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The Citrix Application Streaming client and profiler version 5.2 are available in Beta form. Here is a link. MyCitrix credentials required to download. The Streaming Client is "Offline Plug-in version 5.2". The Streaming Profiler is "Streaming Profiler version 5.2".
These are not production, but they are pretty close to what will ship with the next XenApp release. I note that the Streaming Client/Profiler 5.2 can be used with everything from Presentation Server 4.5 to XenApp next release.
Please give it a whirl. The normal tech support forums should be used to share your positive experiences. 
The 5.2 client will "consume" profiles created by all previous streaming profilers and the performance improvements noted below will be seen with no need to reprofile. That said, there has been a years worth of changes in the profiler, so there can be other reasons to move up.
Things you will see:
- Second time application performance vastly improved. Feature: "Sandbox reuse". In the past, launching two applications from a single profile actually created two sandboxes even though those sandboxes could be considered one as they both had the same definition of isolation scope. Starting a sandbox is a long activity, that is now skipped for second application launches, making second app launch very similar in time to locally installed. This change was the focus of the release and should produce very happy users.
- Sandboxes are left alive for 5 minutes after the last application terminates, improving odds for 2nd time launch compared to first. Registry configurable period, in minutes. Might change this to Ms.
- Integration with the Citrix Receiver to operate as a plug-in, or as a separately installed program. This function first shipped in 1.3 which was a streaming client shipped asynchronous to XenApp releases.
- AIE* environment variables are now visible from pre-launch/post-exit scripts run outside of isolation. This enables things like purging the per-user isolation space before/after application usage, without using RadeRunSwitches. Some other issues with scripts were also fixed.
- A years worth of App Compatibility improvements.
The version number will be 5.2. If you've seen my posts before, you know that I never intended to move away from 1.x, including shipping major new function in point release, like Inter-Isolation Communication at release 1.2. Long story as to why, but the bottom line is that the streaming client after 1.3 will be 5.2.
Enjoy,
Joe Nord
Product Architect - Application Streaming
Citrix Systems
Comments (12)
Aug 14
Anonymous says:
Any chance that we'll see support for applications that require service to be in...Any chance that we'll see support for applications that require service to be installed/running?
Thanks!
Aug 15
Joseph Nord says:
Isolation of services is not part of this release. The focus is performanc...Isolation of services is not part of this release. The focus is performance!
I too would like to have it already.
Aug 16
Anonymous says:
When will the new version 5.2 be available for customer use ? At the moment the...When will the new version 5.2 be available for customer use ? At the moment the Streaming does not look good especially with performance.
Aug 16
Joseph Nord says:
It will ship with the XenApp Cache release. Sorry, but I can't get more sp...It will ship with the XenApp Cache release. Sorry, but I can't get more specific.
Aug 20
Anonymous says:
Dear joe, We are stuck now in production with Streamed Profiles (Stream-To-Serve...Dear joe,
We are stuck now in production with Streamed Profiles (Stream-To-Server) that consisit of IE and Java, and to try and solve the issue with the Beta version of 5.2. The issue was already escelated and checked by Citrix Support and the customer has 4000 users to run with this application in production and we need to know when this version of Client/Profiler 5.2 to be released to customer use (not Beta).
Aug 20
Joseph Nord says:
Schedule information is available, but is cannot be posted here. No dates....Schedule information is available, but is cannot be posted here. No dates. Contact the Product Manager, Tim Graf, or contact me and I'll hook the two of you up.
Aug 23
Anonymous says:
joe,we have apps streamed to servers and the login scripts are very intermittent...joe,we have apps streamed to servers and the login scripts are very intermittently mapped to the users, some days it works on some server some days it doesn't... all stramed servers in same ou with same vbs login script applied?
any pointers?
Aug 23
Joseph Nord says:
Before the Beta, I was experimenting with scripts and concluded they worked righ...Before the Beta, I was experimenting with scripts and concluded they worked right. For a bit there, I thought they were not firing as expected pre-launch/post-exit so I built a detailed experiment ... they were working correctly. Now I'm nervous again. Can you produce a tight testcase?
Send me a note offline and I'll send you my testcase streaming profile. Nothing fancy, it has 4 scripts which are cmd prompt, and triggers their execution before running a small application. Gives you a chance to "exit" to continue to the next script and conclude inside/outside isolation and pre/post execution. Email = firstname (joseph) dot last name (nord) at citrix.com. About 3MB.
Oh - when done, if there's a bug, please post to http://forums.citrix.com/forum.jspa?forumID=856. This will get more people to see it than just me.
-Joe
Oct 01
Anonymous says:
Hi, maybe a stupid question but anyway... Yesterday I installed the new 5.2 Off...Hi,
maybe a stupid question but anyway... Yesterday I installed the new 5.2 Offline Client to test streamed to server Adobe Reader 9 launch performance. If Adobe Reader is locally installed it takes 2 sec to open a document via Windows Explorer. The lauch of the same document on the same server with streamed Adobe Reader 9 takes 8 sec. Same situation with 5.1 client before 11 sec. Is it this what you mean with "second app launch very similar in time to locally installed". I always talk about the second lauch.
Because I don't find any real performance data I would like to know if this is the best possible result in launching a streamd Adobe Reader 9 or if there must be an other issue in the basic hardware or server installation.
Thanks in advance.
Best Regards
Oct 02
Joseph Nord says:
Your scenario is a first launch. Launch the isolated Adobe Reader a second...Your scenario is a first launch. Launch the isolated Adobe Reader a second time and you'll see the change. You can also close the isolated Adobe Reader and you'll still get fast launch on streamed launches for 5 minutes (until the sandbox is torn down). The Adobe Reader executed outside of isolation is no bearing on the time - except to provide the comparison for locally installed time.
Oct 08
Aaron Gayton says:
Hi Joe. In a few of your posts you talk about the sandbox timeout is set to 5 m...Hi Joe.
In a few of your posts you talk about the sandbox timeout is set to 5 minutes by default. Where is the registry key to lower this.
Also in the final release is the timeout in mins or ms.
Oct 12
Joseph Nord says:
HKLM/Software/Citrix/Rade/SandboxStatusMonitorPeriod (REG_DWORD) The period is I...HKLM/Software/Citrix/Rade/SandboxStatusMonitorPeriod (REG_DWORD)
The period is Integer and is in MINUTES, default is 5 minute A value of 0 = kill sandbox immediately on last process terminate, which equals 1.2/1.3 client behavior.
I used forward slashes in the above as my first reply with back-slashes seems to have confused the blog and turned it all into gibberish.
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