In this post, I'll cover how to deploy a fully automated Citrix Windows 2016 VDA on Azure using Packer. Packer is a very lightweight, open sourced tool to deploy identical images or templates from code.  This process is designed to quickly deploy a Citrix VDA to be used for a POC or test environment.  To get started you'll need the following.

• Azure account along with your subscription ID. Use the following to show the ID.

  Login-AzureRmAccount

• Azure Powershell module installed

  Install-Module -Name AzureRM

• The Server OS Virtual Delivery Agent downloaded and placed on a web server.  (This can be stored as an Azure block blob or another web server accessible via the internet)
• Packer downloaded and installed to your machine ( I use chocolatey)

  choco install packer

• Grab the needed files from my GitHub

  git clone https://github.com/ryancbutler/azurectxvda.git

Read more: Deploy Citrix Server VDA on Azure with Packer

What this guide covers

This configuration will include 3 SQL replicas across two sites\subnets.  2 will be located in the primary location where 'automatic failover' will be configured.  This will allow the primary node to automatically fail over to the secondary node at the primary site much like a mirror does.  The third node will reside in the secondary location in the case of site failure and will require a manual failover.

Read more: SQL 2014 Availability Group with Windows 2016...