Another error: ‘Application can’t be started… (Instant Passthru could not be resolved)’ caused by the CWA upgrade.

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A while ago, I wrote a blog about the error message ‘Application can’t be started… (Instant Passthru could not be resolved)’ that we encountered when launching a published application from our Ivanti Workspace Control managed session. Recently, we received the same message again, but this time the cause was different.

Application can’t be started… (Instant Passthru could not be resolved)

Shortly after a relatively simple task—upgrading an outdated version of Citrix Workspace App (CWA) from 1912 LTSR to the slightly newer 2203 LTSR—we encountered some inexplicable issues that made it impossible to launch Citrix Published Apps via SelfService.exe.

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How to Prevent SQL Database Locks and Improve Performance

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Within a large environment where Ivanti Workspace Control is used in combination with a Microsoft SQL Database, the SQL Server has to handle numerous connections initiated by all the Ivanti Workspace Control Agents.To minimize the load and connections on the SQL Server, Ivanti introduced the Ivanti Relay Servers, which act as proxies for all agent connections to the SQL Server, thereby reducing the total number of SQL connections and the overall load.

While monitoring our Ivanti Relay Server, we noticed that a couple of times a day, the Ivanti Relay Servers started queuing all messages. The transactions folder filled up with transactions that weren’t forwarded to the SQL Server. The Ivanti Relay Servers have a built-in failsafe option, where they stop accepting new transactions when the queue exceeds 50,000 transactions. So, in a short period of time, all Ivanti Relay Servers went offline because they hit the 50,000 transaction threshold.

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Managing Citrix Clientname in Double-Hop Scenarios Using Ivanti Workspace Control

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We manage a Citrix farm where users primarily launch a full desktop environment. From there, they can also connect to other applications running in Citrix Silo’s or access external Citrix farms. As an user environment manager (UEM), we utilize Ivanti Workspace Control (IWC).

When a user logs onto the primary desktop, the endpoint hostname is utilized by Ivanti Workspace Control within that session. Based on the endpoint hostname, we can set specific configurations using features like “location and devices”. In a double-hop scenario, where a user launches a Citrix published application or another Citrix desktop from within the primary session, the hostname of the primary session server is used as the hostname in the secondary session.

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Citrix Application Lingering in conjunction with Ivanti Workspace Control

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Recently, I worked on a project where the workload needed to shift from using a Citrix Published Desktop to a physical laptop, with locally installed applications. As always, there are applications that, for various reasons, cannot be moved from the Citrix Published Desktop to the physical laptop. For these applications, we chose to offer them as Citrix Published Applications. Although this transition went well technically, end users reported that working with published applications was not considered very pleasant.

Scenario: The published apps were offered from a Citrix Virtual Apps en Desktops Farm, utilizing Ivanti Workspace Control. Ivanti Workspace Control is a workspace management solution provided by Ivanti, a company specializing in IT management software. It offers features for managing user workspaces across various devices and environments, including physical desktops, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and application virtualization platforms. Unfortunately, Ivanti has announced that Ivanti Workspace Control will reach end of life on December 31, 2026, but at the moment, we are using it to our full satisfaction. When starting a Citrix Published Application, it takes some time due to, among other factors, the loading of the Windows profile and Ivanti Workspace Control settings before the application actually starts. When you subsequently start a second published application, it loads faster since the entire profile and UEM (User Environment Management) don’t need to be processed again. When you close the last Citrix Published Application, it also logs out the entire user session, resulting in the next Citrix Published application taking some time again, as your entire Citrix sessions needs to be loaded

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Application can’t be started… (Instant Passthru could not be resolved)

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After we recently upgraded our environment to Ivanti Workspace Control 10.12.0.0, we suddenly encountered issues with Citrix Published Applications. Users trying to launch a published application received an error “Application can’t be started…(Instant Passthru could not be resolved)

Ivanti Workspace Control

Although we had not made any changes to the Citrix XenApp Publishing integration within the Ivanti Console, we did check the configuration completely. Everything was configured as Ivanti says it should be set up.

Cause the update of our last golden image only updated Ivanti Workspace Control, we decided to downgrade the agent from 10.12.0.0 to 10.11.10.0, the version we were previously using. And yes, suddenly everything was working properly again.

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Migrate Ivanti Workspace Control Database

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Life Cycle management occasionally causes SQL servers to be replaced and databases to be moved to new servers. As a result, the Ivanti WorkSpace Control datastores have to be moved. Now this does not seem very complex at first, but if the environment uses a primary and secondary datastore, you have to deal with some extra challenges. The IWC datastore contains three components

  1. Configuration and state
  2. Logging
  3. Usage Tracking

Out of the box the data is stored in the primary datastore, but the logging and usage tracking data can also be stored in the secondary datastore. This ensures that the configuration datastore does not explode.

Ivanti has a nice support article in which they exactly describe how you can move both datastores to a new database server (SQL in my case). Basically, you merge the secondary and primary datastore again, migrate the primary datastore to the new database server and split the logging and usage tracking from the primary to the secondary datastore.

HOWTO: Migrate database in Ivanti Workspace Control

This all sounds very simple, but what if your secondary datastore is 600GB in size? Putting these together will take forever, not to mention other challenges. Consider, for example, the sizing of the primary datastore, can it store so much extra data? In this case you actually want to migrate the primary and secondary datastore to the new SQL environment and simply change the database connection string within the Ivanti WorkSpace Control console. Although there is no support article how this can be accomplished, luckily there is a way to do this in a supported way!

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Ivanti WorkSpace Control Housekeeping

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RelayServer

During regular maintenance at a customer we noticed the Ivanti WorkSpace Control logging database was getting quite big. The logging database had reached a size of more than 1TB, something of which the cause was not immediately clear. Sure they had lots of users and were keeping lots of auditing data, but the increase in database size couldn’t be related to additional users or something else.

We contacted Ivanti Support to investigate the huge increase in logging database size. They told me about a useful tool called “Workspace Manager Logging Management Tool“. The tool was created by a former employee Patrick van Grinsven. Soon it became clear what exactly was using so much space within the logging database.

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Roaming Sticky Notes with Zero Profile

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Prior to Windows 10 (build 1607) Sticky Notes was a “Desktop App”, for which it was quite easy to roam all user settings and notes. But since the Windows 10 anniversary update Sticky Notes is available as a “Windows App” (Universal App). This creates a new challenge.

We have to make sure that Sticky Notes settings and notes, which a created by the users are being roamed. In case that roaming profiles are being used, this won’t be very challenging, because the whole user profile will be stored soon as an user logs off. However when local or mandatory profiles are used, in combination with a Zero Profile technology, like the technology offered by Ivanti Workspace Control (formerly RES Workspace Manager), some challenges lie ahead.

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