SD-WAN is a Complex Subject, I’ll Simply It
I decided to put together this blended doodle together to better explain Citrix SD-WAN, how it works in a visual illustration to have more meaningful conversations and discussions. I picture can tell a thousand micro stories and the big picture here depicts a simple story which tells you the IT + Business value of SD-WAN including the why and it also tells an important industry story often never told which is that implementing ANY SD-WAN is NOT frictionless with an out of the box experience, it takes effort but once that effort is done and done right then Citrix SD-WAN’s Zero Touch strategy will takeover and make it frictionless from IT to the branch to key workers at home. Another top of mind reason to consider as a real world field example is that you simply cannot do a (Citrix) SD-WAN PoC 99.5% of the time to evaluate it. Wait what? Why? It’s always going to be a pilot, and the why is simple you are taking over co-control of an organisations underlay network to create an SD-WAN overlay network, while inserting (Citrix) SD-WAN packets into the organisations network fabric. This is a fact of every SD-WAN vendor in the marketplace.
Technically Understanding Citrix SD-WAN
The following links below will help you better understand Citrix SD-WAN’s terminology, strategy and technical acumen and thinking when deploying, managing and monitoring an SD-WAN overlay network bonding two or more underlay networks e.g Business broadband and 4/5G LTE internet circuits together into a single seamless internet pipe, while giving IT back control over its WAN including allow them to better measure meaningfully your MSP/ISP internet circuit providers performance including complete vs. brown outages, while visualising and seamless failover due to packet loss in a single direction with any internet circuits.
- Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-sd-wan-orchestrator
- Zero Touch Deployment – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-sd-wan-orchestrator/zero-touch-deployment.html
- Build an SD-WAN network – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-sd-wan/11-2/use-cases-sd-wan-virtual-routing/how-to-build-sd-wan-network.html
- Setup Master Control Node – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-sd-wan/11-2/configuration/set-up-master-control-node.html
- Configuration guide for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops workloads – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-sd-wan/11-2/config-guide-for-cvad-workloads.html
- HDX – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops-service/hdx.html
- Citrix Cloud and Gateway service optimization – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-sd-wan/11-2/citrix-cloud-and-gateway-service-optimization.html
- Office 365 optimization – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-sd-wan/11-2/office-365-optimization.html
- Quality of service – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-sd-wan/11-2/quality-of-service.html
- Classes – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-sd-wan/11-2/quality-of-service/customize-classes.html
- Rules by application name – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-sd-wan/11-2/quality-of-service/rules-by-application-names.html
- Setup Branch Nodes – https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-sd-wan/11-2/configuration/setup-branch-nodes.html
The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Citrix.