In a multi-cloud world, having options for extending the enterprise network to IaaS and PaaS is important. For some time now, many of our customers have benefited from an easy way to onboard virtual SD-WAN instances (we call this our VPX) on public cloud platforms. This has simplified the migration of apps from the data center into the public cloud, including Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. Now with Citrix SD-WAN for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), enterprises get yet another option.

OCI is purpose-built for enterprise and is architected specifically to run enterprise applications and optimize associated databases. While moving enterprise workloads to OCI makes sense, there are limitations to consider with current modes of connectivity.

For example, your users might not get the same virtual app and desktop performance they do now. This is because your WAN might not be architected to deliver an optimal virtual application and desktop experience in the cloud.

Let’s look at the primary ways you can connect your offices to your Citrix environment in OCI:

  1. You might have local internet connections already in place at your offices. Should you use those to connect to your cloud-hosted workloads? Local internet breakout is a great way to quickly try out Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops on OCI, be sure to think about how connectivity issues could affect your business. Not all approaches produce the same results.
    • If there’s an outage or severe brownout, how will you handle failover? Would it be manually? You must consider the impact to users’ virtual sessions.
    • Having plentiful bandwidth is great, but will users be downloading large files, watching videos, or running print jobs that could oversaturate the link?
    • Also, without prioritization of HDX traffic, other non-critical apps can leave critical traffic without enough bandwidth.
    • When problems arise, you need visibility into the WAN conditions to quickly pinpoint and resolve them.
  1. Leveraging your private WAN is another way to give office workers connectivity by backhauling traffic through your data center, which may already be connected to your VCN in OCI via Oracle’s FastConnect technology.
    • Are you aware that distance can introduce latency and degrade the user experience? If your users demand a highly response experience, backhauling might not meet their expectations.
  2. Also, you might need to augment your WAN bandwidth to account for the extra traffic, which can be costly and slow to implement.

For the best reliability and performance, we recommend Citrix SD-WAN, which optimizes connectivity to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops in OCI.

Citrix SD-WAN creates virtual paths you can use to easily and cost-effectively spin up SD-WAN instances to reliably connect branches to OCI through virtual overlays. Citrix SD-WAN supports highly reliable and performant connectivity from office locations to workloads running on OCI and from OCI to on-premises resources such as database servers. This enables advanced features including:

  • Traffic shaping on diverse, bonded commodity internet links
  • Selective packet replication (aka packet racing) for voice, video, and keyboard/mouse input
  • Sub-second, non-disruptive link failover
  • Quick set-up of high-availability connections to OCI virtual-cloud networks
  • Ability to manage the entire network from the Citrix orchestration service
  • Automated VPX provisioning on VCNs through Terraform

Additionally, when running Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops workloads, SD-WAN provides benefits through Citrix’s HDX technology. Citrix SD-WAN delivers unique features such as:

  • AutoQoS for prioritization of types of traffic within ICA sessions
  • HDX fair sharing of session bandwidth over the WAN
  • HDX session and user monitoring and reporting

We’re introducing a tech preview for Citrix SD-WAN on OCI to give you a better way to connect to Citrix and other workloads in the cloud. The SD-WAN virtual appliance (VPX) provides all the advantages of Citrix SD-WAN and enables you to confidently and quickly extend your network to the cloud. You get the powerful SD-WAN capabilities we’ve covered in this post as a virtual instance in OCI.

Download Citrix SD-WAN now, and get started with the tech preview . Our support forum allows you to provide feedback, report issues, and ask questions about SD-WAN SE VPX on OCI. And check out our Virtual Desktops and Applications with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Citrix session on-demand.