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Provisioning vGPU-enabled XenDesktop machines

January 12, 2023
Contributed by: 
C

Requirements

  • NVIDIA GRID K1 or K2 cards.

Tip

Sometimes, other NVIDIA cards may function properly (for example, NVIDIA Tesla M60) as long as the XenServer/ESX hypervisor supports it. The underlying vGPU card in the XenServer host is unknown to PVS. PVS only uses the vGPU setting in the template and propagates it to the VMs provisioned by the XenDesktop Setup Wizard.

  • A server capable of hosting XenServer and NVIDIA GRID cards. For details on recommended hardware, refer to the XenServer system requirements.
  • A supported hypervisor: Citrix XenServer 6.2 or newer, or vSphere 6.0 or newer.
  • The NVIDIA GRID vGPU package for your hypervisor.
  • NVIDIA drivers for Windows 7 32-bit/64-bit (available from http://www.nvidia.com/vGPU).
  • The Provisioning Services release that corresponds to the XenDesktop release you are using. The Provisioning Services XenDesktop Setup Wizard only works with the corresponding XenDesktop controller.
  • To provision machines using the Provisioning Services XenDesktop Setup Wizard, you must use Provisioning Services 7.7 or newer and XenDesktop 7.7 or newer. If you use earlier product versions you can only provision machines manually or by using the Provisioning Services Streamed Virtual Machine Setup Wizard.
  • For details on configuring vGPU for XenServer, see Prepare host for graphics.

Note

XenDesktop supports power management for virtual machine (VM) catalogs, but not for physical machine catalogs.

Provisioning procedures

Prepare the master VM

  1. Prepare the master VM with vGPU enabled.
  2. Install the nVidia drivers.
  3. Join the machine operating system to Active Directory.
  4. Install the Provisioning Services Target Device software.
  5. Using the Provisioning Services Imaging Wizard, create a master vDisk image. If you plan to use the XenDesktop Setup Wizard to provision machines, you must select the Target Device Optimizer when creating the vDisk image, otherwise the VM may fail to boot.

Prepare the template VM

  1. Create a template VM with the same properties as the master VM. Assign a hard drive to the template VM to use for write cache.
  2. Create a device record in the Provisioning Services database with the MAC address of the template VM.
  3. Assign the vDisk to the template VM, and then set the device to boot from vDisk.
  4. PXE boot the VM.
  5. Format the write-cache disk.

Install the XenDesktop Virtual Delivery Agent

  1. Using the Provisioning Services Console, set the vDisk image mode to Private Image.
  2. Install the XenDesktop Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) and point the VDA to the XenDesktop Server during the installation. . Note: Alternatively, you can chose to install both the VDA and the target device software prior to creating the vDisk image. Both install methods require the new template VM to have a formatted write-cache hard drive.
  3. Reboot the VM, and then shut the VM down.
  4. Convert the VM to a template.

Create XenDesktop VMs

  1. Using the Provisioning Services Console, set the vDisk image mode to Standard Image.
  2. Choose the preferred write cache method.
  3. Select from the following provisioning methods:
    • Run the Provisioning Services XenDesktop Setup Wizard to provision VMs. This method is available only if you are using Provisioning Services 7.7 or later and XenDesktop 7.7 or later.
    • Run the Provisioning Services Streamed VM Setup Wizard to provision VMs.
    • Manually create VMs by creating target device records using device MAC addresses, assign the vDisk to the VMs, and then add the target devices to Active Directory.

Create XenDesktop machine catalogs

When choosing between creating physical or virtual/blade server machine catalogs, it is important to consider the different advantages and requirements. For example, VM machine catalogs allow for power XenDesktop management while physical machine catalogs do not.

Virtual and blade server machine catalogs

Requirements:

  • For XenDesktop, the host record must point to the XenServer host or pool where the vGPU VMs existed.
  • The VM names in your hypervisor, device record names in Provisioning Services device collection, and the Active Directory record must all be the same.

Steps:

  1. Start the XenDesktop Machine Catalog Setup Wizard, then select Windows Desktop OS on the Operating System page.
  2. On the Machine Management page, for This Machine Catalog uses select Machines that are power managed.
  3. For Deploy machines using: select Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS). Power management is provided by XenDesktop.
  4. For User Experience, select Users connect to a random desktop each time they log on.
  5. Enter the Provisioning Server’s IP address for the device collection.
  6. Identify the domain where all device Active Directory records are stored and the VDA version level, then click Connect.
  7. In the Provisioning Services structure that displays, select the Provisioning Services device collection where all the vGPU devices are located, then click Next. Device records should be stored in an exclusive device collection.
  8. Enter a machine catalog name and description, then click Finish.

Physical machine catalogs

Requirements:

Device names must exist in the Provisioning Services device collection and in Active Directory. Note: The XenDesktop host record is not required and the VM record names are not checked.

Steps:

  1. Start the XenDesktop Machine Catalog Setup Wizard, then select Windows Desktop OS on the Operating System page.
  2. On the Machine Management page, for This Machine Catalog uses select Machines that are power managed.
  3. For Deploy machines using: select Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS). Power management will be provided by XenDesktop.
  4. For User Experience, select Users connect to a random desktop each time they log on.
  5. Enter the Provisioning Server’s IP address for the device collection.
  6. Identify the domain where all device Active Directory records are stored and the VDA version level, then click Connect.
  7. In the Provisioning Services structure that displays, select the Provisioning Services device collection where all the vGPU devices are located, then click Next. Device records should be stored in an exclusive device collection.
  8. Enter a machine catalog name and description, then click Finish.

Create a Delivery Group and associate it with the machine catalog

For details on creating a Delivery Group, refer to the XenDesktop documentation.

PVS and XenDesktop cloud considerations

Within a Cloud DDC, you can create a machine catalog and choose to deploy those machines using Provisioning Services (PVS) by pointing the catalog to a PVS collection. If you intend to use PVS with a Cloud DDC, all the machines within the PVS collection must be associated with Active Directory (AD) accounts.

Provisioning vGPU-enabled XenDesktop machines
January 12, 2023
Contributed by: 
C
January 12, 2023
Contributed by: 
C

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