- All About Citrix
- All About Citrixprovisioning Servers
- Citrix Provisioning Services Documentation
- Download Citrix Server
The Citrix terminology for this virtual disk is a vDisk. The software and hardware prerequisites for installation of the Citrix Provisioning Server are—the user account performing the installation must be a local administrator on the provisioning server and an Active Directory Service Account for Citrix Provisioning Server. Before we install the Citrix Provisioning Server software, I recommend to install some commonly used roles and features. These components are optional, except for.Net Framework 3.5.1 on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, which is a prerequisite for Citrix Provisioning Server 7.16. In this example we will install the following features. Provisioning Services (PVS) is software streaming technology that delivers patches, updates, and other configuration information to multiple virtual desktop endpoints through a shared desktop image. It centralizes virtual machine management while reducing the operational and storage costs of a virtualized desktop environment.
Citrix Provisioning Services is a UDP-based streaming technology designed to deliver an operating system (vDisk) to client devices over the network. PVS uses PXE protocol specs (UNDI) to boot a target device (PXE client) and deliver a bootfile program that contains the instructions necessary to login to a Provisioning Server and start streaming the virtual disk over the network.
There are three really great things about PVS:
1. Single image management
Imagine you have a data center with 100 XenApp servers. Using traditional methods of server management, you would need to login to each and every one of them to make changes such as application updates, Windows patches, and lots of different things or maybe use GPOs to enforce certain modifications, etc.
All About Citrix
With Citrix Provisioning Server (PVS) you can use a designated machine as a golden image, create a virtual disk from its hard drive, and assign it to hundreds or even thousands of servers for OS delivery. Since a vDisk has 2 modes – read/write and read-only, you can modify the image in read/write (Private mode) from one device and then stream to all your devices in read-only (Standard mode). That way all the changes made in Private mode update the VHD and can then be streamed to the rest of your devices in Standard mode propagating the changes you made instantaneously!
2. The Power of Read-Only
Read-only VHD is a truly powerful feature of PVS. Every time a machine is connected to a virtual disk from PVS, any changes made by users to the OS (outside of their roaming profiles) are flushed upon reboot! So, let’s say for instance, user John logs into a provisioned target device (e.g. XenApp server, XenDesktop, Windows endpoint, etc.) and messes with network adapter settings, clock, registry, etc., those changes are gone once the machine is shut down. Also, think about viruses! 🙂
All About Citrixprovisioning Servers
Citrix Provisioning Services Documentation
3. Scalability
Download Citrix Server
PVS is fully enterprise-ready. Not only you have the option of adding existing machines to Device Collections in the PVS Console but in a virtual environment you can spin them yourself! XenDesktop Setup Wizard and Streamed VM Setup Wizard are at your disposal to quickly create new VMs on the fly when you need them.