Historically, it has been complicated and challenging to manage VDI images across on-premises resource locations and across public clouds, with lots of different platforms, tools, and technologies involved. There are vendor specific components that are always changing and evolving. It is not a seamless experience.
Citrix Image Portability Service for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CAVDS) helps solve this problem. It is a new Citrix Cloud service in tech preview that allows you to migrate images from on-premises resource locations to your subscription in a public cloud, all of which is managed by Citrix. It works with both Provisioning Services and Machine Creation Services.
The Image Portability Services uses a multi-phase workflow for migrating an image: Export, Upload, Prepare, and Publish:
- Export – The service exports an image from the current resource location to storage.
- Upload – The image is then transferred to the other resource location through a site-to-site connection to storage
- Prepare – Once the image is transferred, the new resource location is prepared to work on the other platform. It gives you options to reconfigure and add/remove software, such as hypervisor components and the Citrix virtual desktop agent, so the image will work on the new platform.
- Publish – Finally, the image is published and is ready to be deployed from a machine catalog within the new resource location.
There are many use cases for using the image portability service, including:
- On-premises to Cloud
- Migration to a cloud platform
- Cloud burst for additional capacity
- Disaster Recovery in the cloud
- Across Cloud Regions
- Expansion in other regions
- Roaming users between locations
- Resiliency between cloud regions
- Cost optimization across regions
- Across Public Clouds
- Geo expansion
- Resiliency between cloud regions
- Cost optimizations across clouds
If any of these use cases apply to you then you should consider evaluating this tech preview.