This article describes how to update the list of Amazon EC2 instance types available for use in XenDesktop. The procedure can be followed if a required instance type fails to appear for selection in Studio when creating a machine catalog.

Requirements

Write permissions to the file %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Citrix\HCLPlugins\Hypervisor\<vx.x.x.x>\AWS\AWSConfiguration\InstanceTypes.xml is required on every Delivery Controller in the site.

Background

Amazon sometimes introduces new instance types as part of the continuous development of their cloud services. XenDesktop is unable to discover such changes automatically. To make XenDesktop aware of a recently-introduced instance type, it is necessary to manually update an XML configuration file within the Delivery Controller.

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Instructions

For on Premise deployment the following steps must be completed identically on each delivery controller in the XenDesktop site.
 

1. Using a text editor, open the file: %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Citrix\HCLPlugins\Hypervisor\<vx.x.x.x>\AWS\AWSConfiguration\InstanceTypes.xml

2. Inside the “InstanceTypes” element, create a new “InstanceType” child element.

   For convenience, this can be done by copying and pasting one of the existing types, provided that care is taken to update all of its details.

3. For each of the elements inside the new “InstanceType”, copy the matching information from the Amazon EC2 API.

   • The element “Name” specifies how this instance type will be displayed throughout XenDesktop.

   • The element “APIName” must match the name of this instance type as specified in the Amazon EC2 API.

4. Save the file.

5. Check that the XML syntax of the file is still correct. This could be done, for instance, by checking that it can be displayed by a web browser.

6. Restart both the Citrix Host Service and the Citrix Machine Creation Service on each affected Delivery Controller.
    

Note: For Citrix CVAD Cloud environments this is not required, however the AWS Policy JSON must contain the following: “ec2:DescribeInstanceTypes” Please refer to this KB for additional details. https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX298292

 

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This article describes the process required to update the list of available AWS instance types used by XenDesktop.