Migration and Configuration Tools Set to Ease Citrix Cloud Migration

New Citrix cloud migration tools promise to make it easier for partners to move virtual desktops and apps online. Among them are an automated configuration tool and an update to its Machine Creation Services (MCS).

Customers have slowly begun moving their on-premises VDI to Citrix Cloud, which provides virtual desktop and apps as a service. However, COVID-19 has accelerated the pace of migrations, Citrix CEO David Henshall has said. Henshall emphasized that during last week’s virtual Citrix Cloud Summit, the first of three company virtual events this month.

“While I’m sure many organizations understood the value of cloud prior to the current global pandemic, this crisis is amplified the need for these platforms and services like never before,” Henshall said.

Henshall added that Citrix has organized its cloud strategy around three primary areas.

“Migrating to the cloud of your choice, automating the ongoing management of workloads, and of course, optimizing cost and performance across both hybrid and multicloud environments,” he said.

Company officials showcased Citrix cloud migration tools and integrations to AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and SAP.

A Boost for Google Cloud

The latest Citrix cloud migration news focused on migration to GCP. The update to Citrix MCS will enable the provisioning and managing of VDA images to GCP at greater scale. Citrix said the new release will offer higher scalability and performance. Earlier this year, the company announced that MCS now runs on Google Cloud and its new Shared Virtual Private Cloud.

MCS enables migration of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops to Citrix Cloud with native VDA image provisioning and management. One benefit: It uses configuration data from the master image template to develop VMs, according to Citrix. MCS applies components such as labels and tags, descriptions, firewall settings, service account properties, and CPU and GPU configurations from the templates to the targets. Citrix said this feature is only currently available when using MCS to deploy to Google Cloud.

Citrix’s Calvin Hsu

“Citrix Machine Creation Services is the first to support provisioning images and Google Cloud, providing enterprises the ability to migrate workloads with support for Shared Virtual Private Cloud quickly and easily, said Citrix VP of product management Calvin Hsu. “Customers can scale as needed using the full capabilities of Google Cloud Platform and its new built-in control and security features.”

The MCS update for GCP also now offers sole tenant node, which provides dedicated provisioning of Windows 10 clients GCP. Citrix also extended the capacity of its cloud-based application delivery controller (ADC) for Google Cloud. Last year, the company launched a version of Citrix ADC (formerly known as Netscaler) for Google Cloud. New versions launched last week provide capacities of 200 Mbps, 1 Gbps, 3 Gbps and 5 Gbps.

Company officials also emphasized the recent addition of Citrix ADC connectivity to AWS, as well as VMware Cloud on AWS. Last month, AWS certified Citrix ADC on AWS for AWS Outpost. AWS Outpost is a managed service that provides on-premises instances of Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon EBS volumes.

Citrix Automated Configuration Tool

For migration to any Citrix-supported cloud, the new Citrix Automated Configuration Tool is set for release later this quarter. The company announced the tool in August and released a new technical preview last week during its Citrix Cloud Summit. The automated configuration tool migrates configurations from on-premises Citrix virtual apps and desktops to Citrix Cloud services, according to Hsu. Such configurations include policies, applications and machine catalogs that administrators typically must rewrite manually or create automation scripts.

“It makes it much easier for administrators to test how their current on-prem configurations will work in Citrix Cloud services using the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop service,” Hsu said. “That means you see reduced administrative overhead from Citrix managing part of the back-end control plane, and you enjoy automatic and customizable component updates in Citrix cloud services.”

The tool aims to reduce the need for partners and customers to create configuration scripts. Like many modern automation tools, it converts on-premises configurations into editable YAML files. Customers can synchronize those among different cloud regions.

“We think that partners will really benefit from this capability, because they can provide solutions such as disaster recovery with this,” said Citrix senior product manager Nitin Mehta. It will also reduce overall administrative overhead, according to Hsu.

“It makes it much easier for administrators to test how their current on-prem configurations will work in Citrix cloud services and using the Citrix virtual apps and desktop service,” he said. “That means you see reduced administrative overhead from Citrix managing part of the back-end control plane, and you enjoy automatic and customizable component updates in Citrix cloud services.”