Citrix CXD-400 – Designing App and Desktop Solutions with XenDesktop 7

In this course you will learn how to assess and design a XenDesktop 7 app and desktop solution while taking into consideration important projects and architectures that most Citrix customers implement regardless of industry and use cases.

You will also learn how to build a specific design for your organization as well as the tools and references needed to support your work.

Citrix CXD-400 – Designing App and Desktop Solutions with XenDesktop 7 is an advanced, five-day course focused on the assessment, architecture, design, validation, and troubleshooting of Citrix XenDesktop 7 application and desktop virtualization solutions. Unlike administration-oriented training, the course is designed primarily for professionals who need to make architectural and design decisions before and during the implementation of a Citrix environment. It is aimed at desktop virtualization solution designers, architects, consultants, and engineers who need to translate business and technical requirements into a complete XenDesktop solution. The course is classified at Expert level and is associated with the Citrix Certified Expert – Virtualization (CCE-V) certification track.

The central objective of CXD-400 is to teach participants how to assess an organization’s requirements and transform the collected information into a practical desktop and application virtualization design. This means looking beyond individual Citrix components and understanding how the entire solution must work together. Architecture, users, applications, access methods, networking, storage, provisioning, hypervisor infrastructure, databases, authentication, monitoring, backup, migration, and high availability all have to be considered as parts of the same design. The course therefore develops an architectural perspective rather than focusing exclusively on product configuration.

A significant part of the course is dedicated to understanding the XenDesktop 7 architecture and the communication relationships between its components. Participants examine the different elements of the architecture and the protocols through which they communicate, then use that knowledge to make appropriate architectural decisions. This is particularly important when designing environments that must provide reliable access to applications and virtual desktops for large numbers of users. Understanding the architecture also provides the foundation for identifying potential design weaknesses and troubleshooting problems that originate from architectural decisions rather than from a single configuration parameter.

The design process begins with the organization’s business requirements. CXD-400 teaches participants to identify business drivers across different organizational and industry contexts and to work with project stakeholders to establish priorities. This approach is essential because a technically sophisticated virtualization platform is not necessarily a successful solution if it does not address the organization’s actual requirements. Cost, mobility, security, application compatibility, user experience, availability, scalability, operational complexity, and business continuity can all influence the final architecture.

Data collection is therefore another important part of the program. Participants learn how to determine an appropriate strategy for gathering information about an organization’s environment and, particularly, its applications and users. Application data can include technical characteristics, compatibility requirements, dependencies, resource consumption, delivery requirements, and business importance. The objective is to collect sufficient information to make informed architectural decisions rather than designing the environment based on assumptions.

User segmentation is addressed through the FlexCast models available in the XenDesktop architecture. Different groups of users have different requirements, and a single delivery model may not be appropriate for an entire organization. The course teaches participants to identify user characteristics and select suitable approaches for delivering desktops and applications. Factors such as mobility, device type, application requirements, performance expectations, personalization, security, and connectivity can influence the appropriate delivery model.

Application assessment is closely connected to user segmentation. Participants learn how to assess an application portfolio, rationalize applications, and determine whether particular applications are compatible with a specific XenDesktop delivery model. This is an important architectural activity because application characteristics can have a direct impact on the placement and delivery architecture. Legacy applications, applications with hardware dependencies, applications requiring special permissions, and applications that consume significant resources may require different delivery approaches.

The course also addresses project management and documentation. Designing a XenDesktop environment is not simply a technical exercise; it requires coordination between technical teams, business stakeholders, application owners, security teams, infrastructure teams, and project management. Participants examine the importance of project planning and the roles that need to be represented in a project plan. They also learn how design decisions should be documented and ultimately presented to stakeholders.

User design encompasses decisions concerning user groups, endpoint devices, user profiles, policies, and printing. Participants learn how to organize users into meaningful groups, identify and prioritize major user issues, and create a user profile strategy. Printing is also considered as part of the overall user experience rather than as an isolated technical feature. These decisions influence both the architecture and the operational complexity of the final environment.

Application delivery is another major design area. The course teaches participants to determine how applications should be delivered and how application characteristics influence placement and delivery architecture. The objective is to create an application delivery strategy that satisfies inventory and integration requirements while remaining manageable and scalable. This is particularly important in environments where applications are delivered through different mechanisms depending on their compatibility, business importance, resource consumption, and user requirements.

The design of Citrix Receiver deployment and maintenance is also included. Participants consider how users will obtain access to published applications and desktops and how the client software will be deployed and maintained. Access design extends this concept further by examining StoreFront and NetScaler Gateway strategies, authentication, remote access, session policies, and bandwidth requirements. The course therefore considers both internal and external access scenarios and the infrastructure required to provide a consistent and secure user experience.

Desktop design covers machine catalogs, delivery groups, personalization, user profiles, user policies, and personal vDisk usage. Participants must determine how virtual desktops will be organized and how personalization requirements will influence the architecture. These decisions are closely connected to provisioning and storage because the chosen desktop model affects how machines are created, maintained, updated, and delivered.

The infrastructure supporting the XenDesktop environment receives substantial attention. Participants design the topology of XenDesktop Sites and determine appropriate numbers and placement of XenDesktop Controllers. They also consider load balancing, database architecture, license servers, Active Directory integration, and baseline user and virtual desktop policies. These components form the foundation of a production XenDesktop deployment and must be designed with scalability, redundancy, performance, and operational requirements in mind.

Networking is considered as an architectural layer rather than merely a connectivity requirement. The course covers high-availability decisions, integration with the existing network infrastructure, WAN optimization, Multistream ICA, and DHCP functionality. Bandwidth calculations are also part of the design process. These elements are important because the quality of a virtual desktop environment depends heavily on network performance, latency, availability, and the ability to support expected user concurrency.

Storage and provisioning represent another major design layer. Participants evaluate storage options and examine the characteristics and differences between Provisioning Services (PVS) and Machine Creation Services (MCS). They then use this knowledge to design an appropriate provisioning strategy. The choice between PVS and MCS can affect infrastructure requirements, operational procedures, image management, storage consumption, scalability, and the way virtual desktops are maintained.

The platform layer addresses the underlying hypervisor and physical infrastructure. Participants make decisions regarding the hypervisor technology used for desktop virtualization and perform hardware calculations covering VDI resources, shared infrastructure, application workloads, and control components. XenServer, Hyper-V, and vSphere are included within the prerequisite knowledge base, allowing the architectural principles to be considered independently of a single hypervisor platform.

Operational considerations complete the design. Participants examine migration approaches, system monitoring, backup, and application delivery decisions. A successful design must not only function when deployed but also remain manageable throughout its operational lifecycle. Monitoring and backup strategies, maintenance processes, migration planning, and the ability to support changing application and user requirements therefore form an integral part of the architecture.

An especially valuable part of the course is the verification phase. Participants learn how to validate assessment and design decisions using Citrix online tools and how to develop a complete presentation for stakeholders. They must be able to explain and defend architectural decisions rather than simply produce a technical diagram. This reflects the role of a Citrix architect, where communicating the reasoning behind a design can be as important as selecting the individual technologies.

The prerequisites reflect the Expert-level nature of CXD-400. Participants are expected to have intermediate knowledge of Citrix desktop virtualization concepts, basic project-management and documentation skills, presentation skills, and knowledge of Windows Server 2012 including Active Directory and DHCP. Basic networking knowledge, SQL Server and database concepts, permissions, security and high availability are also required. Familiarity with physical and virtual storage technologies such as NAS, SAN, SSD and CIFS, together with experience with hypervisors such as XenServer, Hyper-V or vSphere, is recommended. The course also expects knowledge equivalent to the topics covered by CXD-102 – Introduction to XenDesktop 7 and CXD-300 – Deploying App and Desktop Solutions with Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6.

CXD-400 is therefore significantly different from a basic XenDesktop administration course. Its emphasis is on architectural methodology: understanding requirements, collecting data, segmenting users, assessing applications, selecting delivery models, designing infrastructure layers, validating decisions, and communicating the resulting solution. In the original training offering, the course is five days long, Expert level, with classroom, hybrid, and virtual delivery options. The listed price is €2,600, and the associated certification program is Citrix Certified Expert – Virtualization (CCE-V).

Because XenDesktop 7 is a legacy-generation Citrix platform, CXD-400 should today be understood primarily in the context of existing or historical XenDesktop environments, migration projects, and the architectural principles that underpinned Citrix desktop virtualization. Citrix’s own VDI documentation positioned CXD-400 at the Level-4 architect stage, associated with experienced professionals who had substantial implementation and support experience and who were moving toward expert-level architecture responsibilities.