Somewhere down the line, Citrix Admins need to upgrade their Citrix Site from one version to another, Example, from XenDesktop 71.5 LTSR to CVAD 1912 LTSR. For Citrix site upgrade, we have to mount the product ISO in Citrix server and run the setup file. But What about VDIs?

Based on your company’s VDA usage, you may have hundreds to thousands of VDIs in your company. How do you upgrade VDA agent on all those VDIs? I was tasked with same upgrade activity recently. Citrix has InstallVDA.bat and UninstallVDA.bat files in SetupFilePath\Support\AdDeploy folder. But I didnt get positive results using those scripts. So I ended up writing my own script to do it.

In order to use the script, you have to:

• Download VDAWorkstationSetup_1912.exe from citrix downloads page. This is a standalone VDA agent installer.
• Customize and copy install.bat, remove.bat and VDAWorkstationSetup_1912.exe to a network share.
• Run VDA upgrade.ps1 file. It will copy install.bat, remove.bat, and VDAWorkstationSetup_1912.exe from network share to c:\temp on every VDI in the list.

How does it work

• Creates Scheduled tasks - One for uninstalling existing VDA agent and another for installing new VDA agent.
• Executes VDAUninstall scheduled task first. This scheduled task runs after 3 minutes it is created. Once started, it runs remove.bat file and restarts the VDA.
• After reboot, it runs VDAInstall scheduled task. This scheduled task runs install.bat file. No user login is required.
• After installation is complete, it deletes install.bat, remove.bat, VDAWorkstationSetup_1912.exe files from c:\temp and also deletes VDAuninstall, VDAInstall scheduled tasks.

Checkout my GitHub page for scripts https://github.com/ChayScripts/Citrix-VDA-Upgrade-Scripts