Thursday, 6 October 2011

Upgrading from Citrix PVS 5.6 SP1 to PVS 6.0

Citrix recently released their latest version of Provisioning Services (PVS), version 6.0, with a number of new features.

The most substantial of these is the vDisk Update Management, allowing the administrator to control patch management with SCCM and windows updates automatically. This involves having a virtual desktop host dedicated to recieving updates and changes, and then PVS can move the vDisk automatically into a development or production environment according to your requirements.

PVS now also supports thin provisioning of vDisk changes, so instead of copying that 25GB vDisk and then making changes on it, a VHD differencing disk is created, which can then be slipstreamed back in the original when everything is just right. This makes sense as it will decrease space and time required to make new versions of vDisks.

The last major update is a DR feature for vDisk distribution, allowing you to easily distribute a vDisk across multiple PVS servers or sites.



The Upgrade Process
1. Stop the PVS streaming service from the windows services MMC snap-in.

2. Make a backup of the PVS SQL database. Dont skip this step!

3. If you are using PVS in conjunction with Xendesktop (XD) and you don't have any high availability, put your XD pools into maintenance modes.

4. Un-install your current PVS version and then reboot.

5. After the reboot, simply insert your PVS DVD or ISO and run the PVS_Server_x64.exe (or PVS_Server.exe if you are on 32bit OS) from the "Server" directory.

6. Follow the prompts until the installation is completed, then follow the PVS configuration wizard. If all goes well you will not need to configure anything at all, you can accept all the defaults.

7. Install the PVS console by running the PVS_Console_x64.exe (or PVS_Console.exe) from the "Console" directory on the DVD.
The installation should be complete, but if you are using XenDesktop you may need to do some troubleshooting to resolve problems that may have occured during the uninstallation and upgrade.



Problems and Resolutions

After I upgraded my PVS to 6.0 I was able to launch the console without a problem, but I was unable to use the 'XenDesktop Setup Wizard' and when I tried open the Desktop Studio console I received the following error message.
The Windows PowerShell snap-in 'Citrix.Broker.Admin.V1' is not installed on this machine.

It seems that when I uninstalled PVS 5.6 SP1, it may have inadvertently removed or damaged some Desktop Studio power shell snap-ins.

The resolution is very simple though, pop in your Xendesktop 5.0 or 5.5 DVD or ISO and reinstall the following two files.
\x64\DesktopStudio\PVS PowerShell SDK x64.msi
\x64\Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller\Broker_PowerShellSnapIn_x64.msi


When launching the above msi files, firstly click uninstall, then re-run them and install them both. After completing this process your Desktop Studio and PVS console should work perfectly.

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