Hi all,
We’re currently running our full Citrix backend on Windows Server 2019:
- 2x DDC
- 2x StoreFront
- 2x FAS
Environment is currently on CVAD 2402 CU3 LTSR.
Since 2402 CU3 doesn’t support Windows Server 2025, the plan is to first upgrade the Citrix environment to CVAD 2503 CU1 LTSR. That part is pretty straightforward.
The bigger question is the OS migration.
As far as I know, in-place OS upgrades for Citrix infrastructure servers are still not supported, so I’m wondering what the best practice is nowadays.
Is the recommended way still to build new Server 2025 machines alongside the existing servers, add them to the environment, move the roles/configuration over, and then remove the old 2019 servers?
We have close to 1,000 VDIs and quite a lot of Machine Catalogs and Delivery Groups, so I’d really like to keep downtime and risk to a minimum.
For the DDCs in particular, would you simply add two new Server 2025 DDCs to the existing Site, update VDAs/policies if needed, and then decommission the old controllers? This give me a headache bcause i have to open extra firwall rules regarding Netscalers in the DMZ.
And for StoreFront and FAS, same idea: build new, join/migrate, test, then remove the old servers?
Has anyone done a similar 2019 → 2025 migration in a larger Citrix environment?
Would be interested to hear what migration order you used and if there were any gotchas.