EMC FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering)

There's a new functionality on the horizon with EMC Storage Arrays and the way that they handle their data.  The standard way to provision storage has always been to size your performance requirements correctly and statically assign a RAID Group with a certain number of disks running either SATA or Fibre Channel, and most recently EFD (Electronic Flash Drives).

With FAST, the goal is basically to allow EMC customers to get the best value out of their storage.  This works by letting the array automatically provision and re-provision data to the most appropriate storage tier based on  performance requirements.

Take a look at this video to see how the performance increases using FAST and EFDs.  The example is using Symmetrix, however, note that it mentions that their medium class (CLARiiON) and NAS class (Celerra) arrays will be supported as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofKBDvo8214

Issue Provisioning Disks with the XenDesktop Setup Wizard

I had an issue when running the XenDesktop Setup Wizard where the wizard wouldn't connect to the provisioning server.  This is because many of the ports have changed recently due to port collision issues.  To resolved this it is necessary to edit the SetupToolApplication.exe.config file and change the following settings. 


The default installation path is C:\Program Files\Citrix\XenDesktop Setup Wizard.
 Create a backup copy of this file.
 Within the section of the file:

a. Replace:
endpoint address="http://localhost:8000/pvs/mapi/commandset"
with:
endpoint address=http://localhost:54321/pvs/mapi/commandset 

b. Replace:
endpoint address="net.tcp://localhost:8001/pvs/mapi/commandset"
with:
endpoint address="net.tcp://localhost:54322/pvs/mapi/commandset"

You could read further about fixing the issue in this Citrix Support Document


http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX121658

Citrix Updates

Some new updates out recently for Xenapp and Provisioning Server


Hotfix Rollup Pack 5 for XenApp 5.0 on Server 2003

http://support.citrix.com/product/xa/v5.0_2003/

Citrix Provisioning Server 5.1 SP1

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX122799