Van. Bragt. Net Virtualization Citrix Provisioning Services To PXE or not to PXEDetails. Published Wednesday, 2. September 2. 01. 3With Citrix Provisioning Services the client called target device need to use something to connect to the PVS server to start the streaming process of the operating systems within the v. Disk to target device. The default connection is using the PXE technique combined with TFTP, but Citrix also offers another technique called Boot Device Manager BDM. In this article I will go both options using pros and cons through my eyes and how you can work around the cons of both techniques. At the end I will give my vision which technique to use in which scenarios. First of all Im going to explain how to process both PXE as BDM works exactly, because that is already written in several articles, which you can find easy. Forums/getfile/744845' alt='Microsoft Dhcp Server Pxe Boot Failure Vista' title='Microsoft Dhcp Server Pxe Boot Failure Vista' />The big difference between PXE and BDM is that PXE is used to contact a TFTP component to download the bootstrap. With BDM this bootstrap is provided via another technique which eliminates the TFTP process and as its an alternative for PXE you logically do not need the PXE service as well. This bootstrap is used to set up a connection with the PVS Streaming service, so the actually streaming process can be started and the OS started. If you take a look at both techniques both have their pros and cons. However besides those pros and cons there are some misconceptions about both techniques. PXETFTP Pros. PXETFTP is well known technique. PXE is there already for a long long time. Microsoft Dhcp Server Pxe Boot Failure' title='Microsoft Dhcp Server Pxe Boot Failure' />Latest Windows Server 2008 Interview Questions And Answers. The Preboot Execution Environment PXE is an industry standard clientserver interface that allows networked computers that are not yet loaded with an operating. Start studying Server 2 Chp 13. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. Whats in the Release Notes. The release notes cover the following topics Whats New Earlier Releases of vCenter Server 6. Patches Contained in this Release. VanBragt. Net Virtualization Reviews, Articles, Blogs, Real Life Experiences and News in the virtualization space based on server based computing, VDI, server. VMware is the global leader in virtualization software, providing desktop and server virtualization products for virtual infrastructure solutions. Almost all deployment products use PXE for their bare metal OS deployment. Because its known most people know it and that makes it easier to introduce such a technique. PXE is standard available on all devices. All devices support PXE boot options. So no matter what device you would like to use as a target device, it will support PXE and can connect to the PVS infrastructure using PVS. PXETFTP Cons. PXETFTP are complex to set up in high available scenario. PXE and TFTP are already available a long time, actually that long that high availability was not much in the picture yet. Therefore the techniques dont have high availability available as on option. To set up a good high available solution for PXETFTP Load Balancers are required. More PXE servers in a same VLAN is not possibleworkable. More PXE servers in same VLAN were also the PXE clients exists in the same VLAN is not workable. PXE uses a broadcast as a first try to contact a PXE service, when more PXE servers are available the PXE client will connect to the PXE service which responds as the first one. While using more PXE services for PVS this is not a big issue, however when there is PXE services for another deployment product this is not the way to go. Of course you couldshould place the PXE servers in different VLANS and use different DHCP scope to point the PXE client to the correct PXE service, but this requires IP helpers as well. IP Helpers and DHCP options are required for PXE over VLANS add additional complexity. As already stated in the previous con IP helper and DHCP options are required when the PXE service is not available in the same VLAN as the PXE clients. Technically this can be arranged, but adds complexity and in large organization this should be executed by the network team and we all know the network guys, dont we. BDM Pros. Requires no additional protocols. The biggest advantage of BDM that there is requirement for an additional protocol or infrastructure components. Only using the BDM and loading the small bootstrap from the PVS server is everything that is needed. Creating the BDM ISO file is really easy, within PVS a tool is added to create the BDM ISO including the options available to create to different media HD or ISO file. BDM Cons. More difficult to use with physical devices. Dj Mixer Professional For Windows 2.0.3 Crack. When using physical devices you need to determine how these devices can use the BDM. Options are using CDDVD or USB stick at configure the device to start up from that medium. Of course changing the BDM configuration is not that easy as all those physical devices should be updated with a new CDDVD or USB stick. There is an alternative using a part of the hard disk as the boot device. More work to assign BDM to devices. The BDM should be assigned in some method to the device. As stated with physical devices you should do a walk to them and with virtualized target devices you should point the ISO to the virtual CDDVD rom. You need more BDM ISOs when you have more location where PVS is running. More locations requires more BDM ISOs. Logically you should point to a PVS within the BDM to contact the PVS infrastructure. With the PVS utility to deliver you can add 4 PVS server using IP addresses or use a DNS name. Personally I think this is actually not a real cons as you do some smart things for a single BDM using PVS servers on several locations. I will show you later on in this article. High availability should be arranged for the ISOs. The ISO can be a single point of failure. If the ISO or the storage where the ISO is placed is not available anymore target devices that are restarted will not get online anymore. Now we have discussed the pros and cons I would like to focus about the cons of both solutions. If you take a look at the cons of PXE, I think the most difficult is the set up of a high available solution of PXE and TFTP. Yes, its not the easiest one, but it is doable. Nick Rintalan wrote two excellent articles about it, about how you can set up PXETFTP high available using different techniques. He goes into exact configuration settings for PXETFTP using Citrix Net. Scalers, so Im just going to refer to those articles I never had the opportunity to set up a PXETFTP high available infrastructure using a Net. Scaler. The first article is called Load Balancing TFTP Anything But Trivial, the second one is Load Balancing TFTP with Net. Scaler. Taking a look at BDM I think that the first two cons are also not difficult as many people think. First connecting the BDM ISO to a virtual machine be easily scripted when having a knowledge of the possibilities of the Hypervisor. For example Andrew Morgan wrote a script for VMware v. Sphere to assign the ISO BDM automated, as stated in the article of Ingmar Verheij Who needs PXE for Citrix Provisioning Services. Secondly the con that you need multiple BDM ISOs for multiple locations is actually not the truth. Its true that you can only assign 4 IP addresses of PVS servers within the BDM utility, but the BDM also offers to use a DNS name. When using the DNS name, the BDM need to have the possibility to contact the DNS server, so you need to specify the DNS server later in the BDM wizard or you need to assign DHCP options within the DHCP scope. Logically the last option is preferable, because you can manage this centrally. Beside this Option 3, you should optionally configure Option 1. Domain Name. I have seen environment that without Option 1. The last step is to add A records for all the PVS servers in your infrastructure within DNS, so the name can be resolved. As DNS automatically uses subnet affinity by default the PVS server in the same subnet of your target devices will be used as the server resolved. The found servers will be contacted one by one, so if one fails the next server in the list will be contacted.