In this episode of our podcast, Bill Sutton, Andy Whiteside, and Geremy Myers explore key resiliency features in Citrix DaaS that are critical yet often overlooked, misunderstood, or misconfigured by administrators. We'll delve deep into the Local Host Cache (LHC) and Service Continuity features, discussing how they enable highly available environments capable of tolerating infrastructure outages while maintaining continuous user access to critical applications and desktops.

Ensuring business continuity through a resilient environment is crucial. It allows users to access highly available resources during disruptions, such as power outages or unexpected downtime. This capability is vital as every minute of inactivity due to system outages can translate to significant financial losses. By prioritizing a highly available and resilient environment, businesses can greatly minimize the financial impact of downtime.

Host: Bill Sutton
Co-host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Geremy Myers

XenServer has been a part of the Citrix family since the acquisition of XenSource in 2007. It is a solid player in the virtualization market particularly for running Citrix workloads. With purpose built features for improving the performance of virtual desktops such as Intellicache, Read Caching, PVS-Accelerator, and GPU virtualization many organizations leverage XenServer to host and deliver their Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and Citrix DaaS workloads.

Citrix recently announced that XenServer 8 is now included with their new subscription options: Citrix for Private Cloud, Citrix Universal Hybrid Multi-Cloud, and Citrix Platform License. In this episode we discuss XenServer generally as well as these new offerings and how they can be leveraged by customers.

Host: Bill Sutton
Co-host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Geremy Myers

In today’s rapidly evolving cloud computing environment, balancing operational costs, user experience, and environmental sustainability is challenging and time-consuming for IT organizations. The recent general availability (GA) of Azure Hibernation with Citrix DaaS addresses these challenges. Since its initial tech preview, over 160 customers have successfully trialed this feature, transforming the management of their Azure virtual desktop infrastructure.

Technology that drives actual cloud cost reduction

Azure Hibernation allows businesses to pause virtual machines (VMs) when not in use, significantly reducing compute costs. It saves the VM’s memory contents to the OS disk and deallocates the machine, stopping billing for compute resources and only charging for storage. Combined with Citrix AutoScale, this feature helps organizations manage VMs efficiently based on user demand, ensuring that resources are used only when necessary.

Host: Bill Sutton
Co-Host: Geremy Meyers

Building upon the robust security of Linux thin clients, Citrix is thrilled to announce the expansion of its Enterprise Browser offerings to Linux, marking a significant step in our access security platform expansion strategy. This empowers organizations to further secure access to web and SaaS applications, particularly for environments reliant on Linux thin clients, which are already locked down by design and managed by thin client vendors.

This release, currently available as a private tech preview, comes packed with powerful features that are waiting for you to explore. As part of this preview, let’s dive into its advanced capabilities, particularly in the context of enhanced security for Linux thin clients:

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Bill Sutton
Co-host: Geremy Meyers
Co-host: Monica Griesemer

If you’re ready to leverage the new LTSR but are still working on your upgrade plan, don’t worry. We have quite a few resources available to help you have a successful upgrade including our plan, upgrade, succeed blog series, the latest Citrix Master Class, an FAQ blog for answers to your most pressing LTSR questions from the Citrix Master Class, and our tech paper on parallel migration.

We are also incredibly excited to announce that the Citrix Workspace app 2402 LTSR for Windows is now generally available! This Citrix Workspace app LTSR for Windows includes an extended 3 years of support to help ease your client update processes.

Moving fully to the cloud isn’t for everyone, and we know that. That’s why we’ve continued to invest in our on-premises solutions so you can leverage cloud capabilities on premises too. The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2402 LTSR includes several years’ worth of features to take advantage of. Some of these features were previously only offered in the cloud, and a plethora of on-premises features have been added since the release of the last LTSR in March of 2022. Additionally, customers on our current release (CR) track can leverage this release as a regular update within their environments. So let’s take a closer look at what the 2402 LTSR can do for you.

Host: Bill Sutton
Co-host: Geremy Meyers

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again – if you are on the Citrix Long Term Service Release (LTSR) track, you’ve most likely been missing out on a lot of great features. But I get it; there are many valid reasons for choosing this path, including extended support. The good news is that Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2402 LTSR is now available, and you can now take advantage of all the great features and enhancements made available over the last couple of years.

This post is focused exclusively on our high-definition experience (HDX) capabilities. More specifically, the key HDX features and enhancements that we’ve introduced since the last LTSR (2203) was released. If you are still using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 1912 LTSR, you should also take a look at my other post that talks about key features released between Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 1912 LTSR and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2203 LTSR.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Bill Sutton

In today’s dynamic work landscape, remote access and virtual desktop solutions have become essential for organizations striving for flexibility and productivity. Citrix has been at the forefront of empowering businesses with innovative technologies, and now, with Intel’s new roadmap of GPU offerings, users can expect even more versatility and performance in their virtual desktop experiences.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Bill Sutton
Co-host: Todd Smith

New year means time for new resolutions and new budgets. If your IT team has big plans to invest in new infrastructure and high-value projects this year, adopting a bring your own device (BYOD) policy can help your organization save money without compromising on functionality. BYOD programs aren’t the right choice for everyone, but if your business needs fall under any of the following, a BYOD program may be right for you:

• End users with locally installed applications on native endpoints who work in a hybrid or remote environment
• Third-party contractors or partners who need to securely access your corporate resources from their employer’s device
• Employees who hold extremely mobile roles and need a device that works on the go, such as a laptop or tablet
• Thin or fat client users who work in a hybrid or remote setting for some portion of time

Citrix technology allows employees and contractors to securely access corporate resources from any device, including personal devices. The advantage of choosing Citrix for your BYOD policy is that Citrix offers an exceptional range of features, including a high-quality user experience, simple operational management, Zero Trust security, and reduced hardware costs. Plus, Citrix can save your business over 1 million dollars annually with a BYOD program when you switch 10,000 users from a managed endpoint program to a Citrix BYOD program.

Let’s take a closer look at how Citrix can ease the implementation of BYOD policies and reduce infrastructure costs.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Monica Griesemer