At one of my current projects I was asked to take a look at a Citrix XenApp 6.5 server that couldn’t be loaded into a vDisk. When I ran the wizard to create a vDisk from the XenApp machine to a newly installed Citrix PVS 6 server I got the following error: “Server did not respond to a request in time”.

So my first step was to try and create a vDisk from the PVS server to see if that would work but I got the same error when creating a vDisk. I did some research and found the following thread on the Citrix forums: PVS Create Vdisk – Timeout. When you look at this thread it seems this would only be a problem in ESX(i) but in this case it runs on XenServer but I did change the binding of the NICS and rebooted the PVS server. After the reboot the wizard got one step further but would still fail to complete.

I then remembered some issues I had before on a newly installed server that where solved by running Windows Update. I checked the server and there where no updates installed from Windows Update. After installing all available Windows Updates I rebooted the machine and try to run the wizard again, this time without any errors.  On the eDocs or the install guide I couldn’t find the requirements on Windows Updates:

Provisioning Server OS Requirements

Operating Systems

Provisioning Services English on English, Japanese, German, French, Spanish,

Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, and Russian versions of operating

systems are supported

Windows Server 2003 SP2 (32 or 64-bit); all editions

Windows Server 2008 (32 or 64-bit); all editions

Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1; Standard, DataCenter, and Enterprise editions

Provisioning Server System Requirements

In most implementations, there is a single vDisk providing the standard image for multiple target devices. The more target devices using the same vDisk image, the less

vDisks need to be created; making vDisk management easier. In order to have a single vDisk, all target devices must have certain similarities to ensure that the OS has all of

the drivers it requires to run properly. The three key components that should be consistent are the motherboard, network card, or video card.

Disk storage management is very important because a Provisioning Server can have many vDisks stored on it, and each disk can be several gigabytes in size. Your streaming

performance can be improved using a RAID array, SAN, or NAS.

Processor

Intel or AMD x86 or x64 compatible; 2 GHz minimum; 3 GHz preferred; 3.5 GHz Dual

Core/HT or similar for loads greater than 250 target devices.

Memory

Minimum of 2 GB RAM; 4 GB preferred; 4 GB is required for a larger number of vDisks

(greater than 250).

Hard Disk and Storage

There must be enough space on the hard disk to store the vDisks. For example, if you have a 15 GB hard drive, you can only create a 14 GB vDisk. Additional requirements depend on several factors such as:

Hard disk capacity requirement of the operating system and applications running on a target device. It is recommended to add 20% on the base size of the final installed

image.

Private Image Mode – number of target devices using a vDisk in Private Image mode

(vDisks in Private Image mode should be backed up daily)

Standard Image Mode – number of target devices using a vDisk in Standard Image mode.

Note: Best practices include making a copy of every vDisk created.

Windows 2003 and 2003 x64; minimum of 250 MB on the application drive.

 

If any one can name me the requirements on Windows Update, please leave a message via the comments.

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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.

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