Course Details
The Designing App and Desktop Solutions with Citrix XenDesktop (CXD 400) course provides students with the ability to successfully assess and design a XenDesktop 7 apps and desktop solutions based on the top key projects and architectures that a majority of Citrix customers implement, across different industries and use cases. Students may also have an opportunity to build a design for their organisation and will have access to all of the tools and reference materials required to support their work.
This course prepares learners for the 1Y1-400 Designing Citrix XenDesktop 7 Solutions exam, a requirement for the Citrix Certified Expert – Apps and Desktops. This exam and certification are currently in development and are expected to release in Q4 2013. This course is offered as an instructor-led course with demonstrations and the practical application of concepts through activity-based and application-focused exercises.
Objectives
Upon successful completion of this course, learners are able to:
- Identify the various components and communication protocols of the Excalibur architecture
- Apply architectural understanding to desktop virtualization solutions
- Conduct an organisational assessment focusing on business capabilities and requirements, applications, and users
- Design desktop virtualization solutions
- Verify and present design recommendations
- Troubleshoot desktop virtualization designs
Outline
Module 1: Architecture
- Identify the various components included in the XenDesktop 7 architecture
- Determine how the various components communicate and which protocols they are using
- Apply architectural understanding to desktop virtualization solutions
- Troubleshoot desktop virtualization design
Module 2: Business Drivers
- Identify specific business drivers for multiple verticals
- Facilitate a discussion with the project team at an organisation to prioritize business drivers
Module 3: Data Capture
- Identify the best strategy for data collection given a specific organisational environment.
- Identify the types of application data to collect, the method for collecting them, and application data collection tools
Module 4: User Segmentation
- Identify the different FlexCast models
- Identify considerations in selecting the most appropriate method for segmenting users
Module 5: Application Assessment
- Understand the process of application assessment
- Demonstrate rationalization of applications in a given case organisation
- Assess a suite of applications based on business needs and compatibility to a given XenDesktop delivery model
Module 6: Project Management
- Understand the importance of project management for a successful implementation
- Identify roles for a project plan
Module 7: User Design
- Make key decisions regarding user groups and device (endpoint) design
- Organise user groups for Design document
- Identify and prioritize top user issues
- Design user profile strategy
- Design a printing strategy
Module 8: Receiver
- Define how applications will be delivered
- Design Citrix Receiver deployment and maintenance
Module 9: Resource Req. Recommendations
- Identify recourse requirements
- Make key design decisions regarding resource recommendations
Module 10: Access
- Design an authentication point (Storefront and NetScaler Gateway) strategy
- Determine session and access policies, including user authentication and remote access
- Design virtual desktop operating systems access
- Calculate bandwidth for the desktop virtualization solution
Module 11: Desktop
- Make key design decisions regarding machine catalogues and groups
- Design a personalization strategy including user profiles, user policies and personal vDisk usage.
- Design an appropriate printing strategy
Module 12: Application Delivery
- Design a solution that meets application inventory and integration requirements
- Identify characteristics of the applications that will impact placement as well as the application delivery architecture for the XenDesktop environment
- Design an application delivery strategy
Module 13: Desktop Delivery
- Design a Desktop delivery topology, including Sites, XenDesktop Controllers per site, and load balancing
- Design the underlying infrastructure, including database selection, license servers and Active Directory Integration
- Identify the XenDesktop user and virtual desktop baseline policies
Module 14: Networking Layer
- Make key high availability design decisions
- Integrate the XenDesktop infrastructure with the network infrastructure
- Understand WAN optimization, Multistream ICA, and DHCP functionality
Module 15: Storage and Provisioning Layer
- Make key design decisions regarding storage solutions
- Identify the features and differences between PVS and MCS
- Design a provisioning strategy with either PVS or MCS
Module 16: Platform Layer
- Make key design decisions regarding the hypervisor to be used in desktop virtualization solutions
- Make accurate hardware calculations, including VDI hardware, shared hardware, application hardware, and control hardware
Module 17: Operational
- Understand potential migration approaches
- Design a system monitoring strategy
- Make key design decisions regarding decisions regarding application delivery
- Migration approach
- Backup and System Monitoring
- Backup
- System Monitoring
Module 18: Verification
- Verify assess and design decisions using Citrix online tools
- Develop a complete stakeholder presentation
- Effectively present and support design decisions
- Capstone Exercise
Target Audience
- Desktop Virtualization Solution Designers such as Architects, Consultants, and Engineers.
Prerequisites
Before taking this course, Citrix recommends that students have:
- Intermediate knowledge of Citrix Desktop Virtualization Components/Concepts
- Basic understanding of project management and documentation of best practices
- Basic presentation skills
- Windows Server Knowledge (Windows Server 2012) including
- Active Directory
- DHCP
- Basic Networking Knowledge
- SQL Server – General understanding of databases, permissions, security, high availability
- General understanding of physical and virtual storage
- NAS, SAN, SSD
- CIFS
- Familiarity with hypervisor technologies (XenServer, Hyper-V, or vSphere)
- Completed the following courses or can demonstrate equivalent knowledge:
- CXD-102 Introduction to XenDesktop 7
- CXD-300 Deploying Citrix XenDesktop 7 Solutions