XenServer 6.x to Auto-Start Virtual Machines

In XenServer versions 6.x, the direct GUI ability to auto-start a Virtual Machine on the startup of XenServer was removed as the auto-start functionality interfered with High Availability (HA) and produced unexpected results during HA functions

Setting PVS vDisk Boot Menu Default Option

You may have noticed in the latest version of PVS that when you have a PVS device type set to “Test” or “Maintenance” you will be prompted for the version to boot.

Below describes how to enable the first menu option as the default boot choice without prompting when vDisk boot menu appears if you have multiple vDisk

Complete the following steps to enable the menu option:

PVS 6.1 Rebalance and Load Balancing not working

When you check your PVS replication status you see that some/all of your PVS Servers are missing from the replication status window and/or your load balancing “favours” a single device

This happen when the PVS servers cannot communicate properly with each other on multi-homed servers.

Adding the following reg entry will resolve this by forcing the soap/stream services to use the correct interface/IP address

Increase ARP cache entries Lifespan for PVS 6.1 Servers

The default lifespan of ARP cache entries was lowered from 10min in Windows Server 2003 to a random value between 15 and 45sec in Vista/W2K8. As a result, the PVS bootstraps are twenty times more likely to experience a timeout during a Vista/W2K8 boot.

The workaround is to increase the ARP cache entry lifespan for PVS-bound NIC’s:

Enable Alt+Tab Toggling in a Windowed Desktop Session

1. Open regedit on the client device to edit the registry

2. Navigate to the key (Wow6432Node for 64bit systems)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARECitrixICAClientEngineLockdown ProfilesAll RegionsLockdownVirtual ChannelsKeyboard
3. Open Key: TransparentKeyPassthrough
4. Set the value to: Remote

PerfMon problems – Unable to Add Counters

Opening Performance in Server manager displays on a Windows 2008 R2 server with XenApp6.5

“Unable to add these counters:

MemoryAvailable MBytes
Memory% Committed Bytes In Use
MemoryCache Faults/sec
MemoryCache Faults/sec
PhysicalDisk(*)%Idle Time
PhysicalDisk(*)Avg. Disk Queue Length
Network Interface(*)Bytes Total/sec”

Change NetScaler 10x IP via CLI

1. Log into your NS with root account (nsroot)

2. Type the following

• set ns config [-IPAddress <ip_addr> -netmask <netmask>] (Example: set ns config -ipaddress 10.11.12.13 -netmask 255.255.255.0)
• show ns config
• save ns config
• reboot

Best Practices: Atlantis ILIO and Citrix PVS (Provisioning Services)

Best Practices: Atlantis ILIO and Citrix PVS (Provisioning Services) | Atlantis Computing Blog.

Improving Citrix PVS 6.1 write cache performance on ESXi 5

Improving Citrix PVS 6.1 write cache performance on ESXi 5 with WcHDNoIntermediateBuffering.

Enable Intermediate Buffering for Local Hard Drive Cache

Enable Intermediate Buffering for Local Hard Drive Cache

via CTX126042 – When to Enable Intermediate Buffering for Local Hard Drive Cache – Citrix Knowledge Center.