8. Creating and Populating Remote PC Pools¶

After setting up Parallels RAS, you can proceed to create remote PC pools as described in the Parallels documentation.

Having created the pools, you will need to populate them with virtual machines. For this you will need need a cloudbase image tailored for your VDI scenario. You can create it as described in the Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure Administrator’s Guide. You will need to:

1. Optimize the system for better performance. For example, with this optimization tool.
2. Install Virtuozzo guest tools. See the Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure Administrator’s Guide.
3. Install user applications.
4. Optimize security settings.
5. Optionally install FSlogix tools to enable random desktops.

While you can create the VMs manually, it is simpler to populate a remote PC pool using the following scripts. Run them inside the Windows VM where you have installed Parallels RAS.

Download the scripts:

# wget https://docs.virtuozzo.com/files/vhw-remote-pc-pool-scripts.tar.gz
# tar -xzvf vhw-remote-pc-pool-scripts.tar.gz

The scripts are:

New-VDIGuestFromVHI.ps1

A PowerShell script that creates virtual machines in Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure and adds them to the specified Parallels RAS remote PC pool.

Remove-VDIGuestFromVHI.ps1

A PowerShell script that removes virtual machines from the specified Parallels RAS remote PC pool and deletes them in Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure.

Other scripts in the downloaded archive are used by these two.

Before you can use the scripts, prepare the system as follows:

1. Download and install the latest Python 2 release from the Python website. Add the installation directory to the PATH variable.

2. Verify that PATH contains C:\Python27;C:\Python27\Scripts:

   > echo %PATH%
   

3. Install python-openstackclient. From the command prompt, run:

   > easy_install pip
   > pip install python-openstackclient
   

   If you get an error that Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7 is missing, download and install it. If you get an error “The system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation”, run the command prompt as administrator and install the compiler as follows:

   > msiexec /i VCForPython27.msi
   

4. Install python-heatclient:

   > pip install python-heatclient
   

5. Replace the line import queue with import Queue as queue in

   C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\openstack\cloud\openstackcloud.py:import queue
   C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\openstack\utils.py:import queue
   

6. On the Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure node with the Parallels RAS VM, create a provider-openrc.sh script for the Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure domain and project where you will create remote desktop VMs. For more details, see the Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure Administrator’s Command Line Guide.

To populate a remote PC pool with VMs, use New-VDIGuestFromVHI.ps1:

For example:

> New-VDIGuestFromVHI.ps1 -OpenRC admin-openrc.sh -ImageName `
Windows-2k19-clb-RAS -VmNameTemplate 'new-w2019-v1' -Count 2 `
-Flavor medium -Network VDINetwork -ADDomain abc.local -ADUsername Administrator `
-PoolName TestPool -Insecure -StoragePolicy Premium-SSD-3R `
-OUPath 'OU=RemotePC,OU=RAS,DC=abc,DC=local' -ProviderName abc-farm-pa-dc0.abc.local

To remove VMs from a remote PC pool and delete them from Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure, use Remove-VDIGuestFromVHI.ps1:

For example:

> Remove-VDIGuestFromVHI.ps1 -OpenRC admin-openrc.sh -VmNameTemplate `
'new-w2019-v1' -ADUsername Administrator -PoolName TestPool -Insecure `
-ProviderName abc-farm-pa-dc0.abc.local