Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) Reviews

The most valuable feature to me as IT is that the disk is non-writable. This means that, during the course of computing, nothing permanently bad can happen to the computer. Viruses and malware can’t corrupt it. So instead of a rebuild of the machine, which used to happen at least twice a week, and take as much as 10 hours, it’s a simple reboot to fix.

The second most valuable feature is the ability to deliver a full-featured desktop to our users anytime, anywhere with an internet connection.

My organization is a 24x7 organization. About 2/3 of our users work a schedule that is 48 hours on, 96 hours off on rotating shifts and many of them live a minimum of 70 miles away. They frequently need to get into our computer system to adjust their work availability schedule for overtime and out-of-area deployments, as well as to keep in contact with other divisions that are on more-regular work schedules. We can now access our system in the field, which is valuable when interfacing with our constituency.

I would like to be able to document the VDIs better in XenServer and in the Delivery Controller, so that I could know which snapshot and image goes with which machine. I can do it now, but it takes some digging.

And I still think the training costs too much in relation to the cost of the software.

I have been using it since 2009.

In this newest version, I keep running out of allocated space on my storage server for the virtual desktop images. This is because I am used to the older Provisioning Server model where I had one image that streamed to many desktops. Now, I am using the Machine Creation Services model where each desktop has its own image. That’s okay, but the snapshots of previous images - so that versions can be rolled back - are giving me some problems to get used to. It’s not a terrible problem, it’s just me getting used to it and figuring out how to allow for it.

Customer service and technical support is great, but you do have to pay for it. Don’t skimp and don’t try to do without it; you’ll be sorry. There are great knowledge base articles and a lot of active users, but there is also a lot that happens that never hits the knowledge base. The risk you run by trying to figure it out for yourself is dissatisfied and tremendously frustrated users - and this is not an area where you want to encourage a howling mob.

My experience is no longer very valid as it was seven years ago and Citrix has made many changes and improvements. It was a nightmare. XenServer was, and is, pretty easy. XenDesktop was, and is, fairly complex. At that time, XenDesktop was poorly documented (as in, barely documented) and I ran into problems with everything, including lingering problems with the Nehalem processors in the hosts and problems in my storage server that caused the virtual desktops to arbitrarily hang for the first year or so. Every piece of the technology has matured, both hardware and software, since that time.

The XenServer piece was done by a VAR from the RFP process. The original plan was for them to also do the XenDesktop piece but, as I mention elsewhere, while they were familiar with Virtual Iron, they were not familiar with XenDesktop and did not wish to undertake it. They subcontracted it to another installer, who tried to set it up but didn’t get it done past the problems I mention elsewhere. Then another VAR took a shot at it, but also couldn’t fix it. I spent a lot of time studying, learning, and trying to fix the issues and found the hardware problems and fixed them. But it still didn’t work properly. I finally bit the golden bullet and paid the price for a Citrix gold partner who rebuilt the XenDesktop installation correctly and taught me at the same time. From then on, it worked beautifully and met our vision. But that first 1.5 years was a bear to wrestle.

We extended our hardware replacement lifecycle by not having to replace endpoints. We no longer use PCs, but use thin/zero clients with no moving parts. So instead of a PC refresh every three years, we went 5-6 years and used a less expensive machine. Instead of three servers for the hosts, we were able to use only two when we replaced them and didn’t do it until seven years. Our fuel costs are down because a “broken” machine is a reboot, not a rebuild. We use less electricity. We are able to provide 24x7 on-call support with only 1.5 IT personnel instead of only 40 hours to our 24x7 operation. All our employees, many of whom live in another city, can access our system anytime they need to sign up for overtime or change their schedule (this is a fire department) or interact with any division on a different work schedule than their own. And our overall IT costs (hardware, software, utilities, etc.) dropped 44 percent over what we were spending in 2008 and certainly over our trajectory.

The initial purchase for the first three years will be more expensive than what you have been spending. There will be a higher cost in time, in the learning curve, and in effort. You won’t start to see a savings until after that; the savings comes over time and will affect many areas.

This is a disruptive technology and it will disrupt your organization; you’ll have to learn to think differently both in a technological fashion and in a budgetary fashion. If you’re used to measuring your ROI in terms of years, you’ll need to take a longer view. If you measure it by line item, you’ll need to take a wider view.

Initially, we were going to use Virtual Iron as it looked to be the simplest and least expensive to implement for a small organization. Oracle bought the product in the middle of our implementation process and killed it. Our implementer had a business relationship with a Citrix sales engineer who was able to show us the XenServer/XenDesktop product. It looked very similar, so we went with that. XenServer was; XenDesktop, not so much.

Virtual desktops aren’t for every user and it takes some thought to apply them correctly. Heavy graphics programs will benefit from the use of GPUs in the host. Your best bet will be to use a Citrix partner VAR who knows what they’re doing to implement and train you; even though it costs more initially, it will prevent so much dissatisfaction, it will really be worth it. There are a number of little “gotchas”, optimizations, and tweaks they have already known about and Citrix has worked through and patched that will greatly impact the user acceptance and affect it will have on your organization.

Implementation will also take some user training and you’ll get some pushback. For example, people will need to be trained to use shortcuts on their desktops and to not put a lot of files and folders on them. Why? Because Microsoft Windows loads everything up on load and it will slow them down. It will make their user experience unsatisfactory while they WAIT FOREVER (more than 30 seconds to as much as minutes, depending on bandwidth and user perception) for their desktop to come up. They’ll get used to the new way of working and come to appreciate the new amenities, but you may have to keep reminding them of what they’ve gained when they complain of what they think they’ve lost. And they will lose some things; a virtual desktop is more locked down. The desktop is non-writable, which means that nothing writes to it. This is great for IT support, but not so great for some apps. Think about that in relation to software packages that you use as you’re planning. If you’ve got software that MUST write to the disk, you can do that, but you’ll have to allow for an additional writable disk to the desktop image for any user using that software.

We use Remote PC Access and Remote Desktop Access. We use the solution for two of our clients. For each, we virtualized their whole workspace, so if they log in from anywhere, they get access to all the applications. 

We've locked down their data centers, so some of the users, depending on their rights, cannot even copy stuff from the Citrix environment to their local desktops. Some users with more elevated rights are allowed to access their local. 

It's for work from anywhere, but we had it before COVID. We've had it like this for a very long time.

One of the benefits is that our clients can work from anywhere. It's all consolidated in one environment. It makes it easy for them as things easily accessible from any environment.

It provides the flexibility of being used on any device which makes the employee experience better, in terms of ease of use.

We've also set up access according to security group so it's very secure. We can lock down the environment completely.

As an end-to-end solution for implementing Zero Trust principles I would rate it a six or a seven out of 10, because it doesn't cover all aspects of Zero Trust. There are quite a few aspects you need to cover.

We've used it since 2011.

The stability is very good. In some of our environments, we are on old versions so we're busy upgrading. On the old versions, we have to do a lot of session resets. Hopefully, on the newer versions, after we've upgraded, we won't have so many instances where sessions need to be reset.

The scalability is good because, once you've set it up with the correct architecture, you can just add servers. It's very easy. You can't clone it because there's something with the SID that makes it difficult to clone. But with the latest version, you have that ability where you provision a server according to a template. It's very good.

One of the environments we deployed it in has about 180 concurrent users, and the other one has about 85 concurrent users.

If we upgrade or we set up a new environment, it takes us three months. We do have Citrix consultants who help us. We're thinking that we're maybe doing something wrong because it takes so long, but even with their help, it takes long. It's very complex to set up. If we set up an RDS farm, we can do it within three days.

Our clients have seen return on investment with Citrix in the security and through work-from-anywhere.

We use other technologies. For SD-WAN and web filtering we use TIBCO.

We use RDS in environments where people can't afford Citrix, because Citrix is very expensive. But in terms of security, the Citrix environment, and how you can set it up, is a bit more secure.

The centralized policy control and distributed enforcement is an eight out of 10. It's complex to set up.

When it comes to the security of intellectual property when remote employees are using the solution, I would also rate it at eight. You can protect your environment, but I don't know if you've got logs or things like DLP that can assist you to see what's being moved out of the environment.

Citrix plays a part in our clients' business continuation strategies. We will continue to make use of it as is, because it's much easier to manage the environment, the access, and upgrades. We install the applications only on the application servers. It's secure and makes it easy to work from anywhere, and it makes it easy to lock down the environment.

My advice would be to get a Citrix engineer to assist you with your architecture and to send your engineers on training.

ICA and HDX are the most valuable features of this product to me. These protocols allow features that most other vendors either have not implemented yet or are too bandwidth-intensive to use in the enterprise with WAN users.

Our organization was a VMView shop. Due to issues with application responsiveness / perceived performance, our users had a very negative perception of the technology and were opting for physical PCs instead of VDI. During an extended pilot with these users leveraging Citrix XenDestop, we were able to improve the perceived performance / application response time, as well as use significantly less bandwidth. This was a huge cost savings for the firm.

The biggest area for improvement is in QA testing. The last few releases of either the VDA or updates to the broker either reduced functionality or re-introduced issues that were previously addressed.

I have been using this solution for five years.

The only issue that we had was early on in our implementation with a “Black Screen”. Although we were never able to determine the root cause with Citrix Tech support and escalated engineering, updating form 5.6 to 7.6 greatly reduced this issue / impact to our users.

I rate technical support 5/10.

The initial setup was straightforward. We were able to get three farms up and running within two hours. The migration from older to newer was relatively easy as well.

Implementation was done in house. My best advice if you are migrating from another product to XenDesktop would be to deploy new VDI’s and migrate the users. This allows you to validate the stack and avoid legacy configuration and applications that might have issues. If that is not an option, researching what the VDI’s have installed, and what other remoting technologies are in use, will prove valuable and avoid some of the pitfalls that we had.

ROI I believe is close to three years.

Citrix XenDesktop is a great solution for VDI or virtual desktop environments. Its most valuable features to me are:

• Pretty good management: You can manage a full environment for VDI, you have full control of what your users do, what they can or can't install and what resources your users can use.
• Great performance: Of course, it depends on hardware and the hypervisor (Citrix XenServer and VMWare vSphere are the best). It provides great performance with NVIDIA GPU cards.
• Great performance on low bandwidth links: Citrix was born when I still used a phone modem with 33.5 Kbps, so Citrix created the ICA protocol that provides great performance when you use low links.
• Easy install: With a little bit of understanding, for a standard configuration, if you have a little knowledge of Citrix XenDesktop, you can implement a solution in a few days.

Mobility! You can access your virtual desktop with all your applications everywhere; with a smartphone, laptop, thin client and so on.

I would like to see the following improvements:

• Better monitoring tools included in the enterprise editions: At the moment, if you want better monitoring, you need to buy a third license.
• Linux virtual desktop: We have been waiting more than five years for it!
• Compatibility with public clouds: Today, Citrix doesn't have the best position with public clouds. I work for IBM and we have SoftLayer public cloud, and we want to offer DaaS (Desktop as a Service) to the public. Citrix is a great opportunity for us, but Citrix has to “speak” SoftLayer API language. Secondly, Citrix should have a public cloud offering with a license that final users can afford and not just an annual license.

I have used this solution for at least nine years.

Citrix XenDesktop can be very stable and has great scalability if a certified Citrix architect designs it. Many problems that I've seen in the past with clients were related to bad design. Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp have great stability if you take the correct path.

Citrix is very good with this, if you pay your maintenance every year. :P

I previously used the VMWare solution. It works great but only when you use LAN (at least 1 Gbps if you have many users), but in a WAN environment, I really don't like the lags and delays with that solution.

If you have a little knowledge about Citrix and what a VDI environment means, initial setup is not complex. If you want to do a good job, you must be prepared to know:

• Microsoft Windows Server (2008 R2 or 2012 R2)
• Microsoft Windows Desktop (Windows 7, 8.1 or 10)
• Active Directory
• DNS!!!!!
• Security, local policies, etc.
• DHCP
• Firewalls (local and for internet)
• Citrix NetScaler Gateway
• And so on!

I have a lot of experience with third-party consultants and of course Citrix vendors. I have Citrix Architect Certification, so I have implemented my own solutions, but for big projects, it's much better to count on Citrix itself.

It's very difficult to evaluate this because if you have a low number of users, it's much better to buy new PC's or low-resource laptops than use VDI. For many environments, it's much better to use Citrix XenApp with published applications and use a shared desktop as opposed to using XenDesktop.

If you have at least 1,000 users or use GPU or high-resource-consuming applications, Citrix XenDesktop is the best solution, but you won't see ROI for at least three years.

Many of my clients are looking for a DaaS with IBM SoftLayer.

We use Citrix to unite data sets for remote work and media services. Citrix is used for application virtualization as well as remote access to desktop workstations. We have 30 employees using this technology in various roles, including customer and tech support as well as accounting.

In terms of the employee experience, I would say I think Citrix is quite good. It has also helped us to comply with industry regulations on data protection by allowing us to maintain our target policy of controlling clients' access to information. 

Relative to other solutions, Citrix has fewer conditions and fewer parameters. Citrix also provides some flexibility because it can be used on any device. It has a few security features that are interesting— actions that permit the user to access only the information they are supposed to access. It's extremely secure because all the data is encrypted. The work can be done remotely but the data never has to leave our data center.

I've been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for about four months.

It's efficient. Because there are fewer parameters, the base application runs in less time with less effort.

I think Citrix's support is good, but sometimes it is a little slow. I would rate it a seven out of 10.

Compared to other desktop virtualization products I've used, Citrix has more compelling features that are much more extensive.

Setting up Citrix wasn't complex.

The whole organization is more productive because Citrix allows us to coordinate together and share information.

My advice would be to test this solution and see if it meets your expectations.

On a scale of one to 10, I would rate Citrix a seven.

• ICA protocol performance on a slow network
• Adaptive user constraint in a different user environment
• Load balancing and HA

• This product can reduce the cost of a user environment, but only if all components are included for a migration to a Citrix environment.
• A Citrix environment can increase the security by centralizing and controlling the user environment.
• The application deployment was also accelerated.

Citrix needs to ameliorate their administrative panel and provide a tool to
add more control in the user Citrix environment. An example is Norskale,
recently acquired by Citrix. Actually the user profile can only be modified
by third part tools or by a system tool (like : regedit, script and other).
In addition the AppCenter (XenApp 6.5 version) is not a simple tool and
need to be optimized (too long to load, too many options in different
submenus) and debugged (some columns added in user view corrupt the access
to the AppCenter).

We have used this solution for four years. We used Citrix XenApp when the product was called Presentation Server.

There were some stability issues, primarily with printers and some device drivers. It's important for an administrator to configure policies correctly to prohibit some devices from connecting.

We did not encounter any scalability issues. However, scalability is the key to user performance. The administrator needs to check performance counters to ensure the best user experience.

The technical support is adequate.

We used Microsoft RDS, but it did not have the same performance as the ICA protocol. It lacked the load balancing and high availability functionalities.

The initial setup is pretty simple, but you need to follow the manual as with any software installation.

Beware! It is expensive. You need to include all variables when you are going to migrate your users or applications to a Citrix environment. Remember to establish a global strategy.

We did not evaluate any alternatives. Other products on the market lack the same functionalities.

• Keep calm and take some time to install, configure, and optimize. Test with users as well.
• Remember to keep your users in the project loop before releasing the architecture into production!

The central administration and deployment of desktops and apps. Also, XenApp restricts access to those applications that you, as the admin, will define. XenApp works best if there are no bandwidth limitations in your area.

We have 12 offices around the island, and users are able to connect to the same desktop and access their apps and files from any of these locations. Road warriors get access to the insurance apps on their mobile devices of any OS.

The studio is very slow.

We've been using it since May 2010, alongside XenDesktop and XenServer.

No issues encountered. From an administrative point of view, it is easy to deploy and maintain.

In the beginning yes, especially if you are running a large number of desktops.

No issues encountered, and we run 600 virtual desktops.

8/10.

10/10.

No, but we did try VMWare View as well as part of a lengthy POC. Citrix XenDesktop & XenApp came out on top.

It was a straightforward installation, a simple wizard-based one on Windows.

We used a mix of a vendor and an in-house one. The vendor was excellent, and they advised on the right architecture for performance and scalability, so I would give them a 10/10.

It's reduced the PC maintenance, and upgrade costs by two or three times.

Carefully make the distinction between XenApp and XenDesktop. XenApp uses a mix of Microsoft RDS and Citrix to provision the service so this increases the licensing cost, as well as the amount of administration behind it.

• VMWare View
• Kaviza Desktop (later bought by Citrix)

Carefully select the components for the architecture. Running virtual desktops or apps require careful planning and sizing. We found SSD disk to be extremely appropriate.

The infrastructure for both XenApp and XenDesktop must be carefully designed.

The central administration and deployment of desktops and apps. XenDesktop gives a full desktop experience i.e. the user gets a Windows machine with a C drive and loaded with a set of applications such as mail, productivity suites and access to files.

We have 12 offices around the island, and users able to connect to the same desktop and access their apps and files from any of these locations. Road warriors get access to the insurance apps on their mobile devices of any OS.

The studio is very slow.

We've been using it since May 2010, alongside XenApp and XenServer.

From an administrative point of view, it is easy to deploy and maintain.

In the beginning yes, especially if you are running a large number of desktops.

No issues encountered, and we run 600 virtual desktops.

8/10.

10/10.

No, but we did try VMWare View as well as part of a lengthy POC. Citrix XenDesktop & XenApp came out on top.

It was a straightforward wizard-based setup.

We used a mix of a vendor and an in-house one. The vendor was excellent, and they advised on the right architecture for performance and scalability, so I would give them a 10/10.

It's reduced the PC maintenance and upgrade costs by two or three times.

Carefully make the distinction between XenApp and XenDesktop. XenApp uses a mix of Microsoft RDS and Citrix to provision the service so this increases the licensing cost, as well as the amount of administration behind it.

• VMWare View
• Kaviza Desktop (later bought by Citrix)

You should also have a look at Atlantis Computing as well. XenDesktop is deployed along Atlantis ILIO, which is phenomenal.

The infrastructure for both XenApp and XenDesktop must be carefully designed.

Carefully select the components for the architecture. Running virtual desktops or apps require careful planning and sizing. We found SSD disk to be extremely appropriate.