Citrix Project Rainmaker – FAQ
Here are some interesting details about Project Rainmaker, which I first heard about some time ago. Now it appears that Citrix has a Project Rainmaker FAQ out on their support site!
The following are some frequently asked questions.
General Questions
- What does the term “Overallocated” mean?
- When do farms and workload machines get “Allocated”?
- What results do I get if I filter workflows by “Relevance”?
- How do I migrate my applications and users from an existing XenApp farm?
- How can I delete or rename a tenant?
- Is it possible to only create a PNA site and not the WI site?
- How do I remove a Web Interface machine from Rainmaker? For instance, so that I can delete virtual machines or repurpose hardware.
Installation and Setup
- Why does the user account running the New-Rainmaker* scripts need to have administrative access to SQL Server?
- Why do I get prompted to enter the name of the database user during execution of New-RainmakerFarm.ps1 script?
- Can I set up a tenant in a separate domain?
- Can I use a Domain Controller version other than Windows 2008 R2?
- Can the console service, the configuration manager, and the database be installed on different machines?
Farms and Workloads
- How is the allocation (such as “Allocated: 0 / 2”) calculated for a farm or workload catalog?
- If a workload catalog is being updated and also has unmet allocation, when I add a workload machine, what will happen?
- What happens when a new farm gets imported into a farm catalog?
- What causes the workload catalog to become invalid?
- What causes a workload machine to become invalid?
- Why does a workload machine appear as “Draining”?
- My machines are not being imported into the system after I dropped them to the import the Organizational Unit. How can I find out why?
- How can I roll back to a previous version of a workload catalog?
- Is it possible to point different catalogs to the same import Organizational Unit?
- How do I delete a farm catalog?
- How do I delete a workload catalog?
- How do I remove a machine from Rainmaker? For instance, so that I can delete a virtual machine or repurpose hardware.
- How do I remove a farm from Rainmaker? For instance, so that I can delete virtual machines or repurpose hardware.
Advertisements and Subscriptions
- Can farms and workload machines be reused if the associated subscriptions are deleted?
- Can I modify the default icon of an advertisement? What about a subscription?
- How can I configure content redirection?
The term “overallocated” means that the desired allocation cannot be met because there are not enough farms or workload machines available.
A farm catalog is overallocated if there are workloads associated with it for which there are no farms available. In other words, more farms are required.
A workload catalog is overallocated if there are workloads associated with it with a desired allocation greater than available allocation. In other words, more workers are required for one or more workloads associated with the catalog.
A workload is overallocated if its desired allocation is greater than available allocation. In other words, more workers are required for the workload.
Farms and workers are associated with workloads. A workload can handle multiple subscriptions. Deleting subscriptions does not delete a workload, because other subscriptions can still be created afterward that use it. We do not support deleting a workload for the Early Availability Release but for version 1, you will be able to delete a workload.
Even if you could delete the workload, you could not reuse the farms and workload machines for different workloads because they are “tainted”. They might contain sensitive private information from the tenants” users who previously used them. So even when we support deleting a workload, the farms/workload machines from that workload move to a “graveyard” and the administrator is advised to re-image the machines before reusing them.
The most important thing is to meet the desired allocation first, because without that, you have a service outage which directly impacts end users and causes a potential loss of revenue for the CSP. The upgrade is secondary because it does not cause any outages; it simply delays the time before everyone receives the patched version of an image.
Farms are allocated as soon as they are both available and desired (meaning, a workload has been associated with the farm catalog that cannot use an existing allocated farm because of either tenant isolation restrictions or exceeded farm capacity). If you import a farm (it becomes available) and a farm was required to meet allocation, it will be allocated.