Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 2212
About the release
This Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops release includes new versions of the Windows Virtual Delivery Agents (VDAs) and new versions of several core components. You can:
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Install or upgrade a site: Use the ISO for this release to install or upgrade core components and VDAs. Installing or upgrading to the latest version allows you to use the latest features.
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Install or upgrade VDAs in an existing site: If you already have a deployment, and aren’t ready to upgrade your core components, you can still use several of the latest HDX features by installing (or upgrading to) a new VDA. Upgrading only the VDAs can be helpful when you want to test enhancements in a non-production environment.
After upgrading your VDAs to this version (from version 7.9 or later), you do not need to update the machine catalog’s functional level. The 7.9 (or later) value remains the default functional level, and is valid for this release. For more information, see VDA versions and functional levels.
For installation and upgrade instructions:
- If you are building a new site, follow the sequence in Install and configure.
- If you are upgrading a site, see Upgrade a deployment.
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 2212
Install and upgrade: Web Studio (preview)
Web Studio is a web-based management console that lets you configure and manage your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployment. It’s designed for an improved user experience and generally responds faster than Citrix Studio, the Windows-based management console.
To install Web Studio, use the full-product installer on the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops product ISO. When installing a Delivery Controller, you can also choose to include Web Studio in the installation. For quick deployment, we recommend that you install Web Studio along with a Delivery Controller. For more information, see Install and use Web Studio.
Support for delivering MSIX and MSIX app attach apps using Web Studio
In App packages, you can now add MSIX and MSIX app attach packaged apps, and deliver them to your users. For more information, see App packages.
Generic USB configuration and policy improvements
This release includes the following three new settings to manage USB device selection and auto-connection user experience preferences through Citrix Studio:
- Allow existing USB devices to be automatically connected.
- Allow newly arrived USB devices to be automatically connected.
- Client USB device redirection rules (Version 2)
The new USB device rules policy gives you full control over composite USB devices including device splitting and auto-connection behavior which supersedes the older device rules policy.
Currently, the following policy settings are applicable only for Citrix Workspace app for Windows:
- Allow existing USB devices to be automatically connected.
- Allow newly arrived USB devices to be automatically connected.
The preceding policy settings allow you to override the user experience preferences that control the device auto-connection.
For more information, see USB device policy settings section.
Virtual Delivery Agents (VDAs) 2212
Enhancement to Citrix Universal Printer
Citrix Universal Printer now lets you select the client’s default printer or a specific client printer as the printing destination. To select a printer, use the new Destination Printer field in the Printing Preferences dialog. For more information, see Auto-created client printers.
Published application fix enabled by default
A published application fix, which addresses the following compatibility issues with HDX published applications, is now enabled by default:
- Microsoft Office password prompt might not appear.
- Devices such as Printers & Scanners might not appear in the Settings menu.
- Newly created folders might not show up in the File Explorer application.
- Open Settings in the File Explorer menu does not work.
- In applications such as Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, when you rename, create, or delete a folder using the Save or Open option, the window does not refresh automatically. However, you can refresh the window manually.
- During the launch of a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app, the app appears on the screen 8–13 seconds after the session completion progress bar of Citrix Workspace app disappears. As a result, users might attempt to do multiple launches.
- In an HDX seamless session on Windows 11 version 22H2, the print window might be displayed partially if a Print dialog box is open.
- The search bar of File Explorer does not work.
- Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps cannot be launched successfully if a non-UWP app has been launched before.
Faster registration when using RODC
You can now select which Light Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) bindings to ignore when registering using a read-only domain controller (RODC). Use the ListofIgnoredBindings registry key to ignore unnecessary LDAP bindings. For more information, see LDAP binding sequencing during VDA registration using a read-only domain controller.
Citrix Licensing
When installed, the License Server monitors several types of user data, such as licensing compliance data and Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) data. Licensing compliance data is collected automatically. However, to enable CEIP data collection, the user must choose to participate (that is, opt in).
For information about how to enable CEIP data collection when installing by using the command line, see Command line options for installing core components.
For more information about Citrix data collection, see Citrix Licensing data collection programs.
Citrix Studio
Support for using Studio to provision machines on GCP
Using Studio, you can now create catalogs to provision machines in GCP environments. For more information, see Create a machine catalog
Machine Creation Services (MCS)
Support for scheduling configuration updates in Azure
In Azure environments, you can now schedule a time slot for the configuration updates of the existing MCS provisioned machines using the PowerShell command Schedule-ProvVMUpdate. Any power on or restart during the scheduled time slot applies a scheduled provisioning scheme update to a machine. You can also cancel the configuration update before the scheduled time using Cancel-ProvVMUpdate.
You can schedule and cancel the configuration update of:
- A single or multiple VMs
- An entire catalog
For more information, see Schedule configuration updates.
Limit host groups scope in SCVMM Host Connection
Previously, host connection to SCVMM required the admin to have a single top level host group configured. This implies that the admin had visibility to all host groups, clusters, or hosts beneath the single top level host group. With this feature, in large deployments where a single SCVMM manages multiple clusters in different data centers, you can now limit the host groups scope of the admins. To do this, you can use the Delegated Admin role in the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) console to select the host groups to which an admin must have access. For more information, see Install and configure a hypervisor.
Support for using Citrix ready images directly from Google Cloud Marketplace
You can now browse and select images offered by Citrix on the Google Cloud Marketplace to create MCS catalogs. Currently, MCS supports only the machine profile workflow for this feature. For more information, see Google Cloud Marketplace.
Support for updating machine profile and additional custom properties of MCS provisioned machines in Azure environments
Previously, in Azure environments, you could use Request-ProvVMUpdate to update the ServiceOffering custom property of an MCS provisioned machine. Now, you can also update the machine profile and the following custom properties:
- StorageType
- WBCDiskStorageType
- IdentityDiskStorageType
- LicenseType
- DedicatedHostGroupId
- PersistWBC
- PersistOsDisk
- PersistVm
For more information, see Update provisioned machines to current provisioning scheme state.
Support for changing the storage type to a lower tier when a VM is shut down in Azure environments
In Azure environments, you can now save storage costs by switching the storage type of a managed disk to a lower tier when you shut down a VM. To do this, use the StorageTypeAtShutdown custom property.
The storage type of the disk changes to a lower tier (as specified in the StorageTypeAtShutdown custom property) when you shut down the VM. After you power on the VM, the storage type changes back to the original storage type (as specified in StorageType or the WBCDiskStorageType custom property).
For more information, see Change the storage type to a lower tier when a VM is shut down.
Enable restart schedule for an MCS catalog
Previously, you could schedule image updates by waiting for the next restart or by triggering an immediate restart of all VMs. With this feature, you can now create a one-time restart schedule for a catalog to be triggered on a desired date and time to facilitate MCS image updates. To create a restart schedule, use the BrokerCatalogRebootSchedule command. For more information, see Update the catalog.
Update to MCS time synchronization
With this feature, NT5DS is the default time synchronization protocol in scenarios where:
- The master image is non-domain-joined (NDJ) and
- During MCS provisioning, you select the VM to be Active Directory (AD) or Hybrid Azure Active Directory (HAAD)
For more information, see MCS time synchronization.
Citrix Director
Real-time GPU Utilization available for AMD GPUs
You can now see GPU Utilization of AMD Radeon Instinct MI25 GPUs and AMD EPYC 7V12(Rome) CPUs on Director. Director already supports the NVIDIA Tesla M60 GPUs. GPU Utilization displays graphs with real-time percentage utilization of the GPU, the GPU memory, and of the Encoder and the Decoder to troubleshoot GPU-related issues on multi-session and single-session OS VDAs. For more information, see GPU Utilization.
Advanced Probe Scheduling
Improved scheduling of Application and Desktop Probes can now be done from Director. Using this feature, Citrix Probe Agent can be configured to run the probe tasks on specific days of the week and repeated at specified intervals during the day. This allows you to schedule a single probe task to repeat at specific times of the day and the week. You can now proactively check your site health with probes set to run regularly at suitable times. This feature simplifies probe setup and management in Monitor. For more information, see Application Probing and Desktop Probing.