of the components are common to both enforcement officers while others are specific to OS. The installer automatically detects the Excalibur operating system and offers to install the appropriate components based on the operating system it is running:
the biggest difference between the two delivery agents is the ICA protocol stack. For desktop machines, ships Citrix ICA single user stack (known internally as Portica) that allows a single ICA session at a time. This version connects users to the session of the console machine, like GoToMyPC or other remote access products for desktop operating system. It also includes additional HDX features such as USB redirection and Aero, which are only available on a single-user machine. For server machines, Citrix ICA includes a multi-user stack that extends the Windows Remote Desktop Services with the HDX protocol. This is the same ICA protocol stack developed for Citrix XenApp, just with a different management interface to make it compatible with controllers Excalibur.
Delivery Agents for applications and workstations
First, a number of customers and partners noted that the technology preview requires the self-employed for applications and desktops. I want to set the record straight that all delivery agents are able to accommodate both transparent applications and published desktops using HDX. Thus, the limitation that you noticed in the technology preview is temporary and a result of unemployment insurance and SDKs not yet been updated from VM hosted applications.
Those of you who have used the VM hosted applications (VMHA) feature in XenApp find the new administrator a welcome change. Instead of requiring separate consoles and management infrastructure for applications delivered from server machines compared to desktop machines, applications can be delivered from two types of Delivery Agent in Excalibur. You can host the majority of your applications on a server OS for the higher user density and run legacy 16-bit applications or those that are not compatible Terminal Services on a desktop OS. Excalibur offers the same experience of the management and the end user, regardless of the application is hosted.
Configuration of the delivery agent via the strategy
Because XenApp and XenDesktop ADV, Delivery Agents in Excalibur are configured through policies. Any combination of Active Directory GPO, the console Studio (HDX Policy), and the local GPO settings can be used.
It is important to note that due to differences between the ICA protocol stack installed on the server compared to desktop operating systems, not all Citrix policy settings will apply to all agents Delivery. As mentioned earlier, some features such as USB redirection is only available on a desktop OS. Similarly, features such as improved desktop experience apply only to a server operating system. As shown in the screenshot below, the policy settings can be filtered by a single session (desktop OS) and multi-session (OS Server) settings:
also, note that the application parameter for the wrong type of Delivery agent will not hurt anything either he silently be ignored by the implementing agency if it does not concern. You can use it to configure a single policy applicable to both types of delivery agents.
More to come ...
I hope this gives you additional information on the Excalibur Delivery Agent. Next time, we'll talk about the delivery controller. Stay tuned!
And we want to hear from you ... if Excalibur topics you are interested, please let us know!
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