How to guarantee a successful Virtual Desktop Solution Using Citrix

Written by the founder of Thintech Group, Brett Loveday

If you use or thinking about using Citrix then please read on.

If you are the person responsible for rolling out Citrix Virtual Desktops and you need to get it right then this guide is for you.

Recognise what your doing is so profoundly impacting to the business that if you get it wrong you are putting your own job at risk.

The following guide is a bullet proof methodology that pretty much guarantees success providing you follow this plan religiously.

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This is how I do it:

I hate to use clichés but I am going. The best way I can start this guide is to first think like an architect and I use the analogy of rolling out a virtual desktop project is a bit like having a house built: You need the architect, you need your builders and you need ongoing maintenance.

Each role has a distinct set of actions and you must maintain authority at each stage. (I will cover these in more detail later in the document but here as an overview)

1.      You need the Architect to own the project design, to produce detailed designs, (Blue prints), do environmental checking and ensure any prerequisites are in place.

2.      You need the Engineers to deliver exactly what Architects have requested and in a non-aggressive way, make it absolutely clear that the engineers are in no way shape or form allowed to deviate from the architects designs without following process. The Architect will not take any responsibility if things go wrong if the Engineers don’t follow their plans. Make sure that the Architect takes that responsibility by making your Engineers stick to plan. If changes are needed, get the Architect to update the plans and blueprint for the engineers to delivery.

3.      Make sure your support team are fully trained up before you roll out a single user. This is often one of the most over looked parts of many Citrix projects where most of the focus is placed on the Architect, Engineers and Project Managers responsible for delivering this project. Instead turn it around, realise that the most important people are the ones rolling this out and running this daily. Encourage the Architect and Engineers to engage early with the key business staff, including Security , Networking and Service Delivery Managers. Make them work with them early in the project, let them be involved at the design stage and make the Architect realise that it is them that they are working for as they will be the ones responsible for delivering your internal SLA’s.

Technical Architect’s Role

The role of Technical Solutions Architect is a highly challenging role. They should have years of experience of doing similar projects and if they are really good at their job, they should not only be highly technically skilled but to be great a people’s person as well. When your looking for an architect choose one that can demonstrate that they have two ears and only one mouth because one of the best skills they need is, to listen. Find someone you can trust, find one that listens and find one that is willing to take full responsibility for what they are paid to do.

I highly recommend that you outsource this part of the project either through independent means or through the partner network. Do not outsource this to the vendor e.g. Citrix because, I am sorry Citrites, but this role encompasses way more than just Citrix and you want to be sure that you are getting value for money and/or you buying the right license level based on your needs. If you do choose to use Citrix, pay for an independent Consultant to scrutinize it. It saddens me to see too many designs over priced where premium licenses where applied with none of the premium feature being used or needed. Given that they can be almost double the price, the money spent on a truly independent architect will be more than worth it and it keeps the vendor on their toes.

What to expect from a Senior Architect

You are asking for a lot from the senior architect, they have to take full responsibility for the overall technical design. Get them to work this way:

Discovery Phase

·      Engage them early when your still discovering what it is your looking to do, use their knowledge and expertise to increase your own so that you can make a more judged opinion

·      Force them to take responsibility for their designs by agreeing staged payments and work through with your project to agree those milestones

·      Get them to produce a full Statement of Works (Sow) or PID making sure it includes the following:

a.      Executive Summary

b.      High Level Design:

1.  Requirements
2. Methodology
3.  Virtual Desktop & Application Delivery
4.   Resilience Design
5.  User Access Design
6. User Personalisation
7. Physical & Virtual Component Sizing

c.      Milestones defined

d.      Roles and Responsibilities

e.      Time lines and resource requirements

f.       Licensing

g.      Document Approval

Detailed Design

Once the High Level Design/Statement of Works has been approved you are then in to low level designs. These are the things that you should also expect from the Senior Architect:

·      Hold technical workshops with all the key internal IT stake holders and technical staff making sure that they work especially closely with the security department early on along with the service delivery and network managers

·      Expect them also at this stage to fully identify any prerequisites to support their design or adjust accordantly. Examples being the obvious, if your putting new servers do you have capacity, cooling UPS etc, do you have enough network ports and/or bandwidth. 

·      The end result is you are looking for a detailed Low Level Design (LLD) document that all stake holders sign off.

Environment Configuration

Once the LLD is all signed off it is also the responsibility to make sure that all the prerequires stated in the SOW and LLD have been completed before moving on the next stage these include:

·      Hardware provisioned

·      Network configuration

·      Security model

·      Configuration Management Database (CMDB) creation

·      This is all bundled up including the SOW, LLD, CMDB and handed over to the Engineering team for delivery

Engineering Team Role

If the Senior Architect has done his job well then the Engineering team should have a simple set of tasks they need to follow (blueprints) this is what you need to pay particular attention to:

Solution Build Phase

At this stage the engineers will build out the solution exactly to the plans provided and these are the areas you will need to control:

·      The installation must follow exactly to plan and this is where you will need to be your firmest because when engineers talk to engineers they have a tendency to deviate from the SOW. You have to be strict in a way without being offensive, make them understand that you are placing the responsibility of the success of the project down to the Senior Architect and that they must stick to the design. Allow them room for change but create a simple and quick process where they make it the Senior Architects role to approve changes, update the SOW/LLD and CMDB to be given back to the engineers to delivery. Have good version control and stick to the same approval processes

·      Make sure that at least once a day that the engineers get used to updating the CMDB with their days activities and update any change logs

·      Once they have build out the core solution make them do full functional testing including failover scenario tests. How many times have you seen on paper the solution will be resilient but when you need it something fails out of your control?

·      At this stage there will also be an opportunity to start documenting the migration process and doing some basic test which will include profile migrations either from physical to virtual or virtual to virtual

Application Delivery Phase

I have written a detailed explanation on application delivery approaches and this goes beyond the scope of this document. Here we are interested in defining the end to end delivery process but if you are interested you can find it here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-manage-citrix-applications-complex-environments-brett-loveday/ but that is something for the Architect to do. We are instead focused what you can expect the engineering to do next.

Once you have the core installation done and you have a functioning desktop all this is nothing without the applications! Included in the LLD should be a detailed breakdown of the applications to be installed and what technology they will be using, including App-V, Layering and publishing. Expect the Engineers to deliver the following:

·      Packaging each application, when I say packaging I mean packaging and that is where there create MSI installer with any modification in custom transform files

·      Installations and sequencing of each application after packaging

·      Updating the CMDB after each application

·      Remediation of any packages after testing.

You too will have some responsibilities at this stage, expect the engineers to insist on the following to complete their task:

·      Installation media with install instructions and any license files

·      Application installation priority

·      Testers and approvers, they will not know anything about the applications to test

·      Timelines and expectations

Acceptance and Testing Phase

Now that you have a desktop that is fully tested with each application signed off as production ready you are still not fully tested. You are still not ready to roll out to users. Here are the final steps you need to do before your safe to let your users loose on the system:

·      Do a final full Functional and Reliability test where you stress the system and artificially perform failure scenarios as things can change from the initial testing to go live

·      Load test the solution the best you can with either third party tools or be honest with the test group that you going to include load testing on pilot users

·      Go through all the items on the snagging list and make that as error free as possible

·      Train up the 3rd line support team so they the skills necessary to support and maintain the solution on a day to day basis

·      All of this needs to be bundled up, LLD, Training Manuals, Operations Manuals and CMD and handed over to the Service Delivery Manager to start the roll out

Roll out Phase

Once you have completed the above steps and I mean only once you done the above are you ready to start rolling out the solution. Make sure the Engineering team have done a full and proper handover to the support team that includes the following:

·      Full operation training including operations manuals and CMDB

·      Ensure that all the deliverable have been fully met according to the signed SOW

·      Fully set up tiered admin access to all the systems

·      1st and 2nd line team training including providing a triage sheet they must follow before handing escalating issues to the 3rd line

Expect the helpdesk to take ownership of the following:

·      User migrations including profile migrations

·      Creating the End User training manuals including user guides

Full Overview

The following diagram puts all these steps together and like I say, if you responsible for this and you need it to work this plan is bullet proof and guarantees success.

About the Author

For those that don’t know me, my name is Brett Loveday, I am the founder and MD of Thintech Limited, I am also the MD of 404Team Limited. Both specialise in virtual desktops with 404Team being a cloud hosted DaaS provider using the Thintech way of doing things.

I started Thintech in 2006 out of a passion of seeing so many bad Citrix installs giving the product a bad name. I first came across Citrix back in 1999 and as such I have picked up so many skills that I have created a whole end to end delivery process and that is what Thintech all about. We love Citrix products but we are no way obliged to them. We push our own message.

My background is IT operations being an ex employee of a building society responsible for its operations. I also run some massive IT solutions (9,000 Users Plus) as fully managed services and my own 404Team platform has a few thousand users that has a 99.9% uptime SLA.

For me, the real skill needed here is not technical, it is operations.

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