Planning For Deployment
Before activating your server with ZeeDrive, familiarise yourself with the concepts and planning steps below.
Serverless Design
ZeeDrive is a client tool, so even when activating ZeeDrive as a desktop server, there is no ZeeDrive service component installed on the server; only the ZeeDrive client is installed and it is activated in a desktop server mode. There is a ZeeDrive service component but it runs in the cloud, not on your server.
After activating the desktop server, ZeeDrive will set itself to start-up automatically when a user signs in to the computer. ZeeDrive will start-up, and map the user's network drives that have been configured on the subscription.
An instance of ZeeDrive will start-up for each user that signs in to the desktop server. E.g. if 10 users are signed in to the server, then 10 instances of ZeeDrive will start-up.
Licence Pools And Licenced Users
When activating ZeeDrive as a desktop server, a pool of Shared Computer licences must be assigned to the server. These licences are floating licences.
The number of Shared Computer licences in the licence pool determines the maximum number of concurrent users supported on the server.
Therefore to calculate the number of Shared Computer licences you must assign to the licence pool, you need to know the maximum number of concurrent users you expect on the desktop servers or VDI.
ZeeDrive will only start-up successfully for licenced users. A licenced user is a user that has been set up on the ZeeDrive subscription with either a Personal Computer User licence or Shared Computer User licence.
For more information on licence planning for a desktop server, see Licence Desktop Servers.
Golden Images
If your virtual desktop environments or desktop server environments are based on golden images, then your target for activation should be the golden image, rather than the instances created from the golden image.
By activating the golden image, all instances created from it will automatically be activated with ZeeDrive.
For example; when installing software and configuring your virtual machine instance prior to preparing/snapshotting it as a golden image, activate ZeeDrive on the instance.
This approach works for both golden images for VDI, and for golden images used for the RDS servers themselves.
Username Resolution
After the server has been activated, when users sign in to the server, ZeeDrive will start-up automatically. ZeeDrive will attempt to identify the user to validate they are set-up on the associated ZeeDrive subscription.
If the user is Entra joined on the computer, or, the server is joined to an Active Directory domain, then ZeeDrive will automatically resolve their username and validate whether the user is set up on the ZeeDrive subscription. In the case of an Active Directory domain, review Configure Active Directory Username Lookup to ensure the look-up attribute is configured correctly.
if ZeeDrive can't resolve the username automatically, then the user will be prompted to enter their ZeeDrive username manually, but only for the first time ZeeDrive starts-up. After which, ZeeDrive will remember the user's selection and will start-up automatically thereafter.
Here's the end user experience where ZeeDrive requires them to provide their username:
A pop-up notification will show in the user's system tray informing the user they need to enter their username. The user can either click the pop-up notification, or, click the blue Z icon in their system tray
The ZeeDrive window will pop-open. The user should enter their username, then click the Validate button. On successful validation, the green tick mark will show. The user should click the Next button
ZeeDrive is now ready to start-up. The user should click the "Startup" button. ZeeDrive will now start-up and map the user's network drives. When the user next signs in to the server, they will no longer be prompted again and ZeeDrive will start-up automatically
Enabling The ZeeDrive System Tray Icon For RemoteApp Environments
If the server you plan to activate is a RemoteApp server, and you want the ZeeDrive system tray icon to show for users, then you will need to make a change to the server registry to allow tray icons from the server to show on users' desktops.
To enable the Zee Drive system tray icon on RemoteApp and XenApp environments;
Open the Windows Registry Editor and navigate to the path Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server and identify the key RailShowallNotifyIcons
Verify that the value of RailShowallNotifyIcons is set to 1 (REG_DWORD). If not, then double-click RailShowallNotifyIcons, set the value to 1 and then click OK
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