Hey guys, I have been gone awhile working on other stuff. The farm has been working perfectly I have basically ignored it for the last few months. However, the time has come I have to go back to it.
So, I was called in today to the CIO's office and he wants me to migrate servers as follows
XenApp 4.0 farm to XenApp 5 on Windows 2008
123 servers total
102 servers with Windows 2000
21 servers with Windows 2003
1,843 applications total
I have some ideas on a plan but I would like to ask for suggestions. What is the best method to migrate? Parallel farm, etc? I would appreciate any suggestions and experience sharing you could provide. CIO asked me for a plan which is due in 15 days.
Thanks.
Assuming that the servers are running on common hardware, or groups of common hardware, this would be a great time to bring provisioning server to the table. If your XenApp servers are virtual, this makes it an even stronger argument. If your XenApp servers are not virtual, this should be part of the discussion as well.
James Heistand CCEA, VCP, MCSE, ASE Vital Support Systems
James has given you good advice. However, you may or may not be able to afford Provisioning Server now.
You are in a tough situation. You have a large farm with Windows 2000. Your problem is the Windows 2000 servers. There is no way to upgrade these servers to XenApp 5. For these servers, the only method is to start out from scratch. Reinstall the servers with Windows 2008 and the do the XenApp installation.
You have to create a parallel farm and migrate servers and settings. I recommend against an in place upgrade of the Windows 2003 servers. My advice is to rebuild the Windows 2003 servers as well.
You can use Web Interface to join the two farms during the migration period. It will be transparent to the users. Using this approach, you can test what works and what does not work in the new farm. You should be able to work out all the problems and details within 6 - 8 weeks. Since there is no downtime, you can take your time during the transition and make certain things come out perfect. If you have to rename servers to match naming conventions, things that have changed, etc, now is the time to do it.
I have done 6 migrations, two of them for farms larger than yours, and everything has worked out fine. I have used the approach described above every single time and I have not had any big issues. Just small things here and there. I can't stress it enough. Start out fresh. Do not upgrade the existing environments if you can avoid it. There are several tools you can use to export the farm settings of the existing farm into the new farm.
Regards,Mark LouMCSE, MCSA
Did you CIO give you a cigarette packet for the plan as well. Mark hit the nail on the head you certainly will be able to put together a plan but this will not include apps! My strategy would be the same as Marks and include:
- Do we support 2008 internally, are there other depts. using 2008
-Are all the apps supported on 2008, I am guessing you have a lot of internal VB apps
-Do the servers meet the minimum spec, is there swing kita avail.
-Use the clone tool on CitrixTools.net
-Install the apps to 100% the same locations and use the Migrate Apps on CitrixTools.net (or edit the .CitrixTools file)
-Learn the Profile and GPO differences in 2008
-Printer drivers and old apps?
Just a question no x64?
Good luck --Emil
Thank you, guys. That is what I had in mind exactly! Now, let me get to more details and your questions. No, unfortunately the CIO did not give me a pack of cigarettes.
On Windows Server 2008: No, currently there are no 2008 servers anywhere in our environment. These will be the first servers. I still have to test application compatibility. Some vendors have already certified their apps for 2008 while other vendors have not.
On Applications: Yes, most of the applications published in the farm are custom designed Visual Basic 6/2005, C++ and C# applications.
On Printer Drivers: We use a third party printing solution, namely ScrewDrivers from Tricerat. They have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
On 64-bit architecture: I might recommend 64-bit for some of our Remote Desktop servers. However, 20 - 30% of our servers have older hardware which is not compatible with 64-bit. These servers would have to be retired, virtualized, or used with 32-bit Windows.
Thank you for all your suggestions. Let me know what else you can come up with!
Duke, also if you are not ready to jump into 2008, you can install 2003 and Xenapp 4.5 which is actually 5.0 only 32-bit on 2003. That is the only difference. You could steal a few servers from your current environment and start building a new farm to run in tandem.
"Do not upgrade the existing environments if you can avoid it."
This is a very important point. There is no better opportunity to leave all of your previous Citrix problems behind. I do encourage you to look at PVS. You will be rebuilding 123 servers. If you don't have a server deployment solution in place, this is going to take you hundreds of hours for the build, plus any support time involving inconsistencies with the build process. It may make sense financially.
Hi,
As a cheaper alternative, you can also virtualize the XenApp farm, then use VMWare or XenServer to deploy your new farm from golden templates. Citrix provides a tool for this (XenAppPrep), there are many third party tools too, or you can do this yourself:
http://www.vcit.ca/wordpress/2009/02/16/preparing-a-vmware-vcenter-virtual-center-template-for-deploying-citrix-xenapp-on-vmware-esx-35/
http://www.vcit.ca/wordpress/2009/03/09/30deploying-a-vmware-vcenter-virtual-center-template-for-deploying-citrix-xenapp-on-vmware-esx-35/
Alan Osborne
President (MCSE, CCNA, VCP, CCA)
VCIT Consulting - Citrix/Terminal Services Remote Desktop Solutions for SMB
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