Comments on: Backup, Restore and Reset your XenApp 6 farms with powershell.

By: Andrew Morgan

Andrew Morgan — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 20:21:52 +0000

Check out Barry Schiffers AIM for some good scripts and automation framework: http://www.barryschiffer.com/aim-toolkit/

By: Mayur

Mayur — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 20:19:23 +0000

Yes, I agree using PoSH can be messy and hard to maintain. I have thought about trying PVS but the cost of Platinum license, complexity of its many moving parts does not warrant its useability for smaller Xenapp environments.

I would be grateful to get an overview of what would be involved in terms of initial setup and ongoing maintenance to use RES AM or Frontrange DSM. I had downloaded a trial of RES AM a while ago but never got round to setting it up. Any whitepapers or step by step docs I can review would be very helpful.

The thought also crossed the mind of perhaps looking at using SCCM and Config Manager 2007 plugin for XenApp to automate the deploying of new apps and Windows updates but not sure what is involved in using it from a complexity/knowledge/skills standpoint.

By: Andrew Morgan

Andrew Morgan — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 18:53:55 +0000

I recommend RES automation manager or frontrange DSM if you want I automate the entire process. Doing so from powershell would be a lot of work.

By: Mayur

Mayur — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:42:48 +0000

Hi Andrew, I this is quite an old post which I came across while searching the net for ideas and concepts of how to replace the complexity of using PVS when used for single image management in a XenApp 6.5 farm.

I currently deploy my Xenapp servers unattended in a 4/5 stepped process:

1. Deploy Windows OS
2. Install XenApp 6.5 and join farm
3. Install applications
4. Add new XA server into a Worker group
5. Optionally Add new publish applications and user permissions.

At present I apply Windows and applications updates using scripts which run sequentially through each xenapp server. If a new application needs to be added it gets installed silently at the same time. All the Xenapp servers are identical in build and applications to provide good DR recover-ability, better use of the resources and scalability and minimize profile corruption etc.

I am seeking ideas on how I could transform the process of updating the Windows patches and applications updates/additions using my automation method.

What I had in mind but not as yet tested in lab is if I could script the process in such a way that each time there are Windows updates requiring to be added to the farm servers I simply rebuild the farm from scratch. Off course this would require some form of staging and testing before running it in production. Many years back I have used a tool from VisionApp which did exactly this.

Is this something worth spending time on or there is an easier method that you can think of to achieve the same goal.

Thanks
M

By: Andrew Morgan

Andrew Morgan — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 21:59:18 +0000

Hi Colin,

Absolutely, that check could be turned off in the code. I’m slammed at the moment and will be for a few weeks so feel free to remove if yourself knowing it shouldn’t break anything.

By: Colin Hill

Colin Hill — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:14:34 +0000

great script but 1 major issue for me. We publish a desktop for all of our servers for app support teams. To run this on our Prod farm I would have to have a Worker Group for every server as it currently fails saying applications published to servers are not supported. With over 150 servers this will never happen in our enviroment. Is there either a way I can back these up or exclude the desktop folder when recursing the applications?