Citrix Compatibility

Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure Smart Solution 2.6 with Citrix XenDesktop 5.6 is verified to be compatible with:

• In an enterprise network, performance and capacity planning for desktop virtualization (DV) services has three fundamental dimensions:
• Capacity planning for computing and storage needs
• Capacity planning for network, network services, applications and other infrastructure necessary to support desktop virtualization
• WAN capacity planning for delivery of service to remote sites  

The Cisco VXI validated design delivers the following critical advantages:

Virtual Workspace: Cisco VXI supports a comprehensive ecosystem of endpoints that include unified communications and multimedia capabilities. Cisco Virtualization Experience Clients describes Cisco's endpoint offerings, which include the Cisco Virtualization Experience Client (Cisco VXC) 2200 platform zero clients, the Cisco VXC 4000 Series unified communications software appliance, and the Cisco VXC 6215 unified communications-enabled thin client. Endpoints supported by Cisco VXI include industry-leading capabilities such as Power over Ethernet (PoE), hardware and software form factors, mobility support, and native unified communication media engines.

Integration with Cisco Unified Communications: Users can connect to Hosted Virtual Desktops to make and receive voice or video calls from Cisco Jabber, Cisco Unified Personal Communicator (CUPC), or Cisco Unified Communications Integration for Microsoft Lync (CUCILync) which controls the user's desk phone. The phone's control plane is integrated into the user's desktop. The media plane remains outside the virtual desktop display protocol, which enables the network to perform quality-of-service (QoS) functions such as packet prioritization, call admission control, and path optimization.

Simplified Configuration: The Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) integrates the computing, virtualization, hypervisor, fabric interconnect, and storage functions in the Cisco Virtualized Data Center. Cisco UCS Manager simplifies configuration and improves manageability for all aspects of the Cisco UCS domain. The Cisco Nexus® 1000V Series Switches provide switching, traffic isolation, and policy-insertion capabilities for virtualized environments, extending full networking capabilities to the virtual machine level.

Network Optimization: Cisco Wide Area Application Services (Cisco WAAS) technologies can improve application response times by optimizing bandwidth consumption. For instance, remote print operations can be launched from a user's virtual desktop within the data center to a network printer at a remote branch office. Cisco WAAS can automatically recognize and compress the printing traffic, and spool the resulting print file at the remote location. This capability provides a superior user experience while improving WAN efficiency.

Security: Network connectivity can be controlled at the access layer, using industry-standard IEEE802.1x for port-level authentication. Cisco access switches can thus enforce a security policy at the physical device level and user level by interacting with the credentials-based access control integrated with directory services such as Microsoft Active Directory. Teleworker users, such as mobile users using laptop computers, as well as fixed users, such as home-based teleworkers, can use Cisco's award-wining VPN technology to connect to the enterprise network across the Internet. The user's virtual desktop data is fully protected as it traverses the Internet in a VPN tunnel, encrypted. This technology can also be deployed for traffic traversing a managed WAN.

End to End Integration and Validation: Cisco VXI is an end-to-end system, integrating network and collaboration functions into the virtual desktop experience. The system has been designed and tested as an integrated whole, and mitigates the system integration investment typically required when deploying desktop virtualization and related technologies. The design guidelines and best practices provided in this document reduce the risks associated with desktop virtualization deployments.

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