We are excited to announce the availability of Citrix Autoscale for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) for on-premises customers. Our Autoscale power management solution enables customers to strike the right balance between delivering a great end-user experience and optimizing costs. 

Let’s take a closer look at what this means for you. 

What is Citrix Autoscale? 

We first introduced Citrix Autoscale in the Citrix cloud console in 2019. Citrix Autoscale was built to empower organizations to address scenarios such as user traffic fluctuations resulting from burst scenarios, disaster-recovery planning, seasonality etc. This solution automatically power manages your infrastructure to ensure optimal end user experience and cost efficiency. This feature quickly gained popularity, with over 50% of our customers embracing it. Remarkably, some of our DaaS (Desktop as a Service) customers reported savings of 70% or more in their cloud computing expenses, demonstrating the substantial cost reduction this capability can achieve. 

Some of the key features available in Citrix Autoscale (2305 with Universal/Hybrid license) are the following: 

  • Schedule-based and load-based settings
    • If your business operates on a consistent timetable, consider utilizing the schedule-based autoscaling feature to set specific times for starting up or shutting down virtual machines.
Schedule based setting on Autoscale.
Load Based settings in Autoscale.
  • Dynamic session timeouts
    • To expedite the process of clearing remaining sessions and reduce expenses, Autoscale enables you to set different timeout periods at various times throughout the day.
  • Autoscale tagged machines (cloud burst / hybrid)
    • Autoscale provides the flexibility to power manage only a subset of machines in a delivery group -This feature can be useful in cloud bursting use cases, where you want to use on-premises resources (or reserved public cloud instances) to handle workloads before cloud-based resources address additional demand (that is, burst workloads).
  • User logoff notifications
    • To better achieve cost savings, Autoscale lets you force log off lingering sessions. It does so by letting you send a custom notification to the users and specify a grace period after which the sessions are force logged off. 

Some of the technical platform support information:

  • Supported VDA Hosting Platforms – (All platforms that CVAD supports) 
    • Includes: Citrix Hypervisor, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure Resources Manager, VMware vSphere, And many more
  • Supported OS types
    • Includes Multi-Session OS Delivery Groups and Single Session OS Delivery Groups.

How does Autoscale improve my on-premises deployments?

Built on the same code as our highly successful Autoscale for desktops-as-a-service (DaaS) cloud feature, Citrix Autoscale for on-premises seamlessly integrates with your existing Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops infrastructure. Workloads can be in your own data center or at a public cloud provider.

Now, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops customers can leverage the proven technology from our DaaS offering to enhance their workload management and deliver an exceptional user experience while still managing costs. 

Previously, without using Citrix Autoscale, administrators had to provision resources (desktops and applications) for peak user capacity 24/7 to ensure resources were always available. While this approach ensured an excellent user experience, it came at the expense of keeping resources powered on even during low-demand periods. Additionally, if there was an unexpected spike in demand, administrators had to manually increase resources, which sometimes led to a poor user experience.

With Citrix Autoscale for CVAD, you can bid farewell to overprovisioning and underutilization concerns, as it automatically takes care of resource allocation. 

Citrix Autoscale for CVAD provides a centralized management console that simplifies monitoring and control of the scaling process. With an intuitive interface, you gain real-time visibility into resource usage, scaling activities, and performance metrics. The solution also offers comprehensive reporting capabilities, enabling you to analyze historical data and make informed decisions regarding resource allocation and capacity planning. You also have the ability to review your monthly savings and relay this information to your management team. This will help them understand the cost efficiencies achieved through cloud utilization, thereby enhancing future resource planning.

In CVAD Director, under the “Machine Usage” settings, you can view the cost savings generated by the Autoscale feature for a specific machine.

Citrix Autoscale for CVAD, with its flexible and automated scaling, seamless integration, and effortless management, optimizes infrastructure and user experiences while reducing costs, empowering organizations to excel in the digital age and fully harness their data center’s capabilities.

Learn More

To learn more about Citrix Autoscale for CVAD and embark on your journey towards unparalleled efficiency and scalability, visit Citrix Tech Zone or reach out to our sales team today!

Click here to provide feedback to Citrix about Autoscale. 

Disclaimer: The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and are subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.