**NOTE: This only applies to on-prem CVAD deployments.  This behavior does not apply to CVAD service.

Q. Even if there is no ICA session established on Citrix VDA and only RDP session is established, still Citrix Client License is consumed.

A. This is an expected behavior. When we install a VDA, it includes support for many other features around user sessions apart from an hdx connection.  So, any non-console user connection to that VDA is licensed. This is because we don’t know what other features (non HDX features) may be used, as we don’t license customers for every usage of some features (i.e., User Profile Management, Personal VDisk, Machine Creation Services and Citrix Director etc.).
  
We’re not just licensing HDX, we’re licensing all the features of XenDesktop/XenApp, and the user connection to the VDA is how we license.  It’s quite possible that one is not knowingly using any Citrix features other than HDX, but without adding a lot of licensing overhead to all the separate features we can’t determine that.
 
If you don’t want to incur a Citrix License for RDP sessions, then you need to have a separate RDP server without the VDA installed.
 



 

• Licensing (citrix.com)
• https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX104605