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The question of VDI use cases, customer awareness, and Desktop Virtualization has been a hot topic lately at Citrix. Harry Labana's blog post did a great job describing the differences in Desktop Virtualization and Server Virtualization. In addition to the positive reviews a few commenter's have also brought up some scenarios we have been considering but have not made available to date. Specifically we have been discussing ways to make HDX more pervasive and useful to IT Pro's and users. HDX has significant benefits and we want the broader industry to try it out and get a taste of XenDesktop.
Many in the community may recall a Citrix project called PortICA which led to a component of XenDesktop providing a direct ICA connection from a Client OS ( XP or Vista ) to any endpoint with the ICA client. Outside of Citrix developers & testers ( and a few others 
) who find this very useful, we have not opened up this stand alone capability to the world. If we did make this available, meaning an MSI including the enhanced HDX features that could be installed inside a client OS which could connect directly ( no broker ) to any device with the Citrix Receiver and proper network configuration. The question is what would you use it for ? Would this lead to increased XenDesktop adoption? Some of the XenDesktop product and demo scenarios we have considered or heard are listed below. Please let us know your vote and help describe some new use cases as well.
( Note that this is simply a survey and does not imply what plans we may or may not have )
Also check out Brian Madden's post on the topic and additional commenters views.
Comments (15)
Aug 13
Anonymous says:
How about allowing HDX connection to XenServer virtual consoles for xenserver ad...How about allowing HDX connection to XenServer virtual consoles for xenserver administrators?
Thanks
Aug 13
Anonymous says:
This would compete directly with GoToMyPC.This would compete directly with GoToMyPC.
Aug 13
Anonymous says:
My company won't allow GoToMyPC but we could use this for a premise based remote...My company won't allow GoToMyPC but we could use this for a premise based remote access to corporate PC solution.
Aug 13
Anonymous says:
I want simple VDI with the best user performance. This sounds like a candidate, ...I want simple VDI with the best user performance. This sounds like a candidate, when ?
Aug 13
Shawn Bass says:
There's another use case that wasn't covered here. That of the IT person w...There's another use case that wasn't covered here. That of the IT person who's responsible for supporting/troubleshooting XenDesktop. Today, when there's issues with broker registration, firewall rules, etc. there isn't a way to confirm the basic ICA Client -> ICA Host connectivity is working without incident. This is because the ICA/CGP ports are not opened until after the broker tells the VDA to do so. This makes troubleshooting ICA/CGP connectivity almost impossible. If this was opened up, one could just fire up an ICA client, type in a machine name and boom you're in. Combine this with the use cases of:
1) Immediate DR ability without having to assign a bunch of machine names to people (I know there's pools, but if the app set doesn't match then this is still a problem)
2) Being able to have a single user use multiple XenDesktop systems without having to create multiple desktop groups.
And there's probably other use cases I'm not thinking of right now. But the biggest one for me is enabling troubleshooting and firewall traversal.
Shawn
Aug 16
Anonymous says:
Something similar to shadow feature will be really useful from support poin...Something similar to shadow feature will be really useful from support point of view.
Aug 17
Simon Bramfitt says:
Agreed The troublshooting use case is the one that has the most appeal to me. ...Agreed
The troublshooting use case is the one that has the most appeal to me. In the same way that you can use Web Interface as the standard access mechanism for XenApp but can still install the full PN Client to provide Tech Support with a simple means of validating ICA connectivity to a server, so a XenDesktop system would benefit from a direct connection capability.
Simon
Sep 14
Simon Bramfitt says:
Follow up on this I ran into a problem a couple of day ago where availability o...Follow up on this
I ran into a problem a couple of day ago where availability of standalone HDX would have saved many hours of troubleshooting an issue with XenDesktop.
Just confirms the value that this proposal has.
Simon
Aug 13
Anonymous says:
Appdetective This would an awesome feature and it's great to see that you would...Appdetective
This would an awesome feature and it's great to see that you would even consider this. This is exactly the feature I would want to deploy desktops to a class of user. In other words I would bypass the broker to just connect and allow a very simple service. As your broker matures I would adopt it as my systems management processes change. This feature would be a great addition to XD in addition to what Shawn Bass mentions above. Back over on Madden's site I went on and on yesterday, about why we need this. Citrix please do this, it will help so many customers, even the ones that don't get it yet. It will give you the most flexible Desktop Virtualization solution.
Aug 17
Simon Bramfitt says:
I'm not sure I'd ever want to have a production system that did not use a broker...I'm not sure I'd ever want to have a production system that did not use a broker as part of the end user access infrastructur. It would force too many design compromises to be worth the effort. Better to devote resources to ensuring broker availability/reliability than to develop a production quality brokerless solution.
Simon
Aug 13
Anonymous says:
appdetective This has nothing to do with GoToMyPc. Simply comments from those t...appdetective
This has nothing to do with GoToMyPc. Simply comments from those that see the value here for Service Providers or enterprise customers. GoToMyPc is very different.
Aug 13
Shawn Bass says:
I don't think appdetective was suggesting that it conflicted with GotoMyPC. ...I don't think appdetective was suggesting that it conflicted with GotoMyPC. I think there were other anonymous posters that suggested that.
Shawn
Aug 16
Anonymous says:
I think this would be a huge feature for those of us that want to build solution...I think this would be a huge feature for those of us that want to build solutions with XD. We can use this in combination with what Citrix offers out of the box, and offer our users a lot of flexibility. BTW I am a service provider looking for ways to offer DAAS in the future as the licensing models mature. Citrix should add this feature, it will certainly make XD an easy choice for DAAS. Also as some of the above comments suggest, for some customers that requires a very high SLA, I would have the option at a price to offer a different tier of service that I offer custom to these customers leveraging HDX. Avoids all the broker outages that will happen as one scales up. Many of my customers will like this feature.
Sep 11
Anonymous says:
Indeed, this would be a great feature... this would help complex environ...Indeed, this would be a great feature...
this would help complex environments such as a network with multiple non trusted AD Groups...customer domains, independent domains etc...
Stand alone ICA totally librates the access terminal (existing PC's domain) to the hosted desktop Domains...without having to setup Multiplel DDC's on different domains...
this would be a great use case.
thankx,
kamal
Sep 17
Anonymous says:
i have not used Xendesktop very often yet, but i remember that when we did ...i have not used Xendesktop very often yet, but i remember that when we did the first xendesktop experiments in our company, the first question i did to myself was: how the heck do i directly connect with a ica client to a VM which has the xendesktop agent installed? i could not believe that this was not possible and found the need for AD integration and running a DDC for a simple single-station VDI setup to be a major annoyance. (i had administered some citrix farms to that date and always found it useful to be able to directly connect via ica client to a citrix server, to circumvent using the load-balanced shared/published desktop)
if you want xendesktop to be a success, you should make it easy for the users to use ica/hdx as a drop-in replacement for RDP, i.e. users should be able to directly connect their client to a VM, without the need for a DDC. think of a small VDI deployment with 5 VMs and 5 Thin-Clients where there is a 1:1 mapping of thin clients to Desktops. Who want`s a DDC in such a setup? (which is another VM which needs to be administered, patched etc. and also can be a SPOF)
imho, there is no real reason that direct connection shouldn`t work - it`s not a technical issue, it`s more a question if citrix wants users being able to connect this way, isn`t it ?
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