Desktop seamless physical and virtual management with XenDesktop 5.6 and Microsoft System Center 2012

Desktop seamless physical and virtual management with XenDesktop 5.6 and Microsoft System Center 2012 -

For many IT organizations, the transition to desktop virtualization, with all its benefits, can be a little intimidating. There are many new "tricks" to learn; new storage infrastructure and networking to handle new types of end point devices, and new ways to build and manage workstations. Although these new ways of managing desktops have many advantages, they are still new and that means IT departments must undertake the effort to learn a new set of tools and concepts for virtual desktops and applications while continuing to use the tools and practices available to physical workstations. Not good.

Recognizing this, in recent months we have worked with our friends from Microsoft to bridge the gap between physical and virtual management office. You will see the first results of this collaboration in the newly released XenDesktop 5.6 and the forthcoming Microsoft System Center 2012 releases. We added a number of new features to both products to make it easier for administrators Configuration Manager to monitor and manage virtual desktops built with Citrix XenDesktop solution. Here are some of the new features you'll find in these new versions:

New Virtual Desktop Attributes

Configuration Manager gathers a wide range of information on servers and desktop systems it manages, providing a powerful mechanism for defining dynamic collections systems that are grouped according to certain attributes of these systems. These collections can then be used for compliance monitoring and reporting and policies of the OS and software update. With XenDesktop 5.6 and System Center 2012, the following new machine attributes will now be available to help administrators in building collections for their virtual desktops

• CCM_DesktopMachine (generic virtual office SCCM attributes value below apply to XenDesktop environments)
  • Host Identify - broker Site name XenDesktop hosts the office
  • is assigned to the user - True if the office has been assigned to a user
  • Machine changes persisted - False if the desktop provisioned from a shared image ( ie with PVS or MCS)
  • is virtual - True if the office is a VM
  • Partner - Citrix

• Citrix_VirtualDesktopInfo (specific attributes Citrix)
  • broker Site name - broker Site name XenDesktop hosts the Office
  • office catalog Name - Name of the machine catalog in site
  • Office group name - Office group name in the website
  • assigned - True if the office has been assigned to a user
  • is Virtual Machine - True if the office is a VM
  • OS changes Persist - False if the desktop provisioned from a shared image (c. with PVS or MCS)
  • Persistent Location data - Place where the ID information is stored (see below)
  • Personal vDisk Drive Letter - letter Training for staff vDisk that is attached to the virtual machine (if any)

How do you use these new attributes? You can set SCCM collections that match the XenDesktop catalogs so that updates to the specific operating system and application patches are applied correctly. For example, you may have slightly different policies for endpoint protection for workstations pooled (ie OS Persist = False modifications) to avoid repeated applications of non-critical patches to the same virtual machine. With updates to XenDesktop and Configuration Manager, administrators now have the information they need to easily adapt their virtual desktop configuration management policies.

of unique machine ID for the shared image desktops

virtual desktops built on shared images procurement solutions provided by XenDesktop (Provisioning services and machinery Creating services) presented a bit of a challenge for Configuration Manager 07. Since these machines simultaneously share a single base image, it was difficult to configure properly register with Configuration Manager 07. Without some scripts you have a problem of all recording machine with the same ID or generate a new ID each restart, resulting in a large number of orphan machine files.

with XenDesktop 5.6 and Configuration Manager 2012 that problem is now history. When you create your master image either with MCS and PVS simply install the SCCM agent and forget. When you create cloned / streaming machines in this master image, the SCCM agent will automatically generate and store the machine ID that persist for the lifetime of the virtual machine. Your virtual desktops will record and behave exactly as their physical counterparts. A recording machine and the machine will continue to use the same ID across reboots. This capability will also be available for XenApp streamed with Provisioning Services 6.1.

Update control for shared image desktops

Another challenge faced the Configuration Manager administrators is the fact that with the shared image workstations that you do not want updates to be applied to desktops cloned / streaming that these changes will be lost when restart the machine. Instead, you want the updates to be applied to the "master VM" used to create and / or maintain the master image. System Center 2012 before there was no easy way to disable updates without completely disable the agent and the loss of visibility in the cloned and / streaming workstation for monitoring and compliance reporting.

To solve this problem, Configuration Manager 2012 provides a simple mechanism to disable the deployment of the update. In the Configuration Manager console, you can define a custom client setting for the computer agent. In this there is an option called "Agent extensions manage the deployment of applications and software updates." Setting true that heard the SCCM agent to make all operations of discovery of the normal information, but not attempt to download / apply all software updates. Once you set this policy, you can apply to all virtual desktop collections that are built on shared images. Your master VM can be in different collections that do not have this policy applied so they will continue to download and apply updates.

This change is a good addition to a feature we added to Provisioning Services 6.0 last year. This function, called Update automated image, provides an automated mechanism to update the provision of services vDisk with System Center Configuration Manager. With the new update controls in System Center 2012 and updated automatic image, administrators will see little difference in how they target and deploy OS and application updates to the shared image virtual Desktop v. traditional desktop computers. Once collections are defined and applied the picture update policy, admins can target updates as they would normally and updates will be routed to the master / update and deployed VM desktops streamed on restarting a day Image Provisioning automated Services. This capability can be used to XenApp servers and streaming.

These new features are just the beginning. As we continue to work with Microsoft, we will continue to seek ways to streamline the virtual desktop and application management for administrators Configuration Manager. Meanwhile, if you have not already, download XenDesktop 5.6 and System Center 2012 Release Candidate, give these new features a try, and let us know what you think.

Tweet