Citrix Xenapp 6.5 cannot be installed on Server 2012 but Citrix have released the tech preview of their next version of Xenapp which not only works on Server 2012 but includes some really interesting new features. One of the cool new things is that both Xendesktop and Xenapp are now intergrated into one product allowing you to provision both desktops and applications from a single window. If you go ahead and deploy the tech preview treat it like a Xendesktop install and infrastructure and you will not go far wrong. No longer do you install Xenapp onto each server that you want to host applications, now you have a excaliber controller and push out vda agents to all the desktops and servers you want to use to host either desktops or apps.
They have integrated profile management into the single management instance which is a nice step forward for those of you either still using roaming profiles or no management at all. Also MCS or provisioning services can be used to quickly scale your deployment based on workloads.
The tech preview is codenamed avalon-excaliber and is available for download from here .
There is a video demo of avalon recorded at synology is available to view here.
This is definitely the biggest leap forward for Xenapp/Xendesktop that I have seen for quite a few versions so go and check it out!
Author: Dale Scriven
