1)  
Download this ISOhttp://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5753

2) 
Mount the ISO on one of your Control/Licensing Servers and install the "Windows AIK" from the Wizard.
3) 
Launch  "Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT)" form the Start, Programs Menu, Microsoft Windows AIK, VAMT

4) 
In the VAMT tool, click on the "Options" Menu and select "Manage MAKS"

5)
Click "Add" and then enter your MAK license Key and a Description.  Let the Activation process verify and then close out

6)
Right Click "All Computers" select "Add Computers". Do a search by Active Directory and type the hostname of your Host server or the Computer Group that all of your hosts are in.  

You'll then need to Activate the client by right clicking it an selecting the option to Activate.

Logon to one of your Citrix Xendesktop 7+ servers.

1)  Run either of these commands to identify the KMS Host:

slmgr.vbs /dlv

 or 

slmgr.vbs /dli

2)  Logon to the KMS Host server as identified and run this powershell command as administrator, to export a text file with all of the registered KMS clients.  Search the list for your Host servers or server that you're looking to confirm is using KMS Licensing.

$(foreach ($entry in (Get-EventLog -Logname "Key Management Service")) {$entry.ReplacementStrings[3]}) | sort-object -Unique >> C:\Clients.txt

Sources:

http://cloud.kemta.net/2014/08/powershell-listing-activated-clients-on-kms-server/

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/9a1ec2c8-eb04-4db9-b904-f8b65880ff1b/determine-kms-host-on-network

I will add the port numbers in at a later stage

For those of you who have worked with Storage systems, you will be aware of how important it is to calculate storage IOPS.  This post doesn't go into any details on that subject, but I will try to explain this in another posting, at a later date.


I'm also not going to explain the merits of using MCS over PVS or vice versa--that's a decision that should be made depending on multiple factors, and unique to each organisation.  But let's say that you've decided to use MCS (Machine Creation Services) to deploy your Xendesktop 7 Application/Xenapp 7.5 Servers (Hosted shared).  You have shared storage fabric in place and an idea of the average and peak IO usage.  With that in mind, you are now able to significantly improve those READ IOs  from your Hosting servers by reading from the Host Servers' RAM cache, rather than having to traverse the network and hit the storage fabric for every IO read operation.  Applying these Hypervisor RAM caching optimizations will have a positive impact on Read IO performance. 


Here's an explanation of the VMware and Microsoft RAM caching techiques used to significantly increase IO performance.

VSPHERE CBRC - Content based read cache 

Built into Vsphere 5, this is a 100% host-based caching solution which helps reduce READ IOs.  It help with IO storms, os boots and reboot, virus scans etc. 

There are 2 Components of the cache:

In Memory: Fixed sized of 2GB and 400MB reserved
Dynamic cache that loads blocks on demans and manages cache based on access pattersn to various blocks on the VMDK


Digest/Metadata Table: maintined on dsk for each vmdk on the host
The table holds information about the various blocks in the vmdk. A hash table with each hash pointing to a specific block

If there is a read request to a block on the VMDK, a HASH is computed and the in memory cache is checked to see if the block is present. If it is not present, the hash table is accessed and the specific block is loaded into memory. If the block is in memory, it is returned back to the user.

HYPER-V CSV Block cache

CSV Block cache is a RAM Cache. It Allows you to Cache READ IOPS in the Hyper-V host RAM.

In Server 2012, you had to "SET" the CSV block cache and "enable" for every CSV volume. In Server 2012 R2, it is enabled by default on every CSV volume, but the cache is set to 0. So to enable the cache you have to:

 
# Get CSV Block Cache Size

(Get-Cluster).BlockCacheSize

 # Set CSV Block Cache Size to 512MB

 (Get-Cluster).BlockCacheSize = 512

 Microsoft Recommend 512 (2GB MAX) CSV block cache on the HYPER-V host (Unless this is a scale out file server, which means you can use up to 80% of RAM if the OS is 2012 R2)




Windows Server 2012 R2


1. Open an elevated Windows PowerShell prompt
2. Define the size of the size of the cache to be reserved (example of setting to 2 GB)

 (Get-Cluster). BlockCacheSize = 2048


Windows Server 2012

1. Open an elevated Windows PowerShell prompt
2. Define the size of the size of the cache to be reserved (example of setting to 2 GB)

(Get-Cluster). SharedVolumeBlockCacheSizeInMB = 2048
 3. Enable CSV Cache on an individual disk (must be executed for every disk you wish to enable caching)

 Get-ClusterSharedVolume “Cluster Disk 1” | Set-ClusterParameter CsvEnableBlockCache 1

To integrate your current Redirected Folders into the new Xendesktop 7.1 environment, you would need to configure the Folder Redirection GPO settings from within your Xendesktop 7 "Desktop lockdown GPO"--remember that these OUs are recommended to be processed with a loopback policy applied, which is why these settings need to be configured in your desktop lockdown GPO again instead.  (Unless your loopback policy configured for these Xendesktop 7 hosts is set to "MERGE" mode)

Apply these settings in the Desktop lockdown GPO for each folder that you wish to redirect:

I am using Citrix Profile Manager to redirect my user profile to a network share when a user logs on.  However, you will need to exlcude the folders that you would like to be redirected from the Citrix Profile Management policy, otherwise it will cause a conflict and redirection may not work correctly. so set the exclusion from within the Citrix Studio Console (Policy Node):

This is something that I need to share, especially for those of you who plan to implement Xendesktop 7 and APP-V integration.


So, you've just spent a few days putting the Xendesktop site together, the wheels are on and polished, it's looking pretty good--the only problem is that you have no seats! I'm referring to APP-V 5 packages not being seen on your hosted shared desktop.  You're probably wondering why this is, because you've rolled this solution out before and you've used "Application & Desktop" Delivery group types before too.  But you may want to check that group type again, because the chances are that you've setup a "Desktop" delivery group type, thinking that everything will work exactly the same as an "Application" or "Application & Desktop" delivery group type, but that isn't the case:


When you create an "Application" or "Application & Desktop" Delivery group type, the App-V 5 management and publishing server setting are inherited from the site level configuration.  But Desktop delivery groups do not inherit these settings by default, because desktop delivery groups are unable to publish applications and do not inherit the App-V 5 settings from the site configuration.  Instead, you have to tell a Desktop delivery group to use the specific App-v 5 site policy (Link them)


You would follow this procedure to link your Desktop Delivery group type to the site App-V policy:


Open the Citrix Studio Console and click on the "Powershell Tab", followed by the Powershell button, located on the tab and type these commands:




1)  Get-BrokerDesktopGroup    -adminaddress *yourdeliverycontroller*


2)  Get-BrokerMachineConfiguration –Name AppV*
(Displays the site's app-v policy name)


3)  Add-BrokerMachineConfiguration –Name AppV\XYZ –DesktopGroup UID
 (Replace the AppV\XYZ with the app-v policy name found from the previous command output. Then add the UID of the delivery group, found within the first command output.)


It's prudent to do a reboot of the servers after this.


Log back again, and Bob's your uncle! Your seat are back in the motor!

But before you go, you'll also need to be aware that if you're using folder redirection, you'll need to exclude App-V directories and settings from that process.  If you don't do this, then you're likely to see the app's only once, at first logon. So do the following in Citrix Policies:

"You must exclude the following items using Profile management exclusions:

• Profile Management\File system\Exclusion list\directories:
  • AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\AppV\Client\Catalog
  • AppData\Local\Microsoft\AppV
• Profile Management\Registry\Exclusion list:
• Software\Microsoft\AppV\Client\Integration
• Software\Microsoft\AppV\Client\Publishing"

Sources:

 http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/user-profile-manager-5-x/upm-using-with-app-v.html

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX138139

Open PowerShell on the controller and type add-pssnapin citrix.*

To mount the policies, type new-psdrive “Mysite” –psprovider CitrixGroupPolicy –Root \ -controller *yourcontroller*

Note: “Mysite” is the name of the psdrive you are creating, so it could be anything.
Type cd mysite:\.

Type dir, and find the location of your policy.

In this example, user container is being used, so type Cd user first

Check the number of policies and note the priority number. Then do the same cd.. and cd computer and check if there are conflicting policy
priorities, check for duplication of policies that are in user and computer containers.

To locate name of the policy which is causing the issue, type dir.

In the preceding image, the policy name is CPM PROFILE, so to remove it, type Rd “.\CPM PROFILE”.

Go back to the Studio, click Policy > Refresh.

You will now be able to see the rest of the policies and can modify/create once more.

You might want to remove them all except the unfiltered policy and a start again. This is what I did to get this working again.  Why the duplication happens? That's something I don't have an answer to at the moment