Citrix Provisioning

Exporting and importing vDisks

Provisioning Services exports and imports both versioned and unversioned vDisks from an existing store to another store in a different farm. 

Tip

If you are importing VHDs that were not exported using Provisioning Services, all differencing disks must first be merged to a base disk using third party tools, then the new VHD base disk can be imported.

Exporting vDisks

To export a vDisk:

  1. Right-click on the vDisk in the Console, then select the Export menu option. The Export dialog appears.
  2. Select the version to export from the drop-down menu, then click OK. The manifest file is created in the Store.

Tip

If you delete a vDisk that you plan to export, Citrix recommends that you export the vDisk first, then copy the resulting XML file to the new location before deleting it from the original location.

Importing vDisks

A vDisk or vDisk chain of differencing VHD files can be imported into a store if:

  • the imported VHD does not already exist in the store and both the highest version number of the VHD and associated manifest files match, if the VHD chain includes a base image, and that base image version number matches the base image version in the manifest file. 

Note

When importing a single vDisk, no manifest file is required, however, if you import vDisks with versions you must include a manifest file.

  • the VHD does exist in the store but the imported version number in the associated manifest file is greater than the existing VHD version number.

To add or import an existing vDisk to a site:

  1. Copy the vDisk and any associated properties files to shared storage, if they do not already exist there.
  2. In the Console tree pane, right-click on the Store or a vDisk Pool, then select the Add or Import Existing vDisk… menu option. The Add or Import Existing vDisks dialog appears.
  3. Select the store to search for vDisks from the Store to search drop-down menu.
  4. Select the server to use to search for vDisks from the Server to use for searching drop-down menu, then click Search. All vDisks in the store display in the Add checked vDisks to the vDisk Pool.
  5. Check those vDisks that should be added to the vDisk pool.
  6. Optionally, check Enable load balancing for these vDisks to enable load balancing on Provisioning Servers that provide this vDisk to target devices.
  7. Click Add to add the vDisk(s) to the vDisk pool.

Adding vDisk versions

To add a vDisk version to a site:

  1. Copy the vDisk, and any associated property files, to shared storage, if they do not already exist there.
  2. In the Console tree pane, right-click on the Store or a vDisk Pool, then select the Add vDisk Versions menu option. The Add vDisk Versions dialog appears.
  3. Select the store to search for vDisks from the Store to search drop-down menu.
  4. Select the server to use to search for vDisks from the Server to use for searching drop-down menu, then click Search. All vDisks in the store display in the Add checked vDisks new versions.
  5. Check those vDisk versions that should be added to the vDisk pool.
  6. Click Add to add the vDisk(s) to the vDisk pool.
Exporting and importing vDisks