Citrix® XenDesktop® 7 Cookbook

410 Pages·2014·9.219 MB·English

by  Gaspare A. Silvestri

Citrix® XenDesktop® 7
Cookbook
Over 35 recipes to help you implement a fully featured
XenDesktop® 7 architecture with a rich and powerful VDI
experience
Gaspare A. Silvestri
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Citrix® XenDesktop® 7 Cookbook
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First published: January 2013
Second edition: January 2014
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Cover Image by Aniket Sawant ([email protected])
Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Gaspare A. Silvestri Priyanka Goel
Reviewers Proofreader
Jack Cobben Sandra Hopper
Ferdinand Feenstra
Florian Zoller Indexer
Tejal Soni
Acquisition Editors
Rubal Kaur Production Coordinators
Melwyn D'sa
Kunal Parikh
Aditi Gajjar Patel
Adonia Jones
Lead Technical Editor
Amey Varangaonkar Komal Ramchandani
Technical Editors Cover Work
Pragnesh Bilimoria Melwyn D'sa
Jinesh Kampani Adonia Jones
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Copy Editors
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Disclaimer
The statements made and opinions expressed herein belong exclusively to the author and
reviewers of this publication, and are not shared by or represent the viewpoint of Citrix
Systems®, Inc. This publication does not constitute an endorsement of any product, service,
or point of view. Citrix® makes no representations, warranties or assurances of any kind,
express or implied, as to the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability, availability, or
currency of the content contained in this publication or any material related to this publication.
Any reliance you place on such content is strictly at your own risk. In no event shall Citrix®,
its agents, officers, employees, licensees, or affiliates be liable for any damages whatsoever
(including, without limitation, damages for loss of profits, business information, or loss of
information) arising out of the information or statements contained in the publication,
even if Citrix® has been advised of the possibility of such loss or damages.
Citrix®, Citrix Systems®, XenApp®, XenDesktop®,and CloudPortal™ are trademarks of
Citrix Systems®, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in
the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.
About the Author
Gaspare A. Silvestri is an IT specialist with 10 years of experience in the Information
Technology market. Currently, he works as the CTO for an ICT company based in Italy. Being a
multicertified IT director, he considers his job as the first of all his passions, with a particular
preference for the areas of virtualization and Unix. He is always curious and in search of
new IT projects on which to perform research activities. Gaspare has been involved in the
design, tuning, and consolidation of physical and virtual infrastructures for important system
integration companies based in Italy.
Gaspare is also the author of Citrix XenDesktop 5.6 Cookbook, by Packt Publishing.
Thanks to Viola and Manuela—the shining stars of my life.
Thanks to my parents—for the road of life they have given to me.
Thanks to Tiziana and Sergio—for the help they gave me with my
shining stars.
Thanks to Roberto—who gave me the opportunity to start working on
the Citrix® platforms some years ago.
A special thanks to Steven Wright—a wonderful person who permitted me
to use his fantastic software (WrightSMS2 in Chapter 10, Configuring the
XenDesktop® Advanced Logon).
Thanks to the coffee and Miles Davis—who have been my main fellowships
during working hours.
Special thanks to the entire Packt staff and the Technical Reviewers—for the
exceptional work they have done with me and for all the work we have
done together.
About the Reviewers
Jack Cobben is no stranger to the challenges that enterprises can experience when managing
large deployments of Windows systems and Citrix® implementations, with over thirteen years
of systems management experience. In his free time, Jack writes for his own blog at
www.jackcobben.nl and is active on the Citrix® support forums. He loves to test new software
and share the knowledge in any way he can. You can follow him on twitter via @jackcobben.
While he works for Citrix®, Citrix® didn't help with, or support, this book in any way or form.
Ferdinand Feenstra, based in the Netherlands, is a Citrix® Certified Architect and a senior
specialist for Microsoft environments. He is working in the IT field since 1998, and he has
experience in many complex environments with different customers in different functions.
His experience is categorized into building and designing Citrix® environments,
implementations and migrations projects, and consultancy projects. Since he began working
with Citrix® in 2004, a new world of solutions and the opportunity to work on any device
combined with a great user experience came his way. This makes IT more dynamic and easier
to adopt for users. You can find his blog at www.CitrixGuru.net or check his tweets on
Twitter at @f_feenstra.
This is the fifth review for him. He has already reviewed Instant EdgeSight for XenApp by Vaqar
Hasan, XenServer 6.0 Administration Essential Guide by Daniele Tosatto, Citrix XenDesktop
5.6 Cookbook by Gaspare A. Silvestri, and Implementing Citrix XenServer Quickstarter by
Gohar Ahmed.
Ferdinand works for Imtech ICT Communication Solutions B.V., which is a Citrix® Gold Solution
Advisor. With 2,500 IT professionals, Imtech ICT is part of Royal Imtech NV (30,000 employees
worldwide). Solutions that Imtech provides range from embedded software for high-tech
industrial environments and business software applications to IT infrastructures. Imtech ICT
Communication Solutions BV designs and implements large-scale infrastructures, such as
virtual desktop environments, secure networks, servers, unified communications, storage, and
backup solutions. Among Citrix®, Imtech ICT provides (managed) solutions based on Cisco,
HP, VMware, Avaya, Microsoft, and other major market leading vendors. For more information,
visit www.imtech.com/nl/ICT.
Florian Zoller works as a senior IT consultant for a consulting company in Germany. He has
several years of experience in designing and implementing Citrix® infrastructures. Additionally,
he is an expert in automated server- and client-deployment technologies.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: XenDesktop® 7 – Upgrading, Installing, and Configuring 5
Introduction 5
Upgrading from XenDesktop® 5.6 to XenDesktop® 7 9
Preparing the SQL Server 2012 database 16
Installing and configuring the Citrix Licensing Services – 11.11.1 19
Installing XenDesktop® 7 components 25
Installing and configuring StoreFront 2.0 30
Installing and configuring Provisioning Services 7 41
Chapter 2: Configuring and Deploying Virtual Machines
for XenDesktop® 55
Introduction 55
Configuring the XenDesktop® site 56
Configuring XenDesktop® to interact with Citrix® XenServer® 61
Configuring XenDesktop® to interact with VMware vSphere 5.1 66
Configuring XenDesktop® to interact with Microsoft Hyper-V 73
Chapter 3: Master Image Configuration and Tuning 87
Introduction 87
Configuring and optimizing a desktop OS master image 88
Configuring and optimizing a server OS master image 97
Configuring a target device – PVS architecture 103
Installing and configuring the master image policies 110