Computer name - Missing feature , Citrix XenApp

[Raf]

Howdy!

 

 

When we use PC Monitor in Cirtrix XenApp environment, on our production servers value of ComputerName is being copied from master image on which we have PC Monitor installed and then the image was distributed between these production servers. 

 

Manual change is not a problem if to be done once, but due to the fact these production machines are being rebuild every night according to master image - using PC Monitor to monitor XenApp servers adds daily task to our busy jobs.

 

What I think should be available in PC Monitor Manager on the Account tab/Computer Information/Computer Name is a tick box to use %Computername% queried (on the startup) against registry of actual machine rather than string entry only.

 

 

Thanks for consideration of proposed improvement of your product.

 

 

Kind Regards

Raf

[Marius]

Hi Raf,

 

If you delete the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MMSOFT Design\PC Monitor\ComputerName entry in the master image before that image is distributed the PC Monitor agent will display the default computer name. You can try deleting the entry on one of the production servers to see the result.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Regards,

Marius

[Raf]

Thanks for your answer. 

The name that PCMonitor Manager is picking up now is the name of Hyper-V host that Development/Production Servers are running on. So it seems it does not solve the issue.

Any other ideas ? Thanks.

 

 

Raf

[Marius]

This works for us every time. Do the following on the VM:

 

1. stop the PC Monitor service

2. close the PC Monitor Manager

3. delete the registry key

4. start the service

 

you should see the VM with the proper name. 

[Raf]

Sorry, my bad, just had too many remote sessions windows open.

 

So... after I did what was suggested, it is still showing up development server's name in the PC Monitor.

[Paul]

This is odd. Can you please tell me what steps you took and what happened. Maybe I can help.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Paul

[Raf]

Ok, now it works fine.

 

So to sum this all up together:

 

 

On development server:

 

1- stop PC Monitor Service

2 - delete registry entry:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MMSOFT Design\PC Monitor\ComputerName

3 - Pull off master image

4 - Distribute that image across production servers

5 - have a doughnut :]

 

 

Thanks for help resolving this guys. Kind Regards.

 

 

Raf

[Marius]

That's great Raf, glad it works. Thanks for the update.

[Raf]

Hi Again

 

Sorry for being a pain, but infos about these servers is being multipied overnight after when they are rebuild, I will include a photo for you guys to have perspective. 

[Marius]

For some strange reason the ComputerIdentifier value in the registry is not being kept and it's deleted on deployment. That means the server will see each computer as a new computer.

 

You need to delete just the ComputerName value in the registry and leave the ComputerIdentifier there.

[Raf]

Hi

 

I have written down values of the ComputerIdentifier from the development server and two production servers so tomorrow when they are freshly rebuild   again overnight will check in the registry if these values got changed and if this is creating problem.

 

I also think that I wasn't removing this ComputerIdentifier item from registry when I was pulling off the image, just ComputerName field was deleted.

We will see tomorrow then. Thanks. 

 

Raf

[Paul]

You mean that you are pushing the same ComputerIdentifier to all of the virtual machines. This is bad. Make sure you don't change the ComputerIdentifier.

[Raf]

They have all got changed for new REG_SZ values except the one on the Developement server.

 

 

Is there any way to have this resolved ?

[Raf]

You mean that you are pushing the same ComputerIdentifier to all of the virtual machines. This is bad. Make sure you don't change the ComputerIdentifier.

 

I think that the service changes it when starting on the boot up, but I could be wrong.

[Paul]

Help me understand this, Citrix rebuilds every day the machines from templates? Why? Isn't it possible to make it keep some registry values? You need to make sure that the ComputerIdentifier will not change.

 

Yes, I think that the service will change ComputerIdentifier if there is another computer with the same identifier.

 

So if you have all computers up and running, make sure that the next time they rebuild they will not overwrite the ComputerIdentifier registry value.

[Raf]

Hi Guys

 

We have had resolved this issue by an accident. What we have done is we have had swapped over NIC settings in HyperV when we took VMs from HyperV2 to HyperV3 so now interface 0 is a Provisioning network, interface 1 is our domain network. I have realized that it is working fine after a few days really :]

 

I think it was HyperV's thing messed up rather than PC Monitor's one and perhaps that's why it was so difficult really to pin point it. Anyways, thanks for support on this one, and very best regards.

 

Raf