Citrix XenDesktop or XenApp

Optimize Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp Over the WAN

Ensure distant offices receive a responsive, predictable Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp experience even across unpredictable Internet connections. Silver Peak mitigates the effects of network congestion that can disrupt XenDesktop and XenApp while shortening data transfers by 80 percent. With Silver Peak, XenDesktop/XenApp screens refresh faster and mouse movements become smoother regardless of the office location. 

Citrix XenDesktop is a collection of products for delivering virtual desktops to remote users. Citrix XenApp provides a similar capability, providing a way to deliver published applications to remote users. Both environments use the Citrix Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) protocol for delivering the published desktops or application to the client and can use Citrix’s Common Gateway Protocol (CGP) for session reliability.

Citrix minimizes the bandwidth required for XenDesktop/XenApp through built-in client-side compression. Nevertheless, users may still suffer frozen screens, and unpredictable mouse movements when operating across long-distance connections. Throughput is limited due to the increased delay stemming from distance, service provider routing architectures and peering policies. Increased packet loss and out-of-order packets impact throughput and also interfere with XenDesktop/XenApp user experience. These problems are only exacerbated when other applications share the wide area network (WAN), which may consume the bandwidth needed by XenDesktop/XenApp.

Silver Peak mitigates the effects of network congestion, allowing XenDesktop and XenApp to be more responsive, while minimizing bandwidth consumption by 80 percent. More specifically, Silver Peak addresses the following challenges:

  • Bandwidth – Silver Peak byte-level deduplication removes redundant XenDesktop and XenApp data from the WAN. The first time XenDesktop and XenApp sends data it is fingerprinted and compressed by Silver Peak. Subsequent requests are fulfilled by the local Silver Peak instance.  If enabled, Citrix client-side compression (and encryption) can be  automatically disabled so Silver Peak can deduplicate the data. 
  • Congestion – Silver Peak makes XenDesktop and XenApp performance more predictable across congested WANs. Lost packets are reconstituted in real-time at the far end of a WAN link, avoiding delays that come with multiple round-trip retransmissions. Out-of-order packets are resequenced, avoiding retransmission and processing delays that occur when packets arrive out-of-order. Bandwidth is guaranteed through application classification, packet marking, queuing and shaping.
  • Latency – Silver Peak mitigates latency enabling XenDesktop and XenApp to operate more efficiently over distance. TCP Acceleration includes windows scaling, selective acknowledgements, and HighSpeed TCP. Latency is also reduced through packet coalescing, which re-packages multiple smaller packets into a single larger one, and through Dynamic Path Control, which selects the fastest path to a remote location.

Silver Peak protects XenDesktop and XenApp data in-flight between locations with an Accelerated IPSec virtual private network (VPN) running AES-256, the enterprise standard for data encryption. Data-at-rest within Silver Peak appliances is encrypted with AES. Citrix client-side encryption can be automatically disabled to improve optimization performance. SSL/TLS can be used for end-to-end encryption. 

Silver Peak offers the most scalable and cost-effective data acceleration software for connecting data centers, remote offices and the cloud. Download and deploy it yourself in just 20 minutes or contact us to see how Silver Peak can help your team.

Featured Products

  • VX WAN Optimization Software

    VX Virtual WAN Optimization Software

    Silver Peak VX WAN optimization software supports the full list of Silver Peak WAN optimization features. Use Silver Peak VX software to build a Silver Peak Unity WAN fabric for integrating your enterprise WAN, the Internet and the cloud, and to optimize every SaaS application.

  • NX WAN Optimization Appliances

    NX Appliances for Application Acceleration and Replication Acceleration

    Silver Peak NX WAN optimization appliances are the industry's highest-performance WAN optimization solutions, delivering three-times the WAN performance and capacity of the nearest competing products. Silver Peak Software for Life program means you can convert NX appliances to VX software at anytime for free.

  • Unity Architecture: Building an SD-WAN Fabric

    Silver Peak Unity is the premier solution for broadband and hybrid WANs.

Benefits

  • Increase productivity by making XenDesktop and XenApp sessions more reliable and more responsive. 
  • Avoid or delay expensive bandwidth upgrades by eliminating the majority of XenDesktop and XenApp traffic from the WAN.
  • Extend XenDesktop and XenApp deployments by ensuring XenDesktop and XenApp traffic is delivered fast and reliably.
  • Maximize your Citrix investment by making XenDesktop and XenApp fast enough for any application.

Resources

  • Citrix XenDesktop is a popular way of virtualizing desktops. Across the wide area network (WAN), XenDesktop performance may become unpredictable. Screen refreshes may take too long and mouse movements may become erratic due to increased latency and jitter of the WAN – problems that are only exacerbated when other applications share the WAN connection. The WAN’s limited bandwidth is also a challenge when XenDesktop activities move large amounts of data, such as file transfers and print jobs. 
  • Demonstration of the industry's first and only multi-gigabit-per-second virtual WAN optimization solution for Citrix XenServer environments. Silver Peak's virtual offering for Citrix XenServer now extends from small remote offices to large data centers, giving Citrix XenServer hypervisor customers a highly flexible and cost-effective solution for maximizing the performance of applications and storage traffic over a long distance wide area network (WAN).
  • Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP is a real estate law firm representing organizations and individuals in all aspects of real estate, finance, and construction. The firm has more than 120 lawyers located in offices in Los Angeles, Irvine, and San Francisco, California, and is one of the largest real estate law firms in the United States. Cox, Castle’s primary data center is located in Los Angeles, California, with corporate connectivity supported by a 45 megabit-per-second (Mbps) multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) wide area network (WAN).
  • Accelrys Optimizes VDI and Replication over Distance
  • To keep its virtual desktops functioning at high performance during its peak season, tax preparation firm SurePrep decided virtual WAN optimization would be the best way to share resources in service centers across the globe. SurePrep’s IT needs are unusual, because its resources are dedicated to making everything run flawlessly during a short period when tax season is in full swing. “Our peak season is five days a year,” said Will Hosek, SurePrep’s vice president of information technology. Hosek said SurePrep goes from about 50 servers during most of the year to more than 100 during tax season. The Newport Beach, Calif., company has a 200-seat service center in Irvine, Calif., and another 200-seat center in Mumbai, India. Both service centers run virtual desktops with Wyse Technology Inc.’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)-based thin clients.
  • The combined strengths of Dell PS Series storage and Silver Peak WAN acceleration solutions can help optimize virtualization and VDI deployments.