Citrix Provisioning 5.0 with XenDesktop 2.0?

Citrix released Provisioning server 5.0 on Aug. 21 and has many different features worth upgrading, such as the database can now be an Microsoft SQL database, and uses Microsoft VHD format. The one problem I have seen so far is the last one, Microsoft VHD is not seen by Citrix XenDesktop.

Citrix will be releasing a newer version of XenDesktop 2.1?? but will it work with Provisioning server 5.0? Not sure, but why wait? You can still use Provisioning 4.5, but more importantly here is a way to use both!

If you have a Provisioning 4.5 server create another Provisioning 5.0 server and set your targets to use the correct server via DHCP. Meaning migrate your vDisk to the new format if you want to just keep your XenDesktops using the old Provisioning 4.5 server or install a Provisioning 4.5 server just for your XenDesktop 2.0 server. As a best practice you should already be creating an DHCP Reservation for your targets, just make sure to create one for your XenDesktop targets and modify the “Configuration Options” for the target’s DHCP Reservation to include the correct DHCP options:

066 Boot Server Host Name “hostname of Provision Server 4.5”
067 Bootfile Name ARDBP32.bin


Make sure that you have don’t have any “Scope Options” or “Server Options” set and your targets set to use DHCP and you are good to go. Then again you could also create a boot iso as a fall back!