There are probably many scenarios that would benefit from the ability to separate XenApp servers from the data source. Unfortunately this has not been a recommended practice due to the latency incurred when moving data from one location to another. Now with the emerging availability of Private and Public Clouds and typically constrained premise space and power this capability could become even more interesting. The time to move data across the WAN securely has been the limiting factor but how about using the Citrix Repeater to accelerate the data and Access Gateway to secure it ? Yes this is possible and we wanted to provide a Proof of Concept, demo and C3 Blueprint that may be beneficial.  

This demonstration was included in the Synergy session on Citrix C3 Cloud Architecture. The client laptop located in Florida is connecting over ICA/HDX to a XenApp server hosted in the EC2 Cloud in Virginia, which is pulling data from a file server located in Santa Clara Ca. As indicated in the demo when the Repeater acceleration is enabled the time to open a 5 Megabit file is about 7 seconds. A usable experience for the document delivery example. However with the acceleration disabled the time to open the same 5 Mb file grows to about 2 minutes and unacceptable experience. A 10X+ improvement from acceleration.

Certainly this configuration has limitations and may or may not apply to your situation but it may open the possibilities to solving many app delivery and data location challenges. This example can be recreated easily following the C3 Blueprint and the AMI ( Amazon Machine Image ) template available as part of the C3 Lab in EC2. This does presume you have an available Branch Repeater and Access Gateway on premise to complete the PoC. Try it out and / or let us know what challenges this type of solution may help solve.

Also check out Craig Ellrod's Cloud Bridge post that utilizes Vyatta for a full Premise to Cloud VPN.

http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/craigel/2009/06/08/Cloud Bridge

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