In XenDesktop 7.0 Citrix has added App-V 5.0 Integration support which means you can now discover your App-V 5.0 Applications and publish them like local hosted applications. This blog will talk about “App-V Server Sync Failure” error that occurs when the users try to launch App-V applications.
To use App-V integration in Citrix Studio, as a first step Administrator should configure App-V Management and App-V Publishing Server in App-V Configuration Node.
After the administrator configures the App-V Management and Publishing Server, App-V applications can be published in Citrix Studio along with Master Image applications during creation of Desktops and Applications OR Applications Delivery group. You can learn more at /blogs/2013/06/28/microsoft-app-v-support-in-xendesktop-7/
The end users will be able to see App-V applications in their Receiver.
But end users might sometimes encounter the following error when trying to launch the applications.
There is more than one reason why this might occur – the publishing server is down, the package is removed from AppHub etc. One frequent cause for this error is when Citrix Components try to issue a Sync-Publishing Server cmdlet while App-V Client is doing Sync due to UserRefreshOnLogon.
To explain in detail, when an end user logs into Receiver and launches an application a new session is started for the user on VDA machine. If “UserRefreshOnLogon” is true for the publishing server on the VDA machine, App-V Client issues Sync. If application that is launched happens to be an App-V application, Citrix components issue a Sync operation. App-V 5.0 Client does not support the execution of simultaneous cmdlets. You can read more about this problem at http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX138056. Microsoft has fixed this issue in App-V 5.0 SP2 R2client.
Before solving this problem, Administrators can quickly check few things:
- Make sure that App-V Client is installed, and no earlier than App-V Client 5.0.
- Make sure that Temp Folder is pointing to the correct location, and that there is enough space available in the Temp directory.
- Run Get-ExecutionPolicy on VDA machine and check if it RemoteSigned.
- Make sure you have Administrator permissions and run Get-AppvClientConfiguration and make sure that EnablePackageScripts is set to 1.
Administrators can solve the Sync problem described above in one of the following ways. If you are using XD 7.1 skip XD 7.0 steps.
In XD 7.0:
To avoid App Launch failure the admin has to use the GPO policy mechanism and add the same publishing server (that was added in Desktop Studio) in GPO slots. To learn about how to add a publishing server through GPO policy you can read at
http://www.netdavidic.com/2013/03/deploy-app-v-50-client-via-gpo-and.html
While adding the publishing server in GPO slot set ‘User Publishing Refresh On Logon’ to False. Admin can add the publishing server in any slot (out of the 5 slots) but we recommend the admin to do the following. Go to VDA machine and run Get-AppvPublishingServer to get the Id of the publishing server. If the Id is 1 then add the publishing server in GPO slot 1. If the Id is 2 then add then publishing server in GPO slot 2.
You can read the Id by running Get-AppvPublishingServer *
Finally do a gpupdate/force on VDA machines or restart the machines.
Note: If the admin tries to add in a slot different than server Id of Publishing Server present on VDA machine, App-V Integration will still work but we do not recommend it. If the admin wants to add a different publishing server (other than the one added in Desktop Studio) through GPO policy then we recommend him to add in slot which is free i.e in an Id for which there is not publishing server present on VDA machine.
In XD7.1:
XD 7.1 has introduced two new powershell cmdlets on the Citrix Studio side – Get-CtxAppvServerSetting and Set-CtxAppvServerSetting. To avoid App launch failures we recommend to set the setting UserRefreshOnLogon to ‘False’ for all App-V Publishing servers that are added on Citrix Studio. This can be achieved by using this cmdlet on Citrix Studio
Set-CtxAppvServerSetting –AppVPublishingServer <servername> -UserRefreshOnLogon $false
Admin should restart the VDA machine after executing the cmdlets on Studio.
If “App-V Server Sync failed” problem still persists after doing the above steps, it may be due to other reasons. In this case we recommend the admins to go through this troubleshooting guide http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/xendesktop-71/app-v-troubleshooting.html
Note: We recommend Administrator to set ‘UserRefreshOnLogon’ to ‘False’ only for ‘Applications Only’ and ‘Applications & Desktops’ delivery groups. We do not recommend this for ‘Desktop only’ type of delivery groups.
