XenApp 6 command line installation

I’m just starting my first XenApp 6 install and I like what I see so far. This is the first major change to XenApp in several releases. If you were familiar with Presentation Server 3.0 you would have had no problem jumping into a Presentation Server 4.0/4.5 even a XenApp 5.0 farm. But with XenApp 6 there are enough changes to make a seasoned pro get googling quickly!

If you are into command line silent installs like I am then you will find the installation method has significantly changed – a role-based installation method is now used. The installation of XenApp 6 has been separated from the configuration of XenApp – note that “configuration” includes joining the server to the farm.

To install XenApp 6 from the command line use XenAppSetupConsole.exe which is found in the “XenApp Server Setup\bin” folder of the XenApp 6 source. A typical installation command line is:

XenAppSetupConsole.exe /install:XenApp /Enterprise /logfile:C:\Build\Logs\XA6_Install.log

You can likely guess what this does: installs Enterprise edition of XenApp and logs the installation to a log file.
Make sure you set the correct edition (/Advanced, /Enterprise or /Platinum) for your licenses and the /logfile switch is optional.
The /install switch has a number of options which allows installation of other components such as Web Interface, Secure Gateway, Provisioning Server and Provisioning Services Target Device. To install an all-in-one demo box, your installation command might look like this:

XenAppSetupConsole.exe /install:XenApp,WebInterface,Secure Gateway /Enterprise

To install XenApp with support for Provisioning Services:

XenAppSetupConsole.exe /install:XenApp,PVDeviceFeature /Enterprise

The command line installation of XenApp 6 is well documented on Citrix eDocs. I will cover the command line configuration of XenApp 6 next time.