In the Welcome to the Installation Wizard for Citrix Provisioning Server x64 page, click Next. In the License Agreement page, select I accept the terms, and click Next. In Citrix Provisioning 1811 and newer, you’ll see a Default Firewall Ports page. You can optionally select Automatically open all Citrix Provisioning ports in Windows Firewall. If you later use the Citrix Provisioning Console to change the.

Disabling Spanning Tree or Enabling PortFast

1. Before starting the Console, make sure that the Stream Service is started and running on the Provisioning Server. (After the Configuration Wizard runs, the Stream Service starts automatically). From the Start menu, select: All Programs Citrix Provisioning Services Citrix Provisioning Console.
2. Citrix License Server is version 11.16.3.0 build 28000 or newer to resolve a security vulnerability. The licenses installed on Citrix License Server match the purchased licenses at – some Citrix License Servers have too many licenses installed.

• With Spanning Tree or Rapid Spanning Tree Protocols the ports are placed into a 'blocked' state while the switch transmits Bridged Protocol Data Units (BPDU’s) and listens to ensure the BPDU’s are not in a loop-back configuration.
• The time it takes to complete this 'convergence' process depends on the size of the switched network, in which case, PXE may time out.
• To resolve this issue, disable Spanning Tree on edge-ports connected to clients or enable PortFast or Fast Link depending on the managed switch brand.

Citrix Provisioning Services Virtual Disk

Large Send Offload

• The TCP large send offload option allows the AIX® TCP layer to build a TCP message up to 64 KB long and send it in one call down the stack through IP and the Ethernet device driver. The adapter then re-segments the message into multiple TCP frames to transmit on the wire. The TCP packets sent on the wire are either 1500 byte frames for a MTU of 1500 or up to 9000 byte frames for a MTU of 9000 (jumbo frames).
  
• This re-segmenting and storing up packets to send in large frames will cause latency and timeouts to the Provisioning Server. This should be disabled on all PVS Servers and clients.
  
• To disable Large Send offload go into the Advance Tab of the NIC Properties.
  
• For some NICs there is not setting in the NIC Properties and will require a registry key change to disable it. If the option is not there add the following entry to the registry:
  

  HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesBNNSParameters
  DWORD = EnableOffload
  Value '0'
  

Auto Negotiation
Auto Negotiation can cause long booting times and PXE timeouts especially when booting multiple Target Device. It is recommend that all PVS Ports (Server and Client) be hard coded both on the NIC and on the switch.

Citrix Provisioning Server

UPDATE :See the KB at https://support.citrix.com/article/ctx117374

Citrix Provisioning Services - PVS

Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) are being widely used in large scale application and desktop virtualization environments. Bottlenecks in the PVS servers can lead to slow boot times, cause desktops and applications to be unavailable or to be slow. Sudden session freezes or disconnects can also happen if PVS servers are slow. Monitoring of PVS servers and their performance is therefore important.

eG Enterprise is one of the few solutions in the market that provides deep visibility into every aspect of Citrix Provisioning service performance, irrespective of whether the server is deployed on a physical or a virtual machine.

Why is Citrix PVS Monitoring Challenging?

Since users do not directly access PVS, slowdowns or failures of PVS are hard to detect. Furthermore, because there are several underlying tiers in the Citrix infrastructure, when slowness is detected, an administrator often has to spend a lot of time determining exactly where the cause of the problem lies.

In-depth visibility and analysis of key performance indicators at the server operating system (particularly IOPS and memory), the infrastructure (key services, errors, etc.) and the application layers (e.g., the vDisks, the target devices, the write cache, PVS sites, PVS connections to license servers and data stores, etc. ) are the keys to identifying PVS problems proactively.

eG Innovations provides the best value for the money coupling visibility and excellent reporting. Using their automatic root cause analysis we avoided throwing $$ at the problem and realized $20K in savings - immediately.

Xen Provisioning Server

What eG Enterprise Monitoring for Citrix PVS Offers

• Deep Visibility into Provisioning Services Health and Performance

  • Provisioning server operational status
  • Availability of provisioning server's key Windows services, connectivity to database and license servers
  • Provisioning server errors (from log files, event logs, etc.)
  • Status of each of the vDisks and target devices
  • Write cache utilization in RAM
  • Active vs. Inactive devices
  • Target device activity on vDisks and devices
  • PVS site and farm-wide visibility

• Answers to Key Questions Regarding Citrix PVS Performance

  • Are all the provisioning servers in a site available and responding to target device requests?
  • Are there any inactive vDisks in a site? Which ones?
  • Is the PVS server's RAM sufficiently sized?
  • Which vDisks are not connected to any target device?
  • Are any vDisks locked for a long time?
  • What is the number of times a target device had to retry an I/O transaction?
  • What are the boot times for target devices?

Benefits

Citrix Provisioning Services Documentation

• By proactively detecting and resolving problems, you can ensure business continuity and keep Citrix users productive and satisfied
• Increase business efficiency by ensuring great Citrix performance and uptime
• eG Enterprise Universal Insight is a force multiplier for IT productivity. With the total Citrix performance visibility it offers, even helpdesk administrators can detect and resolve problems quickly
• In-depth analytics enable architects optimize their Citrix farms to scale and support additional users
• Provide a consistent and unified view for all the different stakeholders in your organization

Why eG? One Monitor to Manage All of IT.

• eG Enterprise is the only single pane-of-glass, virtualization-aware, auto-diagnostic IT infrastructure performance monitor
• Gain actionable answers to performance issues, wherever they originate, from application code to bare metal
• Understand the impact of infrastructure issues on application performance and user experience
• Unify IT performance monitoring, alerting, diagnosing, reporting, and capacity planning in a single console
• Ensure a great user experience and dramatically improve IT efficiency
• Benefit from flexible deployment options (on-premises and SaaS) and IT monitoring approaches (agentless and agent-based)