When you have worked with Provisioning Services you know the process to create a vDisk. First you install your gold build server or workstation (the master target device) with the OS and all the software and configuration you want to have in your vDisk. You also install the Provisioning Services client on this machine. Then you create an empty vDisk on the Provisioning Server, add the master target device to the Provisioning Services database and link the empty vDisk to the master target device. After that you make sure boot from hard drive is selected on the master target device and then boot the device. After the device is started and the vDisk is connected you can start the image building process.

My opinion is that this is quite a time consuming procedure with lots of steps you have to take. Especially when you install your master target device fully automated, like I like to do, it sucks that you have to use this process afterwards to create the actual vDisk. So I was very happy to find another way to do this process of creating the vDisk. Now my goldbuild installation is literally 100% automated..! From installing the Operating System to creating the vDisk.

To do this, there are just 3 simple things you need to do.

First of all the Provisioning Services client software consists of two parts; 1: the target device drivers and optimization stuff and 2: XenConvert. The XenConvert contained in this package however is a customized version that only allows to convert to Provisioning Services vDisk. So the first thing I did is extract the two MSI’s from the Provisioning Services client setup. To do this just start the install and instead of finishing the installation, browse to the temp folder in your userprofile and locate the MSI’s. Actually the only MSI you really need from the installation package is the one that is called “Citrix Provisioning Services Target Device.msi”. The other MSI you need is the full XenConvert client (version 2.0.2 at the moment). The full XenConvert MSI can be downloaded from the Citrix website. So when you have both MSI’s separately you just install them (unattended if you want) on the master target device.

Second thing you need to do is make sure you have a separate disk partition installed on the master target device. Make sure this partition is big enough to contain the complete vDisk. We're going to use this partition to save the vDisk on.

Third and last action is building the disk via the full XenConvert client. You can do this by running the following command manually or via a script:

"%PROGRAMFILES%\Citrix\XenConvert\XenConvertCLI" P2VHD [Diskname] [Sourcedrive] [Destinationdrive]

Example:"%PROGRAMFILES%\Citrix\XenConvert\XenConvertCLI" P2VHD GoldBuild C:\ V:\

After the process is finished the destinationdrive contains the vDisk in VHD format. You can copy this VHD file directly to your Provisioning Server vDisk store and import in the database. Because the Target Device software is installed on the disk, the vDisk immediately works on your target devices!

Another very handy thing to do; when you have to change your vDisk, just apply your changes on the master target device and build a completely new vDisk using the process above. A big advantage is that this way, you can easily update stuff like network drivers, XenTools, VMware tools, PVS Target Device software.. without having to reverse image your vDisk!

Of course there are some limitations of using this procedure for creating your vDisks. As far as I found out one is that you only have the possibility to create a vDisk in dynamic format. Secondly you're only able to create a vDisk with one partition. But if these limitations don't matter to you I can assure you this is a very easy way to create your vDisks!

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