VIRTUALDESKTOPBLOG

There's a little bug in Provisioning Server when using the writecache to reside on the client's local disk. When checking out the writecache on the client's local drive the writecache file is displayed as being 0 kb in size.

To see the real size of the writecache file, just right click the file, choose properties and click OK. Then press te F5 button and the actual size is being displayed in explorer.

Sometimes it's usefull to set a custum environment variable on a system (for example a XenApp silo server). You can use this variable in scripts and applications.
To flexibily set an environment variable at server startup you can use Windows Group Policy. In order to do this you need to create a custom ADM template.

This template looks something like this:

CLASS MACHINE

CATEGORY "Custom Settings"
CATEGORY "Systeem Variables"

       POLICY "Silo Variable"
             KEYNAME "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment"
                  PART "Silo" DROPDOWNLIST
                  VALUENAME "Silo"
                         ITEMLIST
                         NAME "Desktop"
                         VALUE "Desktop"
                         NAME "Apps"
                         VALUE "Apps"
                         NAME "Support"
                         VALUE "Support"
                         END ITEMLIST
                 END PART
            END POLICY ; Silo Variable

       POLICY "Application UNC Path"
            KEYNAME "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment"
            PART "UNC Path"
                 EDITTEXT
                 VALUENAME "APP_Path"
            END PART
       END POLICY ; Application UNC Path
  
END CATEGORY ; Systeem Variables
END CATEGORY ; "Custom Settings"

The first GPO settings contains a dropdownlist in which the value for the silo variable can be selected. The second setting just contains a text string in which a UNC path can be inserted.

In the Group Policy Management Console this looks like this:

In Provisioning Server 5.1 Citrix changed the SOAP service port from 8001 to 54321. They did this to avoid a port collision when the PVS Server and the XenDesktop Server are installed on the same system.
But with this change a new problem arised. When you run through the XenDesktop Setup Wizard on the Provisioning Server and you arive at the Virtual Disk (vDisk) selection screen, no vDisks are displayed. The follwoing message is bing displayed:

Unable to retrieve the vDisk templates.

When you click details your see the following error:

Unable to retreive site information from the Provisioning Server farm.
Unable to find sites in Provisioning Server. The operation failed with System.ServiceModel.CommunicationObjectFaultedExeption.

To solve this issue we need to make some changes in the SetupToolApplication.exe.config file on the Provisioning Server. The file is located in: C:\Program Files\Citrix\XenDesktop Setup Wizard
Now open the file with notepad and edit the following lines:

Locate the following line;
http://localhost:8000/pvs/mapi/commandset

Change the line to;
http://localhost:54321/pvs/mapi/commandset

Also locate the following line;
net.tcp://localhost:8001/pvs/mapi/commandset

Change this line to;
net.tcp://localhost:54322/pvs/mapi/commandset

Now save the file and restart the XenDesktop Setup Wizard. You will notice that you can now choose your vDisks in the Virtual Disk (vDisk) section of the wizard.