Citrix has released service pack 2 for Provisioning Server 5.0. This service pack includes a few hotfixes that are critical to the success of a Provisioning Server or XenDesktop deployment.
First off it is definitely worth mentioning that this service pack (like the service pack before it) is a complete reinstall. Now you won’t lose any configuration data or any virtual disks but it probably wouldn’t hurt to take a backup. Then just to be on the safe side… take a backup of the backup… Ok maybe just one backup will do!
So far I have done two installations with this new service pack and both installations required the uninstall, manual removal, reboot, and finally a reinstall to get the Provisioning Server Console to work. In my experiences the console will crash when you try to do things like create or modify Active Directory objects. If you get a nasty MMC error then you’re probably in the same boat.
No worries, its relatively easy to recover:
- Uninstall the Provisioning Server Console using add/remove programs.
- Manually remove any file structure that was left behind (i.e. C:\Program Files\Citrix\Provisioning Server Console)
- Reboot
- Install the Provisioning Server Console from the service pack 2 media.
Yes the installation could be a little bit easier but trust me it is well worth the hassle to put in this service pack for new deployments as well as existing deployments.
Citrix has done a lot of work on getting the Active Directory integration pieces smoothed out in this release. See CTX120420 for the official release notes.