Using a Provider in multiple farms

This topic describes how to use the same Provider in multiple RAS Farms simultaneously. To better understand the problem and the solution, consider the following hypothetical example:

• Let's say we have a hypervisor with two available virtual machines.

• We also have two Farms (1 and 2).

• Our intention is to use the first host to host resources in Farm 1 and the other to be a template in Farm 2. Both hosts will run simultaneously on the hypervisor, but each one will be available in its respective Farm only.

The problem is, RAS Guest Agent can normally communicate with one RAS Provider Agent, but since each Farm has its own RAS Provider Agent, this will not work out of the box. The solution is to make the RAS Guest Agent running in a host to be aware of only one specific RAS Provider Agent with the ability to change the assignment as needed.

The assignment is done via Windows registry. All hosts belonging to VDI pools and host clones created from a template need to have a new String value 2XVDIAgent specifying the RAS Provider Agent name or address. To add the value:

1. Log in to Windows running in the virtual machine, open the registry editor (regedit) and locate the following keys:

   • 32-bit systems: HLKM\Software\Parallels\GuestAgent

   • 64-bit systems: HLKM\Software\WOW6432Node\Parallels\GuestAgent

2. Add a String value named 2XVDIAgent. The value data should be specified as follows:

   • If a dedicated RAS Provider Agent is used, the value must be set to the FQDN or IP address of the server where the agent is installed.

   • If the built-in RAS Provider Agent is used with manual agent selection, the value must be set to the FQDN or IP address of the RAS Connection Broker.

   • If the built-in RAS Provider Agent is used and the agent is selected automatically (high availability), the string must contain FQDNs or IP addresses of all RAS Connection Brokers separated by a semicolon (i.e. <PA1 address>;<PA2 address>;<PA3 address>).

Note that you can include names or IP addresses of multiple Connection Brokers for the manual agent selection scenario as well (the second bullet in the list above). This way you will not need to change the value every time you switch the preferred Connection Broker for a Provider.