Install Web Studio

License requirements:

To use Web Studio, you need to have one of the following license types:

• Citrix Universal Subscription License.
• Citrix on-premises subscription for annual and term-based retail licenses.
• Any on-premises license for Citrix Service Providers (CSP).

Introduction

Citrix Studio is a Windows-based management console that lets you configure and manage your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployment. Web Studio is the next generation of Citrix Studio — a web-based management console offering full feature parity with Citrix Studio. With the same look and feel as the Citrix DaaS Full Configuration interface, Web Studio modernizes your management experience by providing a native web experience.

You can deploy Web Studio to any Windows server with Internet Information Service (IIS) installed. For quick deployment, we recommend that you install Web Studio along with a Delivery Controller. In that case, Web Studio is installed as a website on the Delivery Controller. We recommend that you follow this setup for simple architecture and less management overhead. The following diagram shows the Web Studio architecture:

A general workflow to get Web Studio up and running is as follows:

1. Install Web Studio.

2. Set up a site.

3. Add Delivery Controllers to Web Studio for management.

4. Log on to Web Studio.

New features available in Web Studio compared with 2212

The following features are now available in Web Studio:

• Support for configuring session roaming. Previously, PowerShell was your only choice to configure session roaming for applications and desktops. You can now do that using Web Studio. For more information, see Manage delivery groups.

• Renamed some actions to better align with their actual meanings. We’ve renamed the following actions in Machine Catalogs and Delivery Groups. The workflows for performing those actions remain unchanged.

  • Update Machines renamed to Change Master Image
  • Rollback Machine Update renamed to Roll Back Master Image
  • Upgrade Catalog renamed to Change Functional Level
  • Upgrade Delivery Group renamed to Change Functional Level
  • Undo Upgrade Catalog renamed to Undo Functional Level Change
  • Undo Upgrade Delivery Group renamed to Undo Functional Level Change

• Use a machine profile turned on by default for Azure catalog creation. When creating Azure machine catalogs using Web Studio, the Use a machine profile option is now selected by default. For more information, see Create a machine catalog using an Azure Resource Manager image.

• Annotate an image when updating machines. In Web Studio, you can now annotate an image by adding a note for it when updating an MCS-created catalog. Each time you update the catalog, a note-related entry is created whether you add a note. If you update the catalog without adding a note, the entry appears as null (-). To view note history for the image, select the catalog, click Template Properties in the lower pane, and then click View note history. For more information, see Change the master image for a catalog.

• Improve performance by preserving a provisioned VM when power cycling. We’ve added a setting, Retain VMs across power cycles, to the Machine Catalog Setup > Disk Settings page. The setting lets you preserve a provisioned VM when power cycling in Azure environments. For more information, see Create a Microsoft Azure catalog.

• Proxy mode for Web Studio. Previously, the Web Studio console had to communicate with both the Web Studio server and Delivery Controllers when managing sites. With proxy mode, the Web Studio server can now act as a proxy for Delivery Controllers, thus becoming the only access point for the Web Studio console. For more information, see Configure Web Studio as a proxy for Delivery Controllers.

Note:

Some of the information sources above direct you to the Citrix DaaS documentation. In Citrix DaaS, Web Studio is known as Full Configuration. We are in the process of updating the current documentation to cover Web Studio. Implementing the updates is an ongoing process. Your patience during this transition is appreciated.

System requirements

Supported operating systems:

• Windows Server 2022

• Windows Server 2019, Standard and Datacenter Editions, and with the Server Core option

• Windows Server 2016, Standard and Datacenter Editions, and with the Server Core option

Prerequisites

This release of Web Studio is compatible with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2212 deployments and later.

For deployments earlier than 2212, first upgrade to 2212 and then install Web Studio.

Known limitation

If you use Web Studio and Citrix Studio interchangeably, consider the following limitation:

• A template created in Web Studio is not shown in Citrix Studio, and vice versa. This is because Web Studio uses a database different from Citrix Studio to store templates. As a workaround, create a policy from a template in Web Studio and then create a template from this policy in Citrix Studio, and vice versa.

Install Web Studio

The following information is a supplement to the guidance in Install core components. To install Web Studio:

• Install Web Studio using the full product ISO installer for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. The ISO installer checks for prerequisites, installs any missing components, sets up the Web Studio website (on the Delivery Controller if included in Delivery Controller installation), and performs basic configuration.

• If Web Studio was not included during installation, use the installer to add Web Studio.

• When installing Web Studio, you are prompted to type the address of a Delivery Controller.

  Note:

  • You can add more than one Delivery Controller. Web Studio attempts to connect to them in random order. If the Delivery Controller to which Web Studio is attempting to connect is unreachable, Web Studio automatically falls back to other Delivery Controllers.
  • If Director was selected in Core Components and installed, the Delivery Controllers you add here are used for both Web Studio and Director.
  • If you don’t have the external public trust certificate configured and don’t want to request the certificate from an enterprise CA, you just need to configure the FQDN of your Delivery Controller.
  • If you have the external public trust certificate and can configure the public DNS for your Delivery Controller, you can type the DNS name as the Delivery Controller address.
  • If you can request the certificate from your enterprise CA and can specify your personal DNS, you can add your personal DNS as the Delivery Controller address.

  

• To secure the communications between the browser and the web server and between the browser and the Delivery Controller, TLS encryption must be enabled on the IIS website hosting Web Studio and on the Delivery Controller. If no TLS certificate is configured for the Delivery Controller, the installer creates a self-signed certificate, with the FQDN of the Delivery Controller and localhost as the DNS name certificate. If a TLS certificate is configured, the installer doesn’t make any change. For more information about TLS encryption, see Secure a Web Studio deployment (optional).

• On the Finish page, the Launch Site Manager check box is selected by default so that the Citrix Site Manager opens automatically. To launch it later, open your desktop Start menu and select Citrix > Citrix Site Manager. Before you launch Web Studio, you need to use the Citrix Site Manager to create a site or join an existing site. For more information, see Set up a site.

  

Note:

You can also use the command line to install Web Studio. Example: .\XenDesktopServerSetup.exe /components webstudio /controllers "ddc1.studio.local" /configure_firewall /quiet. For more information, see Install using the command line.

Set up a site

To set up your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployment (also known as a site), use the tool, Citrix Site Manager. The tool is installed automatically with a Delivery Controller.

To set up a site, follow these steps:

1. On a Delivery Controller, open the desktop Start menu, and then select Citrix > Citrix Site Manager.

2. In the Citrix Site Manager, select Create a site. The Site Setup wizard appears.

3. Create a site and configure its settings as follows:

   • On the Introduction page, type a name for the site.
   • The Databases page contains selections for setting up the site, monitoring, and configuration logging databases. For more information, see Step 3. Databases.
   • On the Licensing page, specify the License Server address and then indicate which license to use (install). For more information, see Step 4. Licensing.

4. On the Summary page, check all settings and click Submit.

   The IP address of this Controller is automatically added to the site.

   Note:

   The user who creates a site becomes a full administrator for it. For more information, see Delegated administration.

If you install a new Controller after creating a site, you must add the Controller to the site. Detailed steps are as follows:

1. Run Citrix Site Manager on this new Controller.
2. Select Join an existing site.
3. Type the address of a Controller that is already added to the site.
4. Click Submit.

Add Delivery Controllers to Web Studio for management

Use the Studio configuration tool to add the Delivery Controllers to Web Studio for management. This tool is available in the Web Studio installation folder.

By default, the tool is installed in the following default folder.

• C:\Program Files\Citrix\Web Studio\Tool\StudioConfig.exe

Suppose you want to configure the following two Delivery Controllers for the site that you want to manage with Web Studio: ddc1.studio.local and ddc2.studio.local. Run the following PowerShell command:

• .\StudioConfig.exe /server "ddc1.studio.local,ddc2.studio.local"

Note:

• The tool requires computer administrator permissions.
• The Delivery Controller configuration changes might not take effect immediately due to cache settings on the IIS server. For immediate effect, go to the Web Studio server, open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, navigate to Start Page > Sites > Default Web Site, and select Restart in the Manage Website pane.

Configure Web Studio as a proxy for Delivery Controllers (optional)

By default, when you manage your deployment using the Web Studio console, you connect to both the Web Studio server and the Delivery Controllers through the web browser. We provide you with an option to configure the Web Studio server as a proxy for Delivery Controllers. As a result, you connect only to the Web Studio server when managing your deployment.

This section guides you to configure a Web Studio server as a proxy for Delivery Controllers. We assume that Web Studio and Delivery Controllers are installed on different servers.

Before you start, verify that you have all necessary core components installed in your deployment. For more information, see Install core components.

To enable proxy mode for Web Studio, follow these steps:

1. Back up the manifest.json file at C:\Program Files\Citrix\Web Studio\Site\assets\json\.
2. On the Web Studio server, run Windows PowerShell as an administrator.

3. Run the following command where you replace fqdn_of_webstudio_machine with the FQDN of your Web Studio server.

   & "c:\Program Files\Citrix\Web Studio\Tool\StudioConfig.exe" /ProxyServer fqdn_of_webstudio_machine

To disable proxy mode for Web Studio, overwrite manifest.json at C:\Program Files\Citrix\Web Studio\Site\assets\json\ with the manifest.json file you backed up.

Note:

As a best practice, we recommend that you secure your Web Studio deployment by using an external public trust certificate or a certificate from an enterprise Certificate Authority (CA). For more information, see Secure a Web Studio deployment.

Log on to Web Studio

The Web Studio website is located at https://<address of the server hosting Web Studio>/Citrix/WebStudio.

To log on to Web Studio, open your desktop Start menu and select Citrix > Citrix Web Studio. Administrators with permissions for Web Studio must be Active Directory domain users. When logging on to Web Studio, consider the following scenarios:

• If you have not yet specified Delivery Controllers for the site. You are prompted to specify a Delivery Controller so that you are provided with temporary access to Web Studio.

• If the specified Delivery Controllers are currently unreachable, you can’t log on to Web Studio. Test your connections to make sure that those Delivery Controllers are reachable. Or specify an alternate Delivery Controller so that you are provided with temporary access to Web Studio.

Next steps

1. Install VDAs

2. Use Web Studio to deliver virtual apps and desktops to your users by:

   1. Creating a machine catalog

   2. Creating a delivery group

   3. Creating an application group (optional)

      The information sources direct you to the articles specific to Citrix Studio (the windows-based management console). Citrix Studio and Web Studio have a different look and feel but the workflows for configuring settings remain the same (unless otherwise stated).