Sunday 3 July 2011

Installing XenApp 6.5 Tech Preview - Part 1 - License server

Following on from my overview of the XenApp 6.5 Tech Preview (http://zenapp.blogspot.com/2011/07/xenapp-65-tech-preview.html), I am now going to build a demo farm and explore some of the new features.

For this demo I'll be building a basic set of servers, based on a fairly powerful server running XenServer and 4 virtual machines - a license server, a web interface and an application server.

  • xensvr01: License server
  • xensvr02: Web Interface
  • xensvr03: Data Collector
  • xensvr04: Application server

The first step for me is the License server - its specified during the setup of the main servers, so its nice to have it in place first, and XenApp 6.5 will require a later version of the Citrix License Server than the v11.6 License server which shipped with XenApp 6.

Step one has to be to download the files we'll need – I’ll assume from here on in that this is done and they’re extracted to a nice file share somewhere your servers can all access.

All servers built for this are Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 (so they’re all 64 bit, as 2008 R2 is 64-bit only). They've all got static IPs and anti-virus programs installed, but otherwise are fresh installs.

To set up the license server, I go to my installer share on my first server and execute \Licensing\CTX_Licensing.msi

Accept the EULA and click next until it finishes...

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You then get a screen to configure the basics of the license server, and I'm keeping defaults. If you vary the license port, do remember what you change it to! Try to remember the “admin” password as well if you can. :-)

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Click the Start Button and select Citrix, Management Consoles and License Administration Console

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Click the Administration tab and enter your admin username and password you set up earlier...

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Click Vendor Deamon Configuration (catchy...) and click import license

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Click Browse and find the license file you downloaded earlier - this is a time limited evaluation license, it should have the expiration date in its name. Click Import license and you should get a nice green message.

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As it says, you need to restart the Citrix License service to get the licenses. Click Start, Administrative Tools, Services. Find the Citrix License service and give it a bounce.

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Go back to the Dashboard on the web page and you will see you have 99 Platinum and 99 Enterprise concurrent licenses, plus 4000 startup licenses. Interestingly, this seems to be a reduction from the 5000 servers the older license server supported...

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And that's it! Not even a reboot in sight. Bear in mind that you also need Terminal Services (sorry, Remote Desktop Services) licenses, though of course RDS has a 120 grace period on a newly built server, which is plenty for this test. I tend to combine RDS License and Citrix License services on a single server in production, though there's no requirement for this.

Next phase is to get a Web Interface server up and running, then we can actually establish the farm.

1 comments:

Frank Baier said...

Hi, you should upgrade your version 11.6 to 11.9

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