Migrating to XenApp 4.5: A Best Practice tool

I wanted to share another best practice with you all.  Migrating to any version of XenApp (formerly known as Presentation Server) has always been somewhat of a challenge.  The last thing you want to do is transfer issues from the old farm to the new farm and how to you efficiently migrate to a new platform without affecting your users?

I’ve spent years putting together migration strategies from 1.8 to XP, XP to 3.0, 3.0 to 4.0 and now 4.0 to 4.5.  Over those many migrations there are things that I have taken into account and made them best practices.  The first and I think most imporant is careful planning.  Careful planning will ensure that your XenApp environment is available and stable during the transition.  A lack of planning is the most common pitfall of migrations.

I have four key areas in the planning of migrations.  They are:

1. Define requirements
2. A documented design
3. Testing
4. Implementation

After laying out the planning, it comes down to having efficient and consistent processes.  With those your migration time can be drastically reduced.  There are other tools out there that can accomplish this, but the best practice for the Alliance Enterprise Architecture Group is VisionApp.

VisionApp’s Platform Management Suite was created to automate TS and Citrix server creation and maintenance. With a single centralized Control Center, the Platform Management Suite automates the build, deployment, change, and update processes to TS and Citrix servers.

This is done through Visionapp’s unique combination of tools and installation packages, along with a unique architecture that gives architects and adminstrators power and visibility into many aspects of their networks.

 

 

You can get more information by going to http://www.visionapp.com

This is one of the best tools that I have seen to accomplish manual tasks.  You can basically take your existing build cookbook and automate everything.

Cheers

 

~ by Michael Keen on April 28, 2008.