Interesting Citrix XenDesktop issues. Some Solved, Some Not.

Recently, I have been pretty heavily involved in Citrix focused solutions with my head buried in various issues.  Citrix XenDesktop, XenApp and Provisioning servers.  Everything but the Hypervisor has been part of the Citrix provided solutions.  The hypervisors of choice are still VMware vSphere at all of my clients. 

The first issue I ran into was on the DDC.  Citrix’s Desktop Delivery Controller piece that directs users to their waiting desktops for their VDI solution.  After installing the latest DDC software on a Windows 2003 x64 bit server (yeah – Citrix *still* doesn’t support its DDC on Windows 2008 R2 – Boo!), I was receiving the following error below : Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller does not have the required licenses present on the license server.

Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller does not have the required licenses present on the license server.

Really?!? I had all of my licenses on the licenses server and the servers were actively checking the licenses in and out of the FlexLM. (Side note to Citrix – Please get rid of the FlexLM!).  In fact, everything was working great (users logging in and out without issue) but on the consoles of the DDCs, this error was queuing up every fifteen minutes flooding the event logs and making console logon times annoying (clicking through dozens of popup errors to log in).  Most times, this error message points to a specific issue related to the mismatch of the product version installed and the actual licenses installed.  Not the case for me.  If it had been, my user logins would have also been affected.  My error seemed to be a fake error message that although annoying did not interfere with operations.  I opened up a case with Citrix and after numerous transfers and escalations, a private hotfix was provided to fix my issue.  The fix included a new Wsxica.dll.  This library includes routines for Citrix to verify that a user has rights to a published application.  I’m assuming it also verifies licensing as well.   Reference Case # 60365220 if you at the end of your rope and think this might help.

The second issue involved using XenDesktop 4 to a physical Windows 7 machine with multi monitors.  Even after following the Citrix Administration guide for this scenario, it just isn’t working correctly.  The mouse seems offset (up to half the screen) from where the pointer actually is.  The resolution of the remote VDI session is all screwed up and the session is unusable.  With a single monitor target, such as a VM, the XenDesktop Session works perfectly.  I am still waiting on this one from Citrix.  The case is open but has not been resolved yet.  If you are successfully using XenDesktop to a Windows 7 multi-monitor solution, please let me know in the comments.

Back to troubleshooting.

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