Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 Cumulative Update 1 becomes End of Life on June 25, 2025. Plan to upgrade to XenServer 8.4 before this date. For more information about XenServer 8.4, see What's New.

Key changes in XenServer 8.4

Licensing

Only XenServer Premium Edition socket licenses are supported with XenServer 8.4. If you currently use a Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops license file to license your XenServer hosts, this license file is no longer supported with XenServer 8.4. Obtain separate XenServer license files, which are available as part of your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops entitlement.

For more information about how to proceed, see the next section: Before upgrading to XenServer 8.4.

Updates

An important change in XenServer 8.4 is how updates work. XenServer 8.4 provides frequent and granular updates either from a CDN or through offline bundles. This mechanism replaces the legacy hotfix approach.

Key differences:

For more information about how to proceed, see the next section: Before upgrading to XenServer 8.4.

Before upgrading to XenServer 8.4

Get a XenServer Premium Edition socket license

Only XenServer Premium Edition socket licenses are supported with XenServer 8.4. Ensure you get these licenses and apply them to your hosts before upgrading.

• If you have a Citrix for Private Cloud, Citrix Universal Hybrid Multi-Cloud, Citrix Universal MSP, or Citrix Platform License subscription, XenServer Premium Edition socket licenses are available as an entitlement of your subscription.  Allocate XenServer licenses from your MyCitrix Account.
• If you use your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops licenses to license Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 CU1, request to participate in a no-cost promotion for 10,000 XenServer Premium Edition socket licenses. Get in touch with your Citrix Sales representative or Citrix Channel partner, who will be able to complete your registration and delivery of licenses. If you don’t have a partner, please use the partner locator.
• If you are already using a Premium or Standard Edition socket license with Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 CU1, you can upgrade to XenServer 8.4 and continue to use these licenses until their expiry date.

If you do not apply a Premium Edition socket license to your host, when you upgrade to XenServer 8.4, your hosts revert to Trial Edition. This is a 90-day trial of the Premium Edition features in a restricted size pool of up to three hosts.

Plan for the new update mechanism

Review the product documentation about updates and consider how this feature fits into your environment and workflow. For example:

• Do you want to take updates from the CDN or by using the update bundles?
  • Using the CDN is recommended for internet-connected environments. 
  • Use the update bundles for air-gapped environments or for updating individual hosts before joining them to a more up-to-date pool.
• Which update channels do you want to use in your environment and how?
  • The Early Access channel provides the updates in advance of the Normal channel. You can use this channel in your test environments to review and verify update changes before updating your production pool.
  • The Normal channel provides the updates slightly later. 
  • Security fixes are released to both channels at the same time. No matter which channel you choose to use, your environment has access to the most up-to-date security fixes.
• How will you ensure you apply the updates in a timely manner?
  • If you are going to use the CDN to update your pools, ensure that you do the initial set up in XenCenter Updates to choose the update channel and how often the pool synchronizes with the channel. 
  • Plan your workflow for applying updates to ensure that you monitor the release of updates and have a workflow for applying them to your pools. Apply updates within 6 months of their release to remain in support.

Check that your hardware is supported with XenServer 8.4

Check that the hardware that the hosts in your pool is installed on is compatible with XenServer 8.4. For more information, see the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL).

Check that your VM operating systems are supported by XenServer 8.4

Check that the operating systems of your VMs are supported by XenServer 8.4. If your VM operating system is not supported, upgrade your VM operating system to a supported version before upgrading XenServer. For more information, see Guest operating system support.

Update XenServer VM Tools on your VMs

Ensure that all your Windows VMs have the latest version of the XenServer VM Tools installed. For more information, see Updates to XenServer VM Tools for Windows.

Check that your environment is compatible with XenServer 8.4

• Are you using a supported host disk partition layout? The legacy partition layout is no longer supported. If you use it, you might not be able to upgrade to XenServer 8.4. For more information, see Legacy partition layout.

• Are you using the Citrix Licensing Server virtual appliance?  In previous releases, we supported the Linux-based License Server virtual appliance. This product is no longer supported. If you are using the License Server virtual appliance with an existing pool, migrate to the latest version of Citrix License Server for Windows before upgrading to XenServer 8.4. For more information, see Licensing.

• Is the key size of the server’s identity certificate smaller than 2048 bytes?  If your pool was first installed using XenServer 7.6 or earlier, it might still have certificates with a smaller key size than 2048 bytes. In this case, when you attempt to upgrade to XenServer 8.4, the upgrade wizard shows an error during prechecks. To proceed with the upgrade, you must reset the self-signed certificate on each affected server by running the following command: xe host-emergency-reset-server-certificate

• Are you using high availability with a heartbeat SR that has less that 4 GB of space? In Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 CU 1 the required size of the heartbeat SR is smaller than that required for XenServer 8.4. Before upgrading, disable high availability and resize your heartbeat SR to 4 GB or more. Or, if your heartbeat SR is the same SR as you are using for your VM disks, ensure that the SR has at least 4 GB of space that can be used for the heartbeat.

   

Upgrade to XenServer 8.4

1. Download the latest XenServer 8.4 Installation ISO from https://www.xenserver.com/downloads
2. Update your XenCenter to the latest version. For more information, see https://docs.xenserver.com/en-us/xencenter/current-release/updates-xencenter
3. Plan your upgrade process. Review the upgrade documentation at https://docs.xenserver.com/en-us/xenserver/8/install/upgrade. For Citrix environments, additional upgrade guidance is available at https://docs.xenserver.com/en-us/xenserver/8/install/upgrade-citrix-virtual-apps-desktops.
4. Complete your upgrade to XenServer 8.4 in accordance with your plan.

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