XenDesktop 5.5 HDX Optimizations & Best Practices

Citrix has made available in a new white paper from Citrix Consulting which details the new HDX features & optimizations available in XenDesktop 5.5.

To validate the recommendations for the new HDX features, a WAN emulator was used to simulate different scenarios, varying from a high latency DSL connection to a trans-pacific branch office. The main goal of XenDesktop 5.5 was to provide a better user experience over the WAN and it definitively succeeds in that. A great example is the huge improvement in Flash Redirection over the WAN, a feature that previously required running the Flash Player on the server. Now the server scalability benefits of Flash Redirection, which offloads Flash rendering to the user device, are available over both LAN and WAN connections. Read the whitepaper in its entirety here “Best Practices and Recommendations for Citrix Receiver 3 and HDX Technology with XenDesktop 5.5”

Below is a list of the HDX features that were tested extensively as part of this whitepaper:

• Windows Media Redirection: The playback of video was over both the LAN and WAN has improvedin XenDesktop 5.5 due to its ability to dynamically adapt to the available bandwidth and intelligent drop frames while maintaining a synchronized playback with prioritized audio.
• Flash Redirection: A new version of Flash Redirection is included which improves performance over the WAN along with including support for Linux devices (initially Ubuntu and Fedora).
• Aero Redirection: HDX RichGraphics Aero Redirection is a new feature in XenDesktop 5.5 that delivers the signature Aero experience in Windows 7 within a XenDesktop virtual desktop.
• RealTime: This feature involves the video conferencing experience inside a virtual desktop. Consulting employed various test scenarios using Microsoft Lync (Office Communicator) to document how new features, such as UDP audio, improve the overall user experience.

Download the White Paper here: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX131859