PresentersDennis Callaghan (451 Research)Rick Ruskin (VDX)Bala Vaidhinathan (eG Innovations)

Citrix & Desktop Migration Success The 3 Secrets to User Satisfaction and ROI

• Migration and related challenges

• Keys to Successful Migration

• Real world case-studies

• Q & A

Agenda

• User experience issues

• Lack of visibility across silos

• Complex and/or slow issue identification

• Proactive problem solving

• Lack of representative baselines

Poll: What Are Your Biggest Migration Performance Challenges?

Migration Challenges

Dennis CallaghanSenior Analyst451 ResearchDennis.Callaghan@451Research.com

Significant change underway in today’s IT environments:

• Traditional desktop to virtual desktop (including upgrade XenApp 4.5 to 6.5, 6.5 to 7.5, Windows XP to Windows 7/8)

• Physical to cloud migration, including hybrid cloud. Don’t forget software!

• Virtualization of infrastructure and app layers—some legacy apps not designed for virtualization

• Moving off Windows Server 2003 and AIX. They’re still out there!

Users expect the same or better performance after the migration as they had before the migration. And when performance

problems occur, the migration is blamed first.

Migration Trends

• Migration increases complexity of underlying IT platforms—Dependencies discovered the hard way.

• Migration project delays due to unexpected performance and availability issues

• Migration project cost overruns due to new hardware and software demands/requirements greater than original design

• Legacy applications running on legacy infrastructure. Don’t know where to start.

• Configuration Drift: ITSM issue that leads to performance issues

Common Migration Challenges

Where the puck’s going

Challenges ahead

• Where does my application reside? What services/infrastructure does it depend on?

• Will my current monitoring tools work in new environments my applications/infrastructure are moving to?

• Can I get a true “single pane of glass” of performance levels from multiple monitoring tools?

• Can I maintain configuration integrity when changes are constantly made?

• Can I maintain a consistent view of end-user experience as applications and infrastructure migrate, especially with more applications being accessed by mobile devices?

• Can I foster more collaboration/cooperation between developers and operations teams (DevOps)

Keys to Successful Migration

Bala VaidhinathanCTO, eG Innovationsbala@eginnovations.com

Migration Considerations

Configuration

• Configuration at the hardware/OS/app layers

• Physical Virtual / 32 Bit 64 Bit

• App/OS Compatibility

• App/OS Dependencies

• Private/Public Cloud dependencies & setup

• Assessments

Migration Considerations

Performance• Performance Baselines of pre-migration environment.

• Total performance visibility into the post migrated environment

• User Experience tracking

• Identifying Bottlenecks, Peak Usage, Capacity

• Critical when it comes to migration, but often overlooked

3 Keys to Success

Citrix & Desktop Migration

1

Citrix & Desktop Migration

Performance Baselines

Performance Baselines

• How is the user experience in the pre-upgrade environment?

• What are the current usage patterns in the pre-upgrade environment?

• What are the consumption patterns in the pre-upgrade environment?

• What are the baselines for the pre-upgrade environment for user/app/OS/infrastructure performance?

• Ability to track all of the above in the post-upgrade environment and compare

• Key to success is to get equal or better user experience without compromising other KPIs

Understand User Experience

Know how user

experience is impacted

Know when and where

it is impacted

Understand User Behavior

Know usage patterns and trends for effective capacity planning.

Top Users based on

activity and impact on resources

Understand Applications Usage

Understand application usage patterns and trends to effectively size the environment and maximize resources

Baseline

Actual Metric

Multi-level auto-baselining of the environment helps you automatically identify trends and pro-actively

isolate performance issues.

Automatic Baselining

Event Analysis

Event analysis gives you a perspective of the type and frequency of Performance Issues in the

VDI environment

Understand Peak Utilization

Identify Peak demand and the time of demand

VDI Demand vs Consumption

Understanding Desktop Demand vs VDI infrastructure resource consumption during

peak Demand

Use Case – Successful Migration

Performance before migration

Performance after migration

XenApp 4.5 to 6.5XenApp 6.5 to 7.5

XenDesktop 5 to 7.5

2

Citrix & Desktop Migration

Total Visibility

WhoWhat How

User complaints are about the “service”, not about individual tiers.

Total Visibility

WhoWhat How

To troubleshoot user service performance issues, end-to-end visibility is required.

Performance Management

WhoWhat How

Profile Management

SharefileControl

DeviceManager

CitrixPerforma

nce Managem

ent

Citrix & VDI performance management must cover the non-Citrix tiers as well.

Total Visibility

A Real-World Example without Total Visibility

08:00User to the helpdesk – “my application access is very slow. I am not able to work properly.”

8:00AM

Helpdesk

We will get on it right away!

A Real-World Example

The helpdesk has received many calls that application access is slow. The Citrix admin is called to look at the issue.

9:00AM

Things look

normal from

here …

Citrix ServiceManager

The load is not unusually high – there are 5 active

sessions.

Logon times are ok.

Citrix ServiceManager

A Real-World Example

Director’s availability

monitoring of the infrastructure also

shows nothing wrong.

9:30AM

09:30 Basic infrastructure status checks don’t reveal problems.

Citrix ServiceManagerA Real-World Example

Search for a specific user.

See processes that the user is running and

their CPU & memory.

View HDX channel information for the

user.

10:00AM

10:00 User-by-user troubleshooting begins.

What Follows …

•

Citrix Director / EdgeSight

VMware VCOPS - Virtual

Task Manager - Windows

Event Viewer - Windows

EMC Ionix - Storage

Cisco UCS Manager - Hardware

CiscoWorks - Network

A Real-World Example

08:00 Helpdesk receives a call that application access is slow

09:00 Helpdesk has received many calls that application access is slow. The Citrix admin is called to look at the issue.

11:00 The Citrix admin has reviewed Director/EdgeSight metrics, has killed the offending process. But user complaints persist.

12:00 The Citrix admin decides to reboot the server but the problem persists even after the reboot.

13:00 The problem does not appear to be specific to Citrix. The Citrix admin calls for a conference call with the other administrators .

17:00 After hours of troubleshooting, the problem is identified in the VMware tier!

Slo

w a

nd m

anual dia

gnosi

s

Performance Management

with Total Visiblity

•

Real-World Example - Revisited

06:30The helpdesk receives an automatic alert saying that access to Ctirix is slowing down. No user has been impacted yet.

6:30AM

Helpdesk

This looks odd. Let’s get to the bottom of this before users start calling …

•

Triage Problems Quickly

The application that is

responsible for the slow down – a

samba backup job

6:35AM

Helpdesk

Yup, the backup job is

taking up resource

s …

•

Focus on the Root-Cause, Not Effects

Without root-cause diagnosis, you have no idea where the problem lies

With root-cause diagnosis, you have a clear idea of what to do to resolve the problem.

All the problems appear to be equally important.

The root-cause of the problem

The effects of the problem

The Result

06:30 The helpdesk seels an alert of a slowdown with Citrix access.

06:35The helpdesk reviews the service topology and determines that there is an issue on the VMware server. Contacts the VM administrator.

06:45The VMware administrator realizes that the backup job is impacting the user experience. Reschedules the backup job for later in the evening.

Performance Management Made

Rapid

and a

uto

mate

d

dia

gnosi

s

Profile Management

SharefileControl

DeviceManager

CitrixPerforma

nce Managem

ent Total Visibility with Performance Management gives comprehensive coverage to be pro-active

End to End Performance Management

3

Citrix & Desktop Migration

Rightsizing for ROI

Real-Time VDI Overview

CPU bottleneck identified

Isolate bottlenecks to growth in real-time

Use Case – Performance Optimization

A few of the servers are

handling most of the sessions

Citrix Architect

Use Case – Bottleneck Analysis

Analyze which tier is the bottleneck

Know How to Invest Wisely

Memory bottleneck preventing addition of

more Desktops

Identify and resolve VDI bottlenecks and excess capacity

and right-size your environment.

Assess Users, Not Just VMs

See performance issues at the user level so you can fix

and right-size your VDI environment for user satisfaction.

CPU usage inside a virtual desktop

is high

Deep Visibility Into Sessions

The top CPU process is

Windows Media Player. The user

is watching a movie

Deep Visibility Into Sessions

Accelerate problem resolution by understanding why a VM is consuming

resources.

Case of Disk I/O Bottleneck

Clicking the Magnifying glass reveals the Root Cause which turned out to be a rogue process consuming Disk I/O

Forecast the Future

Predicted FUTURE performance

based on the past

Citrix Architect

Assess/Plan/

Design

MigratePost-

Migration

Maintain

Migration Performance Assurance

3 Keys

- Performance Baselines

- Total Visibility - Rightsizing for

ROI

Performance Assurance

using

eG

Pre-Migrati

on

Real-World Migration Case Study

Rick RuskinVice President Sales & MarketingVDXRRuskin@vdx.com

Our Mission

A premier consulting organization that specializes in redefining the way companies manage, package and distribute their desktops, applications and services to end users. A provider of unique technologies that assure the success of those projects.

Connecting People Process and Technology

• Microsoft, Vmware, Citrix, NetApp expertise

• Microsoft National System Integrator – Merit based designation

• Proven customer success

• Migrated over 200,000 XP desktops in the past year

• Deep technical capabilities

• Level 400 consultants ONLY

• Core focused on enterprise infrastructure:

• Desktop transformation

• Private and public cloud

• The management tools to optimizethese solutions

About VDX

52

What We Deliver

Strategic Platform Engagements

Technology Implementations

Desktop/Data Center Migration &

Transformation

Cloud Acceleration

AssessKnowledgeTransfer

Plan

Pilot

Transform

• High level goals in any of these migrations is to upgrade as much of the infrastructure as possible to avoid major architectural work every time an upgrade needs to take place.

• Current major Migration initiatives in flight today:

• XP End of Life

• Server 2003 End of Life

• Citrix 4.5 End of Life

Migrations

• Approximately 33% of Desktops still running XP

• Even if you are 80% migrated, there is considerable work to be done

• Why is it imperative that you finish the migration process?

• Security upgrades WILL end soon

• Third party software companies will cease support soon

• No ability to acquire new hardware that supports XP

• The cost for extended support from Microsoft will continue to increase over time

XP End-of-Life Migrations

• Build out of supporting infrastructure – upgrade to SC2012

• Re-packaging and virtualization of applicationsso that at next O/S most of the work is done

• Profile management and performance management technologies:

• Preserve user experience

• Decouple personna from physical devices

• Enablement of automation and self-service portal for application download

• All this creates the foundation or BYOD and private cloud

Windows 7/8 Migration

56

Enablement of the Cloud

• Migrations are also the time to initiate your Cloud strategy:

• RAG assessment against the application portfolio

At the end of 2014, not only will XP be eradicated from their

environment, but they will have enabled over 30,000 users to

access any application, from any worldwide location, from ANY

supported Device

Global Fortune 100 Health Insurance Company

• VDX decoupled personas from desktops

• VDX virtualized all applications across the organization. Now virtually O/S independent.

• VDX Build out a virtualized XenApp infrastructure for all apps that couldn’t be virtualized.

• Enabled IT to more easily support large user community across all geo’s

In roughly One year, totally transformed environment from

Physical with much EOL product, to Modern, Up To Date, and

Cloud-Ready

Mortgage and Lending Leader

Massively parallel modernization of entire desktop infrastructure which included:

• Upgrading to System Center 2012

• Virtualizing and de-coupling of user profiles

• Upgrading all desktops to Windows 7 or 8

• Enabling folder redirection

• Virtualizing or repackaging of 1,000’s of applications and building application catalogues

In less than 5 Months, the entire Environment was transitioned from Windows XP to Windows 7/8, and

NO Financial penalties were incurred

Mid-Size Regional Bank

• Needed to get off XP before April, 2014 deadline

• As of November 2013, no apps had been migrated and all DT’s were still running XP

• Built out SCCM 2012 so could do “zero touch” upgrades

• Took “Virtualize First” approach to applications and put the others into Citrix

• Virtualized profiles to ensure positive user experience

Q&AAsk the Experts

About eG Innovations

eG Innovations is the only enterprise-class performance management solution that provides virtualization-aware correlation and complete visibility across every layer and every tier of dynamic & complex cloud, virtual, and physical IT environments to reliably deliver mission-critical business services.

WorldwideLocations USA, UK, Netherlands, Singapore, Hong Kong, India

Customers Over 1000 customers

Certifications

Awards & Recognition

Customer Success

• eG Innovations – www.eginnovations.com

• Bala Vaidhinathan - info@eginnovations.com

• eG Innovations Resources

• XenApp Monitor – www.eginnovations.com/xenapp

• XenDesktop Monitor – www.eginnovations.com/xendesktop

• Product Trial – www.eginnovations.com/trial

Resources, Q & A