Add a Hypervisor VDI Provider

This section describes how to add a hypervisor-based VDI provider. For the information on how to add a cloud-based VDI provider, see Add a Cloud VDI Provider.

Adding a VDI provider

To add a VDI provider manually:

1. In the RAS Console, navigate to Farm / Site / VDI.
2. On the Providers tab, click Tasks > Add.
3. The Add VDI Provider wizard opens.
4. On the Select VDI provider type page, select Virtualization to use a hypervisor deployed on your network. The Cloud computing option is described in the Add a Cloud VDI Provider section.
5. Click Next.
6. In the Type field, select the hypervisor type. For the information on what the "Remote PC" type is, see Remote PC Pools.
7. In the Address field, specify the host's FQDN or IP address.
8. Specify a user name and password to log in to the server.
9. Type an optional description for the provider.
10. Click the Advanced Settings link to open the Advanced VDI Provider Settings dialog. The dialog allows you choose the following options:
    • Use dedicated VDI Agent: Select this option if you will install (or have installed) the RAS VDI Agent yourself. Clear the option if you will use the built-in RAS VDI Agent.
    • Agent address: This option becomes enabled if you select the option above it. Specify the FQDN or IP address of the server where the RAS VDI Agent is (or will be) installed. This can be either a physical box or virtual machine.
    • Preferred Publishing Agent: Select a RAS Publishing Agent to be the preferred agent for this VDI provider. Select Automatic to let the system select an agent (this option is enabled and selected by default if you have at least three Publishing Agents installed). The automatic selection is especially important to ensure that the VDI provider and guest VMs always have a VDI Agent they communicate with in case of other Publishing Agent(s) failure. For more info, see Enabling High Availability for VDI.

    Click OK (or Cancel) when done.

11. Click Next.
12. The wizard will now try to connect to the RAS VDI Agent. If you specified Use dedicated VDI Agent option in the previous (optional) step, and if the agent is not installed, you will need to install it. Click Install and follow the instructions to push install the agent on the specified host. Please note that for the remote installation to work, the following requirements must be met:
    • The firewall must be configured on the server to allow push installation. Standard SMB ports (139 and 445) need to be open. See also Port Reference for the list of ports used by Parallels RAS.
    • SMB access. The administrative share (\\server\c$) must be accessible. Simple file sharing must be enabled.
    • Your Parallels RAS administrator account must have permissions to perform a remote installation on the server. If it doesn't, you'll be asked to enter credentials of an account that does.
    • The target server should be joined to an AD domain. If it's not, the push installation may not work and you will have to install the agent manually. For instructions, see Installing RAS VDI Agent Manually.
13. [VMware vCenter only] If you've selected VMware vCenter as the VDI provider, another page opens (the page will not open for any other host type). On this page, you can specify a vCenter resource pool. This allows you to enumerate VMs by selecting a cluster (root resource pool) or an individual resource pool within a cluster. To choose a resource pool, select the Use specific resource pool option and then click the [...] button next to the Resource Pool field. In the dialog that opens, select a desired resource pool. Note that if you leave the Use specific resource pool option cleared, all VMs from the entire vCenter cluster will be retrieved (max number is 35,000). Click OK when done.
14. Click Finish to close the wizard.