Citrix Provisioning on Nutanix AHV [Updated with PVS support for AHV]

nutanix_NutanixAcropolisIf you’re a more regular reader of my blog you probably have read about Nutanix AHV, the native hypervisor that Nutanix ships. Nutanix AHV is built from the ground up for hyper convergence and that makes it a great hypervisor for desktop virtualisation. This is where the relationship with Citrix and the Citrix Provisioning SDK comes into play.

With the current availability for MCS on AHV as described in Citrix MCS for AHV: Under the hood, Installing the plugin for Citrix MCS on Nutanix AHV and more recently in Citrix MCS on Nutanix AHV: Unleashing the power of clones! Nutanix and Citrix are combining forces to deliver that world class user experience from both a performance and functionality perspective. 

While the MCS integration was possible due to the availability of the Provisioning SDK delivered by Citrix as of XenDesktop 7.7 this SDK was built for MCS only (initially for cloud provider support like AWS and Azure) i.e. the PVS integration piece was missing here. 

As of PVS 7.14 Citrix has added the PVS integration into the Provisioning SDK, if you look at the PVS 7.14 release notes you’ll find the following paragraph:

Citrix Provisioning 1

Given the fact that we integrate using the Citrix Provisioning SDK we need a plugin-like integration point just like we did with the MCS integration. Reading on in the release notes this is explained here:

Citrix Provisioning

This plugin is currently still work in progress but will delivered as soon as Nutanix devs are ready and QA has done their job on qualifying the plugin on our systems.

Screen Shot 2017-08-15 at 11.18.35

The menu item is natively available as of PVS 7.15: http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/provisioning/7-15/whats-new.html.

Bottom line here:

Provisioning method Plugin
Citrix MCS Available
Citrix PVS Native menu item PVS 7.15), still needs the plugin – In process

If you’re looking to unleash Citrix PVS on AHV today you’ll have to revert back to something like Automating Citrix PVS on Nutanix AHV with PoSH or Ryan’s scripting wizard PVS and AHV powershell wizard or use the MCS plugin to make advantage of our storage native capabilities in AHV.

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Kees Baggerman

Kees Baggerman is a Staff Solutions Architect for End User Computing at Nutanix. Kees has driven numerous Microsoft and Citrix, and RES infrastructures functional/technical designs, migrations, implementations engagements over the years.

14 comments

  1. […] via Citrix Provisioning on Nutanix AHV — My Virtual Vision […]

  2. Shane Paul says:

    There is a lot of talk out there about integration of Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) and Acropolis and I realize that is what this blog is all about. However, what if we want to run VMware as the hypervisor on Nutanix? Will PVS work with that hypervisor as it does today outside of Nutanix? Thanks, and I look forward to your reply

    • k.baggerman says:

      Absolutely! Nutanix has reference architectures for running XA/XD with PVS on vSphere to support your deployments. We can PVS on all 4 supported hypervisors (AHV when it’s GA, XS, Hyper-V and vSphere) and the same goes for MCS.

  3. markjramos says:

    I’d to follow up and see if the latest release has included the new PVS 7.15 – if not, would anyone know when it would be available?

    • k.baggerman says:

      There will be a plugin required for PVS on AHV and we should be publising this soon, I should have a more specific answer early next week.

  4. Martin Liem says:

    Kees, we are very interested in PVS on AHV. Keep us posted.

  5. Scott Carroll says:

    Hey Kees,
    We are trying to use PVS 7.15.1 and Nutanix AHV 5.5
    We have made some progress in getting this working, we had to install the Delivery Controller role, and the Nutanix MCS Plugin on the PVS Server.
    We now get a different error – Connection Failed! Unrecognized Guid format.
    IS there any documentation on how to do this properly? is there any configuration on the Nutanix cluster required to work properl?
    Thanks!

    • k.baggerman says:

      I’ve reached out via email Scott, let’s sync up to see if help is still needed

      • Johnny says:

        I am receiving the same error “Connection Failed! Unrecognized Guid format.” what was the fix for this? Does the Host Address, Username, etc have to be entered in a particular format?

  6. Scott Carroll says:

    Hello Kees,
    Where can we get the Nutanix PVS Plugin? I cannot find a location for this plugin anywhere? Citrix Support site points to the Nutanix Portal tools. I can only find the MCS plugin and the Director Plugin on that site. Can you assist? Thanks!

    • k.baggerman says:

      As said, it’s posted since last week on our portal after an extensive Early Access period but it’s now GA.

  7. Martin Liem says:

    Any Update on the PVS plugin?

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