Guest operating system support
Important:
Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 Cumulative Update 1 becomes End of Life on June 25, 2025. Plan your upgrade to XenServer 8 now to ensure a smooth transition and continued support. For more information, see Upgrade.
If you are using your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops license files to license your Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 Cumulative Update 1 hosts, these license files are not compatible with XenServer 8. Before upgrading you must acquire XenServer Premium Edition socket license files to use with XenServer 8. These socket license files are available as an entitlement of the Citrix for Private Cloud, Citrix Universal Hybrid Multi-Cloud, Citrix Universal MSP, and Citrix Platform License subscriptions for running your Citrix workloads. Citrix customers who have not yet transitioned to these new subscriptions can request to participate in a no-cost promotion for 10,000 XenServer Premium Edition socket licenses. For more information, see XenServer.
If you do not get a compatible license for XenServer 8 before upgrading, when you upgrade your hosts they revert to the 90-day Trial Edition. Trial Edition provides the same features as Premium Edition with some limitations. For more information, see XenServer 8 Licensing Overview.
When installing VMs and allocating resources such as memory and disk space, follow the guidelines of the operating system and any relevant applications.
| Operating System | Minimum RAM | Maximum RAM | Minimum Disk Space |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows 10 (32-bit) [Latest tested version is 22H2] | 1 GB | 4 GB | 24 GB (40 GB or more recommended) |
| Windows 10 (64-bit) [Latest tested version is 22H2] | 2 GB | 1.5 TB | 32 GB (40 GB or more recommended) |
| Windows Server 2016, Windows Server Core 2016 | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 32 GB (40 GB or more recommended) |
| Windows Server 2019, Windows Server Core 2019 | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 32 GB (40 GB or more recommended) |
| Windows Server 2022, Windows Server Core 2022 | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 32 GB (40 GB or more recommended) |
| CentOS Stream 9 (64-bit) (see note 3) | 2 GB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (64-bit) | 2 GB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (64-bit) (see note 2) | 2 GB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP5 (64-bit) (deprecated) | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 8 GB |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP5, 15 SP6 (64-bit) | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 8 GB |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP5, 15 SP6 (64-bit) | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 8 GB |
| Oracle Linux 8 (64-bit) | 2 GB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| Debian Bullseye 11 (32-bit) (see note 1) | 512 MB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| Debian Bullseye 11 (64-bit) (see note 1) | 512 MB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| Debian Bookworm 12 (64-bit) (see note 3) | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| Ubuntu 20.04 (64-bit) | 512 MB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| Ubuntu 22.04 (64-bit) (see note 1) | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| Ubuntu 24.04 (64-bit) (see note 4) | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| NeoKylin Linux Advanced Server 7.2 (64-bit) | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| Gooroom 2 (64-bit) | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| Rocky Linux 8 (64-bit) | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 10 GB |
| Rocky Linux 9 (64-bit) (see note 3) | 2 GB | 1.5 TB | 15 GB |
Notes:
- Requires hotfix XS82ECU1036.
- Requires hotfix XS82ECU1046. Customers who wish to use this guest OS must also install Citrix VM Tools for Linux v8.2.1-1 or later, available to download from the Citrix Hypervisor product download page.
- Requires hotfix XS82ECU1050. Customers who wish to use this guest OS must also install Citrix VM Tools for Linux v8.2.1-1 or later, available to download from the Citrix Hypervisor product download page.
- Requires hotfix XS82ECU1069. Customers who wish to use this guest OS must also install Citrix VM Tools for Linux v8.2.1-1 or later, available to download from the Citrix Hypervisor product download page.
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Citrix VM Tools for Linux is only supported on the Linux guest operating systems listed above.
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All supported operating systems run in HVM mode.
Support for paravirtualized (PV) VMs was removed in Citrix Hypervisor 8.1. Remove PV VMs from your environment before moving to Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 CU 1.
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Individual versions of the operating systems can also impose their own maximum limits on the amount of memory supported (for example, for licensing reasons).
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When configuring guest memory, do not to exceed the maximum amount of physical memory that your operating system can address. Setting a memory maximum that is greater than the operating system supported limit might lead to stability problems within your guest.
- To create a VM of a newer minor version of RHEL than is listed in the preceding table, use the following method:
- Install the VM from the latest supported media for the major version
- Use
yum updateto update the VM to the newer minor version
This approach also applies to RHEL-based operating systems such as CentOS and Oracle Linux.
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Some 32-bit Windows operating systems can support more than 4 GB of RAM by using physical address extension (PAE) mode. To reconfigure a VM with greater than 4 GB of RAM, use the xe CLI, not XenCenter, as the CLI doesn’t impose upper bounds for
memory-static-max. -
Citrix Hypervisor supports all SKUs (editions) for the listed versions of Windows.
- Windows 11 is not supported on Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 CU1.
Long-term guest support
Citrix Hypervisor includes a long-term guest support (LTS) policy for Linux VMs. The LTS policy enables you to consume minor version updates by one of the following methods:
- Installing from new guest media
- Upgrading from an existing supported guest
Out-of-support operating systems
The list of supported guest operating systems can contain operating systems that were supported by their vendors at the time this version of Citrix Hypervisor was released, but are now no longer supported by their vendors.
Citrix no longer offers support for these operating systems (even if they remain listed in the table of supported guests or their templates remain available on your Citrix Hypervisor hosts). While attempting to address and resolve a reported issue, Citrix assesses if the issue directly relates to an out-of-support operating system on a VM. To assist in making that determination, Citrix might ask you to attempt to reproduce an issue using a supported version of the guest operating system. If the issue seems to be related to the out-of-support operating system, Citrix will not investigate the issue further.
Note:
Windows versions that are supported by Microsoft as part of an LTSB branch are supported by Citrix Hypervisor. Windows versions that are out of support, but part of an Extended Security Updates (ESU) agreement are not supported by Citrix Hypervisor.