Geek115 Real World Perils and Pitfalls of PVS in the Enterprise Or Dont Always Do What I Did Who Am I Citrix Technology Professional CTP Architect of multiple Fortune 100 Citrix environments ID: 763667
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Geek115: Real World Perils and Pitfalls of PVS in the Enterprise Or.. Don’t Always Do What I Did!
Who Am I? Citrix Technology Professional (CTP) Architect of multiple Fortune 100 Citrix environments 19+ years working with Citrix products Author and editor Owner of CitrixTips.comPrincipal Consultant at Presidio
Large scale PVS considerations Gold Disk Replication StrategiesThe ever-controversial idea of a separate streaming networkCommon monitoring and logging mistakesOther configuration tips and tricks Tweet about tonight’s session with the hashtag #Geek115 ! All slides and notes available post presentation.Session Content
Constructing a Solid PVS Farm
Let’s Talk About a Farm!
I’ve Got 96 Sites and PVS in Every One…
Gold Disks and Replication Show of hands… who still uses Robocopy? Here’s an example Robocopy script to get you started: REM Robocopy from PVS01 to PVS02 REM Deletes files from other server if not present on local server Robocopy D:\vDisks \\pvs02\d$\vDisks *. vhd *. vhdx *. avhd *. avhdx *. pvp /b / mir / xf *. lok / xd WriteCache /xo * Source: Carl Stalhood
…But Some People Still Use DFS-R! DFS-R can be a viable alternative for Gold Disk storage and replication! However, it is very dependent on the number of gold disks and frequency of changes. 4 gold disks, monthly image rebuild, 8 PVS servers across 3 physical sites with 3 DFS-R servers. Customer 1 35 gold disks, constant patching of apps and OS, 12 PVS servers across 2 physical sitesCustomer 2Guess which one DFS worked well for?VS
Make sure to apply SMB performance tweaks when using CIFS! Yes these are old, but still applicable. Make sure to read the comments section for SMB2 and 3 tweaks https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2010/11/05/provisioning-services-and-cifs-stores-tuning-for-performance/ Finding the Best DNS Config Set a Preferred Primary server!Round-robin DFS is bad with multiple stream serversDisk versions can become out of syncSet the secondary DFS to fail back to the Primary always Use a Hub and Spoke Design! Limit Vdisk updates to a single site Prevents disk contention from multiple updates to the same version Citrix recommended best practice
Time for another show of hands… who still uses a separate streaming network? To Stream or Not to Stream (Separately)? For many years the recommendation from CCS was to separate your streaming traffic from the actual client traffic. The days of 1GB NICs in the data center are generally long dead though, and the technical reasons for using a separate NIC are now significantly limited.
When Separate Streaming NICs Goes Wrong Real World Story…. Client was moving from XenServer to ESX 6.0 with XenDesktop 7.8. They had ALWAYS used a streaming network and were stubborn about keeping it “Just because.” Images worked fine in Private mode but failed trying to seal themImages would boot and then have massive numbers of retriesSometimes the whole session would just hang and never recover
Windows Device Identity Manager Gets Confused
Field office scenario with 1GB NICs in their closet Class B Streaming Network across Sites Secure Enclave with a segregated traffic requirement Because you like complexity and aren’t running ESX. But Sometimes Streaming NICS Still Make Sense
Monitoring Tools
CDFTrace Configuration: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX138698 Make Sure You Monitor!
My fellow CTP Sacha Thomet wrote a very nice monitor script for PVS! Check it out here: http://blog.appcloud.ch/happy-new-script-pvs-7-7-healthcheck/ Custom PVS Monitoring
SCOM PVS monitoring with the ComTrade integrationTons of 3 rd party monitorsCheck out ControlUp’s real time RAM cache monitoring! Other Party Monitoring
Other Configuration Tips
I’ve been at several clients who really wanted to just use Network Services when they installed PVS. You know what I had to say about that? Please, please don’t . You know what’s easier? Just using a service account! Just Use a Service Account
So I talked about how a Service Account is the easier path, but here’s something I hear all the time: “Yes I have a Service Account.” And that’s what they really mean… they use 1 SA for everything. Use Unique Services Accounts
HKLM\System\Currentcontrolset\services\BNTFTP\Parameters (for the tftp Server) orHKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\PVSTSB\Parameters (for the tsb server)values:InitTimeoutSec dword 1-4 seconds (default 1) MaxBindRetry dword 5-20 retries (default 5) Delay-Start PVS Services
Remove System Partition VS https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg441289.aspx
Disabling Task Offload Should you still? It Depends… https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/onthewire/2014/01/21/tcp-offloadingchimney-rsswhat-is-it-and-should-i-disable-it/ http://blogs.vmware.com/performance/2015/06/vmxnet3-lro.html
CTX207624 Citrix Health Assistant
Thanks For Coming! And that’s all I’ve got today! You can find the content of these slides at http://citrixtips.com/