How best to run a test environment?

Hi All,

I'm on the look out for a cost effective way of running a XenDesktop test infrastructure (yes for a CCA-V in XenDesktop 7.x)! I haven't been able to find any active projects / relatively cheap products that offer this. I wonder if anyone has any experience / suggestions.

I may end up buying a server but feel like I must be missing something (maybe my googling isn't as good as I thought)!

Any thoughts appreciated.

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jso

Citrix do have a large amount of demo sites and labs. Unfortunately, you either need to enroll in a e-learning class or work for a company that is thinking of purchasing Citrix and requested a demo from Citrix's sales team/partner.

Best bet is to go your own with xenserver on an SSD - instead of using some cloud provisioned thing (which wont support PVS).

And the old saying fits nicely here. You have to spend money to make money.

RichGreen

I did find a some Citrix lab resources, but they were approx £500 per month! Making them unrealistic for most personal educational use. Interestingly I did find www.citrixcommunitylab.com, but it looks like it's not off the ground yet.

I'm aware of the HCL list that Citrix generate, but wonder if you have any other specific recommendations/thoughts on hardware to use. I'm thinking about seeing if these guys - Overclockers UK - Computer components, hardware & gaming PC can help me out.

thanks for the reply.

jso

I've only had to consult HCL lists when I've been trying to do something fancy. RemoteFX on Hyper-V has a list of requirements as long as your arm. So I'm going to exclude any kind of GPU on XD/XS for now.

The guy opposite me is studying for his CCA-V now. He has a lenovo laptop running VMWare workstation. On that he's put XenServer. When I was studying I've used my old Dell T1500. Pretty much if its got an i7 and more than 8gb of memory, you can't go wrong. I would be still using the T1500 if I could put more than 16gb in it (which I think is more than enough for the CCA-V).

RichGreen

Very helpful, thanks for that.