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Filter 75 vetted Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop) reviews and ratings
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March 03, 2020
We use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop) to deliver virtual apps and desktops to our whole organization. We have a subset of employees who work entirely remotely from our corporate office, and they use the system for all access to our on-premise apps. We have another subset of employees who work at the Corporate office, and they use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop) to access a few apps that are only available via virtual access as well as remote access when away from the office. It solves a lot of business issues, including letting us share Apps to older machines, centralizing applications for better management, and allowing users to have common desktops regardless of what device they are using to access our apps.
- Using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop) allows you to do a one to many deployments with apps. Whether you stream them to desktops or host them via web protocols, you can install it once and allow many to use.
- If you want to minimize IT resources, you can use this program to produce virtual desktops that can be static or allow users to change as needed. There is no need to go to each desk to fix issues with their desktops when they are all centralized and managed via Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop).
- Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop) has a great protocol (HDX) that minimizes bandwidth needs allowing you to use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop) to offices or devices with slower internet connections.
- Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop) has a great management interface that allows granular control over all your apps and desktops.
- Users can bring their own device, whether a mobile or PC type.
- Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Formerly XenDesktop) does have a bit of a learning curve and can get complex at times.
- Pricing on the system can be a little steep for large deployments considering it is an add on to MS Terminal Services/RDS.
- An issue that is probably not Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop) specific, but since these are virtual apps if used on a connection that has high latency or frequent internet drops users can become frustrated. Unlike true web services, users do require a solid internet connection. Slow is ok; latency is not.
We use this Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for our remote workforce and work from home staff. All departments use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops however some are not fully able to utilize it due to their roles. It is worth mentioning that we also use Citrix ADC to facilitate secure remote access to our Citrix environment.
- It has a really good end-user experience when using desktop features.
- It's easy to use Citrix Storefront.
- Optimization for audio and video is not the best.
- Logging is very weak and makes it hard to troubleshoot issues.
XenDesktop is being used by multiple departments across the entire organization in order to facilitate safe and fast connections to company resources remotely.
- Fast connection
- Secure connection
- Ease of use for new and existing users
- Simple user interface
- Can run a little slow depending on the applications
- Overall desktop lag is present
- Works with Mac but not without issue occasionally.
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is used in conjunction with our document management application to centralize data for our nationwide (worldwide) insurance division.
- Centralize data.
- Ease of user desktop management.
- Standardization of desktops.
- It's not cheap to operate.
- Complex, there are a lot of moving parts, so it takes some dedication to set up and manage.
- The constant changing of names is annoying (i.e., Virtual Apps and Desktops—formerly XenDesktop).
June 13, 2019
Citrix XenDesktop is utilized at our Datacenter to provide our third-party offshore developers access to internal company resources while maintaining a good security standing. XenDesktop prevents customer data and/or proprietary code from being downloaded external to the company and leaked to competitors or our customer's competitors.
- All Management resources can now be installed on a single server. Reducing the overhead required to maintain a citrix environment.
- Granularity of the Delivery groups allow you to define allowing a remote user to connect to a random XenDesktop VM or individually assigning VMs to users.
- HDX RealTime Optimization Pack has stabilized some of the issues of utilizing all of the features of Skype for Business in a ZenDesktop VM.
- Product documentation is bloated with information and lacks documentation on assisting with first time setup.
- Customer service offers very little assistance when it comes to using your support contract.
- Default Policy, out of the box, allows Clipboard, File Share, Printer Sharing, Drive redirection, and others security risks that should be disabled by default.
- Screenshots are not prevented, other products blank a screenshot or sniping tool image. Watermarks are the only security citrix offers and are disabled by default.
- Renewal cost of support contract is 80% of initial purchase price. Other companies renewal cost is significantly less.
- End users who do not properly log off can leave a hung connection, and requires manual deletion of the connection for users to re-connect.
January 25, 2019
We use XenDesktop across the organization to bring high performance to an application whose client would otherwise operate far too slowly across the WAN link from our central data center. The management of the solution is the biggest reason we continue to use it because it requires low effort to maintain and the support is very good.
- Management of the entire solution is central and intuitive.
- Printing is simple and easy to manage.
- Deploying the client and updating it are a challenge at times.
August 17, 2018
My company uses the XenDesktop as a way to access our work environments from anywhere. This offers employees the flexibility to access our work and perform our job anywhere there is an internet connection. Life is busy, things happen, and having the ability to work remotely without any complications is a signification stress relief.
- Fast connectivity
- Easy installation
- Stable connection, no drops
- Connection can sometimes "stutter" when moving between screen setups (example: docked laptop, multiple monitors, etc.)
August 09, 2018
XenDesktop is used to give Windows access across all of our locations while at the same time giving our IT department easy access to troubleshoot and update software. We have multiple locations across many states and XenDesktop enables our company to make Windows sessions manageable.
- XenDesktop runs Microsoft Office software very well. It's as speedy as running on your own hard drive.
- XenDesktop enables users to easily share files across shared servers.
- XenDesktop makes it easy for IT in other locations to troubleshoot user issues.
- XenDesktop is not good for running Adobe Creative Suite.
- XenDesktop is not good for color accuracy when compared to print output.
- XenDesktop is not good for fast response when accessing large image files.
May 01, 2017
Most of our organization uses XenDesktop--we run Outlook through it, our database system, and store all our files on it. It allows everyone who uses it to access all the files and information from anywhere, which is really convenient. We have people who work offsite, as well as 2 different office locations, so it's really helpful to have one place for everything.
- Can be accessed from anywhere
- One central location for everything to be stored
- Sometimes the system freezes
- I've run into issues where it tells me I have multiple instances of a program running even if I don't
- I wish the mobile versions worked better
April 21, 2017
XenDesktop is used as our virtual desktop when we are working remotely. It is used for all employees who telecommute to ensure a secure connection to our servers. It allows us to work on anything we have saved wherever we are working remotely without concern of security.
- Security
- Authorization
- Desktop mirroring
- Speed could be improved. But this will always be an issue for connecting to servers.
- Direct mirroring of desktop would be better than a similar desktop setup for all employees.
We use XenDesktop for the whole organization. The business problem it address is that we are in the process of using XenDesktop for remote access with NetScaler Access Gateway so we can shutdown our VPN. The reason [for this] is so we don't have to open a hole into our network with a VPN. Since XenDesktop is just a screen refresh it solves the security issue on that front. We also use XenDesktop for fast roll out since upgrading and patching is done on one master image. On the client side we use Wyse Zero client. Using all these technologies helps streamline IT as a whole to cut costs in the long run. We can focus on backend projects instead of fixing physical computer issues.
- Remote access. Even with high latency, HDX helps with working no not so ideal situations
- PVS server lower IOPS and faster image management
- USB redirection is a nice for remote users
- Technical support is lacking.
- Flash or HTML Videos lag with Zero clients.
- Support cost is expensive when their support is really poor.
- Self-taught
Yes - The upgrade process is easy just make sure you have a dba on the side just in case you don't have permissions to upgrade the db.
April 20, 2017
XenDesktop VDI is used by those in our organization who need to remotely access servers with a virtual machine interface. This is accessed through Citrix XenApp and then through and RDP client to connect to the server and launch a virtual machine to manage it. To date, there have not been any problems reported with using the XenDesktop that I'm aware of.
- It makes connecting and managing a server through VDI simple.
- Easy to access through the Citrix XenApp for anyone regardless of location.
- Gives options for Dedicated, Full Screen, and Partial Desktops.
- Sometimes the VDI system can be in maintenance mode which keeps users from being able to connect to them.
- No other issues reported.
May 06, 2016
We use XenDesktop (XenApp) in published desktop mode to facilitate users at remote rehabilitation clinics to perform their clinical work with patients on wireless laptops and desktops at the clinics. Typically the clinic will only have a T1 WAN connectivity back to the datacenter on a MPLS network and bandwidth is a real concern. It is also used for remote workers and as a work from home method.
- XenDesktop 7 provides two effective methods of managing session host updates and keeping them consistent within a machine group. In prior versions of XenApp/Metaframe, each host had to be updated individually resulting in inconsistencies across the resource pool.
- XenDesktop 7 provides several efficient methods to maximizing session performance while minimizing bandwidth utilization. We can effectively facilitate an average of 8-10 clinicians at a remote site across a 1.5MB WAN link, working in multiple applications, printing, scanning and streaming video.
- XenDesktop 7 enables user mobility by using a common interface across multiple platforms - Windows/Linux/IOS and OS X.
- Monitoring and troubleshooting tools are lacking. Unless you can afford the costly step up to Platinum licensing, there is little native visibility into the Inner workings of the system, or into the ICA tunnel protocols. there are third party tools available, but because ICA is licensed by Citrix, there are only a few vendors who have the ability to really see what is occurring under the covers.
- Profile management is very sloppy. Once again, a third party tool is required to effectively manage roaming profiles and keep login times down to a manageable level. UPM allows profiles to grow dramatically and requires careful monitoring and frequent intervention.
- The Citrix Receiver client (Windows) is quirky and often causes end user performance and UX issues. Installing and upgrading the client is not straightforward or easy, although Citrix has been improving this weakness in recent releases.
September 23, 2016
We utilize XenDesktop to provide seamless access to virtualized desktops and applications across our 16 satellite locations.
- Ease of Management
- Scalability
- Ease of Use
- Integration with third party server and storage vendors
- Self-taught
Yes - Went smoothly, not unexpected impacts or downtime.
October 08, 2015
We leveraged XenDesktop internally for our cloud hosted product, which allowed SMBs to leverage our hosted infrastructure and use their applications. I also helped other enterprise businesses implement XenDesktop in their environment. As a consultant it was used across an entire organization as well as per department. The business problems it addresses is accessing data and applications from any device across a geographically diverse organization.
- XenDesktop gives speedy access to a full Windows desktop using its own ICA protocol. This is far and away better; a better experience than remote desktop which can "draw" slowly over low bandwidth connections.
- XenDesktop can leverage local resources like dual monitors, and printers to provide a rich multimedia experience and make the user feel like they are using a local desktop.
- XenDesktop eliminates data residing on local devices, which can help in the event of an endpoint being stolen or damaged. The user can be assigned a new laptop/desktop, download the Citrix client, and immediately re-connect to all their applications and data.
- XenDesktop can benefit from application virtualization suites like Microsoft App-V, however this functionality isn't built into XenDesktop. Some products are close like personal vDIsk, but the ability to manage a single image and stream users' application to that image would lessen maintenance.
- XenDesktop used to offer a free 10 user version (Express) in XenDesktop 5.X however this is no longer available in 7.6 and is sorely missed to help ease customers into XenDesktop. Most all of the Express installs that I performed in 5.X became licensed and paying customers after 10 seats.
- Remote access requires Netscaler which can be tricky to setup. This would mostly be a request to make NetScaler setup more seamless, intuitive, and wizard driven.
October 16, 2015
We use XenDesktop as a global solution for our company's users to access resources in several different regions. It allows our users to work closer to where their applications and data are opposed to trying to access those resources directly from their endpoint device.
- Flexibility to find the best configuration for your company's needs.
- Good options/tools for managing the environment.
- Suite of products that support XenDesktop like Storefront and NetScaler.
- Well established company in Citrix that has been developing this technology for over 20 years.
- While you can present multiple global sites in one pane of glass to users, from an administrative standpoint they must be managed separately.
- XenDesktop is more complex than previous Citrix products (XenApp).
October 09, 2015
XenDesktop is mostly used by Finance, HR and Management. It is a great light weight solution as opposed to desktops. Mixed with our Citrix environment, we couldn't be happier.
- App Streaming
- Connectivity
- Ease of use
- Powerful and Secure
- None that I can point out at this time.
October 09, 2015
XenDesktop serves as our platform for delivering virtual desktops to doctors and nurses throughout the hospital. It improves productivity by allowing users to easily move between patient rooms and other areas of the hospital without having to repeat the login process and application startup each time. Coupled with proximity card authentication and single-sign on, password reset requests and login times are considerably reduced.
- Minimizes new desktop provisioning time.
- Allows for a standard desktop image which increases stability, decreases downtime, and simplifies updating.
- Increases user productivity while moving between devices.
- For 2008 R2 Hyper-V environments, if VMM goes offline no new connections to desktops can be made. VMM cannot be clustered making it a single point of failure.
- Desktop Director could be more robust.
October 08, 2015
XenDesktop is primarily being used by our IT, operations and off source resources. We are looking to expand it to other business units in coming months. XenDesktop facilitates us to deliver the same desktop environment from any device, anywhere over any type of network. It provides secure access to our enterprise desktop offerings whether it is VDI or RemotePC.
- Key strength lies in Citrix's proprietary protocol ICA/HDX. It can handle traffic over high latency network very well.
- New FMA (Flexible Management Architecture) is a unified platform to deliver virtual desktops, application & physical PC access.
- XenDesktop is Hypervisor agnostic. We can run it on VMware ESX, Citrix XenServer or Microsoft Hyper-V.
- Support for webcam & softphone.
- Definitely want to see improvement & bug fixes in RemotePC access.
- Offline VDI & application access to offset threat from Microsoft's Direct Access technology.
October 06, 2015
XenDesktop empowers our users to work from anywhere while maintaining a consistent and persistent user experience. Our mobile workforce is able to access the information vital to their job functions from any device, anywhere. XenDesktop allows us to present our apps and desktops to our staff in a way that is familiar and customizable to them for the context in which they are working.
- XenDesktop allows for connections from any type of device.
- XenDesktop has fantastic delegated administration, allowing for large IT organizations to delegate tasks to support desk, junior and senior engineers.
- XenDesktop integrates desktop and application delivery seamlessly and is backed by the leader of the industry for decades.
- Provisioning XenDesktop with Provisioning Services provides unparalleled scalability and performance at a fraction of the time, cost and effort of other solutions.
- Some legacy features have not yet made it to newer versions of XenDesktop architecture, specifically around troubleshooting information from EdgeSight.
- Citrix level 1 support can be painful at times.
- While nothing else compares to XenDesktop in terms of features and functionality, the lesser-featured rivals can be less expensive, so it can be a battle to demonstrate the total cost of ownership (TCO) against alternative solutions that have hidden costs.
October 06, 2015
We are a Citrix service provider and with Citrix, we deliver a hosted virtual desktop to our clients. Citrix XenDesktop allows us and our clients to seamlessly work from any location, with any device. We have several Citrix farms (sites), and utilize most, if not all, of the Citrix features.
- Delivery of a virtual desktop across a high latency/high packet loss connection: When Citrix introduced Framehawk, we were excited to get it into production. The feature seems to work pretty well, but even the base implementation, when correctly configured, works well across the WAN.
- Access Interface: When users access the Web front-end or Receiver interface, it is a visually pleasing experience and invites users to connect to "Work".
- Scalability: Citrix allows us to scale our deployments in a quick and easy way with Machine Creation Services (MCS), or Provisioning Services (PVS). We have many small clients with dedicated images and with MCS we can give them the benefit of a fresh "Golden Image" without the added cost of additional servers.
- File accessibility: Currently, Citrix offers the ability to transfer files to and from their virtual desktop via client mapped drives. This works ok, but can be clunky and a little slow at times. ShareFile is a good segueway, but can be a little cumbersome to set up in a Hosted-Shared environment.
- Offline access: With XenClient, users can run offline instances of virtual machines and still get the benefit of the virtual machine managed from the datacenter. The process isn't very seamless and could be more integrated into XenDesktop. If a XenDesktop virtual desktop could be delivered to a users local machine and then cached, that would be a great solution.
We design and deploy XenDesktop solutions for large enterprise customers in a wide range of verticals as well as use it for demos in our lab environment.
- More features
- NetScaler
- Name changes
- Vaporware
- Platinum tax
We use XenDesktop as a BYOD platform for knowledge workers and as a VDI platform for call center agents.
- Easy to provision machines
- Easy to update systems
- Easy to apply policies
- Better user control
- Better reporting
- More open API
October 09, 2015
XenDesktop is used to manage internet bandwidth at our remote locations as well as creating a standard set of applications, which are centrally managed and maintained. Our remote locations generally have T-1 or less connections, so bandwidth has to be carefully used. By keeping their applications and desktops on our data center end, it has lowered the amount of bandwidth used at the locations.
- XenDesktop does a very great job at load balancing our applications and desktops across servers. It uses a load evaluator index to gauge the load on the server and sends new connections to the server in the group with the lowers LEI.
- The integration into our VMware environment has been critical. Using Machine Creation Services, I am able to create an image and all machines created from that image are reset to it upon reboot. No more worrying about a user corrupting one server and having to rebuild it or deploy again from a VMware template. Creating a new server in a group is easy and fast.
- Management of user sessions within XenDesktop's Director is simple and straight forward. Finding and managing a user's session is without complication.
- The Director leaves a lot to be desired. I have had to resort to scripts and a custom page to get the information I need to properly manage our environment. The previous EdgeSight had detailed information that this just seems to leave out. There is no way to customize views, add or remove content, or otherwise customize for our brand.
- One thing left out from this version that was in previous versions, was the ability deploy applications from all servers, not just those in a delivery group. As it is set up now, you can only deploy an app to a specific set of servers in a delivery group. If I have Group A running SAP and Group B running Office, only Group B can host Office for the users, even if Group A has Office installed. It would make better use of my servers if I could have on application run from both groups and still load balance properly. It is possible to have it run from both delivery groups, but the load balancing functionality appears to not work correctly.
- A new functionality in the Feature Packs (1 and 2) was session recording. The functionality is useful, but is still clunky and uses a large amount of storage space. I have yet to see a way to auto purge old recordings without manually deleting them. Storage may be cheap now, but it still needs to be managed and used wisely. Being able to purge old recordings would go a long way.
October 09, 2015
We've used XenDesktop across the whole organization to solve a few challenges. Initially it has been set up as a solution for the remote offices to address the latency issue. Later it has expanded as a disaster recovery solution when deployed with Citrix Access Gateway, which later has been replaced by the NetScaler product.
- Great for remote office deployments as it usually resides in the same data center as the servers and provides much quicker access to the resources avoiding high latency that is common on the intercontinental connections
- Good choice for the DR as it can be migrated between the data centers if needed.
- Good solution for remote access providing extra security over a VPN connection.
- Using XenDesktop on a non computer device is a bit cumbersome.
- Not ideal for traveling users, who would need to work offline and carry a laptop with them to be able to use the XenDesktop.
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop) Scorecard Summary
What is Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop)?
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop) is a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and application virtualization solution from Citrix.
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenDesktop) Technical Details
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application: | No |