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.

To add a VDI provider:

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.
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.
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, but haven't installed the agent yet, 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 push installation cannot be performed for any reason, you can install the agent manually using the installer. See Installing RAS VDI Agent using the installer

13. If you've selected Microsoft Hyper-V Failover Cluster as the VDI provider type, the page opens where you can disable MAC address management for guest VMs. Note that you should only do it if you are using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) or other solution to manage MAC addresses. See the explanation below.

    MAC address management is required when using Microsoft Hyper-V Failover Cluster as a VDI provider. This is to avoid duplicate MAC addresses, which may occur when a guest VM is migrated to a different node in the cluster and the MAC address is released and reused on the original node. If that happens, such a guest VM can no longer be managed in a Farm. Parallels RAS uses a pool of static MAC addresses at the VDI provider level to automatically generate and assign MAC addresses to guest VMs. This way, when a guest VM is migrated to a different node in the cluster, its MAC address will not be reused for a different VM and no duplicate MAC addresses will occur. The pool has 10,000 reserved MAC addresses in the range displayed in the Starting MAC address and Ending MAC address fields on the wizard page.

    As was said above, if you are already managing MAC addresses using SCVMM or other solution, clear the Enable MAC address management option.

14. Click Next.
15. 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.
16. Click Finish to close the wizard.