When ConfigMgr 2012 was released, Microsoft built in some generic WMI namespace in which different vendors could populate certain fields in order to tell the SCCM Agent which location to use for storing it's persistent configuration. When the SCCM agent is starting it detects it is running on a non-persistent machine and used WMI to determine the location of the Citrix Identity Store (in order for this to work, PVS write cache should be set to Device Hard Disk).

When SCCM determines the location of the persistent drive (ex. D:\ ) it restores its unique information from this location.

There is no documentation from Citrix regarding this configuration other than that it should just work. However we have found that some additional steps are needed in order to make this work:

1. When finishing the "master" image, prior to shutdown. Stop the CCMEXEC service. (or SMS Agent Host)
2. Delete the C:\Windows\SMSCFG.INI file
3. Delete the current certificates in the "SMS" certificate store.
4. Close the master image
   
   When the image is next booted using PVS standard mode, the SCCM agent will create a new SMSCFG.INI file based on the contents of the Citrix Identity Store and will create new certificates to be used for communication with the configmgr management points. The agent will now use the existing resource records within ConfigMgr instead of creating a new resource.

Archiving enables application and desktop settings to be rolled back to previous states in event of profile inconsistencies. The great thing about the AppSense way of working is that, in contrast to the standard Windows profile, EM Personalization is split into small pieces, allowing you to restore only the erroneous settings.

We created an import/export process to migrate data from the virtual AppSense registry to the physical registry of the computer. But the same process can be used to import/export files between the physical filesystem and the virtual AppSense filesystem.

When going through the memory dumps I noticed the issue was related to the network Citrix PV Ethernet driver, more specifically xenvif.sys, installed by XenServer Tools from XenServer 6. When an interface using this driver receives a rogue TCP packet, where the TCP header contains options but the IP packet length is too short to accommodate them, the system crashes. The fact that these packages exist suggest something else on the network is misbehaving.

Citrix recognizes this problem, but it will only be fixed in the next version of XenServer, 6.0.2, which will be released somewhere in March. Luckily there are two workarounds for this problem:

• Install XenServer Tools from XenServer 5.6
• Disable 'Large Receive Offload' on the driver properties for all interfaces using the Citrix PV Ethernet driver

Update: This powershell script disables Large Receive Offload for all interfaces using the Citrix PV Ethernet driver:

$root = 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}'
$items = Get-ChildItem -Path Registry::$Root -Name

Foreach ($item in $items) {
    if ($item -ne "Properties") {
        $path = $root + "\" + $item
        $DriverDesc = Get-ItemProperty -Path Registry::$path | Select-Object -expandproperty DriverDesc
        if ($DriverDesc -eq "Citrix PV Ethernet Adapter") {
            Set-ItemProperty -path Registry::$path -Name LROIPv4 -Value 0
        }
     }
}

NOTE: If you do not want any troubles only increase the disk size. Decreasing can cause loss of data.  

Flow

Increase Disk using diskpart

Step 1: Edit the virtual machine settings and increase the size of the disk (VMDK).

 Step 2: Open the console of this virtual machine and start a command prompt.

Step 3: Start diskpart and execute following steps.

list volume à this gives you a list of the available partitions

select volume x à select the partition number you want to increase

extend à this will add the empty disk space into the partition. Now the partition has increased in size.

NOTE: On Windows 2008 this can be done via the Device Manager / Storage, but I have seen some weird things like showing incorrect partition sizes.  

Increase Disk using Third Party tool

Since I have some great experiences with the Acronis Disk Director tool I will explain the steps to increase a disk using this tool. Another tool that can be used is e.g. GParted.

Step 1: Be sure you have a boot image (ISO) of the Acronis Disk Director Tool that supports your guest OS.

Step 2: Boot your virtual machine using the boot image ISO. Use the ESC button during booting your virtual machine to activate the "one time boo menu"

Step 3: Select the partition you want to increase and right mouse click on it. Then select "Resize Volume"

Step 4: Increase the disk space of the selected partitions by decreasing the unallocated space to 0

Step 5: After increasing the partition you have to commit the changes.

Step 6: Now you need to reboot your virtual machine after disconnecting the boot image.

 Today,  12th of July VMware announced a new suite of products.  Look here for news release.

In the near future I will blog about this new release in a sort of “How to” format to introduce the new features.

The suite consists out of following products.

VMware vSphere 5.0         

 VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0

VMware vSphere Storage Appliance 1.0

vShield App 5.0 with Data Security

VMware vCloud Director 1.5

A new product most of the time means, a new set of licenses.  VMware moved from 6 different licenses to 5, they removed the Advanced license.  Lucky for the owners of this license (with a active subscription, they will be migrated to Enterprise.  Look here for the license paper

Here a list of vSphere 5 introduction links

VMware Cloud Infrastructure: http://www.vmware.com/cloud-infrastructure/

The Console Blog: VMware Unveils vSphere 5 and the Cloud Infrastructure Suite

NTPRO: http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/

Kendrickcolemand: vCenter 5 - To Appliance or Not?, Using VMware AutoDeploy for ESXi

YellowBricks.com Live BLogging, vSphere 5.0 Clustering technical deepdive

UP2V: http://up2v.nl/

VmwareTips: VMware 2011 Mega Launch

Virtual Geek: Raising the Bar V = vSphere 5!

CRN VMware Adds Virtual Machine-Based Licensing In vSphere 5

vTexan: really cool things in vSphere5

The cause of this problem is that an ISO was mounted from a datastore which does not exist anymore. 

To solve this problem, just connect to the ESX host where the VM is registered on.  Edit the setting here and put the CDROM on “Client Device”. 

Then check on which datastore the VM is located.  Then unregister and register the VM again in the ESX host.  Now you are able again to edit the setting of this VM via vCenter

We checked the permissions on this server and we saw that the user who wanted to remove the server was admin on datacenter level.  Here the screen we got.

Knowing there is a PowerCLI command to remove a ESXi host from the vCenter, we walked that way with success.

I used this PowerCLI script to remove this server from the inventory after moving the server out of the cluster to the datacenter level.

Connect-VIServer  vCenterServer

Remove-VMHost "HostThatCannotBeRemovedViaGui" –confirm:$false

Disconnect-VIServer –confirm:$false

The solution is to create a list of printer drivers that are blocked so that these printers are not created automatically in the session. This is the procedure to block these drivers:

Within Citrix Delivery Services console, create or edit a User policy. Within this policy navigate to Printing > Drivers > "Printer Driver mapping and compatibility" 

Edit the Printer mapping and compatibility and add the printer drivers you want to block. Use "Do Not Create" as the action.

Here is a list of common printer drivers you can block:

• Send To Microsoft OneNote Driver
• Microsoft Office Document Image Writer Driver
• pdfFactory 2
• Amyuni Document Converter 400
• Microsoft XPS Document Writer
• PDFCreator
• CutePDF Writer
• Send To Microsoft OneNote 2010 Driver

Download here

Simon Rust, VP of Technology, AppSense, discusses how web-based applications will impact our VDI environment with topics such as; application management, maintenance, user experience and end-user needs. "The number and effect of Web-based applications has not yet grown big enough to directly affect VDI. However, they are a relevant topic for discussion because they do significantly lessen the impact of the administration model and desktop delivery for the enterprise, and ultimately will deliver cost savings".