Getting to a single Golden image has been talked about for so long it’s almost become cliché. The problem with vendors using this in their marketing is that when push came to shove, they were unable to deliver on their promises. This was the case because many applications in an enterprise couldn’t be packaged and delivered using these vendors’ products. When those products failed, the fallback was to install the applications directly into the images, leading to larger image sizes and often multiple images for the Citrix team to manage.
The Current State of Application Provisioning in Citrix Environments
When you put applications into PVS vdisks or MCS snapshots, you require a machine state change to provision applications and application updates. This has the potential to be disruptive, particularly in the case of failed application updates which require a fix or version downgrade in the middle of the workday. Asking users to close their applications or log off their desktop or even worse just forcing their sessions to close can leave a bad taste in the mouths of your employees. It leads to poor employee experience and resentment towards IT.
The key to achieving a single golden image (or simply reducing images) is removing as many applications from the image as possible. To do this, you need a solution that can quickly and dynamically deploy applications without application conflicts.
Cloudpager for Citrix
Luckily, we have a solution that does just that. Our Cloudpaging application containers delivered with Cloudpager can eliminate application conflicts, remove failed application uninstalls which can cause corruption all while improving application manageability in your Citrix environment. Cloudpaging application containers provide many benefits including the ability to isolate applications which helps eliminate application conflicts and can help migrate legacy applications to modern Operating Systems, with our containers you can achieve always clean and consistent application removals which reduces application related issues and eliminates OS rot.
Cloudpager provides a way to orchestrate your application containers with all of their great benefits via a cloud native solution to dynamically provision applications to any Windows machine, on any network, anywhere (be it in the Cloud or in your own private data center) – even in active user sessions – quickly and consistently with features becoming of a true modern application management solution. We will outline just some of the features throughout this article.
With Cloudpager, you can dynamically deliver applications and application updates quickly and if needed, you can rapidly rollback application updates with just a few clicks. This greatly reduces disruption for those using published applications and can eliminate disruption for those using virtual desktops or published desktops. The video below demonstrates how to do just that. To see dynamic application roll backs in action, start at 7:42.
Read this case study to discover how one of the world’s largest banking and financial services institutions achieved a single golden image for more than 100K Citrix VDI users with Cloudpaging.
If you currently use Microsoft App-V, Microsoft MSIX Containers, or Citrix App Layering Elastic Layers in your environment, you likely realize the benefits of removing applications from the image already and how powerful dynamic delivery of applications can be. Cloudpaging application containers differentiate themselves from others by the high rate of compatibility. Some of the limitations of the aforementioned solutions (e.g., drivers, certain Windows services, COM+ Component Services, user-based installs, etc.) are no problem with Cloudpaging application containers, which boast a 95%+ rate of compatibility. You no longer need to install many applications in your images and face image sprawl because your applications do not work with your current product of choice.
While we would be delighted for you to try our best-in-class application containers, you do not have to. We support management of native App-V and MSIX packages. If you would like a cloud-native modern provisioning solution that provides the scale of the cloud with unmatched speed for your App-V and MSIX packages, this is the solution for you.
Modernize Your Application Management
If you are using App-V in your Citrix environment today. If you use the full infrastructure, connecting your publishing servers in Citrix Studio, you are dependent on the management and publishing servers that have not been developed in years and on databases that live on SQL with only up to version 2019 supported. Currently, the App-V Full Infrastructure is estimated to enter End of Life in 2026.
For more information on automatically modernizing your App-V packages for the latest Windows desktop environments, read our Run App-V Packages Forever article here.
As stated, Cloudpager can deploy your native App-V applications but it can also optimize your existing App-V packages using our Cloudpaging technology to extend the life of your packages past 2026 whilst delivering benefits like eliminating the need for Connection Groups, the use of RunVirtual, improve launch performance, make local Office integration simple and improve usage reporting to name just a few benefits.
Cloudpager can work alongside Citrix App Layering. You may opt to use Citrix App Layering to create your published layered images, include our agents in that layered image, and deliver most of your applications dynamically using Cloudpager. When using Cloudpager to deploy Cloudpaging application containers, you can expect to achieve a higher rate of success deploying applications outside of your published layered images.
Hybrid Scenarios
With Citrix’s Universal licensing, customers can permanently live in a hybrid world with some workloads in the cloud and others remaining on-premises. This can make managing applications more challenging. Cloudpager is a cloud-native solution that delivers applications over HTTPS and can work on any network. If you have virtual desktops in the cloud or in your data center and roaming physical endpoints to manage, Cloudpager is also perfect for this. You gain a single pane of glass for managing applications across all virtual desktops and physical endpoints. Any Windows desktops, anywhere!
Conclusion
Cloudpager and the use of application containers is the key that unlocks the possibility to truly achieve a single Golden image. This is possible because of a high rate of compatibility when delivering applications dynamically outside of the image and desktop provisioning process. We integrate and work with various Citrix products, you can manage your application to your Citrix VDAs with Cloudpager and publish the applications to your users with Citrix Studio. You can have your applications write user data outside of the containers to roam with Citrix Profile Management. You could publish your own custom shortcuts for your Cloudpaging application containers using Citrix Workspace Environment Manager. You can manage your images containing our agents using Citrix App Layering. Combining Numecent and Citrix’s great products can make the life of your IT Admins easier and make the digital employee experience for Citrix users the best it can be.
Subscribe to our Citrix Newsletter
Stay up to date on all the latest solutions and insights for simplifying the mobilization and management of applications across Citrix desktops.