{"id":3591,"date":"2015-06-17T13:36:38","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T21:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.atumvirt.com\/?p=3591"},"modified":"2015-06-17T13:36:38","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T21:36:38","slug":"provisioning-server-pvsnotes-from-the-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/2015\/06\/provisioning-server-pvsnotes-from-the-field\/","title":{"rendered":"Provisioning Services (PVS)\u2013Notes from the Field"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of content out there on PVS has become somewhat \u201cstale\u201d but it is still good info. I figured I would rehash some notes from the field that are relevant after brushing up on PVS for a recent project.\u00a0 In no particular order below, here are some handy tips.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You can use the built-in PXE (bnpxe) and the built-in TFTP or a standalone offering.<\/li>\n<li>The built in PXE control panel applet does not work on 2012 R2 and support has stated they have no intent of fixing it.<\/li>\n<li>You can use DHCP options instead of PXE to offer the boot file (TFTP) server and the boot file name.<\/li>\n<li>Be sure to <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.citrix.com\/2014\/04\/01\/a-solid-option-for-the-pvs-boot-method-tftp-load-balancing-using-netscaler-10-1\/\">load balance TFTP<\/a><\/li>\n<li>The built in PXE server points to TFTP on itself.<\/li>\n<li>The XenDesktop Setup Wizard in PVS 7 discards all disks attached to a template.<\/li>\n<li>The XenDesktop Setup Wizard can create a boot device manager (BDM) disk (8MB VHD or VMDK) for you, avoiding the need for PXE\/TFTP and eliminating the scalability\/migration problems of attaching a central ISO<\/li>\n<li>The Boot Device Manager utility can create ISOs.\u00a0 <strong><em>Be wary with this utility that you do not overwrite your partitions on your PVS server.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen it done too many times to mention.<\/em><\/strong> (Avoided it myself so far <img class=\"wlEmoticon wlEmoticon-winkingsmile\" src=\"http:\/\/www.atumvirt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/wlEmoticon-winkingsmile.png\" alt=\"Winking smile\" \/>)<\/li>\n<li>The imaging wizard is not your only option.\u00a0 You can use BNImage or P2PVS (especially helpful when capturing multi-partition\/disk servers)<\/li>\n<li>When booting to \u201chard disk\u201d using PVS for capture with P2Pvs (be it via the boot file delivered by TFTP, BDM partition, or BDM ISO), when multiple local drives are attached, set the one with the bootable partition to the highest SCSI ID or PVS will not find the boot loader.<\/li>\n<li>Set your cache type to \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/support.citrix.com\/article\/CTX139627\">Cache in RAM with spillover to disk<\/a>\u201d.\u00a0 Going forward, all other modes will be considered legacy. Check out the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Vn5O6pDUFCA\">tech deep dive here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>It is not necessary to disable intermediate buffering with Cache in RAM with spillover to disk.<\/li>\n<li>You must have at least 7.1.3.1 (7.1 SP3) server and target device for the Cache in RAM portion of Cache in RAM with spillover to disk to work.<\/li>\n<li>PVS 6.x is E-O-L 6\/17\/2015.\u00a0 Time to upgrade.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.citrix.com\/2011\/07\/11\/pvs-secrets-part-3-ports-threads\/\">Threads and ports are important<\/a>.\u00a0 Up the number of threads if you\u2019ll have a large number of servers potentially connecting to PVS (more than 160 by default).\u00a0 Remember to consider your HA\/failover balancing with this!<\/li>\n<li>If you\u2019re using 2008R2, you must have <a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/en-us\/kb\/2550978\">KB2550978<\/a> installed. Note: In 7.6 the error reported is no longer 0x000007b but rather 0x000007e.\u00a0 Refer to <a href=\"http:\/\/discussions.citrix.com\/topic\/357481-pvs-76-stop-error-when-booting-hard-drive-and-blank-vdisk\/\">this thread<\/a> for additional troubleshooting tips. In short, check hotfix, Ethernet pciSlotNumber (or deviceID in XenServer) and for <a href=\"http:\/\/support.citrix.com\/article\/CTX133188\">ghost NICs<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>If you\u2019re using a file share, try to use an SMB2.1 or higher server.\u00a0 2012 R2 is recommended (for both file server and PVS) so everything can speak SMB3.\u00a0 Note: Some NAS devices may not properly \u201cspeak\u201d SMB 3 despite being advertised.\u00a0 As always, test.<\/li>\n<li>DFS-R Replication of vDisk store requires proper configuration of the staging area.\u00a0 You can avoid a whole lot of pain by using a robocopy script to manually replicate your disks around.\u00a0 Should you choose DFS-R, be sure to size your staging area and exclude the .lok files.<\/li>\n<li>DisableTaskOffload is still <a href=\"http:\/\/support.citrix.com\/article\/CTX117374\">best practice<\/a> for PVS server and Target Device<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re using KMS, you can&#8217;t use Network service as the service account.\u00a0 Use a domain account that is local administrator.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.atumvirt.com\/index.php\/2015\/02\/service-account-spn-registration-tip\/\">Register your SPN<\/a> for your service account<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of content out there on PVS has become somewhat \u201cstale\u201d but it is still good info. I figured I would rehash some notes from the field that are relevant after brushing up on PVS for a recent project.\u00a0 In no particular order below, here are some handy tips. You can use the built-in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,43],"tags":[86,105,106],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}