XenApp and XenDesktop - Architecture Advice please?

[johnnybb2000]

Hi,

 

I have implemented XenApp with NetScaler and wanted to publish a desktop to enable shortcut on desktop type access to MS Access Databases which users insist on using. After reading up it is apparent the publish desktop option is not secure enough for my environment and to do this it looks like I need to purchase the XenDesktop module.

 

I currently have 2 NetScalers for redundancy and 1 XenApp Virtual Server and a Management VM. I have bag for resource available to increase the 2008 R2 VM Server and could create more VM's to increase servers for load balancing. I have 20GB infrastructure and 1GB to the Desktop. I only need to support 50 users with a Desktop with 3 shortcuts to these (vile) DB's and wonder - and appreciate this is a wide open question - Can anyone provide a little assistance by way of a technical approach and if I need to supplement resources to support - assuming my XenDesktop thoughts are correct.

 

The VM for XenApp has 8 CPU's and 64GB RAM I think from memory.

 

Any help would be gratefully received.

 

Kind Regards,

 

JOhn

[Ric_]

In what way is XenApp not secure enough for your needs? If you simply want to publish Access for 50 users, your current setup is more than adequate (although I would probably go for 2 XenApp servers to give some load balancing and redundancy options - maybe half of your current spec as that is huge and XenApp scales better outwards rather than upwards).

 

The only time you would need to look at XenDesktop in this situation is if the applications must be run on a single user system running a desktop OS. This will then need up to 50 VMs depending upon the concurrency required.

[johnnybb2000]

In what way is XenApp not secure enough for your needs? If you simply want to publish Access for 50 users, your current setup is more than adequate (although I would probably go for 2 XenApp servers to give some load balancing and redundancy options - maybe half of your current spec as that is huge and XenApp scales better outwards rather than upwards).

 

The only time you would need to look at XenDesktop in this situation is if the applications must be run on a single user system running a desktop OS. This will then need up to 50 VMs depending upon the concurrency required.

 

Hi, and thanks for response, much appreciated - we have a blade center with a failover host so, prob not going to add to the farm atm but, obviously have the ability to at any time in the future. The reason I quote that the Server desktop is not secure enough is because (and simply) because that is what I have been advised by a CITRIX engineer. I disagreed at the time but was told I should use XenApp as exactly that, not look to extending the scope to use the servers desktop, even though I also suggested it could be vastly restricted by Group Policies and local server permissions. If the advice is that using the XenApp desktop function would be secure enough, I will again revisit and indeed lose the complicated thought of going into XenDesktop.... More than happy with that!

 

So, advice is that a secured XenApp desktop is good, then I'll get back to you with the response from my tech advisors.

 

For info, I am a PM and wanted to find out if I was being advised correctly, so thanks again for response.

 

Any additional comments gratefully received.

 

Regards,

 

John

[Ric_]

If you are wary of publishing the desktop, just publish Access as an application (this is probably the way I would go).

 

My advise is to definitely add a second XenApp VM into your farm... at the moment you have failover on your NetScalers and your physical hosts but not on the VMs - this seems like a single point of failover which could be easily (and cheaply) avoided given that you have a,ready spent so much on your infrastructure.