“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in joy, and were suddenly ecstatic. I fear something awesome has happened.” –Atum wan-Kenobi

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New Features

Citrix has released XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12, which, along with many other enhancements, includes the much anticipated return of Local Host Cache (LHC).  Although LHC shares the name as the XenApp 6.5 implementation, it is implemented completely differently and tasks such as periodic dsmaint and the randomized corruptions should be a thing of the past.

Admins can read about the feature here.

In addition to LHC, other totally awesome enhancements include multiple restart schedules for delivery groups  This can be combined with the new “Tag Restriction” feature that allows application and delivery groups  to be “subdivided” into smaller groups, effectively giving us the flexibility of worker groups entirely through tags.

It’s worth noting that in 7.11, automatic install and upgrade of Citrix Insight Services was enabled by default and disabled in the CLI and now the GUI and CLI are enabled by default.  The auto-upload can be disabled in the registry or using the CLI option.  When installing a Windows VDA, the CEIP is also automatically enrolled.  If you want to opt out of those settings consult the Citrix Insight Services article.

Enterprise customers see increased historical data from 7 days to 31 days in director.

See the complete “What’s new” for more.

Notable Fixes

“&” is now supported in application names

Machine Creation Services (MCS) created machines do not honor machine account password GPOs, causing passwords on the MCS machines to not reset.

Deprecation

Copying this verbatim to try to avoid confusion –

Announced in XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12

In-place upgrades from XenDesktop 5.6 or 5.6 FP1 will not be allowed after the next LTSR. Instead, you can migrate your XenDesktop 5.6 or 5.6 FP1 deployment to the current XenDesktop version.

The following platforms will not be supported after the next LTSR:

• VDAs on  Windows 8.1 and earlier Windows desktop releases. Install desktop OS VDAs on Windows 10.

• VDAs on Windows Server 2008 R2. Install server OS VDAs on supported versions such as Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2016.
• XenDesktop 5.6 used on Windows XP. No VDA installations on Windows XP will be supported. Install VDAs on a supported Windows version.
• CloudPlatform connections. Use a different supported hypervisor or cloud service.
• Azure Classic (also known as Azure Service Management) connections. Use Azure Resource Manager.
• Installing core components (other than Studio) on 32-bit machines: Delivery Controller, Director, StoreFront, and License Server. Use 64-bit machines.
• The following features will not be supported after the next LTSR:
  • Connection leasing. Use Local Host Cache.
• Legacy Thinwire mode
• Desktop Composition Redirection (DCR)
• Clear as mud?  Start planning now if you use any of these.
  

  Provisioning Services 7.12

  Although docs doesn’t currently listed it, you can view fixed issues here.  I’m personally glad that these fixes are now mainstream

  Server Issues

  • On a Provisioning Server running version 7.8, inventory replication shows that files are missing.[#LC5700]

     

  • Servers appear with the status message ‘Server Unreachable’ in the Replication Status Window.[#LC5683]

     

  • vDisk replication status fails to display on the remote server.
    [#LC4317]

  Storefront 3.8

  Multiple base URLs.  For those of you that needed this, you can agree that this is awesome.