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The reason for this article is to (hopefully) save those of you who use AppSense Environment Manager some time and effort when optimizing your Server 2012 R2 workloads your deploying with XenDesktop or XenApp.
Citrix have done a great job in providing an optimization guide for Windows 8 and Server 2012 that can be found here:
https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2014/02/06/windows-8-and-server-2012-optimization-guide/
They have also done a great job of wrapping this all up in a nice script for you to run on your “gold” image so that before deploying it you have a nice optimized image for your workload delivery. If that is how you want to manage your images then no need to read on, however, if (like me) you want to completely automate your gold image build then you would want to put all of these settings into AppSense Environment Manager for easy / repeatable deployment.
In this article I will run you through importing all the settings in the official Citrix Optimization guide into your AppSense Environment Manager Deployment, furthermore, I will provide you with the XML files to import and save you hours of work putting them all in yourself.
A couple of pre-reqs to doing this.
- These files come as is – please test in development before putting them into a production environment
- This article assumes you know about policy creation within AppSemse EM and have a working environment to test in
- BITS is not disabled as AppSense Requires this
- Optimize Processor Resource Scheduling is disabled in this case as I run AppSense Performance Manager for that
Step 1 – Download the XML Templates
Click HERE for the Computer Settings
Click HERE for the User Settings
Unzip these 2 files and save the XML files to a location that can be reached from the AppSense Environment Manager Console
Step 2 – Import the Settings into the Policy
In this example I am going to start with a blank policy but you may want to pull these settings into your existing policy
Right Click on the Computer Start-up node and select Policy Templates – Import
Locate the Computer Settings XML file you downloaded earlier
Click on OK and you will see the settings imported for you
NOTE: I have disabled Processor Optimization – you can re-enable it if you don’t use AppSense Performance Manager
Right click on the Pre-Desktop User Node and select Policy Templates – Import
Click ok and you will see the settings imported for the user
Rename “Machine” to “User” (You don’t strictly need to do this but it looks nicer on the config)
That’s it – save and deploy the config to your Windows 8 or 2012 R2 workload servers.
Hopefully this will save you some time entering all the configuration into your AppSense Environment Manager console.
Laters,
b@m
Service Settings
Computer Registry Settings
User Registry Settings
Fantastic share Dave, will download and give this a go in my labs!
Thanks Dan,
Will hopefully save you some time, worked ok in my lab but had to tweak the processor scheduling and the BITS to get PM and EM to work correctly.
Dave.
Many thanks for sharing Dave, I can’t wait to compare with mine 🙂 BITS is required to download agent itself, if I remember correctly.
Yep, that’s right, with BITS disabled the agent won’t install and configure correctly.
Should be a pretty standard config, just the Citrix 2012 Optimization guide without the BITS and processor scheduling.
Oh, and the .Net 3.5 Install.
Dave.
The server 2012 optimization guide is no more available on https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2014/02/06/windows-8-and-server-2012-optimization-guide/; Can you please share the script if you have it?