How easy is it deploying XenClient ? Quick walkthrough

Todays generation of IT-users are embracing BYOD as much as possible, where one user has multiple devices to work with. This isn’t so easy to achive with a corporate laptop.

Imagine a new employee comes on board and is given a new corporate laptop. This new employee demands flexibility and the ability to personilize the laptop, not quite easy when the laptop is installed with a corporate image and contains different security settings to contain the integrity of the laptop.

So you get a not so happy user. The solution ?
XenClient!

XenClient is a type 1 hypervisor (Like XenServer and Hyper-V) but it is used on client computers not on servers. Where the main idea is to have different virtual machines running on a laptop (for instance having 1 VM which the user can use at home his personal VM) and then having a corpoprate VM which he uses at work)
This way the user gets the BYOD he/she wants.

Remember that XenClient has an HCL which you should look on before you deploy this product
http://citrix.com/ready/en/search?search%5Bq%5D=Xenclient

The architecture and deployment of this solution is pretty simple and this is what I want do show.

The Architecture consists of a Managment Server and a Synchronizer server (Which must be installed on top of a hypervisor 2008R2 or 2012 With Project Thunder beta release)

The Synchronizer is the one responsible for deploying and maintaining the VDI images.
For the purpose of this demo I deployed Project Thunder (Which supports Hyper-V 2012 server) and deployed XenClient on top of VMware player.

You can download this from mycitrix (requires login)
After installation and opening you need to configure the network switch

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Check the other settings as well and make sure that the UNC path for VMs are correct.

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Now in my case im going to create a VM running on Server 2012 which I want to deploy to my users, doesn’t make a lot of sense but that’s the only ISO I had stored here Smilefjes

If you want to import ISO files into XenClient you have to place them in this folder
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Then go into Software Library –> ISO Media and import the file.

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Next we go into Virtual Machines and choose create new and add the ISO file and enter the paramteres

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Next I choose the usage mode.
Since this is going to be my personal VM and I don’t image updates Im going with Custom.
In many cases I would use PVD with the corporate image since then I can have one Image that I need to update.

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Next I define which hardware this VM should have.

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Next I define policies for this VM, for instnace backup schedule, allow USB devices etc.

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Then XenClient will start the VM on Hyper-V

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Then I can finish customization and then I can deploy it to my users.

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Then it runs the deployment job

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Then you can see that the VM is deployed

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Then I now have a VM and a local user which I will use to connect to the Synchronizer server.
(Something I found a bit odd was that I had a self-signed certificate on the server but the client connected anyways)

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Then I have to enter information to connect to the Sync-server

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Now as an IT-admin I could setup this for another user and download his VM but in my case I have my own windows server vm I wish to user to I enter my own user Smilefjes

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Now XenClient will start to download the VM which is deployed to my user

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I can now see in the XenClient management console that my computer is connected to the server.

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Now if someone steals the laptop I can choose kill it in the XenClient console, the Client refreshes and all I see is this screen. And remember that you should setup a policy that defines that your clients need to contant the sync-server for instance once a week.

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Now remember that XenClient is a part of XenDesktop Enterprise or Platinum so when you buy XenDesktop you get this as well.
Someone I suggest Citrix does, is to “integrate” XenDesktop with XenClient. For instance if I have my VM running on XenDesktop and I wish to sync it to my XenClient laptop as well for working on the road, this is something they should work on Smilefjes

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