Archy.net Blog

Application delivery method

After many years going from a customer to another, speaking with people all around the world, I wanted to share my experience regarding application integration. This is not a new topic but there are so many way to deliver applications today it can become very messy very fast.

In a lot of companies I worked with, I had to face many different situations with different technologies and solutions. What I explain in this blog is just one way to get things done, maybe not the best one but I think this is the most efficient way to leverage Citrix / Microsoft solutions when it’s about application delivery. I made a simple diagram to materialize my though when I plan to integrate or migrate new application into a VDI environment.

When I write VDI, I mean : VDI = Virtual Desktops + Shared (Virtual) Desktops (SBC)

For example, when I need to free a XenDesktop golden image from all the applications installed over the years, I need to understand :

1. Is this application still in use ?
2. Who need this application ?
3. Why they need it ?
4. How they use it ?
5. How many users need this application ?
6. Is there enough license for this application ?
7. What is the update cycle of this application ?
8. What are the prerequisite of this application ?
9. Etc etc…

Then I need to to know if I want or need to “virtualize” this application or not :

• First thing first : is this application working on a regular OS with a “normal” installation process ?
• Do you need to virtualize this application ? time & cost vs deployment & number of users
• What are the prerequisite for this application ? (XenApp silo needed or not, specific Streaming profile / AppV)
• Is this application need to be use offline, ie roaming users ?
• What is the application size (Mb, Gb) once it’s installed ?
• Is this application supported on a 64bit Operating System ?

All these point are what I’m asking myself before doing anything. There are a lot more question you need to ask yourself, it depend of each customer’s environment and technologies in use. The more I look this diagram the more I find some other step to add, this is like a never-ending construction and a new puzzle at each customer’s place. We could continue this schema with application compatibility between each others etc…

This is very important to choose the right solution to deliver one application, when I ear sometimes, “We want to use only XenApp published applications” or “We want to use only App-V streamed applications” I just think this is wrong because you will always face a situation where that will become a block point (for example, App-V package cannot be bigger than 4Gb)

I think the best solution consider to mix and use all the different technologies to adapt each application case.

If you have some step to add, some experiences to share, send some comments, I will integrate it to the schema !