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Using a VDI provider in multiple farms

This topic describes how to use the same VDI provider in multiple RAS Farms simultaneously. To better understand the problem and the solution, consider the following hypothetical example:

  • Let's say we have a hypervisor with two available virtual machines.
  • We also have two Farms (1 and 2).
  • Our intention is to use the first guest VM to host resources in Farm 1 and the other to be a template in Farm 2. Both guest VMs will run simultaneously on the hypervisor, but each one will be available in its respective Farm only.

The problem is, RAS Guest Agent can normally communicate with one RAS VDI Agent, but since each Farm has its own RAS VDI Agent, this will not work out of the box. The solution is to make the RAS Guest Agent running in a guest VM to be aware of only one specific RAS VDI Agent with the ability to change the assignment as needed.

The assignment is done via Windows registry. All guest VMs belonging to VDI pools and guest VM clones created from a template need to have a new String value 2XVDIAgent specifying the RAS VDI Agent name or address. To add the value:

  1. Log in to Windows running in the virtual machine, open the registry editor (regedit) and locate the following keys:
    • 32-bit systems: HLKM\Software\Parallels\GuestAgent
    • 64-bit systems: HLKM\Software\WOW6432Node\Parallels\GuestAgent
  2. Add a String value named 2XVDIAgent. The value data should be specified as follows:
    • If a dedicated RAS VDI Agent is used, the value must be set to the FQDN or IP address of the server where the agent is installed.
    • If the built-in RAS VDI Agent is used with manual agent selection, the value must be set to the FQDN or IP address of the RAS Publishing Agent.
    • If the built-in RAS VDI Agent is used and the agent is selected automatically (high availability), the string must contain FQDNs or IP addresses of all RAS Publishing Agents separated by a semicolon (i.e. <PA1 address>;<PA2 address>;<PA3 address>).

Note that you can include names or IP addresses of multiple Publishing Agents for the manual agent selection scenario as well (the second bullet in the list above). This way you will not need to change the value every time you switch the preferred Publishing Agent for a VDI provider.
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