Whitepaper – Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop Policy Planning Guide

Citrix Consulting have released a XenApp/XenDesktop Policy Planning Guide that is a must read for architects that design XenApp/XenDesktop solutions.

Overview

Citrix policies provide the basis to configure and fine tune your XenDesktop and XenApp environments, allowing organizations to control connection, security and bandwidth settings based on various combinations of users, devices or connection types. Correctly defining an initial baseline policy and assigning additional policies based on security requirements and specific access scenarios can be important in delivering a high definition user experience.

This planning guide is intended to be a guideline during the decision process for creating a baseline policy and additional policies based on connection, security, device and profile considerations. While it creates a baseline policy and recommendations for policy settings, it should not be assumed to be a complete configuration, or absolutely correct for every customer situation. Architects should review the recommendations contained in this document against desired outcomes within the organization to ensure requirements are met.
When making policy decisions it is important to consider both Microsoft Windows and Citrix policies as components within both policy configurations have an impact on user experience and environment optimization. Within this planning guide a base set of windows policies that can be used to optimize XenApp and XenDesktop environments is presented. For more details on specific Windows related policies, refer to the Group Policy Settings Reference for Windows and Windows Server, specifically settings related to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

To help architects design a XenDesktop and XenApp solution based on real-world projects, organizations can refer to the Citrix Desktop Transformation Accelerator for step by step assessment, design and deployment guidance, and the XenDesktop Design Handbook for reference architectures, planning guides and best practices.

Read the full whitepaper here

Conclusion

Creating policies for XenDesktop and XenApp configurations involves a combination of Citrix and Microsoft Active Directory group policy settings. Correctly configuring a baseline policy configuration and keeping policy exceptions to a minimum allows organizations to create an environment that meets user experience and security requirements, while providing a policy structure that is easy to review and diagnose. This planning guide has provided a suggested set of policies as a starting point for a XenDesktop or XenApp configuration. It can be used as a basis for architects to customize an initial policy configuration for an organization.

Source

Download the Policy Planning Guide for XenApp, XenDesktop here