Citrix is a U.S.-based cloud computing and virtualization company that offers server, application and desktop virtualization. It also offers software as a service (SaaS), cloud computing, and networking products for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.
Citrix is best known for its desktop virtualization products: XenApp and XenDesktop. The company markets these products as a way for IT departments to lower the total cost of ownership by centralizing their applications as well as supporting multiple devices.
With a Citrix Server, companies only have to upgrade an application or operating system once instead of rolling out new versions to individual users. XenDesktop virtualizes a desktop – usually Windows, but it can also be a Mac or Linux desktop. XenApp only virtualizes single applications.
Overview of Citrix server
Citrix Server is a virtualization platform that enables organizations to centrally manage and deliver applications, desktops, and data to users. It utilizes Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly known as XenApp and XenDesktop) to provide secure, remote access to resources. This technology aims to streamline IT management, increase productivity, and provide a better user experience.
Citrix Server provides virtualization technology that enables organizations to deliver and manage applications and desktops remotely, enhancing security and accessibility for users. It centralizes management, reduces IT costs, and improves efficiency, making it easier for businesses to adopt working-from-home and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies without compromising on performance.
The server also offers seamless integration with other Citrix products such as XenDesktop and XenApp. This creates a comprehensive and user-friendly virtual workspace environment for diverse business needs.
Citrix Server makes it possible for organizations to make use of a centralized data and application repository, providing access to applications and corporate data in a highly secure, reliable and flexible manner. It is widely adopted in various industries such as healthcare, finance, and government organizations, where confidentiality, compliance, and ease of access to critical resources is of paramount importance. By centralizing and virtualizing the resources, it enables IT departments to manage, maintain, and monitor the infrastructure effortlessly, reducing both operational costs and complexity.
What does Citrix server do?
The system comprises several components, including the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, Citrix Hypervisor (formerly XenServer), NetScaler, and XenApp. All these products are designed to work together and provide users access to applications and files over the internet, enterprise networks, and, in some cases, mobile networks as well.
The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops solution is the core of the Citrix Server system, providing a platform for hosting applications, desktops and user profiles. The system virtualizes desktops to deliver mobile and remote access to applications, allowing users to access their desktops from any device. The solution also includes tools for managing user permissions, desktops and applications.
The Citrix Hypervisor is a virtualization platform that allows organizations to run multiple virtual machines on a single server. The system is designed to reduce infrastructure costs while providing a high level of availability, security and performance. The Citrix Hypervisor is compatible with different operating systems and comes with security features that protect virtual machines and data.
NetScaler is a secure, reliable, and flexible application delivery controller that is used for load balancing, security, and traffic management. The solution can be used to provide secure remote access to applications and desktops, as well as to ensure the performance, availability, and reliability of applications and workloads.
XenApp is a legacy component of the Citrix Server system, providing access to applications delivered from a remote server. While it has been rebranded as Citrix Virtual Apps, it remains an essential element of the solution, providing an efficient way to deliver applications to users across multiple platforms and devices.
How does it work?
Citrix Server may be costly, complex to implement, and time-consuming to maintain.
Citrix Server uses the Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) infrastructure to deliver virtual applications and desktops to remote users. While there are numerous components involved in a Citrix virtualization infrastructure, the two main editions are:
- Citrix Virtual Apps
- Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
Citrix Virtual Apps isolate the applications from the underlying operating system (OS) and deliver them to the target device. The client device doesn’t need applications installed — all the configuration and data are on the server. The user sends keystrokes and mouse clicks to the server and receives screen updates. The client device needs the Citrix Receiver installed on it to gain access to hosted resources from a Windows Server. In this case, the users share the server’s physical resources.
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops are used to publish a whole virtual machine (VM) from a hypervisor to remote client devices. A published VM means every user gets a unique virtual machine of the OS and desktop. The resources are not shared between users, as its virtual desktop is allocated with resources.
Benefits of using desktops with Citrix servers
With businesses increasingly looking for ways to enable remote work and streamline IT operations, Citrix hosted desktops have emerged as a popular solution for delivering virtual desktops and applications from the cloud. By leveraging the power of Citrix servers, businesses can create a secure, scalable, and cost-effective virtualization environment that meets the needs of their workforce.
Here are some of the features of hosted Citrix desktops:
Seamless experience similar to Windows desktops
Hosted Citrix desktops are designed to provide a seamless experience to users. From the look and feel to the smooth accessibility, these virtual desktops are similar to Windows desktops. This makes the transition to hosted Citrix desktops easy for employees without any significant changes to their daily work routine.
Hassle-free management
Desktops with Citrix servers are offered as a comprehensive solution that includes OS patching, upgrades, and overall infrastructure management. Your IT team doesn’t need to worry about managing the infrastructure, allowing them to focus on other essential tasks. Additionally, with easy migration to the cloud, businesses can streamline their operations and reduce their overall IT expenses.
No upfront costs
Managed Citrix desktops don’t have any capital expenses. The managed VDI provider set up the entire IT infrastructure for VDI. You don’t need to spend money on management, security, and upgrades, as you receive high-end, high-performance servers with advanced storage infrastructure. You only need to start using virtual units; everything else is maintained and upgraded by the cloud service provider.
Further, the best physical desktops to use for virtual desktops are the ones you already have in your organization. Therefore, there’s no need to spend money on the physical hardware of the office, which adds up to Citrix server costs.
Advanced security features
Security is a top priority for businesses, and Citrix Hosted Desktops provide multi-layer security features to protect business-critical applications.
With the help of Citrix Virtual Apps, managed desktops acquire a multi-layer security architecture, including the following:
- TLS 1.3 and 256-bit encryption
- OS patching, IP filtering, and management
- Access control
- Multiple-factor authentication
- Intrusion Detection and Prevention System
- Antivirus upgrades
- DDoS protection
Flexibility at its best
Citrix servers offer flexible usage for the following reasons:
- You can scale your resources, including RAM and storage, and upgrade your configuration as per the requirements of your business. It is also possible to de-scale these resources whenever required.
- The payment model for managed desktops usually includes a pay-as-you-go model. It allows you to reduce overall costs and flexibly manage your office desktops.
99.99% uptime for data access
Citrix Hosted Desktops provide maximum uptime and a 99.99% uptime guarantee for data and app access. It is achieved through geographically isolated redundant servers and fault-tolerant systems replicating data and virtual machines to multiple servers. With this uptime, businesses can ensure their employees can access critical applications and data when needed.
Easy disaster recovery
Citrix-hosted desktops offer 30-day backup support for your devices to store data on redundant backup servers, improving recovery feasibility. During a disaster or mistake, you can restore your data whenever possible.
Similarly, if an employee deletes a data file accidentally, you can restore it to a backup image.
Customized solutions for each business needs
No two businesses are the same, and Citrix Hosted Desktops can be customized to meet the specific needs of your business. By working with a managed services provider, businesses can explain their requirements and receive custom virtual desktops that meet their particular needs.
Businesses can take advantage of the benefits of hosted Citrix desktops while ensuring the solution is tailored to their unique requirements.
Challenges with using Citrix servers
Both Citrix Virtual Apps and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops come in three different editions with different features and pricing structures:
- Standard
- Advanced
- Premium
Organizations need to search through each product edition to work out which features best suit their purpose. Moreover, additional components such as Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) and Citrix Director for advanced features should be purchased for an improved user experience.
Another challenge is that the installation of Citrix products may be complicated. Often a certified professional is needed to install and configure the product, plus multiple components need to be configured for complete virtualization infrastructure.
An overly complicated Citrix infrastructure is also challenging when it comes to delivering and maintaining business continuity. Given the large number of components required to deploy Citrix systems and the many failure points, an organization cannot provide high availability and disaster recovery for its assets.
Additionally, a Microsoft SQL database is necessary to maintain a healthy Citrix infrastructure. As there can be a multitude of software and hardware components within the Citrix infrastructure, monitoring it may be challenging.
Also, SQL Server pricing may be costly and complex for organizations. The Per Core option pricing model in the SQL server is too high for organizations that want to scale up their SQL instances.
Other Citrix products
Citrix offers the following desktop as a service (DaaS), virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), application delivery and security tools:
DaaS and VDI
- Citrix Analytics for Performance. This tool enables users to track, gather and visualize the key performance indicators of applications and desktops.
- Citrix Hypervisor. This Windows-based client enables users to install, provision, and run VMs.
- Citrix DaaS. Formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service, DaaS is virtualization software that gives IT control of virtual machines (VMs) and applications and offers several security features.
App delivery and security
- Citrix Analytics for Security. This tool enables users to create risk scores to identify potential security threats.
- Citrix ADC. Formerly NetScaler ADC, this application delivery controller and load-balancing tool offers enhanced security and application performance.
- Citrix App Delivery and Security Service. Users can create automatic policy-based configurations. This tool ensures application and application programming interface (API) security is deployable and manageable.
- Citrix Application Delivery Management. This web-based software enables users to manage Citrix deployments and network services.
- Citrix Gateway. This tool is designed to strengthen remote access infrastructure for single sign-on across applications in a data center, cloud or SaaS application.
- Citrix Remote Browser Isolation. Formerly Citrix Secure Browser, this cloud-hosted browser service isolates web browsing to protect networks from in-browser attacks.
- Citrix Secure Private Access. This cloud zero-trust network access software enables admins to provide adaptive access to IT-approved applications.
- Citrix Web App and API Protection. This cloud service secures private and public APIs, protects against distributed denial-of-service attacks, and features a web application firewall.
- Citrix Endpoint Management. This software enables mobile device management and mobile application management for organizations that need to deliver applications, email, network access or other tools to mobile devices.
- Citrix SD-WAN. This tool is designed to manage virtual, cloud and SaaS applications on a wide area network.
- Citrix Secure Internet Access. This tool enables admins to protect internet access for remote workers.
Additional tools
- Citrix ShareFile. Organizations use ShareFile software to share content and collaborate among co-workers and clients. The tool features secure file sharing, syncing and content collaboration.
- Citrix Podio. This collaboration database software tool enables users to automate and secure business and document processes.
- Citrix RightSignature. This document-signing software enables users to create, share, sign and return electronic documents.
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