VA/VD "lab"

[Matt Sherman]

My organization is currently on Xen 6.0 We are planing to "upgrade" to VA/VD 7 1912 LTSR.

 

I understand that we can't upgrade, it has to be a fresh installation

 

I would like to set this up in a lab separate from our production environment. 

 

Does anyone see any potential issues setting this up in VMWare workstation?

 

I also will not have AD integration in this "lab", is a setup even possible without AD?

 

Has anyone setup this version of Citrix in a lab? What would be the best way to do it?

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

Matt 

[Diego Oliveira]

Does anyone see any potential issues setting this up in VMWare workstation?

No problem, if your PC has hardware sufficient for the lab.

I also will not have AD integration in this "lab", is a setup even possible without AD?

You need to have AD.

[Matt Sherman]

31 minutes ago, Diego Oliveira said:

Does anyone see any potential issues setting this up in VMWare workstation?

No problem, if your PC has hardware sufficient for the lab.

I also will not have AD integration in this "lab", is a setup even possible without AD?

You need to have AD.

 

Thanks Diego. That AD part was my main concern. I have to work within the constraints I was given, and unfortunately I don't see how it's possible given no access to our organizational AD in the lab environment. 

[CarlStalhood]

If you want to try MCS, then Workstation doesn't have the vCenter equivalent.

[Ken Z]

Hi Matt

 

I've got a CVAD "lab" on my Windows 10 laptop (12 core, 64GB RAM, 2 x 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD disks), running on Windows 10 Hyper-V, so no need for VMware Workstation.

This includes an AD Server, as well as all the other components of Citrix, plus a file Server, NetScaler, etc. All the VMs are running on a Private network (vSwitch) within the laptop, and I've got a multi-homed firewall (virtual smoothwall, but you can use PfSense) that links the private vSwitch to my external vSwitch.

 

Having the lab on a private vSwitch on my PC allows me to run DHCP, PXE, etc, while my laptop is plugged into the corporate network, and not worry about it interfering with the office network.

 

Finally, as Carl mentions, this doesn't allow for MCS, but if you want to play with that, I'd recommend you get hold of a spare physical server, install XenServer onto it, and and build your VDAs on that. If you don't have a spare server, then a decent desktop/laptop can be rebuilt with XenServer and used instead.

 

Regards

 

Ken Z