Citrix is continuing to bring value added services to its desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) platform by including enhanced monitoring and management features to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Standard for Azure (formerly Citrix Managed Desktops). With Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Standard for Azure, customers benefit from turnkey, simple deployment of virtual apps and desktops from the Azure cloud that includes robust support of Windows and Linux apps and desktops, including Windows multi-session workloads (Azure Virtual Desktop).
Now Citrix adds enhanced monitoring and management features to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Standard for Azure to make it even easier to manage and monitor your DaaS environment.
Let’s take a closer look at these new services.
Citrix Studio (Web Studio)
Citrix is excited to announce the addition of Citrix Studio console to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Standard for Azure. This console eliminates the need for separate management consoles to manage delivery of applications and desktops. Studio provides wizards to guide you through creating your workloads to host applications and desktops and assigning applications and desktops to users. Admins can now manage their environments with granular precision, applying ready-made template policies for security and control, scalability, and optimization.
Apply security policies such as limiting copy/paste, USB device use, and printing limitations for organizations that have strict regulatory guidelines. Conveniently choose and apply to any user or group. Citrix even lets admins create their own custom policy templates and save them for use.
Tiered-Pricing Option for Monthly Subscription
Customers have been requesting a tiered-pricing option for monthly subscription options based on number of licenses. Previously customers that subscribed to monthly, no-commit pricing would have only one license price per user. Citrix now offers tiered pricing for month-to-month, no-commit service based on number of licenses. This applies for customers subscribing to the service through traditional Citrix channels (Citrix partners and direct sales) as well as Azure Marketplace. This is ideal for organizations that need to support a short term project or season with a number of users that need access to apps and desktops. The monthly service can be canceled when the project or season is completed, and you only pay for what was used during that time.
Citrix Advanced Monitoring
Citrix advanced monitoring provides a unified view where IT admins can monitor, troubleshoot, and assist users with virtual apps and desktops for thousands of users as easily as for one. Leveraging many of the traditional features of Citrix Director, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Standard for Azure’s advanced monitoring can access real-time data from the broker agent using a unified console integrated with analytics, performance manager, and network inspector. You can also control sessions, power manage machines, end running applications, and end running processes. Here are a few key highlights of advanced monitoring:
Application and Desktop Probing (Trends)
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Standard for Azure now supports application and desktop probing. This automates the process of checking the health of Citrix Virtual Apps that are published in a site and proactively monitors the health of apps and desktops by scheduling automated launches to test overall system or site health. This enables your admin to keep proactive status of your environment, keeping your users online and productive.
The application probing feature helps you proactively monitor the health of the applications via an agent that is installed on a user’s machine. This agent launches the configured app and reports back the health of that application to Citrix advanced monitoring console.
Desktop probing automates the process of checking the health of Citrix Virtual Desktops that are published in a site. You can schedule your desktop probes to run during off-peak hours across multiple geographies. The comprehensive results can help to proactively troubleshoot issues related to provisioned desktops, hosting machines, or connections before the users experience them.
Machine Filters
Citrix includes a machine-filtering console that helps admins quickly locate and manage any active session. This service gives help-desk admins the ability to locate a specific session quickly and troubleshoot if necessary, including putting sessions in maintenance mode, restarting or resetting any app or desktop that may need it. This enables the admin to quickly diagnose any issue and correct, keeping your workers up and productive.
Citrix includes a convenient search feature built in to help the admin quickly locate a user, machine or endpoint device. This makes it much easier for the admin to locate a specific VDA when accessing hundreds or thousands of active sessions at once.
New Linux VDA Citrix Prepared Images
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Standard customers are enjoying the ease of leveraging prepared VDA images in the Master Image Library. Admins can select various up to date master VDA images and deploy or customize quickly and deploy as needed. Citrix continues to add additional image templates, now offering Linux VDA prepared images. Admins can choose the latest single and multi-session Ubuntu Linux prepared images alongside Windows RDS and multi-session prepared images, giving your organization the flexibility to deploy the OS of choice that makes the most sense for your workforce.
Citrix continues to set the pace with management tools that help IT simplify their apps and desktop deployment, built directly into the management console. Combined with Citrix’s superior user experience and leveraging key Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Teams makes Citrix-simplified DaaS the complete solution. Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Standard for Azure is now available as a monthly or term subscription in the Azure Marketplace. If you are interested in a demo or trial, please contact one of our Citrix representatives to get started today.
