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NextGen-2025.1 BETA release notes

The following release notes include features and enhancements for NextGen-2025.1.

This Beta release is part of Apporto’s partner program. Selected partners are granted limited licenses to use the software, solely for the purpose of evaluating and testing its functionality and providing feedback back to Apporto. Apporto will notify these partners when a market-release version is available.

As a Beta tester, you agree to:

  • Install the software into your company’s on-premises server environment.
  • Perform functional tests on all on–premises features.
  • Report any observed issues to Apporto Support.
  • Allow Apporto staff to access your instance(s) of the software for inspection, modifications, or maintenance.

As a Beta tester, you agree not to:

  • Reverse engineer or modify the software or in any way disclose Apporto’s unreleased intellectual property.
  • Share the software with customers or prospects until the Beta testing phase is complete.
  • Include screenshots of the software in your own sales and marketing materials.

Apporto retains all rights to Beta testing feedback. Beta testers understand and acknowledge that the Beta software is a test product, and its accuracy and reliability are not guaranteed. Beta testers waive any and all claims against Apporto arising out of the performance or non-performance of the software.

 

New features

Auto-deployment & cluster creation ADMINS

Customers now have the ability to manage deployments of Apporto software into their on-premises Windows environments. Once an Apporto license has been executed, the Apporto team will set up an Apporto instance using the instance name (URL) determined during onboarding. Afterward, the Apporto Support team will provide an initial control plane login for configuration of the instance and desktops.

The overall deployment process is as follows:

auto-deployment flow chart
After receiving the initial login credentials, on-prem customers can sign in to the control plane and navigate to Setup. From here, the “On-Premises Clusters” section will be available for installing Apporto and viewing the statuses of created clusters. The installation wizard will guide you through the configuration steps.

step 1 of the on-prem installer

Packaged with the Apporto VM is a node discovery tool, which allows you to select the nodes from your hypervisor container that will be part of an Apporto cluster. For this release, Apporto supports Nutanix Prism and VMware vSphere hypervisors.

node discovery tool

For additional information and a detailed description of each deployment step, see the Apporto NextGen On-Premises Deployment Guide.

Server autodiscovery ADMINS

Apporto now contains an autodiscovery service that detects new servers within your defined resource hubs. Once a server has been detected, it’s added to the “Unassigned” section of the Servers page.

unassigned tab on the servers screen

From the list of unassigned servers, you can select servers to match to an existing or new server pool.

You can read more about this new feature in the Help Center article on managing unassigned servers.

Drain mode ADMINS

When administrators need to perform server maintenance, Apporto now allows them to put a multi-session production server or single-session VM pool into drain mode. This feature prevents new connections from being created, while allowing current connections to the RDS hosts to continue running until the users close them out.

Administrators can trigger drain mode one of two ways:

  • Drain immediately – manually put a multi-session server or single-session pool into drain mode
  • Schedule drain – place a drain mode event on the calendar for a future date/time

Once the drain is complete, administrators will receive a notification. Maintenance activities can now commence. When maintenance is complete, the server or pool can be brought back online to accept new connections.

For more details, see the Help Center article on draining server sessions.

Services/appliances for on-prem ARCHITECTURAL CHANGE

There are two new Apporto appliances for on-premises customers:

  • Apporto Service
    The Apporto Service is an agent installed on RDP servers and virtual machines. It handles a variety of functions, including server autodiscovery and identifying remote applications.    For customers with cloud implementations, the Apporto Service is used to terminate sessions.
  • Secure Gateway
    The Apporto Secure Gateway is a secure load balancer to route traffic coming from outside the organization’s network. You may also define an internal load balancer for internal traffic. Only one load balancer is required, but if you use both you can set one as the default for routing traffic.

Enhancements

  • Redesigned identity management & auth method updates ADMINS
    • The “SSO Domains” tab in Setup has been renamed “Identity Management,” and various settings have been consolidated into this tab for a more holistic view of authentication. Visit the Help Center document on configuring identity management settings for more information.
      identity management tab in setup
    • For control plane (portal) access, on-premises instances can use either single sign-on (SSO) or lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) authentication methods.
      SSO will use the SSO domains settings that already were present in the system.
      single sign-on authentication method
      And LDAP will require configuration in the “AD Sync” tab. The Help Center articles on SSO domains and AD sync will provide additional details.
      LDAP authentication method
    • We’ve added an option called “SSO to the desktop” as a convenience feature. This option uses certificate-based authentication to let users access applications and virtual desktops without requiring a secondary login. The Help Center article on identity management describes how SSO to the desktop is configured.
      SSO to the desktop option
  • Resource hub updates for on-premises instances ADMINS
    To align resource hubs with on-prem needs, there is a new tab on the create and edit screens–”RDP Management Gateway.” In addition, some settings that were previously in the resource hub profile section are now handled in the “Provider” tab. For information on these new tabs, review the Help Center articles on managing and creating resource hubs.
    RDP management gateway for an on-prem resource hub
  • Enhanced hypervisor support for Nutanix & VMware ARCHITECTURAL CHANGE
    On-premises Apporto instances now support the following hypervisor versions:
    VMware vSphere 6.5
    Nutanix Prism 6.5+
  • Preventing hairpinning ARCHITECTURAL CHANGE
    In on-prem and hybrid/on-prem deployments, it is not ideal to allow internal network traffic to leave the environment and travel back in through the external firewalls and DMZ (a situation known as hairpinning). This creates extra load on the external protection systems and increases latency and hops to internal resources.
    External users: Users coming from outside the network are routed to the Secure Gateway.
    Internal users: Users coming from the internal network are routed to the internal Hyperstream load balancer.
  • Improved rendering ARCHITECTURAL CHANGE
    We’ve improved device detection accuracy and browser support for H.264 video compression. In other words, if the user’s environment supports H.264 and this feature is enabled for the application or desktop, rendering performance is faster. This can make a significant difference in responsiveness for video and graphics-intensive applications.