Datastore:

• Core data store changes make mixed farms incompatible because of differences between the structure of and communications to a XenApp 6 and a XenApp 5 data store. Consequently, mixed farms will most likely cause data store corruption.

• XenApp 6.0 is not capable of contacting an IBM DB2 or Access database.

Management consoles:

• The new MMC 3.0 Delivery Services Console only works with XenApp 6.0 and is a requirement – it does not work with XenApp 5.0, nor does the 5.0 Console work for XenApp 6.0.

• The XenApp Advanced configuration does not work on a XenApp 6.0 system.

Management and Configuration:

• Management and configuration infrastructure is policy based for XenApp 6.0 and XenApp 5.0 is not compatible with this and makes mixed communication impossible.

• Worker Groups are specific to XenApp 6.0 and this is a fundamental management change - making mixed farms a problem.

• Active Directory integration and management is not possible with XenApp 5.0 in the way that XenApp 6.0 allows, so management infrastructure could become massively complex in a mixed environment.

User Experience Consistency

• In a mixed environment with load balancing, configured users would get totally inconsistent options and experiences depending if they connected to a XenApp 5.0 server one day and a XenApp 6.0 server the next.

License Server:

• Version 11.6.1 Build 9020 onwards is required for XenApp 6.0.

• Port options on the License Server and files have been removed as of license server 11.5 onwards – so management again would become ambiguous.

Operating System:

• Windows 2008R2 is required for XenApp 6.0 and is 64-bit only as is XenApp 6.0, so upgrading from any 32-bit operating system is not possible. XenApp 6 was specifically developed to operate on the 64-bit Windows 2008 R2 platform.

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