Issue: Citrix VDI specs: Windows 10, 1607 version.
User’s end point specs: Dell windows 10 1709 version.
Start webex meeting in citrix VDI - works fine. But when webex video is started, it crashes the citrix HDX engine stopped working.
Event viewer entry:
Faulting application name: WFICA32.EXE, version: 14.9.4000.9, time stamp: 0x5b7a823f Faulting module name: swscale-4.dll, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x5807d28d Exception code: 0xc0000005 Fault offset: 0x00030922 Faulting process id: 0x4330 Faulting application start time: 0x01d44cab61bfe2d1 Faulting application path: C:\PROGRA~2\Citrix\ICACLI~1\WFICA32.
Tools that I came across in my day to day troubleshooting:
Autoruns - shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and when you start various built-in Windows applications like Internet Explorer, Explorer and media players. CDFControl - CDFControl utility is an event tracing controller or consumer for capturing CDF trace messages displayed from various Citrix tracing providers. Refer to CTX111961 - CDFControl to download the CDFControl utility.
Citrix Provisioning provides an auditing tool that records configuration actions on components within the provisioning farm, to the provisioning database. The auditing tool provides administrators with a way to troubleshoot and monitor recent changes that might impact system performance and behavior.
Administrator privileges determine the audit information that can be viewed and the menu options that are visible. For example, a Farm Administrator can view all audit information within the farm.
The administrative role assigned to a user, or a group of users, controls the ability to view and manage objects within a Citrix Provisioning implementation. All members within a group share administrative privileges within a farm. An administrator may have multiple roles if they belong to more than one group. Groups are managed at the farm level through the Console’s Farm Properties window.
The following roles exist within a Citrix Provisioning farm:
Citrix Provisioning is software streaming technology that delivers patches, updates, and other configuration information to multiple virtual desktop endpoints through a shared desktop image. It centralizes virtual machine management while reducing the operational and storage costs of a virtualized desktop environment.
Using citrix provisioning, you can stream OS from a single vhd/vhdx file to multiple VMs in your data center. Some of the benefits with citrix provisioning include:
This would reduce your storage footprint, as all the VMs would get OS from a single vhd/vhdx file from PVS.
When offline database support is enabled on the farm, a snapshot of the database is created and initialized at server startup. It is then continually updated by the Stream Process. If the database becomes unavailable, the Stream Process uses the snapshot to get information about the Provisioning Server and the target devices available to the server; this allows Provisioning Servers and target devices to remain operational. However, when the database is offline, Citrix Provisioning management functions and the Console become unavailable.
There are different ways on how you can load balance TFTP. Below are the ways on how you can do so:
DNS Round Robin Entry DHCP with Multiple Entries Provisioning Services PXE Broadcast Provisioning Services Boot Device Manager NetScaler Use Source IP (USIP) NetScaler Direct Server Return (DSR) NetScaler Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) Check out this document on detailed explanation: HA for TFTP with PVS
High Availability for PVS vDisks:
Citrix Provisioning Server (PVS) streams the contents of the vDisk to the Client VMs (target device) on demand, in real time. The Client VMs boot directly across the network and behaves as if it is running from its local drive. This article talks about various steps involved in network boot and how the vDisk is streamed.
Citrix Provisioning Services Network Boot Process
VM/Target Device is powered on
Device BIOS configured to perform a network boot
Subnet - is a range of IP addresses determined by part of an address (often called the network address) and a subnet mask (netmask). For example, if the netmask is 255.255.255.0 (or /24 for short), and the network address is 192.168.10.0, then that defines a range of IP addresses 192.168.10.0 through 192.168.10.255. Shorthand for writing that is 192.168.10.0/24.
VLAN - A good way to think of this is “switch partitioning.” Let’s say you have an 8 port switch that is VLAN-able.
Farm:
A farm represents the top level of a Provisioning Services infrastructure. Farms provide a “Farm Administrator” with a method of representing, defining, and managing logical groups of Provisioning Services components into sites.
All sites within a farm share that farm’s Microsoft SQL database. A farm also includes a Citrix License Server, local or network shared storage, and collections of target devices. The farm is initially configured when you run the Configuration Wizard.
