In the era of remote work, Citrix Remote PC Access has become a vital tool for IT to securely deliver remote access to physical workstations. In working with our customers, we learned that Remote PC Access needed Wake on LAN capabilities that are easy to use and easy to deploy and configure.
You asked, we listened.
I’m excited to share that we have a new Wake on LAN feature that is fully standalone and incredibly simple to deploy and configure.
With this new Wake on LAN feature, there’s no need to have additional infrastructure in the network to deliver magic packets; to figure out how to get magic packets to traverse subnets; or to deploy separate agents to the PCs. After all, we already have an agent running on the PCs — the VDA — and the machines have direct access to the subnets they are in. We decided to use the VDA to send the magic packets!
How do you use this great new feature? You’ll need the following:
- Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service or Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2009+
- VDA version 2009+
- Windows 10 PCs
- Wake on LAN enabled in the PCs’ BIOS/UEFI
- Wake on LAN enabled in the PCs’ NIC within Windows configuration
At this time, you must configure via PowerShell. Details on how to do that are available in our Remote PC Access documentation. I also have a sample script you can use or modify — at your own risk. As always, I recommend you test this out in your test environment or test Machine Catalogs before running it in production.
Our documentation covers a number of design and operational considerations, but I wanted to answer a few frequently asked questions:
Can you use the same Wake on LAN connection with multiple Machine Catalogs?
Yes.
Can you use the same Wake on LAN connection across multiple zones?
No. Host connections are assigned to a specific zone, so you must have a Wake on LAN connection for each zone.
Does this work across multiple subnets?
Yes and no. While we support having PCs in multiple subnets and using Wake on LAN to power them on, you must have at least one PC powered on in each subnet that can send magic packets so that PCs in that subnet can be woken up.
Can PCs wake up PCs in a different Machine Catalog?
Yes, as long as both Machine Catalogs use the same Wake on LAN connection and the PCs are in the same subnet.
Learn more about our new Wake on LAN feature in our Remote PC Access documentation. And if you have any questions or feedback, please share in the comments below.
