Yesterday Citrix anounced that their Provisioning Server product will be a part of XenApp 5 Platinum Edition. Dispite the fact that deploying your XenApp farm was already one of the most important use cases for Provisioning Server, there was never a complete how to install guide for this scenario.

Untill today! Starting today I will release a 3 part HOW TO GUIDE: "Installing and Configuring Citrix Provisioning Server for Deploying XenApp".
Yes that’s quite a mouth full…..The guide will mainly focus on installing and configuring the Provisioning Server environment. Documentation on how to exactly install Citrix XenApp can be found… well just about everywhere…The "Installing and Configuring Provisioning Server for Deploying XenApp Guide" will be divided in 3 separate articles;

- Preparing the network/domain for installing Provisioning Server
- Installing and Configuring the Citrix Provisioning Server environment
- Installing the Master Target Device and Building the XenApp Image
 

The Environment
Let me first describe the scenario which I use for this guide;- The Provisioning Server environment will be installed in a Windows 2008 Active Directory Domain
- A Windows filecluster will be used for hosting the Provisioning Server vDisk store
- Citrix Provisioning Server 5.0 SP1 will be used
- Citrix XenApp 5 will be used for the XenApp farm
- All servers are hosted on XenServer 5
- vDisk writecache will be on the client disk

At this moment the Provisioning Server environment will not be High Available. This will be something for in a future article.
In the articles I will also provide a lot of the best practices for Citrix Provisioning Server.

We’re going to start today with Part 1: Preparing the environment for installing Provisioning Server.


Part 1: Preparing the network/domain for Installing Provisioning Server

Before installing Provisioning Server we first have to do some preparations in Active Directory, Network Services and storage. Furthermore we need a SQL and License server.

Preparing Active Directory
In my environment I'm using a fileshare as store for the vDisks. Because a fileshare is being used, an Active Directory account is needed as service account for the streaming service.

- Create an Active Directory account (e.g. SA-PVS)
- Make sure the password never expires
- The account only needs to be a Domain User

For delegation of control there needs to be a Provisioning Servers administrators group. This group has to be created before the installation of Provisioning Server. The account that is used for the installation of Provisioning Server will be a member of this group.

- Create an Active Directory group (e.g. PVS-Admins)
- Add the account you're going to use for the installation of Provisioning Server to the PVS-Admins group

When streaming the XenApp image the Provisioning Server takes care of the hostname of the target devices. This name and password assigned by Provisioning Server must match the information in the corresponding computer account within the domain. Otherwise, the target device is not able to log on successfully. For this reason, the Provisioning Server must manage the domain passwords for the target devices. To enable domain password management you must disable the Active Directory controlled automatic re-negotiation of machine passwords. The best way to do this is to create a GPO on the XenApp Server OU in which the "Disable machine account password changes" setting is enabled.

AD Policy

Preparing network services
Provisioning Server depends on several network services to build and deploy the OS images. A TFTP server is being used to provide the bootstrap file wit boot information to the target devices. Provisioning Server provides a TFTP service. Use this service when no other TFTP server is available in your network. Be aware of the fact that high availability is not by default supported with the Provisioning Server TFTP service. For this article the Provisioning Server TFTP Service is being used.

In my environment an existing DHCP server is being used to provide the location of the TFTP server and the name of the bootstrap file to the target devices. This information is going to be provided by configuring DHCP options 66 and 67 (Boot server hostname and Boot file name). Providing the bootstrap information by using DHCP options 66 and 67 is best practice, use this when possible.

- Open DHCP manager
- Right click Scope Options and choose Configure Scope Options
- Select option 66: Fill in the ip-address of the TFTP server
- Select option 67: Fill in ARDBP32.BIN
- Click OK

DHCP

Preparing the Store location
Provisioning Server needs a storage location to create a store for the XenApp image(s) and writecache. In this scenario a Windows filesshare is being used as store location.

- Create a fileshare
- In the fileshare create 2 folders; "vDisks" and "Cache"
- Add at least read/write permissions to the fileshare for the PVS service account and the PVS admin group you created earlier.

Store


Preparing SQL
A SQL server is necessary for hosting the Provisioning Server database. This can either be SQL 2005 Express, Workgroup, Standard and Enterprise. No other database platforms are supported. The Provisioning Server installation media provides a SQL Express installation, use this for small implementations like for test and PoC environments.The Provisioning Server database will be created during the Provisioning Server installation process. Also the permissions for the service account on the database will be automatically set. Make sure the account used for installing Provisioning Server has enough permissions on the SQL server to create and configure the database.

Citrix License Server
Provisioning Server requires a Citrix License Server with valid licenses to provide the ability to stream images. When you already use a Citrix License Server for other Citrix products you can use this License server for Provisioning Server also. In this case make sure to upgrade your License server at least to the version delivered on the Provisioning Server media.
When a License Server is not installed, no valid licenses are available or an older version of the Citrix license server is installed, Provisioning Server clients will shutdown after 5 minutes.


When followed the steps described in this first part you have your network and domain environment properly setup for implementing Provisioning Server. In part 2 we will actually install and configure the Provisioning Server environment! 
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