Application Delivery
to the Enterprise
Jeremy Holt
Director of Information Services
About
Us
Grace University was founded on June 1, 1943 in Omaha, NE. Grace is a compact
urban campus located two blocks from the historical downtown business district.
Each bachelor level student at Grace University pursues a double major. The first
is in Biblical Studies and the second in a professional or vocational field of his/her
choice, such as Psychology, Teacher Education, Intercultural Studies, Nursing,
among others.
Grace University has 300-350 students locally, and a number of students in other
countries such as China, Mali, and El Salvador.
The current economic situation has forced many
IT departments to cut costs and increase
functionality to remain competitive.
What was the process of rethinking the
management, delivery, support, and
total cost of ownership in this
challenging environment?
Reasons and Purpose
• Grace University was coming to the end of a
number of contracts and leases for equipment,
services, and licensing.
• Opportunity to find ways to improve usability,
productivity, and total cost of ownership (TCO).
• Analyze existing infrastructure in relation to
providing support to the students, faculty and
staff.
• Place Grace University on a planned course of
excellence for the future.
Application Delivery
The process of providing the end users with
the tools necessary to address the
purpose of the organization.
Defining the Project
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What are the driving forces of necessity?
What is the current infrastructure like?
What needs will be addressed?
What options did we have to provide
solutions?
• What were the benefits of the solutions we
chose?
Driving Forces of Necessity
• Desktops are nearing end of lease.
• Upgrading to current software versions has been
reluctant and slow because of the limited
capabilities of existing hardware, and time to
implement with the current architectural design.
• Storage space of the existing servers was nearing
capacity.
• Servers were reaching, and in some cases past,
life expectancy of the hardware.
Assessment of Current Infrastructure
• Create committees of key user groups to
define their specific needs
• Inventory equipment to define age, single
points of failure, and availability
• Inventory software to define licensing, and
necessity
Needs to be Addressed
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Replace desktops coming off lease
Upgrade server hardware
Increase data storage capacity
Reduce single point of failures
Simplify software upgrade and patch process
Simplify and increase Help Desk support
Expand user accessibility
Solution #1:
Status Quo
• Purchase new desktops
• Replace servers with new hardware
• Add physical drives to existing file servers to
increase data storage capacity
Needs Not Addressed
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Reduce single point of failures
Simplify software upgrade and patch process
Simplify and increase Help Desk support
Expand user accessibility
Solution #2:
Application Delivery
• Replace desktops with lower cost thin clients
and use Citrix XenApp for application delivery
• Virtualize servers with Citrix XenServer
• Add SAN storage with Equallogic
Benefits of Solution #2
• Reduced single point of failures
• Simplified software upgrade and patch
process
• Simplified and increased Help Desk support
• Expanded user accessibility
• Reduced Initial Investment and TCO
• Changed licensing structure
• Highly scalable environment for growth
HP Thin Clients
• Windows CE imbedded w/ XenApp integration
• Gold image deployed via flash drive in 30 sec.
• Longer Life Expectancy
– No moving parts
– Lower power consumption
• Software updates happen server-side
• Smaller footprint
• Server-centralized data storage
Citrix XenApp
• Application Delivery
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Thin Client Integration (local users)
Web based (multi-platform remote/mobile users)
iPhone Application (mobile phone users)
Eliminates VPN
Citrix Farm
- Load Balanced Servers
- High Availability
- Applications published to users through AD
security groups
- Help Desk shadowing for centralized and remote
support
Citrix Receiver
For iPhone
Citrix XenServer
• Single vendor to support the whole stack
• Integration with SAN solution
• Reduced energy consumption and rack space
through Virtualization
• Provision new servers from gold images
Equallogic SAN Storage
• Virtualized storage to optimize XenServer
Environment
• San and Server Management via a single
console
• Increased data storage capacity dynamically
• Ability to move virtual servers between
physical hardware for high availability, load
balancing, redundancy
• Snapshots
Cost Benefits
• Thin Clients
– Desktops cost 2-3 times more for hardware
– Time of workstation deployment/rebuild
– Lower (TCO)
• Longer life expectancy
• Lower power consumption
• Smaller footprint
– Software updates are only done on XenApp
Servers requiring less man hours and faster
adoption
– Server-centralized data storage
Cost Benefit Cont.
• XenApp
– Life expectancy of existing PCs increased
– Centralized support for world-wide user base
• XenServer
– Reduced Server OS licensing requirements
– Reduced power consumption
– Reduced rack space requirements
– Reduced server room cooling requirements
Cost Benefit Cont.
• Equallogic San Storage
– Increased data storage needs
– Server deployment
• Time and utilization
Maintaining Citrix
• Support Structure
– Internal Resources
• Ability to absorb day to day management with existing
FTEs
– Emineo Group
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Citrix Gold Partner
System Upgrades
Tier Three Support
Strategy Development
Review
Grace University has provided a highly
scalable IT environment, and broadened its
services to include local, remote, and mobile
users.
The University met the challenge by
introducing a blend of Citrix technologies,
server virtualization, SAN storage, and user
thin clients.
Q&A
Jeremy Holt
Director of Information Services
Email - jholt@graceu.edu
Phone - 402.449.2935
Application Delivery
to the Enterprise
Jeremy Holt
Director of Information Services