Excalibur and Configuration Manager

Now Citrix released a beta build of Excalibur a couple of months ago, which shows the next generation of XenDesktop and XenApp architecture. (Well actually just XenDestkop, since the XenApp architecture is disappearing)
In addition, with this release we have some fancy choices for how to manage the machines within XenDesktop.

Excalibur will add additional WMI classes to all its desktop.
Which are listed here à

http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/xendesktop-ibi/cds-manage-sccm-ibi.html

This allows you to create collections based upon if it’s VDI or Session host based, and even if it is assigned to a user or not.
Now in order to make these attributes available in Configuration Manager we have to add some WMI classes.

Go into Client Settings -> and alter the clients policy -> Go into hardware inventory and choose add classes. And from the list choose Add Hardware inventory class. From there you can browse to a remote computer that is installed as a VDA and in the namespace you can type rootcitrixdesktopinformation

And choose “Citrix_VirtualDesktopInfo”
Then Press OK

This will give you some more attributes on that WMI class

Which you can again use to create collections based on the variables.

Since Excalibur does not have any direct integration with for instance App-V you can now create user-based assignments to delivery groups.
So the user has multiple options of application deliveries.

Either via Software Portal and Configuration or Storefront with Citrix.