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# citrix-vad
s
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j
Not scary. Just make sure you have your VM and DBs backed up.
a
i've read that its recommended to get to CU4 first THEN to 1912 but i'll let others chime in on that. i'm looking at the same situation but currently at CU2
j
@Joel Donaldson yep of course. Although I’ve never seen any official Citrix docs on how to roll back a failed in place upgrade. 😀
a
other than just snapshotting your servers and backing up the sql db first and roll back that way right?
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n
Finishing up our 7.15 to 1912 upgrade as I type this. Nearly everything worked fine, except our W10 VDAs required 2 reboots in order to successfully register and work properly.
a
@Nick Panaccio i think you had jumped to cu5 first and then 1912, right? or am i mixing you up w/ someone else
n
Yes, we jumped to CU5 first.
Though Citrix told us we didn't have to.
a
i guess not a huge deal to make that jump first to be safe
b
We went from CU4 to 1912 without issue
r
The upgrades are straight foward, Just snapshot everthing and backup DBs. I can send you a guide on what I did if you cant find any material out on the web.
j
Cheers all for the feedback. @Ray Davis Obviously I’ve got the official documentation but would be great if you could send your guide. Anything extra is always helpful. Much appreciated.
t
We just finished ours last week. We went from 7.15 CU2 straight to 1912 with few issues. I would recommend you download and install the .Net framework separately from the upgrade as it saves a chunk of time waiting for it download and install during the install. Our biggest problem was updating the WEM agent from 4.7 to 2003. The install had corrupted and wouldn’t upgrade or uninstall so we had to redo the Platform layer again. We didn’t upgrade PVS as we are planning to move to MCS soon.
s
Have done a good few 7.15 CU4 to 19.12 LTSR, each one went off without a hitch, seems to be a really stable upgrade...
n
I second the .NET installs. We have two separate sites, and on the second site we pre-installed .NET before the installations because of how long that installation can take.
WRT App Layering, I wouldn't upgrade anything, personally. This calls for a new Platform layer.
t
I was trying to take a shortcut. 😲 We will be moving from Server 2016 to 2019 for OneDrive support and I didn’t want to spend to long on the 2016 image. I ended up spending longer trouble shooting WEM then it took to create the new layer.
a
@Nick Panaccio for your site that you pre-upgraded .net, how long did the 1912 upgrade go then? we may be pulling the trigger on our upgrade from 7.15 cu2 to 1912 directly tomorrow night so just planning my outtage (2 servers only)
n
We jumped from CU2 to CU5 and then to 1912, and with all steps accounted for, I want to say it took us 4-5 hours? We were pretty patient and rebooted more than was probably required. Validating XenDesktop afterwards was by far the longest process.
a
ouch ok thats longer than i thought. i thought i remembered our last upgrade like this taking about 1-2 hrs but that was a direct jump. it sounded like Citrix says you CAN go directly from CU2 to 1912 i think though right? db backups and server snapshots first of course
t
We took about two hours to complete the upgrade of four DDCs and the DB. We installed .Net out with the installer but at the same time.
n
We saw some weird issues with the first upgrade - which was a jump from CU2 to 1912 - which is why we went to CU5 first on the second site.
t
We went from CU2 to 1912.
a
cool thanks @TimonW! i'm hoping to do the .net upgrade tonight if i can. i cant imagine the newer .net is an issue w/ the older 7.15 cu2 right if i do it ahead of time?
t
I doubt it will matter. One thing to note is we upgraded the first two DDCs then upgraded the database. After we upgraded the second two, Studio prompted us to upgrade the database again. It ran the upgrade and updated a few more things. I had a session running the entire time and it didn’t skip a beat. Good luck with the upgrade. 👍
a
awesome! thanks for the help! arent you usually supposed to do 1 DDC, then db upgrade and then the reamaining DDCs? or i may be mixing it up
t
I think it’s half of them, upgrade then do the rest.
n
Yeah, half, update schema, upgrade the other half.
@TimonW: We saw the same behavior, Studio prompting to upgrade the database after each DDC upgrade. None of us had ever seen that before.
We still had a crazy issue where my W10 VDAs had to be powered on and rebooted twice before they would register properly and start functioning (like receiving policies). Captured logs for Citrix, and in typical Citrix fashion, received the "this capture is missing certain files" reply (thanks, Scout!).
a
ok cool we only have the 2 ddc's so 1 upgrade, db upgrade then the other so makes sense and just expect a possible scheme update after each and possible reboot of desktops twice which shouldnt be a big deal. reboots are pretty quick on our setup. @Nick Panaccio when you say issue functioning how did you know they werent? not registering or more?
n
Don't forget to upgrade your catalogs and DG, too.
There were a lot of Citrix Desktop Service errors in the event log. They would attempt to register, then fail. The biggest tell was logging into a desktop and not having any Citrix policies applied.
a
yup no problem! thanks for the reminder! i just noticed that our DDCs only have 4gb of ram too so i'll try and get us to 8 like the requirements say
good deal , good to know what to test right away ! thanks for the help
n
The one thing that stood out while troubleshooting was that c:\ProgramData\CitrixCseCache\Citrix-Gpo-1-HDXSite - ComputerPolicy.gpf" would always have an old timestamp if the VDA was broken. If the timestamp was from the time it booted, it was fine. Wound up writing a quick PS script to check this on all VDAs just to be safe.
a
nice! mind sharing that PS? i may be able to compare that w/ ControlUP but if you have something you found helpful i'm all ears!
n
Copy code
$ErrorActionPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'
$VDAs = Get-Content .\VDAs.txt
ForEach ($VDA in $VDAs) {
	If (Test-Connection -ComputerName $VDA -Count 1 -Quiet) {
		$File = Get-ChildItem "\\$VDA\c$\ProgramData\CitrixCseCache\Citrix-Gpo-1-HDXSite - ComputerPolicy.gpf"
		$Output = ($File).LastWriteTime.ToString()
		$VDA+","+$Output | Out-File -Append .\VDAResults.txt
	}
}
a
i'd think i should be safe to upgrade .net on each DDCs tonight 1 at a time w/ out a maintenance window right since they are load balanced?
n
Just put your VDA hostnames into that VDAs.txt file.
a
awesome thanks! you rock
n
It was different for us, but I'd have no issues personally upgrading .NET the night before the upgrade.
a
ya i would think itd be no different than when i reboot them off hours 1 at a time. could see that definitely decreasing the upgrade time
n
Stuff like this is why our organization wanted to go with 2 identical sites. Drain the first site, take it offline, then do what you need to do while everyone else is on the other site.
a
good idea!
n
...until your org is pushing you to increase density so much so that you couldn't fail over an entire site onto the other. 😞
a
right! we're about 500 desktops right now so hasnt too TOO bad. just have to make sure to get our RAM bumped up on those DDCs quick. what do you have on yours for CPU / Ram?
n
4 vCPU/8GB for ours.
a
is there an official cpu recommendation for 1912? i only see ram and looking at ours i see they only gave me 1 vCPU so that cant be good
actually i see 4 is the recommendation
j
@Nick Panaccio apologies to ask, I may have missed something but can you explain a bit more about your 2 identical sites idea? As mentioned, I’m under pressure to upgrade from 7.15 to 1912 but obviously can’t afford any major issues at the moment. We have plenty of spare VM and DB capacity, so I have been toying with an idea of building a brand new 1912 site in parallel and then moving xenapp servers across in small increments. Therefore if we discovered a major issue in, for example 1 week time, we could just move users back to 7.15 farm. After all it would only be 2 new DDCs and a new DB. Use the same SF servers and slowly move xenapp servers from old site to new? The only part I’m worried about is the Citrix policies, as these would be time consuming to recreate. But this idea could be risk free, complete back out plan and zero down time. Is this same thing as you devised?
n
It's pretty straightforward - we just doubled up on everything. We have two datacenters, and in each of them we built a brand new Citrix site. Each site has: 3 DDCs, 1 StoreFront, 3 PVSs, 1 Director, and its own SQL cluster. We have a single license server handling licensing for both sites. In StoreFront we use aggregation to combine both sites so that users only see one icon for their apps/desktop, and can hit either site. Outside of the license server, our App Layering appliance and WEM are on their own islands being used for both sites.
The biggest drawback is having to duplicate all of your work. Set a policy in one site? Make sure you do it in the other. Same for delivery groups, etc.
j
Yes, so I think a very similar idea. Build new 1912, aggregate in SF and slowly migrate the users/servers. Users see same name desktop/app and don’t know. Yes the policies are my biggest headache as you can’t import/export to different sites and I assume versions? Thanks @Nick Panaccio at least the idea isn’t totally crazy then!!
a
if we are using citrix FAS, do we HAVE to upgrade those at the same time we upgrade VAD or can the older 7.15 version of FAS be updated later? just coordinating everything we need
n
The policies thing is minor, since it doesn't take long to configure. You just have to make sure you get into the routine of changing it in two places (if you use Studio).
👍 1
No idea on FAS.
a
no problem! thanks for the help! hopefully my .net 4.7.2 upgrade goes smooth tonight
r
@Jakspurs this was what I did in my dev environment. Its not finished but will help you. (Note I did my VDA side first) The docs states you can do them anytime. Just something I did.
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j
@Ray Davis absolutely great stuff - thank you. Really useful and very much appreciated 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
a
quick question for the group here.....so i'm an admin on my DDC servers and Citrix admin but NOT on the SQL server that hosts our DB. I am doing this upgrade this weekend along with my SQL admin so curious the best approach for the upgrade. can i be RDP'd into my DDC's and do the citrix upgrade and him jump in to do the sql upgrade part w/ entering his creds or better if he signs into the DDC and runs it all w/ him logged in since windows authentication should pass through is creds for the automatic site upgrade for the db?
t
We use a service account to run the Citrix services and increased to permissions to dbo for the upgrade.
a
i may not be able to get anything like that changed prior to the upgrade this time i'm afraid but good idea . so if i just have him logged into the DDC and we run the upgrade that way, have you found the automatic site upgrade to work well w/ 1912? i know in the past we had to do the manual script way
n
FWIW, I would upgrade your controllers using the same account that created the site. I’ve seen weird upgrade issues where an admin - even with the appropriate SQL rights - is unable to complete the upgrade process.
I’d also go the auto site upgrade route, personally. Just make sure you run your site test beforehand.
t
I have always done the automatic site upgrade. I’m lucky that my DBAs are happy with that and do not insist on doing everything themselves.
a
awesome thanks guys! yup i think i'm gonna have my DBA rdp into my controller and i take over and run the install so it uses his AD account (since he created the db for me initially) just to play it safe. good call there. I got the .net 4.8 upgrades done last night...thankfully only took 5 min on each doing it that way so hopefully takes some time off
n
It took 2 hours on one of our controllers, lol.
a
ouch! and that was JUST for .net you said right? .net can kiss my ass lol
n
Yep, that was just .NET. Everything else was quick. Hopefully Citrix changes the PVS install behavior, because you think you’re done, and 3-4 minutes after staring at your desktop, the installer randomly pops up to finish configuration.
a
thats annoying. i'm hoping since we just have the 2 controllers and .net is done and no vda's to worry about it wont take too long. i know my DBA isnt thrilled about having to work this weekend
alright last nights upgrade went great! 2 controllers done and systems rebooted in about 90 min. taking everyones notes on what they experienced to know they were "expected" helped quite a bit and went very smooth! now the nervous 1st morning begins here! thanks for everyones help!
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