Citrix have released to web a new version of Citrix Provisioning Services 6.1. The new version supports Personal vDisk and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 and finally official support for VmWare vSphere 5.

Citrix Provisioning Services™ uses streaming technology to dynamically deliver server workloads and desktop images on demand to any physical or virtual machine, reducing IT capital and operational costs while increasing business agility.

Provisioning Services 6.1 is a companion release to XenDesktop 5.6 and adds the following new features:

• Personal vDisk Support: In XenDesktop environments this capability allows user data and desktop configuration changes to be saved between sessions while still giving IT the storage optimization benefits of Provisioning Services Standard Image Mode provisioning.
• Microsoft System Center 2012 Support: The XenDesktop Setup Wizard, Streamed VM Setup Wizard, and the Image Update feature have been updated to support Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and Virtual Machine Manager.

What’s New in Citrix Provisioning Services 6.1:

• Support for Personal vDisks — Citrix XenDesktop with personal vDisk technology is a high-performance enterprise desktop virtualization solution that makes VDI accessible to workers who require personalized desktops using pooled-static virtual machines. Target devices that use personal vDisks are created using the Citrix XenDesktop Setup Wizard. Within a Provisioning Services farm, the wizard creates and adds target devices with personal vDisks to an existing site’s collection and assigns an existing shared-mode vDisk to that device. The wizard also creates XenDesktop virtual machines to associate with each device. A new type of catalog exists in Citrix Desktop Studio that allows you to preserve the assignment of users to desktops; the same users are assigned the same desktop for later sessions. In addition, a dedicated storage disk is created (before logon) for each user so they can store all personalization’s to that desktop. Personalizations include any changes to the vDisk image or desktop that are not made as a result of an image update, such as application settings, adds, deletes, modifications, documents, etc.
•  Support for Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (SCCM) – The vDisk Update Management feature now supports SCCM 2012 environments.
•  Support for Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) – The XenDesktop Setup Wizard and Streamed VM Setup Wizard now support SCVMM 2012 for Hyper-V environments.
• Provisioning Services support for KMS licensing no longer requires local administrator privileges. Provisioning Services SoapServer KMS licensing now requires the same VHD mount privileges as Microsoft Windows (SE_MANAGE_VOLUME_PRIVILEGE, which is included in Administrators group by default).
  Note: If upgrading from a past release, be sure to reset the privileges accordingly.
• Hypervisor support for ESX 5.0.

Source

Download Citrix Provisioning Services 6.1 here (Require MyCitrix ID)

Introduction

A successful XenDesktop 5.5 Proof-of-Concept (PoC) begins with simple preparation. Although XenDesktop supports many different technologies and provides support for desktop, server, and application virtualization, this document focuses on a deployment of XenDesktop 5.5 using Microsoft’s Windows 2008 R2 SP1 with Hyper-V code base for delivering hosted virtual desktops. Hosted VDI virtual desktops demonstrate the brokering technology and the benefit of the HDX protocol. This level can be used to quickly compare the end-user experience and allow basic desktop remoting. This approach is good to validate user requirements with the technology. The PoC environment is expected to be isolated from the production environment, although the production Active Directory domain could be used to contain the computer and user accounts for testing. Preparation for the PoC will include hardware, operating systems, Active Directory accounts, and software licensing.

Windows 7, Server 2008R2, and SCVMM Service Pack 1  Support

Citrix XenDestop5 SP1 and now 5.5 support the use of the Windows 7 client and Windows Server 2008R2 SP1. Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 provides major new features for VDI focusing around key areas such as Dynamic Memory for Hyper-V (see Microsoft Deployment Guide for Dynamic Memory), RemoteFX for assigning virtual GPU’s to XenDesktop Windows 7 virtual machines(see Microsoft Deployment Guide For RemoteFX), and System enter Virtual Machine Manager SP1 for managing VM’s with Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX GPU’s assigned to them (see Migrating to SCVMM 2008R2 SP1). More information about enabling RemoteFX for XenDesktop can be found here. XenDesktop 5 SP1 and 5.5 Quick Deploy support the use of Dynamic Memory configuration and RemoteFX adapters in the master Windows 7 SP1 image. This enables the administrator to create specific feature enabled desktops instantly from a VM template master image using the Quick Deploy Wizard. These new VM guest features should be enabled via the SCVMM 20008R2 SP1 administrative console on the master image prior to using Quick Deploy. Virtual machines currently running as a guest operating system already have the R2 integration services enabled by default. These existing virtual machines will run normally with the host upgraded to SP1. The newer features such as Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX, do require the SP1 version of integrations services applied to those existing virtual machines to take advantage of newer updates and enhancements. For more information on this see http://technet.microsoft.com/enus/library/cc732470(WS.10).aspx

Read the entire whitepaper, you can find it under Sources in this article. Enjoy /Poppelgaard.

Sources

Download Whitepaper – XenDesktop 5.5 Hyper-V Proof of Concept Guide here

Tony Sanchez from Citrix and Michael Kleef (Microsoft) and Patrick Jaspers (Microsoft) have made this great presentation, where you get a technical deep dive into following technologies:

• Microosft Windows Server 2008R2 SP1 Dynamic Memory
• Citrix XenDesktop 5
• Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
• Microsoft System Center 2007 R2
• Lync 2010

You will see how easy it is to deploy VDI with XenDesktop 5 in a Hyper-V environment in this session. Great Video.

See the session here

Next version of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 is going to be cool and much more Cloud aware. So i will post more info, when i notice it.

Whats new in the upcoming Microsoft SCVMM 2012:

• SCVMM 2012 will have two main roles: Service Management (lifecycle management of virtual machines and applications inside them) and Fabric Management (configuration management of computing, networking and storage)
• Communication with the storage layer will happen through SMI-S (Storage Management Initiative Specification) providers. SCVMM 2010 will be able to provision LUNs at the cluster level
• Capability to create logical networks (abstracting IP subnetting, VLANs, and DNS domains) for private cloud computing
• Capability to define and assign IP pools to logical networks, as well as MAC address pools to host groups
• Capability to copy a VM template from SAN to SAN on provisioning
• Support for Citrix NetScaler as load balancer to create Virtual Private Addresses (VIPs) and assign them to services

• Support for Citrix XenServer (5.6? 6.0?) and VMware ESX 4.1
• Hyper-V remote deployment on bare-metal
  A new server will boot from PXE, download a WinPE image, download a VHD, join a domain and install the Hyper-V role all automated and orchestrated from SCVMM 2012.
• Dynamic Optimization (DO)
  Automatic/Manual workloads balancing across Hyper-V hosts in a cluster, without System Center Operation Manager (SCOM).
  It will compete with VMware Distribute Resource Scheduler (DRS)

• Enhanced Placement
  New 100 checks and validations used by the workload placing algorithm, including manual rules to detail inter-VMs dependencies, defined by the administrator.
  It will compete with the VMware DRS affinity rules.
• Power Management
  Hyper-V hosts will be powered off using DO and Live Migration in case of low hardware utilization.
  It will compete with VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM).
• Administration Delegation
• Resources Quota
• Capacity Management