Boot Options for a Citrix Provisioning Services Target

Provisioning Services Targets can boot from PXE, CDroms or Hard Drive Boot code.  This boot code tells the bare metal target where to go to receive it’s streamed Operating System (vDisk).  Chris Hahn sent over a short punch list on how to boot from Hard Disk.

Putting the boot code on the hard disk in 7 easy steps. 

1)      Boot up a machine in private mode with a local disk with no data on it

2)      Create a small partition at the beginning of the local disk (I used 100mb)

3)      Run BDM.exe from the XA or XD machine (you can just browse to the executable on the Provisioning Server over the network)

4)      Run through the BDM wizard and set the appropriate IP settings (use verbose mode also so you can see what is going on during the boot process if there are any problems)

5)      At the end of the wizard, select the appropriate partition to write the boot code to.  It should look something like this –

6)      From Disk Management, set the partition as active.

7)      Reboot.  The server should now boot using the boot code on the hard drive.