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gdavid
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎10-17-2011 11:17 AM

vCenter Cloning - XenDesktop PVS

I am trying to run citrix xendesktop with pvs (yes i know.. boo).

I am using a ESXi 4.1 cluster to host the environment.

I created 1 template VM (2 Processors / 2 GB RAM / 1 GB HD for cache from PVS).

I cloned it 5 times via vcenter.

Now when i PXE boot via DHCP to stream the image to my VMs, DHCP and PVS both report the first template VMs hostname, for all 5 VMs.

When i cloned it i didnt customize it (not sure if that makes a difference), because there is no OS installed and it doesn't need to be sysprep'd.

I checked the vmx files and I dont see any mention of the first template vm.

how can i fix this? i was hoping to clone the VMs via vCenter instead of PVS because PVS doesn't support my naming convention (cant end the prefix in a number).

thanks.

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5 Replies
Troy_Clavell
Immortal
Immortal
‎10-17-2011 11:30 AM

your vmx is going to have a reference to the .vmdk file.  Why are you cloning blank VM's?  We not create multiple blank VM's with the correct hostname and the PXE boot?

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gdavid
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎10-17-2011 11:41 AM

initially i cloned it because it saved the option to have PXE boot above the HD and CD-Rom in the boot order. I wasn't sure if the HD had to be formatted or not (i'm still not sure) in order to use the client cache. If its a raw disk it would be the same as creating it from scratch.

I'm still curious where its getting the original hostname from.

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Troy_Clavell
Immortal
Immortal
‎10-17-2011 11:44 AM

you don't need to format the HDD.  With that said, I can't really say for sure why the name is being pulled, but it is stamped all over the vmx file and the vmdk file(s).  Your best bet is just create multiple blank guests instead of trying to clone a blank VM.

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gdavid
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎10-17-2011 11:49 AM

i'll probably setup a powershell script to assist with this.

thanks.

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gdavid
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎10-20-2011 08:54 AM

After reviewing the logs and checking out the performance. i realized that the local cache was not working.

according to this doc.

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX119469

the local disk needs to be formatted. i used a template to deploy some additonal machines and that worked better than just cloning.

some additonal info

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX122141

thanks

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