20 Dec 2011

The Ultimate RES Software BuildingBlock for Citrix

Written by Thomas Poppelgaard on. Posted in Provisioning, RES, SQL, Uncategorized, XenApp, XenDesktop

Short info about RES Automation Manager

The RES Automation Manager is a small-footprint, yet highly scaleable infrastructure management platform that allows you to make changes to any kind of Windows server or computer, without having to create a single script or policy. Automation Manager (abreviated AM) is driven by a userfriendly and easy-to-use management console, that allows for massive parallel operation: Multiple admins can schedule multiple jobs on multiple AM agents all at the same time. While retaining the ability to interface with Active Directory for the purpose of managing AD objects, RES Automation Manager itself does not need AD as a prereqisite to run. This means you can manage machines even outside of your own domain. AM supports multiple administrative roles, which will allow you to securely define exactly who can create or run jobs on what target computers. You can add the Service Orchestration Module to AM, which will allow you to deliverIT as a Service. (source resguru)

The Ultimate RES Software BuildingBlock for Citrix

Mr. Luca Lo Castro and Max Ranzau (resguru.com) have created this most awesome Run Books for RES Automation Manager.

The Runbook does the following:

Unattended installation of Citrix Provisioning Server 6.0 (PVS)
Unattended installation of Citrix XenApp 6.5 (XA)
Unattended installation of Xen Desktop 5.5 (XD)
Preparation of a Windows 7 image (application of best practices, per Citrix’s recommendations.

This is quite valuable for anyone who installs these products for a living, no matter if you are a consultant, a Citrix SE or perhaps a Citrix admin. Note * SQL express is used in this Building block, for enterprise environments i would use a SQL server std/ent or HA.

The cool part is that ALL of the above is done in less than 45 minutes! Add that to the approx. 15 minutes it takes to stand up the RES Automation Manager infrastructure, and ask yourself this: How long does it take you to stand up a XenDesktop + PVS + XA environment under normal circumstances? I trust you see my point. So what are the prerequisites for all this? You’ll need the following:

Your 3 .ISO files, respectively for PVS, XA and XD. If you haven’t got them, download them from MyCitrix.com
A server (200x, doesn’t really matter), which will hold your DBMS for Automation Manager and be a mount point for your ISO’s. Let’s call itServer1. If you can run a compatible datastore for Automation Manager, this could be your laptop!
Mount the ISO’s on this server using Daemon Tools or similar. Alternatively, if you are using a VM, you can just mount the ISO’s directly on the virtual machine as DVD drives. Finally if you already have the ISO’s extracted somewhere, you can just share those folders. Either way, make sure you share the individual mount folders, so the contents of each ISO is available as a \\server1\share UNC path.
You will also need 3 blank x64 Server 2008R2 servers. And I do mean blank. For example, not manually install the .Net 4 client profile ahead, as it will mess up the unattended installation of SQL Express. These servers will be the target servers for PVS, XA and XD. Lets call these machines Server A, B and C
Finally you’ll need a blank Windows 7 machine. This is the machine which will be prepped for use with PVS (registry hacks applied, services configured etc) as the golden image.

To get things stood up, here are some guidelines to get you started:

Download and install the RES Automation Manager aka AM. Refer to theGetting Started guide.
Deploy the AM Dispatcher to Server1
Deploy the AM Agents to the 3 blanks Servers A..C
Import the buildingblock, which you will find at the end of this article.
In the AM console, go to Repository | Run Books
Rightclick on the Citrix POC-Sales runbook and select Schedule Job
Fill out the parameters for the runbook as described below
Hit OK, then hit the local Starbucks..

The parameter screen needs a bit of explanation, because if you don’t fill things in right, then of course “interesting” things may happen. You know the drill: BS in, BS out. So let’s have a look at a screen I’ve already filled out below. Click to enlarge:

The table below explains each field and what you need to enter.

Field	Description
customer	This is the name of the site where you are installing the proof-of-concept. This will be displayed as the Farm name
SetupNumber
newXA	Hostname of one of the 3 blank Server2008R2′s which is to become the XenApp 6.5 server. Just use NETBIOS name
newXD	Hostname of one of the 3 blank Server2008R2′s which is to become the XenDesktop 5.5 server. Just use NETBIOS name
newPVS	Hostname of one of the 3 blank Server2008R2′s which is to become the Provisioning Server 6.0. Just use NETBIOS name
securitycontext	This is a combined field of domain\username + password credentials to be used for the installation. Normally you would use the equivalent of a Domain Admin for this.
domain	Supply the FQDN of the current domain to which we are installing into, such as yourdomain.com
licserv	Where the Citrix License server is installed. This has to be a Server 2008R2. IIS will be installed here to support the license server
components	Here you can chose one of 4 options: 1) install just the license server, 2) Install just the Web Interface, 3) Install XenApp, and 4) Install XenApp + WebInterface
exmode	Here you select either to Create a new farm from scratch, or Join an existing one
version	Chose here what flavor of XenApp you want to install: Advance, Enterprise or Platinum
optimization	This section lets you chose one or more optimization methods to be applied to the Windows 7 image. These are documented in (link needed)
sqldatafolder	This is the path to where the SQLexpress will create the datastores. For regular POC scenarios, this doesn’t need to be modified
sqlInstancename	Name of the SQL instance to be created. More info needed ???
sapassword	specify the sa password for the new SQLexpress datastore
TerminalServerLicenseServer	Specify the hostname of the TS License server. This is strictly not necessary for a short term demo environment as you’ll have temporary licenses to work with. This is used when enabling Terminal Services in Application mode
TSLicenseMode	When enabeling TS in Application mode you have to chose what licensing method. You can specify here either PerUser or PerDevice.
PVSpath	The \\server\share UNC path to the share that contains the mounted ProvisioningServer .ISO or the contents of it.
XApath	The \\server\share UNC path to the share that contains the mounted XenApp .ISO or the contents of it.
XDpath	The \\server\share UNC path to the share that contains the mounted XenDesktop .ISO or the contents of it.