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Thincomputing.net Article: Creating An Automated Citrix Server Build

Wednesday, 09 August 2006 by Michel Roth

In this article Jan van der Elst will explain a way how you can create an unattended Citrix server build: "In Citrix farms, it�s absolutely critical that all servers are identical. Any difference in the between servers can lead to inconsistencies that will at the very least will lead to an increase in support calls. Therefore it�s considered to be a best practise to deploy your servers via an unattended installation. This article will show you how you can do this do this with some free available tools provided by Microsoft."

Deploying W2k3 servers with Citrix Metaframe Presentation server unattended , might look difficult, but it really isn�t that hard. You don�t really need expensive tools, you can just do-it with free tools and technologies provided by Microsoft. There�s three basic steps that make up our unattended server build.

1. RIS
First there�s RIS (Microsoft�s Remote Installation Service). You can use RIS to automatically deploy W2k3.

2. Citrix Presentation Server
Next, there�s the unattended installation of Citrix Presentation Server. To customize the Citrix installation to fit your environment you need a tool called ORCA.`

3. Installing Applications
Finally you need to install all the applications unattended on your Citrix server.

Of course there�s a lot more you can do to customize your Citrix server further, like Group Policy but that�s beyond the scope of this article. This article focuses on the initial unattended deployment of Windows Server 2003 � Citrix Presentation Server � Applications.

Read the entire article here.