RAS VDI Agent Information

In order to function in a RAS Farm, a VDI provider (hypervisor or cloud-based) needs the RAS VDI Agent component to be installed in the Farm. RAS VDI Agent is a software that acts as an interface between other RAS components and a VDI provider. RAS VDI Agent conducts all communications with a VDI provider (hypervisor or cloud-based) through the provider's native API.

In Parallels RAS v16.5 and newer, RAS VDI Agent is built into the RAS Publishing Agent, so it's already installed in your RAS Farm and is ready to be used to manage one or more VDI providers. You do, however, have another option, which is installing a dedicated RAS VDI Agent on a server of your choice. The differences between the built-in and a dedicated RAS VDI Agent are as follows:

• When you install a dedicated RAS VDI Agent, it can be used to manage a single VDI provider only. The built-in agent can be used to manage multiple (or all available) VDI providers, and it also gives you the high-availability configuration option, while a dedicated agent does not.
• A dedicated RAS VDI Agent must be installed manually using the RAS installer. The built-in agent is installed together with the RAS Publishing Agent.

All of the VDI providers supported in Parallels RAS can be managed via the built-in RAS VDI Agent. This gives you a choice of using the built-in RAS VDI Agent or a dedicated RAS VDI Agent.

What you should read next:

• If you are adding a VDI provider that will use the built-in RAS VDI Agent, you may skip to Add a VDI Provider.
• If you want to install a dedicated RAS VDI Agent on a different host, read the RAS VDI Agent Installation Options section, which follows this one.