Monitors Citrix MCS delivery groups and automatically creates machines based on the number of machines you want always available to be assigned to users. The main goal of this is to eliminate the need to monitor your delivery groups and manually spin up machines when there aren't any left to be assigned.

• Windows Server 2012+
• Powershell 5.1+
• Citrix (CVAD) Powershell snapins 1912 LTSR

Older versions may work but only these were tested

Active Directory service account with permissions to create computer objects in the OU's used by your machine catalogs. See this link for details on the required Active Directory permissions.

The Active Directory service account will need the 'Machine Catalog Administrator' and 'Delivery Group Administrator' roles.

I would not recommend running this directly on one of your delivery controllers. I run this on a management jump box.

Start Powershell as Administrator then run the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/tonysathre/CitrixAutoDeploy.git
cd CitrixAutoDeploy
.\setup.ps1

The setup script performs the following:

• Create an Applications and Services event log called Citrix Autodeploy
• Create three scheduled tasks
  • Citrix Autodeploy
  • Citrix Autodeploy Error Monitor
  • Citrix Autodeploy Machine Creation Monitor
• Delegate the SeBatchLogonRight (Logon as a batch job) privilege to the Active Directory service account on the local machine

By default the task is set to start every day at 5:00 AM, and run every hour after that, but the settings can be modified in Task Scheduler. For testing you can run the Citrix Autodeploy scheduled task manually.

You will need to configure which machine catalogs and delivery groups you want to monitor in the citrix_autodeploy_config.json. setup.ps1 will create this for you if it does not exist. The included example config file contains the following:

{
    "AutodeployMonitors" : {
        "AutodeployMonitor": [
            {
                "AdminAddress" : "ddc1.example.com",
                "BrokerCatalog" : "Example Machine Catalog",
                "DesktopGroupName" : "Example Delivery Group",
                "MinAvailableMachines" : 5,
                "PreTask" : "C:\\Scripts\\pre-task.ps1",
                "PostTask" : "C:\\Scripts\\post-task.ps1"
            },
            {
                "AdminAddress" : "ddc2.example.com",
                "BrokerCatalog" : "Example Machine Catalog",
                "DesktopGroupName" : "Example Delivery Group",
                "MinAvailableMachines" : 1,
                "PreTask" : "",
                "PostTask" : ""
            }
        ]
    }
}

MinAvailableMachines works by checking how many unassigned machines there are in the delivery group. It then subtracts that number from MinAvailableMachines to determine how many machines it must create to satisfy the configured MinAvailableMachines.

For email alerts to function you must configure acitrix_autodeploy_config_email.json. setup.ps1 will create this for you if it does not exist. You may also need to allow the machine running Citrix Autodeploy to relay email through your SMTP server.

{
    "SmtpServer" : "smtp.example.com",
    "To" : ["[email protected]", "[email protected]"],
    "From" : "[email protected]"
}

The two included monitor scripts will send emails for event ID's 1 and 3. You can get additional email alerts by creating scheduled tasks that trigger on the different event ID's described below.

Autodeploy job started: 

AdminAddress         : ddc1.example.com 
BrokerCatalog        : Example Machine Catalog 
DesktopGroupName     : Example Delivery Group 
MinAvailableMachines : 1 
PreTask              :  
PostTask             : C:\Scripts\post-task.ps1

No machines needed for desktop group 'Example Delivery Group'
Available machines: 1
Required available machines: 1

Available machine names:
VMName.example.com

Executing pre-task 'C:\Scripts\pre-task.ps1' for desktop group Example Delivery Group

Executing post-task 'C:\Scripts\post-task.ps1' for desktop group Example Delivery Group

Pre-task output

Some script output

Post-task output

Some script output

You can define a script to run in the citrix_autodeploy_config.json before each machine is created, and after each machine is created. This can be useful for things such as putting a machine in maintenance mode or registering it with your CMDB. A couple examples are included in post-task-examples folder.

Here is an example post-task that puts the newly created machine into maintenance mode, and then powers it on:

Set-BrokerMachineMaintenanceMode -AdminAddress $AdminAddress -InputObject $NewBrokerMachine -MaintenanceMode $true                   
New-BrokerHostingPowerAction -AdminAddress $AdminAddress -MachineName $NewBrokerMachine.MachineName -Action TurnOn

The following variables can be used in pre and post-task scripts: