Client Overview
- Client: State Economic Development Agency
- Services: Governance and DR, Directory and Policy Cleanup, VDI Stabilization
A major State Economic Development Agency, referred to here as the State Entity. The agency supports thousands of staff across multiple locations and has relied on Z7 Solutions for end user computing and VDI support since 2018.
Executive Summary
Before Z7 Solutions stepped in, an earlier attempt to move from Citrix to VMware Horizon had failed. Both data centers were in a fragile state. Horizon was unstable, Citrix was still partially in use, and technical debt kept growing. Users experienced slow logons, frequent disconnects, and had very little confidence in the platform.
Z7 rebuilt one site as a clean Horizon 8 reference architecture, then used that design to repair and standardize the second site. The team retired Citrix, remediated deep Active Directory and GPO issues, strengthened DR, and put real governance around images and applications. The result was a stable, modern Horizon 8 environment that now supports thousands of users and serves as the foundation for the agency’s cloud journey.
Challenge
The State Entity had tried to migrate from Citrix to Horizon years earlier. That effort stalled and then drifted. By the time Z7 was engaged, both data centers were showing symptoms of a failed migration.
Site A
- Horizon deployment was unstable and failed frequently.
- Users saw session drops, desktop crashes, and very inconsistent performance.
- vSAN and Dell compute clusters were oversubscribed, misconfigured, and not monitored in a disciplined way.
Site B
- The Horizon deployment had been abandoned mid project.
- App Volumes packages were incomplete or broken.
- There were no standards for image lifecycle, patching, or configuration.
Environment-Wide
- Citrix was still partially active, which meant duplicate complexity and extra licensing cost.
- App Volumes and DEM were used inconsistently and caused random application failures.
- Active Directory contained thousands of stale objects. Group Policy was messy, slow, and full of conflicts.
- DR was limited to basic backups, with no regular validation that recovery would actually work.
Z7 was asked to fix the environment, retire Citrix, standardize Horizon 8 across both sites, and keep production VDI on premises, using cloud only for backup and recovery.
Z7 Solution
Z7 delivered a full environment rescue and standardization effort across both data centers.
Rebuild of Site B
- Deploying Horizon 8 components on supported, current versions.
- Corrected vSAN storage policies and host profiles.
- Expanded Dell compute capacity to remove resource starvation.
- Rebuilt App Volumes packages and entitlements into a coherent model.
- Standardized DEM usage and policy structure.
- Hardened golden images and created baseline configuration standards.
Site B became the reference architecture for the statewide environment.
Remediation of Site A
- Cleaned vCenter, snapshots, and orphaned objects.
- Fixed storage policies and cluster misconfigurations.
- Aligned App Volumes and DEM configuration with the new standards from Site B.
- Stabilized performance and eliminated recurring failure patterns.
Retirement of Citrix
- Migrated remaining Citrix workloads into Horizon.
- Unified golden images for all Horizon pools.
- Removed duplicate delivery frameworks and eliminated Citrix licensing.
Directory and Policy Cleanup
- Rebuilt the OU structure to match how the environment is actually used.
- Removed thousands of stale AD objects and accounts.
- Retired hundreds of conflicting or obsolete GPOs.
- Simplified logon policies, which led directly to faster and more reliable logons.
Governance and DR
- Put image lifecycle and app packaging governance in place.
- Validated DR through cloud supported backups and two site storage replication.
- Enhanced monitoring and analytics so that tickets and performance issues could be tracked and trended, not just handled one by one.
Measurable Results
The State Entity saw clear, measurable improvements across thousands of endpoints.
Significantly Faster Login Times
Login times improved by roughly 48% to 60% after GPO cleanup and image tuning.
Dramatic Reduction in Session Instability
Session crashes and disconnects were reduced by more than 80%.
Overall Horizon Performance Gains
Overall Horizon performance improved by about 20% to 30% as a result of vSAN and compute remediation.
Fewer Recurring VDI Support Tickets
Recurring VDI tickets dropped by about 40%, based on ticket analytics.
Simplified Platform Through Citrix Removal
Citrix licensing and complexity were fully eliminated.
Standardized, Modern Horizon Architecture
Both data centers now run a single, modern Horizon 8 architecture that is stable and predictable.
This created the solid, on premises foundation the agency needed to move into Horizon Cloud, FSLogix, Turbo containers, and endpoint modernization in the next phase.
Ready to See the Full Case Study
This summary shows the results. The full case study explains how Z7 Solutions stabilized a failed migration, eliminated technical debt, and built a scalable Horizon 8 foundation.