22 thoughts on “Scripting Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) with PowerShell and Command Line”

1. Hi

   I have some PVS script that i use for several things. I have just created a merge script that are going on the weekend, but there is something that might bo handy. In the gui you can see how many procent that is done in the progress. Is there a way to see this progress somewhere else, i mean som cmd-lets? I have looked everywhere and just cant find anything. Since you can see it, it must be a way to find it. Could it be direct in the database maybe? If you run merge cmd-lets you can see that this will get an unique task id, this task must be found somewhere.

   In xendesktop i use this progress in a script that it is find in get-provtask

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   1. Thats a good one!
      Does this work: Get-PvsDiskUpdateStatus -DiskUpdateTaskId or -UpdateTaskId ?

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      1. Oh and here are all commands but the document is not so easy to read:
         https://docs.citrix.com/content/dam/docs/en-us/provisioning-services/7-7/downloads/PowerShellObjectProgramGuide7-7.pdf

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2. still no percent from the cmd-lets you mentioned

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   1. A that’s a bummer, have you tried looking trough the guide ?

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   2. seems that the snapins from 7.15.1 reveals the answer for this question if you run get-help Start-PVSCreateDisk -showWindow
      within example number 1 you should get the information how to achieve this.

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   3. get-pvstask | Where-Object {$_.Command -eq “MergeDisk” -and $_.State -eq 0}|Get-PvsTaskStatus

      This will give you percentage complete.

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3. Thanks for the guide Chris. Hopefully some of these can come in handy to complete changes out of hours.

   For example I have some production servers that all use a vDisk. I want them to boot from a new vDisk in a few days time when I am out of the office.

   Can I just create a scheduled task to run the powershell script, will it remove the link to the existing vDisk (I’m thinking yes). Would I have to shut these devices down first before the script is run ?

   Add-PvsDiskLocatorToDevice -SiteName “YourSiteName” -StoreName “YourStoreName” -DiskLocatorName ““YourDiskName” -DeviceName “DeviceName” -RemoveExisting

   Thanks in advance

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   1. Hi Paul,
      You’re welcome! You can indeed save the script to a ps1 file and schedule it with task shedulair. With the command above the device don’t have to be shutdown when performaning the command. They will just keep running with the “old” disk until reboot. So in your use case you should create a script which changes the disk with above command and after that perform a remote reboot 🙂

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4. Does anyone have a Powershell command to Change the Load Balancing of the vdisk to a specific PVS server?

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   1. There is none at the moment. You can only set a Pvs server when you create or add a disk. So you could remove the disk from the Pvs server but keep the vhdx and then add it again on the right Pvs server.

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   2. Here is one I use as a function I add to James Kindon PVSImageMangementTool PS script.
      Usage:
      # Will set load balance to PVS server connection that is currently in use when running Set-PVSConnection function from PVS PS module
      PS> SetLoadBalance ‘Disable’
      # Will set default load balance if more than one PVS server is in PVS Site
      PS> SetLoadBalance ‘Enable’

      function SetLoadBalance ($LB) {
      # pops up a window to select vDisk to modify
      $DiskInfo = @(Get-PvsDiskInfo -Verbose -StoreName “” -SiteName “” | Select-Object Name, Description, SiteName, StoreName, Enabled, DiskLocatorId | Out-GridView -Title ‘Select a vDisk’ -PassThru)
      [string]$LBdisk = Get-PvsDiskLocator -DiskLocatorId $DiskInfo.disklocatorid
      $LBprimary = Get-PvsConnection | select -expandProperty server
      # Trimming primary server in case FQDN is used from PVS connection info
      [string]$LBServerTrim = $LBprimary.substring(“”, 15)

      if ($LB -eq “Enable”) {
      try {
      $Info = “Attempting to enable loadbalancing for $($DiskInfo.Name)”
      Write-Host $Info -ForegroundColor Green

      # portion for actual change. Setting to server to blank “” defaults to load balance re-enabling
      Get-PvsDiskLocator -DiskLocatorId $($DiskInfo.disklocatorid) -Fields ServerName | foreach { $o = $_; $o.ServerName = “”; $o } | Set-PvsDiskLocator

      # portion for actual change. Setting to server to the PVS connection we are using on this script to setup load balancing to one server
      #Get-PvsDiskLocator -DiskLocatorId $DiskInfo -Fields ServerName | foreach { $o = $_; $o.ServerName = $LBServerTrim; $o } | Set-PvsDiskLocator

      $Info = “Successfully enabled $($DiskInfo.Name) to load balance to $($LBServerTrim) ”
      Write-Host $Info -ForegroundColor Green
      }
      catch {
      [string]$ErrorText = $Error[0].CategoryInfo.Reason
      [string]$Errordetail = $Error[0].Exception.Message
      Write-Warning $Errordetail
      Write-Output $ErrorText
      Write-Warning “Please Check Device maintenance manually”
      #Write-Error $Errordetail
      Write-Output “Error: $($_.Exception.Message) -Line Number: $($_.Invocationinfo.ScriptLineNumber)”
      }
      }
      elseif ($LB -eq “Disable”) {
      try {
      $Info = “Attempting to disable loadbalancing for $($DiskInfo.Name)”
      Write-Host $Info -ForegroundColor Green

      # portion for actual change. Setting to a specific PVS server to the current powershell PVS connection we are using on this script to setup load balancing to one server
      Get-PvsDiskLocator -DiskLocatorId $($DiskInfo.disklocatorid) -Fields ServerName | foreach { $o = $_; $o.ServerName = $LBServerTrim; $o } | Set-PvsDiskLocator

      $Info = “Successfully enabled $($DiskInfo.Name) to load balance to $($LBServerTrim) ”
      Write-Host $Info -ForegroundColor Green
      }
      catch {
      [string]$ErrorText = $Error[0].CategoryInfo.Reason
      [string]$Errordetail = $Error[0].Exception.Message
      Write-Warning $Errordetail
      Write-Output $ErrorText
      Write-Warning “Please Check load balancing manually”
      #Write-Error $Errordetail
      Write-Host “Error: $($_.Exception.Message) -Line Number: $($_.Invocationinfo.ScriptLineNumber)”
      }
      }
      else {
      Write-Warning “Not able to set $($LB)”
      Write-Host “Not able to set $($LB)”
      exit
      }
      }

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      1. How did you get this to work? I get “ServerName is a Read-Only Property”

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5. Hi Guys,
   Is there a Powershell script that can tell me how many clients are connected to a PVS server? or even more – if the streaming service is displaying as “Down”?

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   1. You can check from Citrix studio / Appcenter / Director? for status of streaming service it can be done at the OS level
      Get-service should get the status of all the services of the OS

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6. How can i create a new maintenance version of our prod version when u already have an newer vdisk (test access mode) version up for a testing scenario. In gui console i only get a new vdisk versioin of the newest one but i wanna new vdisk from our older prod vdisk.

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   1. I dont think it is possible yet, you can only create a version from the latest vdisk be it prod or test

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7. how do you add a description/properties to a maintenance version with PVS PS API?

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8. Thank you, it helps me alot

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9. i need to delete multiple devices in device collection of pvs
   is there any script for it

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10. New-PvsCollection command gives Internal Server Error..Any suggestions on this??

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11. Hi Guys, has anyone automated the following tasks:
    Create a new version of the vDisk in maintenance mode

    Launch a VM using that version

    Apply latest windows patches + reboot if required

    Run clean up scripts on the VM and shut it down

    Promote vDisk to production

    Start restarting target servers

    Reply