Introducing Citrix Smart Tools: improving security, availability and delivery costs for Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop – on-premises or in the cloud.
The Citrix mission is the secure delivery of apps and data. That resonates now more than ever with our customers. Of course, customers aren’t willing to trade off high performance to achieve security. With the introduction of Smart Tools, Citrix delivers a set of key services that help enable both secure and highly performing Citrix environments.
Citrix Smart Tools are delivered via Citrix Cloud as a service comprised of several key components that don’t require installation. They accelerate and simplify the design, deployment and ongoing management of Citrix products. Smart Tools support both current Citrix deployments and new installations. Smart Tools span on-premises, public cloud and hybrid infrastructure. It provides Citrix IT admins with a seamless and simplified experience in their day-to-day operations. Admins can spend less time worrying about configurations and more time focusing on innovation and other strategic activities.
Citrix Smart Tools includes services previously available via Citrix Lifecycle Management and, importantly, adds entirely new capabilities with Smart Check and key updates to others, such as Smart Scale. Citrix is bringing together its deep knowledge of the Citrix stack, the insights gained from thousands of customers and additional new components intelligently tuned for specific customer deployments. The capabilities in Citrix Lifecycle Management can be found in Citrix Smart Tools, plus a newly released component called Smart Check.
From a centralized Smart Tools panel, Citrix Administrators access all of the component services. There are four key components that make-up Smart Tools today; Smart Build, Smart Migrate, Smart Check, and Smart Scale.
- Smart Build: Automated, repeatable and secure Citrix deployments anywhere, based on best practices
- Smart Migrate: Simplifies the transition to the latest platform with improved security and performance
- Smart Check: Secure, highly available environments through proactive diagnosis and repair of issues in your XenApp and XenDesktop deployments
- Smart Scale: Reducing your delivery costs via load-based scaling of XenApp & XenDesktop workloads in public clouds and HCI environments instantly
Prior blog posts have covered the process of building new deployments using the blueprint capabilities of Smart Tools. Check out this blog series if you haven’t already. We’ve also got three short videos on Smart Migrate here.
Let’s touch on the newest Smart Tools service, Smart Check. Smart Check brings together the analytics and data of Citrix Insight Services with the simplified deployment capabilities of the already available update service. Smart Check provides proactive diagnosis and repair of issues in Citrix deployments before they impact end-users. Key capabilities:
- Proactive checks: The service runs regular, comprehensive checks against deployed Citrix components. It provides dynamic feedback on problems as they are detected and prescriptive information on how to fix them.
- Customer-specific: Recommended fixes are specific to customer environments
- Notifications and reporting: Smart Check will provide notifications and reporting for completed health checks of Citrix workloads.
Another key service is Smart Scale. Smart Scale delivers proactive load management of XenApp and XenDesktop running on public clouds or on-premises. Importantly, Smart Scale drives down the delivery costs while maintaining availability.
Key capabilities:
- Cost efficiency: optimize underlying infrastructure to meet demand
- Flexible Scaling: load-based or schedule-based scaling options
- Dynamic usage tracking: visually displays cost savings and utilization metrics
- Multiple cloud and hypervisors: run on AWS, Azure or hypervisors
It’s worth noting that Citrix has made several new packaging changes for Smart Tools. Everyone has access to the tools, simply go to smart.cloud.com
To continue using Smart Tools in production environments you can leverage your Citrix Cloud subscription or have a perpetual license with software maintenance.
Citrix Cloud Apps and Desktops Subscription customers have access to all Smart Tools. Customers on XenApp, XenDesktop, XenMobile and NetScaler perpetual licenses that also have software maintenance (now called Customer Success Services – Select) are also entitled to Smart Tools. Additionally Citrix partners have access to these tools, more information here.
We encourage you to checkout the new capabilities and all the others found in Smart Tools today, simply go to smart.cloud.com to get started.
