A recent partnership between Citrix and Microsoft brings the trusted features of Citrix to the Azure Cloud using two Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDIs): XenDesktop Essentials and XenApp Essentials. So why should you consider a Citrix on Azure Cloud migration?
From Licensing to Infrastructure: The Savings of the Azure Cloud
Migrations to the cloud are often motivated by their cost savings. Citrix features such as Smart Scale allow users to dynamically scale the number of powered-on machines through workload demands, manual scheduling, or a combination of both. These cost savings are extended to the infrastructure, where instead of building and maintaining your own on-premise data center, you only pay a monthly fee for network, compute, and storage resources.
No More Overhead: Scaling and Accessibility of Citrix on Azure
Your infrastructure’s scaling and accessibility can benefit greatly from a move to the Azure Cloud. The ability to spin up or decommission VMs in minutes and automate the regulation of workloads reduces a substantial amount of administration overhead. Microsoft further guarantees an uptime of 99.95% in their service level agreement (SLA), freeing up your IT teams for business-focused projects.
XenDesktop and XenApp support accessing your applications with the most popular receivers including Chrome and HTML 5, Mac, Windows, Linux, and iOS. Citrix and the Azure Cloud extend the security of on-premise systems to a mobile-first BYOD ecosystem, allowing users to access their applications securely from anywhere.
Best-Practices for a Citrix on Azure Migration
There are a handful of best-practices that can make your migration more robust and secure. The first best practice is to create at least two VMs in the availability set. This ensures that you meet the requirements for NetScaler load balancer and the availability SLA for Azure VMs.
These VMs should exist within the same subnet and should not be exposed directly to the Internet. The load balancer will have a public IP address and it will route requests to the private IPs of the VMs. These requests can either be ports that are mapped or NAT rules that are created to route traffic to a specific VM.
Finally, separate Azure storage accounts should be used for each VM’s virtual hard disks (VHDs). This will avoid hitting the input/output operations per second (IOPS) limits for a single storage account.
The Case for a Managed Service Provider
Migrating your Citrix environment to the Azure Cloud may not be an easy endeavor, but the benefits of large cost savings, on-demand pricing, easy scalability, and secure access make it a worthwhile one. A managed service provider’s expertise can ensure that best-practices are implemented while the migration is performed to your company’s tailored needs.
To learn more about the drivers and best practices for migrating Citrix to the Azure Cloud, download our whitepaper.
