OPEN ARCHITECTURE SYSTEMS (PTY) LTD Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 COMPILED AND DOCUMENTED BY Lavers,Philip 11/1/2013
Index Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2... 2 STAGE 1 - Reverse Image the vdisk... 3 STEP 1 - Create a New Virtual Machine on the XenServer 6.2 Platform... 3 STEP 2 - Create new device on PVS to boot the old mage.... 7 STEP 3 - Copy the vdisk Image to Hard Drive... 10 STAGE 2 Create the new Image Master... 14 STEP 4 - Update the Image... 14 STAGE 3 - Build New Image back on PVS... 19 STEP 5 - Build the new vdisk Image... 19 Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 1
Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 One would have thought that you could simply boot your current vdisk on the latest XenServer Platform (Version 6.2) and life would go on. Not so. We get the error Tools out of date (version 6.0 installed). Oops nothing s that simple. If you try uninstall the current XenTool stack and try reinstall the new tools you will have issues. The following methodology describes how to update the vdisk with the latest XenTools. The Current Platform FYI. Provisioning Server 6.1 XenServer 6.02 We built a new XenServer with version 6.2 and the following procedure is based on that platform. In addition we used a generic services account called Citrix that has Domain Admin rights. We are also migrating the vdisk from a name APPDI to APWDI so just be aware of that naming convention. Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 2
STAGE 1 - Reverse Image the vdisk So this process means we need to boot the vdisk on the XenServer from Provisioning Server, load up the XenConvert which will copy the Image back from a vdisk Image to a Hard Drive. STEP 1 - Create a New Virtual Machine on the XenServer 6.2 Platform First we need to create a blank Virtual Machine and link it to our original vdisk Image. On the XenServer 6.2 instance, create a new VM and choose OTHER On XenServer, supply a name, boot options Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 3
Choose a Home Server, set resources as 2 VCPu / memory, and network interfaces Storage. Select create a diskless VM that boots from Network. We will add disk later. Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 4
Add your standard networking configuration. We use 2 NIC s in this environment. Finish Un-tick Start the new VM automatically. Go to the new Virtual Machine Properties and make sure the the Boot Options are set as:- Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 5
Now Add Storage. The above process creates a Virtual Machine that boots from PVS. But we need storage to copy the vdisk image into. So we create a 40GB Disk to hold the vdisk and a 20GB Paging file. Add the disks via the storage tab. Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 6
STEP 2 - Create new device on PVS to boot the old mage. Backup your vdisk Image so we created a new store in PVS and copied the vdisk into that store. First go to XenServer and get the MAC address of the new VM created above. Copy the MAC Address from your Boot NIC Interface ea:49:59:07:95:c1 Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 7
Logon to PVS and create the new device with a new name APWDI Link the BACKUP copy of the vdisk Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 8
Please note that we created the name in a Temp OU within Active Directory an OU where there are NO GPO s applied Boot the VDISK from XenServer start the VM - it should find the entry on PVS and boot up Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 9
STEP 3 - Copy the vdisk Image to Hard Drive When the virtual machine has booted logon with LOCAL Admin Credentials. Not 100% sure why the Image process seems to hang if you logon as a domain user. Start Device Manager Format the Drives Both of them 40GB Drive in Position 1 will become our C Boot Drive with Image (Drive F:) 20GB Drive format for Paging File (Drive G ) Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 10
It is then vital to mark the intended System Drive (F: ) as Active. Launch BNImage.exe (Found in C:\ProgramFiles\Citrix\ProvisioningServices ) Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 11
Run the Optimise and select the Drive chosen above as active in our case it was the F drive Snooze Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 12
When all files have been copied to the F: drive the server reboots, then logon again with the same credentials. Hopefully you see the following. Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 13
STAGE 2 Create the new Image Master STEP 4 - Update the Image Ok so this means the Image process has taken the image from a vdisk on PVS and copied all the files into a local hard drive. Now we can boot on that Hard Drive, and update the configuration with the new XenTools. Shut the server down and via XenCenter change the boot order to boot the image from Hard Drive. What we also did was to delete the Collection entry on PVS. So right click entry PCITAPWDI and delete it. Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 14
Start the VM. Hopefully it will boot up from the image in the local hard drive. When we made the image it copied the contents from Drive C: to Drive F: When we start the image it will change the Drive F back to Drive C: Again we logged in with a Local Administrator User. 1. Assign the paging file to the second 20GB drive we set to 12GB 2. Set the Performance Options to Adjust for best performance 3. Update the XenTools via XenCenter Click on the Tools out of date. Click on Install XenServer Tools this process will remove the old version and will install the new version. What this simply does is mount the Xs-Tools.iso, so switch to the mounted DVD drive and launch the Installwizared.exe process. Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 15
This process installs the Tools Installer, you then need to reboot to free the Network Connections, and the process will continue. Takes longer than the older versions, but we have seen an improvement with this version. Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 16
Remember to logon with local Administrator rights again. 4. Check your network settings. Disable ipv6 if it is not your standard Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 17
5. Disable all the Offload features of the device. Open the networking properties of the interface, select properties, select configure, select the advanced tab. Set each option to disabled. (This is a preference, born out of many testing scenarios. It may not work in your environment so do the home work and test before implementing back into production.) 6. Lastly, reboot and logon with a domain administrator account and check that all your settings are correct. We also checked the Windows activation codes, the RDS licensing etc. Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 18
STAGE 3 - Build New Image back on PVS STEP 5 - Build the new vdisk Image The first job is to create a new vdisk file on the Provisioning Server to hold our new updated image. Again in our experience we have found that if we create the blank vdisk on the PVS PRIOR to running the Image builder Wizard on the image and letting the wizard create the vdisk we get a 100% result. For one reason or another (comments welcomed) if the Image wizard creates the vdisk the process fails with an error Cannot Update vdisk Connect to the Provisioning Server Console, right click the store, and select Create vdisk. Select create vdisk and a blank 70GB file will be created. (No need to mount and format it the Image Wizard will do that for us.) So now we need to logon to the new image with domain credentials as we need to create a new vdisk from this image on the Provisioning Server. Launch the Image Wizard. As we are still on PVS 6.1 this has not changed. Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 19
We need to select the new vdisk we decided not to create a new vdisk. Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 20
Make the 2 nd drive None We do not need to include the Page File in our vdisk image as Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 21
Give the Device a name, select the correct boot Interface, and indicate what the collection point will be (The default is Collection) Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 22
In addition, we use 2 network interfaces. The first NIC is what we call Private and this is only used by PVS Streaming Services, on a Private IP Range. However we make the device Interface as 2. We also have a LAN interface that we mark as Interface 1. So when the device boots from PVS the PVT Interface is used first, and then the LAN interface becomes primary. Bottom line choose the network adapter that will boot the image from PVS as the Mac address is then bound in the PVS database. Select Optimise for Provisioning Server and select Finish Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 23
Change the Boot order back to Network, and reboot the Image. Agree this sounds like a wacky step because how can the Image start from a vdisk when there is nothing in the vdisk i.e. the Image has not been copied yet well trust me the Image Wizard does some funky stuff on the boot order so although it says it is booting from the vdisk it is actually still booting from the Hard Drive then it copies the Hard Drive to the vdisk. Again if you know more about the process leave a comment I also do not have a 100% understanding of this process. Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 24
A messy pic but it shows that during the conversion, the collection point is being updated Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 25
And it also means that the vdisk is in private image mode. When completed, add the machine to Active Directory A production OU. Put the Image in to standard Mode Change the location of the Cache we use Cache on Device Hard Drive Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 26
Change the device to boot from vdisk (Whilst the image process is happening it is set to Hard Drive) Boot and check image. Check that the error in XenCenter has gone hence the Virtualisation state says Optimised (Version 6.2 installed) Once completed, all we need to do is create new VM s, linked to this vdisk and to start them up. Ok and then we have 6 more images to do. Oh Joy! Hope that helps took us 2 or 3 days stuffing around trying other options not to say the other methods were incorrect it s just that this method works for us in this environment. Simple but it works. If there are comments or recommendations please drop me a mail Philip@oas.co.za and I hope it helps you. / Document by P Lavers www.oas.co.za Citrix Provisioning Server vdisk Image Upgrade To XenServer 6.2 Page 27