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 2303

The following features are now available in Web Studio:

• Autoscale available with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. Starting with this release, you can use Autoscale to power manage machines in your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployments. It provides a consistent, high-performance power management solution, letting you balance costs and user experience. For more information, see Autoscale.

• Support for identifying why a machine is in maintenance mode. Previously, PowerShell was your only choice to identify why a machine was in maintenance mode. You can now achieve that in Web Studio:

  1. Use Search to locate the machine.
  2. Check Maintenance Reason on the Details tab in the lower pane. Or, hover over the Maintenance mode column. The following information can appear:
     • By Administrator: Put into maintenance mode by the administrator.
     • Maximum Failed Registrations: Put into maintenance mode as machine exceeded maximum allowed registration attempts.

  Also, the Maintenance Reason filter is now available. You can use it to identify the target machines. The feature is useful for administrators to troubleshoot issues with machines in maintenance mode.

• Support for using shared images to create Azure machine catalogs. When creating Azure catalogs in Web Studio, you can now select shared images from different subscriptions (shared through the Azure Compute Gallery). For more information, see Create a machine catalog using an Azure Resource Manager image.

• Ability to track the progress of catalog creation and updates. Web Studio now lets you stay up to date on catalog creation and updates. You can gain an overview of the creation and update process, view the history of steps performed, and monitor the progress and running time of the current step. For more information, see Start creating the catalog.

• Change certain VM settings after creating Azure VM catalogs. Using Web Studio, you can now change the following settings after creating a catalog:

  • Machine size
  • Availability zones
  • Machine profile
  • License type

  To do that, on the Machine Catalogs node, select the catalog and then select Edit Machine Catalog in the action bar. For more information, see Edit a catalog.

• Policy modeling improvements. The policy modeling feature is now generally available with Web Studio. You can simulate policies for planning and testing purposes. For more information, see Use the Policy Modeling wizard.

• More session details. When you view a session in Web Studio > Search > Sessions, the session view (in the lower pane) now includes more session details to help you troubleshoot and identify client issues:

  • Reconnect time. The time when a session reconnected after being disconnected.
  • Client platform. The platform used to launch the session.
  • Client version. The version of the client platform used to launch the session.
  • Remote host IP. The IP address of the remote host where Citrix Workspace is being hosted.

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

• Windows 11

• Windows 10

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 limitations

• 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.

• To ensure a successful installation of Web Studio, do not change the default site name (Default Web Site) in Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Any changes to the default site name result in installation failures.

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)