How Does the Flexnet Inventory Agent Work in a Non-Persistent Citrix VDI environment and What is its impact?

[mfeinman]

Hi all ...

In my recent rollout of the Flexnet Inventory Agent for Windows (third-party deployment push of the 2021 R1 agent through SCCM), the agent was automatically installed on a Windows image in a non-persistent Citrix VDI environment.  I know little about Citrix VDI.  The question asked of me was "how does the agent work in a non-persistent VDI environment and what its impact might be?"

I've read some prior postings about setting up Discovery & Inventory rules for collecting this inventory.  None of these are done at this time.

Could the experts kindly weigh in on my question or point me to documentation which answers it? If my question needs clarifying data (for example, "Windows image in a Citrix VDI environment" is too general), please let me know what is needed.  Thanks for your help.

--Mark

[kclausen]

@mfeinman - The following recent post on this topic may help you.

https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Forum/Citrix-Virtual-Apps-import/m-p/258495#M16516

[cdubs76]

@mfeinman -- kclausen's link explains how FNM will make the tie between images and clones that use that gold image....so you want the agent to scan the image at some point--and then when the XenDesktop connector queries the Delivery Controllers---it will recognize what machines out there are using that image...and therefore have a complete picture.

There are cases where the agent baked into an image is needed---we used it at a large customer that wanted to track application usage with the agent.  Typically the apps baked into the image aren't ones you care about---but in this case, the did.   

Also sometimes non-persistent images are used for XenApp (Virtual Apps) servers, and we had an agent on those tracking app usage.  

Just food for thought.

[mfeinman]

Thanks for the documentation link.  Very helpful to me in understanding the setup.

So it appears there's three things required to make this work:

1. Installing the agent on the VDI template (or "golden image").  This was done with the SCCM push during my agent deployment.
2. Installing the Citrix Remote PowerShell SDK onto a beacon. (not done yet)
3. Configuring a connection in the FlexNet Beacon UI to Citrix. (not done yet)

At the moment, only #1 has been done.  Is it OK to leave this "as is" (inventory agent running) or must it be stopped until I set up the inventory beacon connection? My assumption is, in this state, I'll just get inventory from the VDI template.

--Mark