Are you planning a migration from an on-premises Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops environment to one that is hosted in Citrix Cloud? We understand all of the work and effort that represents manually reconfiguring applications, policies, machine catalogs, and more. As a Cloud Success Engineer working hand in hand with many customers for onboarding, I know it’s a time intensive task.

Good news! We’re here to help accelerate your cloud journey.

The New Citrix Automated Configuration Tool

I am very excited to share with you that Citrix has developed a new tool that will assist you in your cloud adoption journey by automating the migration process: the Citrix Automated Configuration Tool for Virtual Apps and Desktops. It’s available now.

With this tool you can migrate from on-premises to Citrix Cloud in a few easy steps:

  1. Complete the prerequisites for both on-premises and Citrix Cloud.
  2. Install the tool on any domain joined machine. Must be in the same domain as your VDAs
  3. Export your on-premises site configuration using the Automated Configuration Tool. This will create all the configuration files to be used.
  4. Import your site configuration into Citrix Cloud.

If you plan to migrate cloud to cloud (from testing environment to prod, for example), you can do that, too.

Sounds easy, right? Yes, it is! This configuration-as-code tool discovers your on-premises environment and creates files that contain the configuration of each component, including Machine Catalogs, Delivery Groups, Applications, Policies, and more. Then, you can use those files to migrate a complete environment or individual components depending on your needs and use case (e.g. by geolocation or site, by business unit, catalogs, specific applications, etc.)

As you know, we love to go above and beyond for our customers. This tool is not limited to migration; it’s an evolution of Citrix operations into automation and configuration as code. You can use the configuration files to create disaster recovery environments and public cloud automation like Microsoft Azure ARM templates and AWS Cloud formation.

In the meantime, let me quickly show you how it works:

First, download and install the tool.

Export your on-premises configuration. The Automated Configuration Tool will automatically create the configuration “.yml” files.

Run the following command: Export-CvadAcToFile -all $true

Run the tool. It will import the configuration files to the Citrix Cloud environment.

Merge-CvadAcToSite $true

You’re all set! Your resources are now available in Citrix Cloud.

For detailed documentation including leading practices and FAQs, visit our Cloud Success Center. Sign in with your Citrix account credentials to find all you need to know to get started using the tool. Another great resource is the POC guide that includes general information about tool functionally, configuration and use cases.

Finally, don’t forget to register for our August 19 Citrix TIPs webinar — Why Cloud Migration Is Easier than Ever. In addition to tips and tricks for migration, we’ll talk in detail about the Automated Configuration Tool and perform a demo.

— Amir Trujillo, Lead Customer Success Engineer