Citrix updates XenApp and XenDesktop products to version 7.14
The XenApp and XenDesktop 7.14 is the industry-leading solution for virtual application delivery, providing Windows apps to workers on any device, anywhere. By centralizing control with XenApp, you can give your team the freedom of mobility while increasing security and reducing IT costs.
XenApp and XenDesktop 7.14 introduces license type flexibility or the ability to combine different license types within a single site. This new flexibility reduces infrastructure costs, minimizes operational overhead, and simplifies migration from older platforms. License type flexibility is ideal for merger and acquisition activities when companies utilize different license types or for accelerating an upgrade from an older XenApp version. Now, you can mix and match product line and model types within a site on a per delivery group basis. For example, you can create one delivery group for XenDesktop Platinum edition user/device licenses and another delivery group for XenApp Platinum edition concurrent license. Assigning license types to a delivery group enables you to consolidate infrastructure, thereby reduce costs and operational overhead while simplifying your administration.
The XenApp and XenDesktop 7.14 release includes the following new and enhanced features.
Maintenance and troubleshooting with Citrix Scout
The new Citrix Scout collects diagnostics from Delivery Controllers and VDAs. Use collections for proactive maintenance and troubleshooting. This new version is installed automatically when you install or upgrade a Delivery Controller or a VDA.
- Collect: Runs a one-time diagnostics collection on machines you select. Then, you upload the zip file containing the collection to Citrix or save it locally.
- Trace & Reproduce: Starts a manual trace on machines you select. Then you re-create issues on those machines. After re-creating the issue, the trace is stopped. Then, Scout collects other diagnostics and uploads the zip file containing the trace and the collection to Citrix, or saves the file locally.
- Schedule: Schedules daily or weekly diagnostics collections at a specified time, on machines you select. The zip file containing each collection is automatically uploaded to Citrix.
Citrix Smart Tools agent
When installing or upgrading a Delivery Controller, you can connect to Citrix Smart Tools (formerly Citrix Lifecycle Management), which installs a Smart Tools agent. Smart Tools enables you to automate deployment tasks, health checks, and power management. You can also enroll in Call Home, as in earlier releases.
The Smart Tools page for XenApp and XenDesktop in the installation wizard replaces the Call Home page. When installing a VDA, you are prompted to enroll in Call Home. The wizard page is retitled Smart Tools because Call Home is a part of Smart Tools.
Local Host Cache
- In a VDI deployment, the number of VDAs that can be handled effectively during an outage has increased:
- In a single-zone VDI deployment, up to 10,000 VDAs can be handled during an outage.
- In a multi-zone VDI deployment, up to 10,000 VDAs in each zone can be handled during an outage, to a maximum of 40,000 VDAs in the site.
- In earlier releases, power-managed desktop VDAs in pooled Delivery Groups that have the ShutdownDesktopsAfterUse property enabled are placed into maintenance mode when an outage occurs. That remains the default behavior. Now, you can override that default behavior by running PowerShell cmdlets for the Site and the affected Delivery Groups. If you enable this feature, you cannot rely on power management during an outage, and the desktops might contain data from a previous user.
Session Recording
Session Recording includes the following new and experimental features:
- Session Recording integrated into the XenApp and XenDesktop full product installer. With this feature, you can install Session Recording by using the unified XenApp/XenDesktop installer. For more information, see Install, upgrade, and uninstall Session Recording.
- Load balancing for Session Recording. This is an experimental feature to support load balancing across the Session Recording Servers. Citrix recommends that you leverage Citrix NetScaler for load balancing. For more information, see Configure Session Recording with load balancing.
Director
Director includes the following new and enhanced features in XenApp and XenDesktop:
- Disk Monitoring. Director provides IOPS (I/O operations per second) and disk latency measurements of Server and Desktop OS VDAs. Both measurements are important performance measurements of a disk. The Machine Utilization panel is extended to display the real-time average IOPS and disk latency for a selected VDA as graphs. Use Historical Machine Utilization to view and export the average IOPS and disk latency measurements for a selected time period. This data helps you troubleshoot disk-related issues on a machine.
The Trends -> Resource Utilization tab in Director is extended to display the historical IOPS and disk latency metrics for all VDAs in the selected Delivery Group. The graph displays the average IOPS for the last 24 hours, last month, and last year time periods. The table displays the average and peak IOPS, and the disk latency per machine. This data helps you size and plan disk capacity.
This feature requires Delivery Controller(s) and VDAs version 7.14 or later.
For more information, see Monitor deployments, Troubleshoot machines, and Monitoring policy settings.
- GPU Monitoring. Director provides monitoring of the NVIDIA GPU infrastructure in the environment. The Machine Utilization panel on Director is enhanced to display real-time NVIDIA GPU monitoring graphs. The graphs include percentage utilization of the NVIDIA GPU, the GPU memory, and of the Encoder and the Decoder of the Server and Desktop OS VDAs. For VDAs that access more than one GPU, the average of the GPU metrics collected from the individual GPUs is displayed.
This feature requires Delivery Controller(s) and VDAs version 7.14 or later. GPUs are monitored on VDAs running 64-bit Windows, with NVIDIA Tesla M60 GPUs and running Display Driver version 369.17 or later.
For more information, see Monitor deployments, and Troubleshoot machines.
Multi-type licensing
Multi-type licensing supports consumption of different license types for Delivery Groups on a single XenApp or XenDesktop site. Type is a single combination of Product ID (XDT, MPS) and Model (UserDevice, Concurrent). If multi-type licensing is not configured, different license types can be used only when configured on entirely separate sites. For details, see Multi-type licensing.