Taking a number of questions from customers regarding the upgrade of XA 4.5 to XA 5 and XA 6. 

Upgrade W2K3 XA 4.5 to XA 5.0 

For those of you seeking documentation for the upgrade to XA 5 reference the link below.  This doc will walk you through the process of upgrading your W2K3 XA 4.5 installation to XA 5.0.  For those of you moving froma W2K3 to W2K8 server environment the recommendation is build a completely new farm.  Installing OS updates over the top has never been recommended as a best practice for terminal server.  When upgrading the OS, the complete rebuild of the server is your best bet for success. 

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX116622

Upgrade to XA 6

The upgrade path to XA 6 is a parallel path installation.  XA 6 has been developed exclusively for W2K8 R2.  XA 6 does not run on W2K3 or W2K8 R1.  XA 6 does not offer the opportunity to share a farm context with XA 5 servers.  The documentation for upgrading to XA 6 is referenced in the link below.

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124241

XA 6 Migration Tool

Citrix has developed a Powershell tool capable of porting XA 5 farm settings into your new XA 6 farm.  To purpose of the XA 6 migration tool is of course to speed the deployment of your new farm.  The video will give you information on installation and configuration of the tool.  The video offers insight into the new XA 6 ability to publish applications to groups of users.  You will see how to configure and leverage the latest release of Web Interface to support user migration to the new XA 6 farm. 

Interestingly you will also notice a seamless workflow in the migration of users from Office 2007 to Office 2010.  This is achieved by leveraging System Environment Variables to publish the office applications, %MSOFFICEDIR%\Excel.exe is referenced as the follow up posts for the video.  System Environment Variables can be a great configuration resource for you on the network.  Remember though that for a System Environment Variable to work you must reboot the server to set the configuration….

Citrix XenApp 6 Migration Tool – Guided Tour

You can download the XenApp 6 Migration Tool from http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX125471

Enjoy your migrating.  Please feel free to pass on your questions. 

RTE