RES Workspace Manager: Workspace Container settings not always applied in mixed mode

I’m not sure if this particular situation will occur in many production environments, but here’s the case we ran into during our RES Workspace Manager 2012 upgrade process:

I’m currently performing a migration from RES PowerFuse 2008 to the latest RES Workspace Manager 2012 SR1 software for a large Citrix XenApp environment. During the migration we are running a sort of mixed mode as we need to upgrade the Citrix XenApp servers in small batches to ensure users are not experiencing any downtime in the environment. Migrating to the latest version will take several days which creates a situation where we are running in a mixed mode configuration with both RES Workspace Manager 2012 and RES PowerFuse 2008 Agents connection to the upgraded database (based on RES Workspace Manager 2012).

RES Software has assured us that there is no problem connecting RES PowerFuse 2008 Agents to the upgraded database, as long as we are not using the RES PowerFuse 2008 Management Console to make configurational changes.
We did establish in our test environment that you can view the settings with the RES PowerFuse 2008 Management Console, but refrained from testing what would happen if we did use the old management console to make changes (no need for unneccessary havoc 😉 ).
 

Workspace Container settings

After upgrading the database we also made some configuration changes, ensures all the original settings (and Agents) were linked to a new Workspace Container ([original]) and new settings we implemented as basis settings. This allows us to keep the original settings linked to the new Workspace Container and already apply the new settings as the default settings for all other (read: newly added) Agents.

Unfortunately this plan didn’t work as designed as we quickly discovered that the RES PowerFuse 2008 Agents applied the basis settings and not the ones specified for the created Workspace Container. Settings for Applications, User Settings and Drive and Port Mappings are applied correctly, but the general settings for Background Composition, Screensaver Composition and Managed Application Security that are set for a specified Workspace Container are not applied. Instead the default settings are applied by the RES PowerFuse 2008 Agents.

Workaround

To ensure the correct settings are applied to the older Agents, we did transfer all new settings to a special Workspace Container ([new]) and the default settings were reconfigured to be the same as the ones matched to the [original] Workspace Container. After all Agents are migrated we can easily change the original settings as the new RES Workspace Manager 2012 Agents do apply the correct Workspace Container settings as we kept the [original] Workspace Container settings to quickly be able to switch between settings.

RESWM Workspace Container basic settings

So keep in mind that not all RES Workspace Manager 2012 Workspace Container related settings are applied by the RES PowerFuse 2008 Agents when you run in a mixed mode situation.
 

Esther Barthel

Solutions Architect at cognition IT

Esther has been working in different roles and functions as an IT consultant ever since she finished her Masters degree in Computer Science in 1997. She has worked as a web developer, database administrator, and server administrator until she discovered how Server-Based Computing ( SBC ) combined servers, desktops, and user experience in one solution. Esther has been specializing in virtualization solutions such as SBC, VDI, application, and server virtualization for over eight years now and is currently working as a Senior Consultant at PepperByte, where she designs and implements Citrix® solutions for both small-business and large-enterprise infrastructures scaling from 100 to 15,000 users.
In january 2014 her first book Citrix XenApp 6.5 Expert Cookbook was published by Packt Publishing.

Esther is awarded as a Citrix Technology Professional (CTP) from 2015 - 2017.
Esther is awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in 2017.

Esther is a Citrix Certified Expert – Virtualization (CCE-V), Citrix Certified Professional – Mobility (CCP-M), Citrix Certified Professional – Networking (CCP-N) and RES Software Certified Professional (RCP).