Global Financial Group

The Challenge

Version upgrades to Citrix LTSR in financial services environments carry far more complexity than a standard software upgrade. This global financial group running 1912 LTSR had accrued years of configuration depth — custom policies, compliance-critical application publishing rules, licensing configurations, and legacy identity integrations — all of which had to survive a major version transition to 2203 LTSR without disrupting live financial operations. The simultaneous move to Azure hosting compounded the challenge: control plane components (Delivery Controllers, Director, Studio, Licensing servers) required both version upgrades and re-platforming onto cloud infrastructure, with new Azure-native networking and compute topology to design from scratch. Legacy authentication mechanisms needed to be replaced with modern Azure AD-backed workflows using Citrix Federated Authentication Service — introducing SAML federation and MFA enforcement into a financial desktop environment that had historically relied on traditional Active Directory authentication. VDI capacity management had to be re-engineered from static on-premises allocation to dynamic ARM Template-driven auto-scaling that could respond to real-time session demand without over-provisioning.

Our Solution

Developed the end-to-end migration architecture mapping the transition from on-premises 1912 LTSR to Azure-hosted 2203 LTSR — covering control plane uplift, authentication modernisation, capacity model transformation, and performance validation. Executed lifecycle version upgrades across all critical Citrix infrastructure: Delivery Controllers, Director, Studio, and enterprise Licensing servers were upgraded in sequence with full change control and rollback procedures. Azure Active Directory was integrated with Citrix Federated Authentication Service to enforce modern authentication at the VDI session layer: SAML-based identity federation, MFA enforcement, and seamless SSO workflows replacing the legacy Kerberos-only authentication model. Custom ARM Templates were designed and deployed to orchestrate demand-driven auto-scaling policies for Azure VDI host pools — dynamic provisioning and deallocation tied to real-time session load, replacing static capacity with an elastic model. Comprehensive UAT cycles were conducted across the upgraded environment, with Azure-native performance tuning applied to session density, application response latency, and host pool efficiency.

Key Deliverables

• Formulated end-to-end migration architecture for the transition of core VDI layers from legacy on-premises Citrix 1912 LTSR to Azure-hosted 2203 LTSR — control plane, authentication, capacity, and performance layers
• Executed lifecycle version upgrades across all critical Citrix infrastructure nodes: Delivery Controllers (DDC), Director, Studio, and enterprise Licensing servers
• Integrated Azure Active Directory with Citrix Federated Authentication Service (FAS) enforcing modern authentication — SAML federation, MFA at the VDI session layer, and seamless SSO for financial applications
• Designed and deployed custom ARM Templates orchestrating dynamic demand-driven auto-scaling policies for VDI node pools in Microsoft Azure — replacing static capacity with elastic provisioning
• Conducted comprehensive UAT cycles and implemented Azure-native performance tuning across the cloud VDI environment — session density, application latency, and host pool efficiency optimised

Services Delivered

• CVAD Version Migration
• Azure VDI Architecture
• Citrix FAS Authentication
• ARM Auto-Scaling Design

Tech Stack

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