Citrix Provisioning

Upgrading vDisks using Hyper-V

If you are upgrading from Provisioning Services 6.x to 7.1 or 7.6, this inline upgrade method is recommended because it is faster than re-imaging, and uses the least amount of storage.

Before upgrading using Microsoft Hyper-V, review the following requirements:

  • General Hyper-V knowledge.
  • Hyper-V must be installed (Hyper-V does not need to be installed on the Provisioning Server).

Note

Hyper-V upgrade does not support vDisks using 16 MB block size. When creating new vDisk images, the block size should be 2 MB or greater. 

  1. On a Hyper-V server, uninstall previously installed Provisioning Services software.
  2. Install the newer version of Provisioning Services software.
  3. Copy a newly created VHDX file to the Hyper-V server:
    1. Create a new version of the vDisk.
    2. Promote the new version to test mode.
    3. Perform a merge base to test mode.
    4. Copy the VHDX from step c to the Hyper-V server
  4. Create a new virtual machine in the Hyper-V Manager.
  5. During the creation steps, attach the existing newvDisk.vhdx instead of using a new VHDX.
  6. Go into the properties of the newly created Hyper-V virtual machine (Action panel > Settings) and remove the Network adapter. Go to Add Hardware and add the Legacy NIC.
  7. Go to the Legacy NIC and attach it to the physical system’s NIC.
  8. Boot the virtual machine.
  9. Let the system install the new drivers, then reboot if prompted.
  10. Uninstall Provisioning Services target device software, then reboot.
  11. Optional: Install Hyper-V’s Integration Services. This is only necessary when the resulting VHDX must be bootable in both physical and virtual systems. While the virtual machine is on, go to Action, then choose Insert Integration Services set up disk, then install.
  12. Install Provisioning Services target device software.
  13. Choose to bind Provisioning Services to the inactive NIC (the physical NIC from the original target device). When installing Provisioning Services target device software on NT6.x systems within a multi-NIC environment, all available NICs can be used. Therefore bindcfg.exe is no longer required and no longer installed with target device software.
  14. Shut down the virtual machine.
  15. Go to the virtual machine’s properties (Action panel > Settings), then set it to boot to the legacy NIC first.
  16. Transfer the VHDX (newvDisk.vhdx) back to the Provisioning Server.
  17. From the Provisioning Service’s Console:
    1. Add the VHDX to the Provisioning Services database using the Add existing vDisk menu option.
    2. Add the Hyper-V virtual machine to the list of the target devices.
    3. Associate the vDisk with the appropriate target devices.
    4. Set the vDisk to Standard Image Mode
  18. Boot the physical target device (assuming this is set to PXE first), then the Hyper-V virtual machine.

The original vDisk is now upgraded and a common image for the physical and virtual machines has also been created.

Upgrading vDisks using Hyper-V