Ardbp32.bin

[Bertoldo Beyer]

CitrixProvisioning Services is a solution to provision an image (read only state) to many targets simultaneously (can be virtual or physical) to provide and uniform environment. Also, reduce the time to provision new virtual machines. Its working by streaming the VHD to a target through the network.

The DHCP server must be configured with options 66 (boot server) and 67 (file name) and the Citrix PVS TFTP Service must me running on the PVS Server and the target startup must be setup to network device.

For those environments that request a load balance can be easier accomplish with NetScaler. If you dont have a NetScaler you can set up multiple IP from PVS TFTP Server on DHCP option 66 separated by a semicolon (if your DHCP support). Another think that you can keep in mind that you client must be able to interpret the option 66 with multiple entries.

With this type of boot, you wont need a DHCP with the option 66 and 67. This option can be initial configures when you run the Citrix PVS Configuration Wizard (or just enable the service on control panel > services)

With Citrix PXE built-in service the client during the startup, send broadcast requesting the option 60 (PXEClient) and all PVS Server that handle this service will answer this request and send the file called bootptab. The file bootptab make reference of ardbp32.bin file that contain the image file for the target device.

Address: ??????????? is a wildcard for MAC Address. Its means that this file can be used on all client device. If you want to hard code the MAC address or limited to and range of environment, you can put the MAC address like this Eg: Limitating for HyperV: 00:15:5D

Load balancing for this type of boot process is really simple because when a target send broadcast searching for some dhcp, automatically all the PVS Server with PXE service enabled will respond the request with the boot file. So in case of environment with 2 PVS Server with PXE enabled and one of this servers goes down, the remain PVS Server will answer the dhcp request.

In this type dont need a DHCP option 66 and 67. During the process to burn an ISO, you need to insert the IP or DNS Name of PVS Server, so the target already know the IP to get the boot file. This can easily combined with DNS to make load balance with round robin fashion.

The Target Device must configured in BIOS startup through CD/DVD, so in virtual environments could be a bad solution because sometimes is we need to vmotion virtual machines, and if the virtual machine has and local ISO attached, this vmotion will fail.

Using Citrix NetScaler you can load balance TFTP requests to deliver the bootstrap file to PVS Target VMs. You can provide PVS boot information from an ISO generated by Boot Device Manager. You can also use PXE built right in to PVS or use DHCP via options 66/67.

The same goes for DHCP. If you use DHCP options 66/67 to hand out the TFTP server and boot file name, DHCP can only send clients to one IP address. You could point option 66 towards a DNS record which resolves to all your PVS servers in a round robin fashion. I have tested this but if a PVS server is offline the results really are unpredictable. Using this method is not 100% fail proof.

BDM is the same as NetScaler in a way. If one PVS server fails clients using the Boot Device Manager ISO may attempt to retrieve the file tsbbdm.bin from a failed PVS server during boot but will quickly move on to the next PVS server in the list. Whilst BDM does not depend on PXE/DHCP to deliver the information, you do have to attach the generated ISO to every Target VM by way of DVD drives. You do also need a PXE booting capable NIC of course to boot to a streaming vDisk.

Select Use DHCP to retrieve Device IP and complete other fields such as Primary DNS Server Address and Domain Name. Select Citrix ISO Image Recorder from the drop-down menu and click Burn. This will create an ISO file.

Now depending on your environment you need to store the ISO in a highly available location that all your PVS Target VMs can access to get at the ISO file. For simplicity in this instance I have used a CIFS file share running on a Windows Server VM.

Instead of creating a BDM ISO you can create a Boot Device Partition to include the bootstrap file in a small virtual disk attached to each PVS Target Device VM. You can manually create the BDM media or have the XenDesktop Setup Wizard automatically create the partition for you. For now we will concentrate on the manual method. You need to add a virtual disk to the PVS server or a server that has access to BDM.exe. Within Hyper-V run through the New Virtual Hard Disk Wizard. Choose to create a VHDX. Click Next.

Q1: How does offline DB support actually works in PVS as, LHC in XenApp & where this DB is stored locally on PVS server & how often it got refresed periodically & can we change settings in PVS console when DB is offline?

Q3: As far as my understanding there are three ways to provide PVS login information to target device while PVS boot these are DHCP (option 66,67), PXE (option 60), BDM. Is that correct? & what is BOOTP, Is this different from these three?

Q6: If we select BDM to provide bootstrap file to target device instead of DHCP & PXE, what is tsbbdm.bin file which can be seen during device boot, which is noot seen if DHCP is selected as in that case ardbp32.bin is seen?

1. Snapshot of DB is taken to make sure Target Devices can continue to function whilst you restore the database. The Stream Process is what continually updates the snapshot in the background. I am not sure there is a way to update the frequency, and may not be supported.

2. Each Target Device checks out a license on boot. If license server is down, you enter the 30 day grace period that allows you to restore the license server. After this time no license server is contactable, Target Devices will shut down.

The XenDesktop Setup Wizard can always initialize the disks.

When I manually add disk or increase disk capacity for a vm ,the results were different.

So, is there any way to solve it.

Or, How did the PVS do it?

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