As you already know new version of XenDesktop has been released for download. XenDesktop 7 is merging XenDesktop and XenApp into a single architecture and management experience. Form now all hosted applications and desktops (XenApp) and personalized desktops (XenDesktop) are delivered and managed from one place using single console. The capabilities previously available within XenApp are now delivered within the XenDesktop 7 infrastructure and components.XenDesktop 7 – brief description

For those of you who have prior experienece with previous versions of XenApp and XenDesktop it would be usefull to  highlight the main concepts:

Key differences between XenApp and XenDesktop

In moving from a traditional XenApp environment to the unified environment, you will find the following key differences:

• Citrix Studio instead of Delivery Services Console— In this release, you use Studio to configure your environments and provide users with access to applications and desktops. For example, instead of using folders and Worker Groups to organize applications, servers, and other resources, in Studio you organize those resources using a combination of machine catalogs, tags, Delivery Groups, and Delegated Administrators.
• Delegated Administration — In XenApp, you can create custom administrators and assign them permissions based on folders and objects. In XenDesktop, you can create custom administrators whose permissions are based on role and scope pairs. A role represents a job function and has defined permissions associated with it. A scope represents a collection of objects. You use scopes to group objects in a way that is relevant to your organization (for example, the set of Delivery Groups used by the Sales team). This release also offers several built-in administrator roles (other than the full administrator role), such as help desk, applications, hosting, and catalog. Each of these built-in roles includes specific management permissions.
• No IMA data store — This release does not use the IMA data store as the central database in which to store configuration information. Instead, it uses a Microsoft SQL Server database as the data store for both configuration and session information. This means:
  • Database requirements are different. Microsoft Access and Oracle are no longer supported databases.
  • Terminal Services (Remote Desktop Services) is no longer required on servers running the Controller; however, Terminal Services Client Access Licenses (TS CALs) are still required.
  • There is no dedicated zone master. In XenApp, there is a zone master or data collector responsible for user connection requests and communication with hypervisors. In this release, this function is distributed evenly across all Controllers in the site.
  • If you require high availability or disaster recovery for Microsoft SQL Server you can configure clustering or mirroring, or deploy the database as a virtual machine and use your hypervisor’s high availability features instead.
• FlexCast Management Architecture (FMA) — FMA requires that you must be in a domain to deploy a site. For example, to install the servers, your account must have local administrator privileges and be a Domain Administrator in the Active Directory.
• Sites instead of Farms — In this release, the XenApp “farms” are known as “sites.” Sites should be within one data center.
• Citrix Director monitors the environment — Director is a separate monitoring tool that is installed by default as a website on the Delivery Controller. From this console, administrators (depending on their Delegated Administrator permissions) can monitor the environment, shadow user devices, and troubleshoot IT issues for users and sites. For example, help desk administrators can work only with individual users on specified sites, while full administrators can monitor the entire deployment and resolve system-wide IT issues.
• No Shadow taskbar — To view and interact with other users’ sessions remotely, you use the shadow feature launched from Director console, which uses Microsoft Remote Assistance to connect to user machines. Remote Assistance is installed by default on the VDA; if you clear the check box during installation, you cannot shadow the user remotely.

XenDesktop 7 Main Components

The components introduced in this release are shown on Figure 1

Figure 1 – XenDesktop 7 Components

XenDesktop 7 System Requirements

Review software requirements available in Citrix documentation:  XenDesktop 7 – System requirements

XenDesktop Deep Dive Series

I will perform a test installation to walk through the configuration process and to review the major changes implemented in the latest release of this product. Figure 2 shows all of the main components of our test Virtual Desktop Infrastructure . This architecture does not address the issues of remote access and authorization, data traffic reduction, traffic monitoring, and general issues of multi-site deployment and network management and is used to perform an installation and configuration of all important components in the environment similar to mid-size production infrastructure.

 Figure 2

Hardware and software used for this article :

Hardware:

2 x Dell PowerEdge R510 with 64 GB RAM

1 x Dell Power Connect 8132F

1 x Dell PoverVault MD 3600i

Software:

Citrix XenServer 6.2

Citrix XenDesktop 7

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Datacenter

Microsoft Windows SQL Server 2012 Enterprise

XenDesktop 7 Deep Dive Series will be presented in the following order:

Introduction

Part 1 – Installation 

Part 2 – Configure XenDesktop Site

Part 3 – Install and configure VDA

 Part 4 – Create and configure machine catalog

Part 5 – Create and configure delivery group

Part 6 – Install and configure StoreFront

Part 7 – Configure Receiver