Thursday, December 18, 2014

XenDesktop 7.5 Publish Application to Multiple Delivery Group

Recently I deployed XenApp/XenDesktop 7.5 environment with StoreFront 2.5. By default, using the GUI console, it only allows you to publish an application to a single Delivery Group.

If you have 4 servers and 2 delivery groups, and in each delivery group, 2 servers are registered, with this configuration in mind, you can only publish a particular application to a single delivery group, which equals to 2 servers only.

There was a requirement to be able to publish an application to all the 4 servers within 2 delivery groups. Apparently this is not possible using the GUI console.

However, using PowerShell you can !

You publish the application to the 1st delivery group using the GUI console, then you publish to the 2nd delivery group using the following

Add-BrokerApplication -Name "My Published App" -DesktopGroup "Delivery Group 2"

Note: There is a bug with this, which I believe is fixed with 7.6. The bug is if you were assigning a user to only a single delivery group, that user won't be able to see any of published application assigned to him/her. The user must be assigned to both delivery group.

Monday, December 15, 2014

Citrix XenApp 6.5 Cloning

Here are the steps I've followed successfully to clone a non Data Collector XenApp role without using PvS: 

Find out about VMware Customisation
yes or no

Find out Data Collector
qfarm

Local Admin Password
find out the username/password for local admin of the cloned machine

Shutdown XenApp Server
shutdown

Backup
Take a snapshot of all XenApp Servers
SQL database

Start the XenApp Server
start

XenApp Role Manager
Start XA Role Manager
Edit Configuration
Prepare this server for imaging and provisioning
Do NOT remove this server from the farm
Apply
Change IMA to Manual

(if) there is NO VMware customisation Wizard
Run sysprep here (or not if want to use as a VMware template later)

Shutdown XenApp Server
shutdown

Clone
Clone use vShpere Clone
- customize (if sysprep has not been done)
- no customize (if want to convert this as a template)

After finish cloning, convert the cloned VM to a template

Deploy
Deploy VM from Template and Customize
Make sure it does not have network connected
Remove from Domain
Let it reboot once

Join to Domain
Connect the network
Join the deployed VM to the domain
Reboot

Start IMA
Start IMA
Check Server Join to farm
Change IMA to automatic


Change the original master server IMA to automatic