Although XenApp 6.5 worker groups do not exist in XenApp 7.x, we’ve seen how similar functionality is available.
- Using a single console, Studio, we can easily increase capacity of a delivery group
- With XenApp 7.12 applications tags, we can mimic the functionality where a server could belong to multiple worker groups
Instead of comparing XenApp 6.5 with XenApp 7.x, let’s put some of these new technologies into practice by solving the following design requirement.
- Define a set of XenApp hosts as failover servers for a group of XenApp hosts delivering the primary app? In addition, the failover servers have the following conditions:
- The failover servers are a subset of servers hosting their own set of apps
- The failover servers only host the primary app in the event the primary hosts are unavailable
If I diagram the requirements, it would look something like the following:
This diagram is simple to understand, but it lacks the information need to turn it into a reality. In order to build this solution in XenApp 7.12+, you would have a diagram like the following, which includes machine catalogs, delivery groups, application groups, delivery group priorities and tags.
Let’s break this down into sections.
- A single machine catalog contains all XenApp hosts. The image should include the apps as part of the image (if Unidesk elastic layering is not used)
- Set tags on the VMs as follows
- XenApp VM #1: Office tag
- XenApp VM #2: Office and LoB tags
- XenApp VM #3: LoB tag
- XenApp VM #4: LoB tag
- XenApp VM #5: LoB tag
- Two delivery groups use the previously created machine catalog.
- Office Delivery Group: Server 1 and Server 2
- LoB Delivery Group: Server 3, Server 4 and Server 5
- Two application groups with the following specs
- Office App Group:
- Includes three apps: Word, PowerPoint and Excel
- Assigned to the Office delivery group
- Restricted to VMs with tag of “Office”
- LoB App Group:
- Includes one app: LoB
- Assigned to the LoB delivery group with a priority of “0”
- Assigned to the Office delivery group with a priority of “10”
- Restricted to VMs with tag of “LoB”
- Office App Group:
When this is configured properly, you will see the following in the properties of the LoB app group.
Due to the usage of tags, the LoB app group contains all 3 servers from the LoB delivery group but only 1 of the 2 Office delivery group servers.
This configuration works as follows:
- For the Office apps
- Word, PowerPoint and Excel will only run from servers 1 and 2.
- For the LoB app
- The LoB app can only run from server 2, 3, 4 and 5
- The LoB app will only run from server 2 if servers 3, 4 and 5 are unavailable
Daniel (Follow on Twitter @djfeller)
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