Friday 7 September 2012

XenDesktop 5.6 Express–Licensing

I’ve just spent a frustrating hour trying to license the XenDesktop express proof of concept farm I built a couple of weeks ago.  The problem was truly strange and appears to be a bug on the Citrix site at the moment. 

After installing XenDesktop Express with the Licensing component, it went into a trial period.  So I went about getting a proper license…

In the Desktop Studio, under Configuration > Licensing you will see you are still in a trial mode. 

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To sort this out, I tried to go here in my local Chromium browser: http://deliver.citrix.com/go/citrix/activatexdexpress?userId=guest

After entering details you get the chance to download the biggest license ever – nearly 1gb!

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Luckily its a typo.  Mine was 11kb.  This saved itself in my Downloads folder as a file called “XenDesktop_Express_Edition_License.lic”. 

I put this in the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\Licensing\MyFiles on my XenDesktop service and restarted the license service. 

Back in Desktop Studio I selected Add License:

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Bang.  The “Citrix License Server currently unavailable” bit sounds bad.  I check services.msc and the service has indeed fallen over - in the event log you get this helpful message:

Faulting application name: lmadmin.exe, version: 11.10.0.9, time stamp: 0x4f02e435
Faulting module name: MSVCP80.dll, version: 8.0.50727.6195, time stamp: 0x4dcddc6c
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000038db
Faulting process id: 0xb78
Faulting application start time: 0x01cd8ce15b8b4c3d
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\Licensing\LS\lmadmin.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.6195_none_d09154e044272b9a\MSVCP80.dll
Report Id: 9aa66add-f8d4-11e1-a99d-02faf2a05cc2

Then this post on the Citrix forums suggested I check my .lic file’s contents, and indeed it is an HTML file!  The download page for the file I actually want in fact. I remove it from MyFiles and the Citrix Licensing service will start at least. So I move and rename my .lic file to .html and open it in the browser I just used and hey presto!

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I click “Download your file manually” and it downloads another file called XenDesktop_Express_Edition_License.lic, which this time is the actual file.  Madness.  Saved this in the MyFiles folder on the XenDesktop server again, restart the Licensing service again and refresh the Configuration > Licensing part of the Desktop Studio, and its all working fine:

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I think something needs fixing on Citrix’s website! 

One more issue in my case was the licenses were now in the wrong mode.  I could see the Concurrent licenses but also had the message “Can’t find a valid license – no suitable licenses are available”

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To fix this, I selected “Edit Product Version” in the actions tab…

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Then changed the model to Concurrent rather than User/Device Licensing.  No idea how this ended up on the wrong mode…

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Finally!  All licensed.

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