Review: Citrix Provision Server 5 Beta 2

Hey folks,

Wilco did a great review of the upcoming Citrix Provision Server 5 beta 2. I guess this is another example of how much Citrix has opened up with their CTP program, good job

Wilco have had his hands on PVS 5 beta 2 and has been allowed to publish a review.

There are a lot of new cool features a few of my personal favorites are:

Farm Hierarchy

Probably one of the most requested improvement in the software is the possibility to create a hierarchy within the console. Version 5 has the following components Farms, Sites and Device Collections available.
A farm is group of servers sharing the same database (just like a XenApp farm) On the farm level the following services are running ore configured:
Citrix License Manager server
Provisioning Server Database
Shared Storage
a Console
a server running the PXE service.

Because on farm level the same database, shared storage and PXE services are running it’s the sites are more a logical separation than this can be used for more geographical locations. Sites represent and manage logical groupings of Provisioning Servers, Device Collections, and site-specific stores. Device Collections simplifies device management by performing actions at the collection level rather than at the target device level.

vDisk format

Just like all Citrix virtualization products Citrix Provisioning Server will be using the Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk format (VHD).

Improved Target Device Status

More information is displayed about the devices connected like name, IP address, MAC address, status, current server assignment and current vDisk assignment.

Improved Upgrade possibilities

Upgrading to a new version of Ardence was removing the software and re-installing the software again (and often also rebuilding the vDisks). With Provision Server 5 there are now several improved upgrades paths.

Have a look at the complete article here:
http://sbc.vanbragt.net/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=687&Itemid=232

/René Vester