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Added by Daniel Feller, last edited by Daniel Feller on Sep 02, 2008
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02 Sep 2008 11:09 AM EDT
XenDesktop Maintenance Tasks
[ Tags: xendesktop ,   xenserver ,   maintenance ,   architecture ,   provisioning server ]
posted by Daniel Feller

For those of you who attended the TechTalk on XenDesktop Technical Dive, I wanted to post the videos maintenance videos. 

Remember, a virtual desktop solution must be able to simplify maintenance or else you are simply moving the administrative problem from remote sites to the data center. The first video shows how easy it is to patch the Hypervisor (XenServer).  The running virtual machines are automatically moved to another available XenServer without impacting the users. 

XenServer Update Video:


The second video shows how thousands of users' desktops can be patched easily without requiring a significant amount of time or expense with the use of Provisioning Server. 

Provisioning Server OS Images Update Video:


These are just two examples of maintenance for XenDesktop. The incorporation of XenApp and application streaming greatly simplifies the maintenance of application delivery.  If you want to hear more, take a listen to the recording of the TechTalk which can be accessed from here.

Thanks

Daniel

Homer Simpson Quote of the Blog (What do we need a psychiatrist for? We know our kid is nuts.)

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Comments (4)

 

  1. Sep 11, 2008

    Eric Rossberg says:

    Very nice videos showing the updating feature in Provisioning server.  I di...

    Very nice videos showing the updating feature in Provisioning server.  I did have a question regarding the updated of the vdisks regarding drivers. 

    1) What would be the Best Practice to update drivers on the vdisk?

    2)If you make all updates to the vdisk, not physical disk, can you reverse the process of vdisk to physical to update the drivers?

    3)Have noticed that updates to the XenServer has  ask to update drivers, is that necessary for XenDesktop?

    I love the product just wanted to get the correct procedures put into a process.

    Thanks,

    Eric Rossberg

    1. Sep 11, 2008

      Daniel Feller says:

      Updating a driver on a vdisk would follow the same process as pretty much anythi...

      Updating a driver on a vdisk would follow the same process as pretty much anything else. You would want to

      1. make a copy of the vdisk
      2. turn it into private mode so changes can be saved within the disk
      3. assign the vdisk to a machine (physical or virtual)
      4. update your drivers
      5. shutdown
      6. change the vdisk into standard (shared) mode
      7. reboot your target devices.

      Not really sure what you mean on item #2.

      As for question #3, those driver updates would be the XenServer Tools. A XenServer update could include new drivers for the network, video, etc to make the virtual machine run better.  If an update does have a newer version of a XenServer driver, you would have to update the vdisk and incorporate the XenServer drivers into the virtual desktop image via the process outlined above.

      1. Sep 11, 2008

        Eric Rossberg says:

        I ran into a problem with updating the vdisk with the latest XenServer Tools bec...

        I ran into a problem with updating the vdisk with the latest XenServer Tools because it wanted to update the NIC driver, this caused the streaming from the Provisioning server to stop thus the update never completed to the vdisk.  This even caused a Windows BlueScreen, and I was stuck with an non functioning vdisk and a out of date physical disk (the source of the original vdisk) that I had to re-update to make another vdisk.

         So the reason for my #2 was if I was in this predicament again how can I migrate the vdisk back to a physical disk so that I may update the NIC drivers? 

        1. Sep 11, 2008

          Daniel Feller says:

          That, may I say, is an EXCELLENT question.  That does leave you in a situat...

          That, may I say, is an EXCELLENT question.  That does leave you in a situation doesn't it? You have to update the NIC drivers on an OS that requires the NIC in order to run. The NIC update will kill the  network for a moment, and since your network stream is gone, the NIC update will never end.  Looks like there is a rock and a hard place and you are in between. Well, luckily there is a solution. There are actually a few solutions

          Option 1

          Do you still have the master non-streamed image (either on physical or virtual XenServer disks)?  If you do, then update the XenServer tools on the non-streamed disk.  You will then re-run the image building process

          Option 2

          If you don't have the image on a non-streamed disk, you need to re-create it. This doesn't mean you have to re-install the OS because that would just be crazy.  Instead, do a Reverse Image of the stream.  Try the following:

          • Put image in private mode
          • Add a XenServer virtual disk to your virtual machine (same size as the PVS vdisk)
          • Boot the virtual disk from your PVS image (private mode)
          • Make sure the XenServer virtual disk appears in My Computer. If not go into your OS disk management and configure it.
          • Run the PVS Image Builder. Your destination is the XenServer virtual disk
          • When the Reverse Image Builder is done, shutdown the virtual machine and make it start from disk and not PXE boot. 
          • Update the image
          • Re-build the stream image

          (http://support.citrix.com/servlet/KbServlet/download/16455-102-18798/UpgradeGuide.pdf)\\

          I hope this helps. Let me know

          Thanks

          Daniel

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