Using PVS Boot Device Manger with XenDesktop and Xenserver

Boot device manager (bdm.exe)  is a utility that has been around a while with Provisioning server  but in the new release of PVS 5.0 sp1a major  improvements have been made to allow you to have a great alternative to using PXE(Dhcp, tftp, Bootp, etc) to deliver the Bootstrap to Diskless client(Xenserver VMs, VmwareESX Vms, HyperV VMs , PCs, Servers, TCs). The bdm.exe utility allows you to burn the bootstrap to a  USB, CD-ROM (ISO), and  Hard Disk Partitions.

In this blog I will go through specifically using BDM in a Xendesktop/PVS  with VMs hosted on Xenserver 5.0 

1.       From the Provisioning Server run  C:\Program Files\Citrix\Provisioning Server\ BDM.exe


2.       I usually set it to verbose mode initially.


3.  You have the option to use a static IP address or use DHCP with this tool. In this use case we are creating a template in XS that we will be creating a POOL from using the xendesktop setup tool so I am using DHCP and then I am choosing the citrix ISO recorder.


4.  Click Burn and Save ISO file locally.

5.  Move the iso file to your ISO share in Xen Center.
6.  Now modify our target Virtual Machine template  by going to the storage tab and selecting the ISO file that was created with BDM and copied to the ISO share configured for your Xenserver.




 7.  Next we need to edit the startup options on the Virtual Machine properties page and move the DVD/CD  object to the top of the boot list. See screenshot below. ****


 ***** Make Sure to place Network second in the boot order.


8. We have a XenServer Virtual Machine with little or no disk assigned, set to boot from a DVD/CD ISO file and now we just right-click on the Virtual Machine and click ‘convert to template’ in XenCenter.

9.  So now that we have a Template we can run the Xendesktop Setup Tool to create a pool of Virtual desktops in minutes and not use terabytes of storage.






In the next few weeks I will be posting a similar process for ESX and HYPERV
by the way if you havent heard Xenserver Enterprise is Free.