Introduction

RAS VDI Agent is a software that provides an interface to manage a hypervisor through its native API. In Parallels RAS v16.5 and later, RAS VDI Agent is built into the RAS Publishing Agent, so it's already installed in your RAS farm and is ready to be used to manage one or more VDI hosts. But if you use RAS v16.2 or lower, you must install VDI Agent separately using RASInstaller*.msi or download an appliance.

Built-in VDI Agent limitations:

Almost all of the hypervisors supported by Parallels RAS can be managed via the built-in RAS VDI Agent. The only exception is QEMU\KVM with libvirt. This means that for this hypervisor you must deploy a dedicated RAS VDI Agent as a separate step. For other VDI technologies, you have a choice of using the built-in RAS VDI Agent or installing it separately. The difference is as follows:

• When you use a built-in RAS VDI Agent, you manage multiple (or all) VDI hosts in a RAS farm using the same agent that is already installed in your RAS farm. This eliminates the need to install and maintain the agent separately for each VDI host.

• When you install a dedicated RAS VDI Agent on a different host, it can be used to manage a single VDI host only.

Dedicated VDI Agent

If you are installing a dedicated RAS VDI Agent, you first need to determine where it will be installed. Depending on the hypervisor type, the following options are available:

• The host on which the hypervisor is running. This option is available for Microsoft Hyper-V only.

• A supported version of Windows Server running on a physical box or in a virtual machine. For supported Windows Server versions, see here

• A pre-configured Linux-based virtual appliance (provided by Parallels). The appliance can be deployed on any hypervisor on your network.

Important

All of the RAS VDI components must be installed in the same subnet. This includes the hypervisor software, the RAS VDI Agent, guest VMs, and the RAS Publishing Agent.

The following table lists RAS VDI Agent installation options for each supported hypervisor type:

Note:

The Remote PC is a special type that can be used to create and manage pools of remote PCs as part of hosted desktop infrastructure (HDI). When you add a VDI host of this type, you can manage it like one of the real VDI hosts with some limitations, such as you cannot create templates and use some other strictly VDI-specific functions. The main feature when using this type is the ability to create pools of HDI-based remote PCs and making PCs persistent by assigning an individual PC to a specifics user.

Depending on the hypervisor type:

• Agent runs on the VDI host. This option is only available if you are using Microsoft Hyper-V. Install the agent on the host, as described in Add a VDI Host
• Agent runs on a Windows Server (VM or HW). To use this option, make sure you have a physical box or a virtual machine running a supported version of Windows Server. You will need to specify its FQDN or IP address when adding a VDI host to the farm
• Agent Runs on Appliance. If you are running the Agent on an Appliance you need to download and deploy a virtual appliance as described below.

Deploying a virtual appliance

To download and install a virtual appliance:

1. Visit https://www.parallels.com/products/ras/download/links/
2. On the download page, scroll down to the "VDI Agent Appliances" section and click the VDI Agent Appliance OVA or the VDI Agent Appliance VMDK link to download the appliance. Confirm compatibility with the table above.