XenApp 6.5 Hotfix Rollup Pack 7 + all Hotfixes

I bet several XenApp Administrators around the world still have XenApp 6.5 Farms to manage and so do I. Here’s a table about all post-HRP07 Hotfixes.

Last month I had to manage a XenApp 6.5 Farm which was still on Hotfix Rollup Pack 3 without any further Hotfixes. This farm suffered from regular published Desktop session disconnects. When the users tried to reconnect to their disconnected sessions, they received a new sessions instead, leaving all their apps and documents opened and unreachable in the orphaned session. Continue reading “XenApp 6.5 Hotfix Rollup Pack 7 + all Hotfixes”

Release of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 1903 (formerly XenApp)

Yesterday Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 1903 (formerly XenApp) was released.

Download: https://www.citrix.com/downloads/citrix-virtual-apps-and-desktops/product-software/citrix-virtual-apps-and-desktops-1903.html
What’s new: https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/whats-new.html

Examples of new features:

  • Citrix Director – Citrix Profile Management Duration in Profile Load
  • MCS storage optimization
  • Framehawk is now unsupported
  • DPI matching on Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019
  • Copy and paste between sessions and clients

HowTo: Publish the classic Printers folder in Citrix virtual Apps and Desktops

Starting with Windows Server 2012 R2 Citrix Administrators have to face the problem, that the new Device And Printers view doesn’t work as expected. Connected network printers are invisible. To face that issue, it is a valid workaround to publish the classic Printers Folder.

Starting with Windows Server 2012 R2 Citrix Administrators have to face the problem, that the new Device And Printers view doesn’t work as expected. Connected network printers are often not visible, or to bring it on point: Invisible to the end user. There are several sources on the internet, that describe this pain, for example:

To face that issue, it is a valid workaround to publish the classic Printers Folder known from Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, to your end users. In this view, the problem with the invisible printers doesn’t exit. Additionally we give the users the possibility to get access to the session network printer mapping and the default printer settings.

Continue reading “HowTo: Publish the classic Printers folder in Citrix virtual Apps and Desktops”

My first time: Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS)

After years of MCS virginity I decided it’s finally time to ditch the little farms and try out good ol’ Citrix Machine Creation Services.

Introduction

So today is my very first time: After years of MCS virginity I decided it’s finally time to ditch the little farms and try out good ol’ Citrix Machine Creation Services. In the last ten years I almost exclusively installed small deployments. The big ones have about 150 concurrent user. All are build upon XenApp 6.5 or XenApp 7.6+ with static persistent virtual machines. I always told myself, that static persistent virtual machines, together with a fully automated patch management (for example: PDQ) are enough. And this is still true, because the maintenance effort is virtually not existent. But it really bugs me, that I’m not equally familiar with at least one of the provisioning methods. You might ask, why I don’t try to learn PVS instead. Well, the simple reason is that my stomach tells me not to. The more valid reason is that MCS is included in every XenApp license and doesn’t require additional infrastructure. And additional infrastructure is always a really big topic for the customer.

This blog post won’t be a real classical Blog HowTo Guide, but more of a report of my journey to help me keep track about what I do. Maybe others suffer the same knowledge gap and are interested in my findings and the path I take. Continue reading “My first time: Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS)”

HowTo: Update Citrix Workspace Environment Management (WEM) from 4.x to 4.7 (v4.07.00.00)

A HowTo about the Citrix Workspace Environment Management (WEM) Update process for version 4.7

On July 18th 2018 Citrix released version 4.7 of Workspace Environment Management (WEM). This is an update guide.
Customer Success Services / Software Maintenance eligibility date: May 18, 2018

Download Citrix WEM 4.7 (v4.07.00.00) here:
https://www.citrix.com/downloads/xenapp-and-xendesktop/components/workspace-environment-management-47.html

What’s new:
https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/workspace-environment-management/current-release/whats-new.html

Fixed issues:
https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/workspace-environment-management/current-release/fixed-issues.html

Continue reading “HowTo: Update Citrix Workspace Environment Management (WEM) from 4.x to 4.7 (v4.07.00.00)”