Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 2308

April 26, 2024

Contributed by:

C C

About the release

This Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops release includes new versions of the Windows Virtual Delivery Agents (VDAs) and new versions of several core components. You can:

Install or upgrade a site: Use the ISO for this release to install or upgrade core components and VDAs. Installing or upgrading to the latest version allows you to use the latest features.
Install or upgrade VDAs in an existing site: If you already have a deployment and aren’t ready to upgrade your core components, you can still use several of the latest HDX features by installing (or upgrading to) a new VDA. Upgrading only the VDAs can be helpful when you want to test enhancements in a non-production environment.

After upgrading your VDAs to this version (from version 7.9 or later), you do not need to update the machine catalog’s functional level. The 7.9 (or later) value remains the default functional level and is valid for this release. For more information, see VDA versions and functional levels.

For installation and upgrade instructions:

If you are building a new site, follow the sequence in Install and configure.
If you are upgrading a site, see Upgrade a deployment.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 2308

Support for Windows Server Core 2022

You can now use Windows Server Core 2022 for Delivery Controller, Studio, and Director. For more information, see System requirements.

PowerShell commands to manage Local Host Cache(LHC)

You can now use PowerShell commands to manage LHC on Delivery Controllers. For more information, see Local Host Cache PowerShell commands.

Support for SQL Server 2022

You can now also use SQL Server 2022 to save your site configurations. For more information, see System Requirements.

Vertical Load Balancing at site level for on-premises deployments

You can now use Vertical Load Balancing (VLB) at site level for on-premises deployments to save costs by packing as many sessions in one machine before moving to the next machine and powering it on.

Support for Cloud provisioning using a 30 day trial license

You can now have all cloud-related features that are part of the Citrix Universal subscription license using a 30 day trial with no license. However, if you do not purchase a Citrix Universal subscription license after the trial, then the already deployed cloud features won’t be available.

Support for local launch of MSIX and MSIX app attach packages

With this feature, you can now do the local launch of the MSIX and MSIX app attach packages on the VDA desktop if vPrefer is configured. For more information on controlling local launches with vPrefer, see Control local launch of applications on published desktops.

Virtual Delivery Agents (VDAs) 2308

Audio volume synchronization

Audio volume is now synchronized between the VDA audio and your redirected audio devices. You can now tune the volume using the VDA audio volume slider and have the same volume on your device.

Loss tolerant mode for Audio (Preview)

Audio is now supported over the EDT (Enlightened Data Transport) Lossy protocol. This feature increases the user experience for real-time streaming when users are connecting through networks with high latency and packet loss. When this feature is enabled, Adaptive Transport in Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops use the EDT Lossy transport protocol for a better audio experience. This feature is disabled by default in 2308 and can be enabled by registry configuration. For more information, see Support for audio over EDT Lossy protocol.

EDT enhanced congestion control

The EDT congestion control algorithm has been updated to optimize response and performance in challenging networks.

Web Studio

Integrated Citrix Secure Private Access

The Citrix Secure Private Access service can now be integrated into the Web Studio console, letting you seamlessly access the service through Web Studio. To access the service, select Secure Private Access in the left pane of the Web Studio console. The service’s UI opens on a new tab of your web browser. For more information about Citrix Secure Private Access, see its document.

To enable the integration, follow these steps:

Open C:\Program Files\Citrix\Web Studio\Site\studio\assets\json\spa-config.json on the Web Studio server.

Locate the following string.

"Name": "Spa"
"https://[spaserver]:4443/accessSecurity/ui"
<!--NeedCopy-->

Replace [spaserver] with the IP address or FQDN of the Secure Private Access server.

Configurable Studio inactivity timeout

As an administrator with Full Access, you can now configure the inactivity timeout for the Studio console. This setting determines how long administrators can remain inactive before being automatically signed out of the Studio console. The inactivity duration must be set between 10 minutes and 24 hours. For more information, see Set the inactivity timeout.

Integrated Windows authentication

You can now enable integrated Windows authentication for quick and seamless access to Web Studio. This feature allows your users to access Web Studio with their Windows credentials, using Kerberos or NTLM. For more information, see Manage authentication.

Image refresh option

When selecting master images for machine catalogs, you can now quickly get the most up-to-date master image list using the Refresh option at the top right corner. Note that Refresh option is not available for AWS catalogs. Also, a Refresh option is available for machine profiles and host groups in Azure catalogs.

Removed support for changing the OS type for Azure catalogs

When changing catalog images, only images with the same OS type as the image in use are shown. With this enhancement, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops no longer support changing the OS type for Azure catalogs after catalog creation.

Shared tenants for connections

You can now add tenants and subscriptions that share the Azure Compute Gallery with the subscription of the connection. As a result, when creating or updating catalogs, you can select shared images from those tenants and subscriptions. For more information, see Manage service principals and connections.

Support for organizing machine catalogs, delivery groups, and application groups using folders

You can now create nested folders to organize machine catalogs, delivery groups, and application groups for easy access.

Citrix Director

Probes summary and drilldown

Application and desktop probing automates the process of checking the health of the apps and desktops that are published in a site by test launching them serially using StoreFront. The results of probing are available in Director.

Now, all probe related results are consolidated under the Trends > Probes tab with the following information:

The Overview tab provides a summary of all the configured probes in a single view. You can filter probes based on Time Period, Probe Type, Endpoint name, Application Name, Desktop Name and Probe Result Type. Probes that match the filter criteria are shown with the following details per probe, application/desktop, and endpoint.

Completed Runs – the number of probe runs that ran to completion.
Failed Runs – the number of probe runs that failed.

The Probe Runs tab provides the results of the completed probe runs in detail. You can filter the probe runs based on Time Period, Probe Type, Endpoint name, Application Name, Desktop Name and Probe Failure Stage. Clicking the Probe Name, Failed Runs, Application/Desktop name links also takes you to the Probe Runs page with the list of Probe runs matching the filter criteria.

For more information, see the Application and Desktop Probing article.

Citrix Probe Agent support for Citrix Gateway Multi-factor authentication

Citrix Probe Agent for application and desktop probing now supports authentication via Citrix Gateway Multi-factor authentication. This feature is available only for Citrix Gateway that is configured with LDAP and Native OTP using Single Login Schema. The comprehensive probe results available on Director help troubleshoot issues related to the applications, hosting machine, or connections before the users experience them. For more information, see the Application and Desktop Probing article.

Disable Hypervisor Alerts

You can now disable Hypervisor Alerts from Citrix Alerts Policy > Site Policy > Hypervisor Health. This helps optimize alerts if your role does not involve infrastructure monitoring. For more information, see Hypervisor Alerts Monitoring.

Trends for Session Experience metrics

Director is introducing a new User Details > Session Experience tab with enhanced troubleshooting workflows starting with the ability to correlate real-time metrics in identifying issues within user sessions. Session Experience now contains trends of session metrics like ICARTT, ICA Latency, Frames Per Second, Output Bandwidth Available, and Output Bandwidth Consumed. This feature helps reduce the mean time for resolution by enabling you to correlate multiple performance metrics in a single view. For more information see the User Issues article.

Machine Creation Services (MCS)

Secure environment for GCP managed traffic

With this feature, you can now allow private Google access to your Google Cloud projects. This implementation enhances security to handle sensitive data. To achieve this, you can do one of the following:

Allow ingress rule for Cloud Build Service Account in VPC service perimeter
If you are using a private worker pool, add UsePrivateWorkerPool in CustomProperties.

For more information, see Create a secure environment for GCP managed traffic.

Support for machine profile in Citrix Hypervisor

In Citrix Hypervisor, you can now create an MCS machine catalog using a machine profile. The source of the machine profile input is a VM. The machine profile captures the hardware properties from a VM template and applies them to the newly provisioned VMs in the catalog. For more information, see Create a machine catalog using a machine profile.

Ability to reset the OS disk of a persistent VM in an MCS created machine catalog in SCVMM

You can now use the PowerShell command Reset-ProvVMDisk to reset the OS disk of a persistent VM in an MCS-created machine catalog. The feature automates the process of resetting the OS disk. For example, it helps in resetting the VM to its initial status of a persistent development desktop catalog created using MCS. Currently, this feature is applicable to Azure, Citrix Hypervisor, SCVMM, and VMware virtualization environments. For more information on using the PowerShell command to reset the OS disk, see Reset OS disk.

Restrict upload and download of managed disks

In Azure environments, you can use private endpoints to restrict access to disk contents. This implementation helps you to securely access data over a private link. However, as per Azure policy, you cannot upload or download more than five disks or snapshots at the same time with the same disk access object. For more information on using private endpoints to restrict the export and import of managed disks, see Restrict import/export access for managed disks using Azure Private Link.

With this feature, you can use disk access and private endpoints to lock down your Azure environment, without any risks of failures because of exceeding the limit. MCS runs only up to five concurrent operations. Any excess operations are queued to run when there is more bandwidth.

Support for assigning a specific drive letter to MCS I/O write-back cache disk

Previously, the Windows operating system automatically assigned a drive letter to the MCS I/O write-back cache disk. With this feature, you can now assign a specific drive letter to MCS I/O write-back cache disk. This implementation helps you to avoid conflicts between the drive letter of any applications that you use and the drive letter of the MCS I/O write-back cache disk. This feature is applicable to only the Windows operating system. For more information, see Assign a specific drive letter to MCS I/O write-back cache disk.

Preserve NIC settings on provisioned VMs

Previously, the NIC settings of the master image were not retained in the provisioned VMs. For example, if you configured the DNS settings on the master image, the provisioned VMs did not retain the configured DNS settings of the master image. With this feature, the provisioned VMs can now retain the NIC settings of the master image. The settings are retained even after a Windows update. The filter driver is automatically installed if you do a fresh installation of VDA version 2308 or later on a Hyper-V deployed machine through the MCS master image installations. However, currently, if you upgrade from an older version of VDA (version less than 2308) and want to install the filter driver, then you must select the checkbox Citrix HyperV Filter Driver on the Additional Components page while upgrading the VDA. For more information, see Install additional components. This feature is applicable to:

Hyper-V VMs (including Azure and SCVMM)
Persistent and non-persistent MCS machine catalogs
Non-persistent MCS machine catalogs with MCSIO
Master image with multiple NICs

Previously, in Azure environments, you can share images only with shared subscriptions using the Azure Compute Gallery. With this feature, you can now select an image in the Azure Compute Gallery that belongs to a different shared subscription in a different tenant to create and update an MCS catalog. For more information, see Share images across tenants.

Update properties of individual VMs

You can now update the properties of individual VMs in a persistent MCS machine catalog using a PowerShell command. This implementation helps you to manage individual VMs efficiently without updating the entire machine catalog. Currently, this feature is applicable only to the Azure environment. For more information, see Update properties of individual VMs.