It's very important for the XenDesktop masters to know how XenDesktop worked in its previous versions and the pros and cons that led to the changes in its architectural design. We'll go through an overview of the IMA and discuss the data points on how it was before IMA, since it's closely related to XenApp.
In 2008, the initial version of XenDesktop 2.0 was built on Citrix's pre-existing flagship technologies, including the networking protocol and architecture. It featured the following:
The PortICA (now HDX) extended the ICA protocol for client to server communication. The ICA protocol for Windows was introduced in 1990. The PortICA allows only a single ICA session at a time whereas ICA protocol supports multiple concurrent ICA sessions to RDSH in XenApp.
The IMA was introduced with Citrix MetaFrame XP (now called XenApp) for internal server management in 2001.
Prior to IMA, in the versions before MetaFrame XP, the server configuration...