Citrix Provisioning

Configuring UEFI pre-boot environments

August 23, 2024

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XenDesktop supports Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) hardware technology on on all virtualization environments. This enables you to:

Stream the server operating system at startup time using gigabit network speeds, so users experience faster startups
Support TB disks in a virtualized environment

UEFI is a complete replacement for BIOS and requires a new bootstrap. One bootstrap file for 64-bit systems is available.

Note:

Do not modify the default BOOTPTAB file.

When configuring UEFI, install the OS disk in a VM configured to use UEFI boot. Once you install the OS disk, Windows automatically configures the boot disk to use the GUID partition table (GPT) file system.

Network topology

When booting targets over the network, the Citrix Provisioning PXE server provides the simplest setup because the PXE protocol supports multiple architectures. The Provisioning Services PXE Server recognizes the architecture flag embedded in the DHCP, then discovers and returns the appropriate bootstrap filename. If you want to support network boot of both legacy BIOS and UEFI targets on the same broadcast network, then you must enable the Citrix Provisioning PXE Service and remove any DHCP options related to specifying the bootfile from the regular DHCP setup.

If DHCP option 67 is chosen, there are two topology options:

On a single segment, use DHCP reservations to specify the bootstrap filename (option 67) for each and every target device. This is feasible for smaller environments but quickly scales out of hand for enterprise environments. Use this option if you want to support both legacy BIOS and UEFI on the same segment.
Divide the environment into multiple segments, isolating the legacy devices from the UEFI devices. For each segment, configure a DHCP scope with the appropriate option 67 set.

Configuring bootstraps

The UEFI bootstrap does not have embedded settings. DHCP options are therefore used to configure the UEFI bootstrap.

Note:

Citrix Provisioning supports only UEFI network booting.

DHCP Option 11 – RLP Server

Option 11 allows you to specify multiple IPv4 addresses. Use this option to specify the addresses of the streaming NICs on the Provisioning Services server. You can specify more than four addresses. The UEFI bootstrap reads all addresses, picks a random address from the list, and connects to that address. If the connection fails, then UEFI bootstrap tries the remaining addresses in a round-robin manner.

Note:

Option 17 takes precedence over option 11.

DHCP Option 17 – Root Path

The root path option can be used to provide a single DNS FQDN or IPv4 address to connect to the targets. Multiple login servers can be implemented by creating a DNS alias that translates to the list of up to 32 login servers.

pvs:[Address]: 17:6910

pvs – Required identifier

Address – IPv4 or DNS FQDN referencing the streaming NIC on one or more PVS servers

17 – Protocol identifier for UDP (can be omitted if the default login port is used)

port – Logon port (not required if the default port of 6910 is used)
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Examples:

pvs:[server.corp.com]:17:6910

pvs:[server.corp.com]

pvs:[192.168.1.1]

Pvs:[192.168.1.1]:17:6910

pvs:[fc02::2bfa:5e30:3631:fef4]

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Configuring UEFI pre-boot environments

August 23, 2024

Contributed by:

August 23, 2024

Contributed by:

Configuring UEFI pre-boot environments

Network topology

Configuring bootstraps

DHCP Option 11 – RLP Server

DHCP Option 17 – Root Path

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