Citrix XenApp 6.0 to XenApp 6.5 PowerShell Upgrade Utility Under the Hood

Citrix recently released XenApp 6.5. However, there is not a way to do an in-place upgrade from XenApp 6.0 to XenApp 6.5. This means that the Citrix administrator will have to uninstall XenApp 6.0 components and install XenApp 6.5 components. Citrix released a PowerShell utility to help in this process, and in this post I break that utility down into a Visio flowchart to you can understand what is going on behind the scenes.

Ever since I was a kid, I liked taking things apart. Citrix recently came out with a PowerShell tool to help administrators turn XenApp 6.0 servers into XenApp 6.5 servers because unfortunately (or fortunately depending on the way you look at it), there is no in-place upgrade option from XenApp 6.0 to XenApp 6.5.

This utility is a PowerShell script that performs the following:

Checks to see if XenApp 6.0 is installed or not, and if the XenApp 6.5 installer is available.
Prompts for a password to silently run the install process after reboot.
Uninstalls XenApp 6.0 components. By default these include the Online-Plugin, Management Consoles, and XenApp Application Delivery role. Other components are included in the script and can be enabled for automatic removal.
Installs XenApp 6.5 and, by default, joins the server to the farm as a worker.
Verifies the join is successful by checking to see if the IMA service is running.

I think this script is really cool so I had to take it apart to see just how the script was doing these things. I made some notes in the form of a flowchart and have provided the flowchart here for your viewing pleasure.

Download the Visio Document

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Check out the interactive pan & zoom website (best viewed in Internet Explorer)

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Click the picture below for .gif image of the flowchart