Now Available: Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2402 Long Term Service Release

After much anticipation, the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 2402 Long Term Service Release (LTSR) is now available! We know many of you have been planning for this release for the last few months. My Coming Soon blog took a look at the different Citrix servicing options and it the LTSR is the best fit for you.

If you’re ready to leverage the new LTSR but are still working on your upgrade plan, don’t worry. We have quite a few resources available to help you have a successful upgrade including our plan, upgrade, succeed blog series, the latest Citrix Master Class, an FAQ blog for answers to your most pressing LTSR questions from the Citrix Master Class, and our tech paper on parallel migration. 

We are also incredibly excited to announce that the Citrix Workspace app 2402 LTSR for Windows is now generally available! This Citrix Workspace app LTSR for Windows includes an extended 3 years of support to help ease your client update processes.

Moving fully to the cloud isn’t for everyone, and we know that. That’s why we’ve continued to invest in our on-premises solutions so you can leverage cloud capabilities on premises too. The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2402 LTSR includes several years’ worth of features to take advantage of. Some of these features were previously only offered in the cloud, and a plethora of on-premises features have been added since the release of the last LTSR in March of 2022. Additionally, customers on our current release (CR) track can leverage this release as a regular update within their environments. So let’s take a closer look at what the 2402 LTSR can do for you.

LTSR Overview

First, though, a quick recap. LTSRs are typically released once every two to three years and have an extended lifecycle and support policy. The LTSR track is intended for organizations looking for predictability within their environments because they can get up to five years of mainstream support. Additionally, organizations benefit from upgrading to a highly tested and vetted release with a compilation of all the latest features and innovations.

For organizations on the LTSR track, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 2402 LTSR is the successor to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 2203 LTSR. Additionally, the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 1912 LTSR is scheduled to reach End of Life in December 2024. That means if you are on either the 1912 or 2203 LTSR, there are years of features, capabilities, security upgrades, and more that you can take advantage of by upgrading your environment today. 

For CR customers, this release is also relevant to you. If you are on any of the latest Current Releases, like 2308 and 2311, the 2402 release is your next upgrade. You can continue your upgrade cycle as the next Current Release is delivered. This means you can roll out 2402 into your environments today and start testing to stay up to date. For FAQs on the Citrix LTSR and CR tracks, please reference this support article. 

What’s New

For our LTSR customers, there have been a lot of innovations and changes since the release of the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2203 LTSR, and even more since the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 1912 LTSR. This means there are many features and improvements to catch up on and take full advantage of.

There were so many updates that we made two whole Citrix Master Classes about the LTSR and new on-premises features! Over the past 2 years, we have been diligently adding capabilities to enhance the end-user experience, improve workload and device flexibility, streamline operational efficiency and reduce costs, and strengthen your security posture. Let’s look at the great updates we have made since the 2203 LTSR and resources to help you get more information.

Top end-user experience improvements

The 2402 LTSR includes key High-performance user experience (HDX) technologies that are built to deliver the best app and desktop experience anywhere on any device. Having a like-local and streamlined user experience is key to employee productivity. So you won’t want to miss the key enhancements included in the 2402 LTSR. 

As outlined in our What’s New with HDX in the 2402 LTSR blog, our new features span across graphics, multimedia, transport and networking, and more. We have added support for the AV1 codec for enhanced graphics, delivering superior compression and image quality compared to H.264 and H.265. We also made improvements to our EDT protocol including congestion control and loss-tolerant mode to maintain a high-quality audio and graphics experiences in varying network conditions. These end-user experience capabilities are built into the 2402 LTSR to enhance user productivity and satisfaction.

Top workload and device flexibility improvements

Creating flexibility and choice of how and where you deliver apps continues to be a top priority for Citrix. From delivering any app or desktop to any device – to allowing a combination of on-premises and cloud workloads to be delivered from your environments – Citrix is the platform to make it happen. The 2402 LTSR brings features that allow organizations leveraging on-premises Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops to be more flexible than ever.  

The 2402 LTSR includes major enhancements to provisioning. You are now able to leverage Citrix PVS with Azure and Google Cloud. Additionally, leveraging the LTSR VDA with Citrix DaaS allows for Windows 10 and 11 multi-session support in Azure. We also added support for VMware Cloud solutions on Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS. For more information on deploying cloud workloads from on-premises Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployments, reference this support article. 

The Linux VDA 2402 LTSR is also more robust than ever. Last year was a milestone year for the Linux VDA, bringing Azure AD integration, support for HDX adaptive throughput and the EDT congestion control mechanism, session watermarking, and more. In addition to enhancing the Linux VDA, the 2402 LTSR also supports non-domain joined virtual machines. The choice of what apps you deploy, where you host them, and how you configure your infrastructure is more flexible than ever with the 2402 LTSR.

Top operational and IT efficiency improvements 

Over the last two years, we have worked diligently to bring even more feature parity between cloud and on-premises. This parity is huge in our goal to help you streamline your IT efficiency and keep costs in check. The 2402 LTSR offers key capabilities for you to take advantage of today. 

We introduced Citrix Web Studio for on premises to bring the capabilities and streamlined interface of our web-based Citrix Studio management console to your on-premises deployments.  In the 2402 LTSR, admins can use the new Web Studio to manage their on-premises Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployments alone or alongside cloud workloads for even simpler hybrid management.

Additionally, the 2402 LTSR includes Citrix autoscale for on premises to allow organizations to get the most out of their datacenter investments and save on needed power and resources. Autoscale allows for schedule-based scaling where your virtual machines (VM) automatically power on and off at specific times.

Top security and compliance improvements

We know that features that power your secure Zero Trust environment are the most important to your business. That’s why security is always top of mind when adding new capabilities. The Long Term Service Releases are built to meet your top compliance standards. We are currently validating FIPS, Common Criteria, and Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 compliance standards. For more information and updates, please visit the Citrix Trust Center. The 2402 LTSR also includes several enhancements to Citrix Session Recording, support for Azure Trusted Launch, Support for Device Guard on vSphere, and the addition of Citrix Secure Private Access support.

Citrix Session Recording continues to evolve beyond screen recording of sessions. The 2402 LTSR includes support for recording non-HDX optimized audio inside of user sessions. Additionally, we have added the ability to hide specific applications in lossy screen recording. Citrix Session Recording in the 2402 LTSR brings more flexibility to your environments while keeping them compliant and secure. 

As we continue to bolster security capabilities beyond virtual apps and desktops, we offer more robust compatible components with the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops LTSR. With that, we introduced Citrix Secure Private Access for your IT-managed on-premises environments. Citrix Secure Private Access is a compatible component with the LTSR and provides VPN-less access to web and SaaS applications using single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, device posture assessments, and application security controls. Additionally, users can securely access internal resources with the Citrix Enterprise Browser without having to connect to a corporate VPN.

There are so many more features and capabilities for your organization to take advantage of. Take a look at our product documentation for more details. 

If you want to learn even more from Citrix experts, register today for our upcoming What’s New and Next with Citrix Webinar on April 23, 2024. 

Next Steps

What are you waiting for? Now is a great time to download the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2402 LTSR and start rolling it out to your pre-production environments. You can upgrade directly from the 2311 CR or any CU of the 1912 or 2203 LTSRs. Be sure to take advantage of the latest LTSR and all the resources we’ve created to help you upgrade today!

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