SEP 12.1.2 Best Practices on Citrix Virtual Desktops ( Provisioning Services) -Part 1-

A few days ago I did a little research about possible configurations when we are using SEP 12.1.2 under Citrix Provisioning Services.

I share with you the first part of this research that used as a sources: Citrix and Symantec web sites.

Scenario 1

Symptoms>

The Target Device seems sluggish or generally slower than normal after installing or upgrading your antivirus client.

You notice a significant change in the write cache Disk I/O Performance. For example, if the percentage of disk write time or disk write queue length increase significantly.

Best Practices:

Set up the Manager content revisions to at least 45
Create a new SEPM Domain for just the Citrix Virtual Desktops ( Provisioning Services)
Create a new Group in this new SEPM Domain (For example could be: My Company>Default>Citrix Environment
Move from the old Domain all the Citrix Virtual Desktops to the new
--> At this point you could have two situations:
----> Fresh Installation:
---------> Then Create the Domain and add the SEP clients directly
----> Existing Installation:
---------> Then Use SylinkDrop
---------------> it is recommended that you use the SylinkDrop included on the second installation download (Tools and Documents, \Tools\SylinkDrop)
---------------> Or Export Communication Settings from the group recently created ( Citrix Environment)
In the Group for Citrix Environment set the communicatiosn to
- - Use Pull Mode
  - Use a Heartbeat of 120 minutes
  - Enable Download Randomization
Exclude the following files/process/drivers from all types of Scanning
- Write Cache
- Process: BNDevice.exe
- Following Drivers: BNNS.sys, BNNF.sys, BNPort.sys, bnistack.sys, and BNITDI.sys ó bnistack6.sys,CvhdBusP6.sys, CFsDep2 .sys
  - Can be found at: <systemroot>\windows\system32\drivers
- At Provisioning Service:
  - StreamService.exe, StreamProcess.exe and the soapserver.exe
Apply Virtual Exception Tool
Use Active Scan instead of Full
Enable Random Scan in the Antivirus Policy of this Group
Enable Shared Insight Cache

I hope this helps

Information Source :

Virtualization Best Practices