Best Practices and Recommendations for Citrix Receiver 3 and HDX Technology with XenDesktop 5.5
Citrix has release a whitepaper on best practices and recommendations for Citrix Receiver 3 and HDX Technology with XenDesktop 5.5. 
With the launch of the latest generation of Citrix HDX Technologies in XenDesktop 5.5 and XenApp 6.5, IT Administrators can offer a class-leading application and desktop user experience over not only the LAN, but the WAN as well. With the new release of XenDesktop 5.5, Citrix engineering has made over 150 enhancements encompassing nearly every aspect of HDX Technology. These new enhancements include the implementation of long requested features such as the next version of HDX MediaStream, UDP support for audio, and support for Windows Aero themes within a virtual desktop, to name a few. Additionally, IT Administrators will also be able to implement significant improvements in Flash and Windows Media content playback over many network scenarios. Taken together, these changes clearly differentiate Citrix XenDesktop’s position as a class leading platform for a high definition end user experience for virtual desktops.
While the new features improve the end user experience, administrators need to evaluate all aspects of the enterprise environment when deploying a XenDesktop and XenApp solution. Server and endpoint device hardware is only one piece of the bigger picture. Bandwidth configurations, client devices, peripheral devices and even applications all need to be evaluated against organizational goals associated with cost and an ever globalizing workforce.
This whitepaper is designed for all levels of IT Administrators that are considering an implementation of a new Citrix virtualized environment or looking to optimize an existing environment. Many of the key HDX features will be showcased under scenarios that reflect feedback from Consulting implementations. Much of the information provided in this paper applies to XenDesktop 5.5; however, some content is also applicable to XenApp 6.5. Citrix Consulting Solutions aggregated and tested each of the best practices and design recommendations documented in this paper for XenDesktop 5.5 in order to ascertain the overall impact to hypervisor scalability, client device performance and bandwidth utilization when implementing many of the newest HDX Technologies. The goal of this whitepaper is to provide insight into the enhancements available in the latest Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 release while providing practical and relevant implementation guidelines, when possible, based on Citrix Consulting Solutions experience.
As with all validation results, individual environments and circumstances can greatly influence the outcome of results. It is critical that prior to implementation in a production environment, testing should be conducted in a non-production environment. Differences in hardware, network, and software configuration should also be considered when referencing this whitepaper.
{loadposition content_starwind600}