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Introduction to Citrix AppDisk

Introduction to Citrix AppDisk

In one of my earlier post I discussed about Application Layering. Using Application layering technology applications that need to communicate with device and kernel drivers can also be virtualized and delivered to users. Using Application layering Microsoft virtual hard disk (VHD) or VMware virtual machine disk (VMDK) can be created having the layered applications. These VHD and VMDK can be located on a network file share and made accessible to the users. App layering tools use filters depending on users, groups or locations to determine which layer to make available to each user.

Similar to other Application Solutions like VMware App Volume, Liquidware Labs, FlexApp from Unidesk, Citrix AppDisk is an Application layering technology  Citrix released with XendApp / XenDesktop 7.8 (all versions) built on the ‘Personal vDisk’ foundation. Using Citrix AppDisk you can layer additional applications on top of a Desktop or Server OS instead of providing application directly within the gold MCS or PVS Images. Citrix AppDisk reduces administrative overheads and helps administrator to manage OS and applications independently. The operating systems treats these layered applications as if they are installed locally.

Point need to be considered before deployment.

  • AppDisks can be created on vSphere 5.1 or later and XenServer only. AppDisk are not support for Hyper-V.
  • Hosting AppDisk on VSAN Datastore is not supported.
  • Additional data might be written to the write cache if deployed in Provisioning Services environments. AppDisks are stored on hypervisor storage, not Provisioning Services storage.
  • AppDisk must be on the same hosting resources as the linked clones it is attached to. In case of multiple hosting resources, AppDisk nee to be imported.
  • At present Windows OS is the only supported platform for AppDisk.
  • Just like PVS vDisk Versioning, Appdisk have versioning and rollback capablility.
  • You cannot assign Citrix AppDisk to a user, it is assigned to Delivery Group. Once assigned to Deliver Group, applications will be available on all machines. If you want to hide from Certain users, Group policies can be used.
  • AppDisk can only be assigned with Random Desktop and Server OS Catalogs. Appdisk cannot be associated with the dedicated machine catalogue.
    It is recommended to grop the applications to one AppDisk Layer if possible this will help in reducing resource utilization.
  • Machines must have atleast VDA 7.8 installed to make use of AppDisks.
  • Citrix AppDisk can be integrated with Citrix AppDNA to analyze the AppDisk before deploying to the end users.

In upcoming post, I will be covering the process how we can deploy Citrix AppDisk and assign to the user. I hope this is informative for you. Thanks for Reading!!. Be social and share it in social media, if you feel worth sharing it. Happy Learning 🙂

 

 

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