What’s new
What’s new in 2503.1
This release of Citrix Provisioning includes the enhancements described in the following sections. It includes several fixes for issues seen in past releases, and issues that we have identified.
Improved DST management
Previously, whenever the Daylight Saving Time (DST) changed, VDAs sometimes wouldn’t contact the Domain Controller during boot. The cause of this was Windows miscalculating system time (UTC) at boot and later correcting it through NTP. If any service (such as GPO) attempted to contact the Domain Controller while the time was wrong, this would be rejected because of the incorrect time. This issue arises from an interaction between the hypervisor’s virtual Real Time Clock (RTC), which stores local time, and the registry’s timezone key, which holds the offset from UTC for the current timezone, including DST adjustment. At boot time, Windows takes the value from the RTC and adds the offset from the registry to calculate an initial value for system time (which is always UTC).
Consider the following case:
- The vDisk was created while in DST (say EDT for example) so the offset from UTC is 4 hours and this is the value in the registry.
- While the VM is running, the daylight savings transition to normal time happens - then, Windows rewrites the RTC with the new local time (which is UTC-5hrs in the case of EST) and also updates the registry with the new offset of 5 hours.
- The VM is rebooted at 9am EST (2pm UTC) and starts again – the RTC is still programmed with 9am but the registry is reset to 4hrs offset as the vDisk is in read only mode.
- As Windows starts, if takes the current RTC and adds the registry value to get UTC - adding 4 hrs to the current RTC value results in a UTC time of 1pm which is 1 hour too early.
From this point on, Windows continues to boot and eventually starts the NTP client that corrects the system time and also reapplies the transition to non-DST (so again updating the real-time clock and changing the registry in the running VM.)
As a result, each time the VM boots, the system time is off by 1 hour during initial booting of the VM.
With this release, Citrix Provisioning improves the DST handling by:
- Capturing the UTC offset from the registry when promoting a vDisk to production or standard mode.
- Sending the correct local time (that matches the timezone information in the vDisk) to the target at boot.
- Setting the RTC’s local time to match the vDisk registry during UEFI time, ensuring accurate local time from Windows startup.
For more information, see:
Deprecation of Network service account
From Citrix Provisioning version 2503.1, the support for running the Citrix Provisioning services as Network Service is deprecated. See Deprecation.
Enhanced log files management
Citrix Provisioning allows you to retain log data without using too much disk space by keeping the latest log files and automatically deleting the oldest. Previous versions of log files are indexed as 1, 2, 3, and so on, where the file with the largest index is the oldest.
The feature applies to the following log files:
-
ConfigWizard.log(Text Logs) -
ConfigWizard.etl(Binary Logs) -
ConfigWizard.out(Standard Output) Citrix Virtual Desktop Setup Wizard.logStreamed VM Setup Wizard.logXdExportWizard.log
The new location of ConfigWizard.log, ConfigWizard.etl, and ConfigWizard.out log files is C:\ProgramData\Citrix\Provisioning Services\Log\.
Updated SPN requirements for Citrix Provisioning Services
The two types of authentication that are supported for communicating with the Citrix Provisioning Services in an Active Directory environment are: Kerberos and NTLM. For environments where NTLM is disabled, it is required to configure the Service Principal Names (SPNs) to authenticate the Citrix Provisioning Services. Citrix Provisioning Services could run as a domain user or Network Service, each with different SPN requirements. However, the support for running Citrix Provisioning services as Network Service is being deprecated from Citrix Provisioning version 2503.1. Therefore, only domain users must be used to run Citrix Provisioning services, and Domain Administrators must create the required SPNs on the domain user account.
Increased default RAM when provisioning targets using the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Setup Wizard
Previously, the default maximum RAM size when provisioning targets using the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Setup Wizard was 64 MB. However, the default maximum RAM size is now increased to 256 MB.
Support for Linux streaming target devices
For Linux streaming, the following operating system is supported:
- Ubuntu 24.04
For more information, see Streaming Linux target devices.