Server User Manual

Process preparing a VM for Cloning

 Create, install and configure the Windows VM

 Apply Windows Updates and Service Packs

 Install Citrix XenTools paravirtualized drivers

 Install applications and any other desired customization, apply application updates

 Defragment the hard disk

 Copy the contents of the \support\tools\deploy.cab file to a \sysprep folder in the VM

 Run the sysprep utility and shutdown the VM

The virtual machine is now ready for export, copy, snapshot and create, or SAN based Snapshots or

clones.

Figure 47. VM clones

Note that unsupported methods include such methods as NewSID and Symantec Ghostwalker. Each

generates a unique SID and hostname on the applied image.

By utilizing XenCenter’s console for exporting, copying, snapshot and creating VMs, the VM is

always copied in a process that forces the new creation of Storage Repositories and virtual disks on

those repositories thereby not requiring changes to their UUID.

Changing the Storage Repository and Virtual Disk UUID

A universally unique identifier, UUID, is used to identify objects inside a XenServer host or resource

pool. For storage repositories, this identifier is created upon creation of a storage repository and

allows one SR to be uniquely identified from another. The UUID creation algorithm ensures this

uniqueness. An example UUID would be 6411ec59-7c06-3aa1-99d0-37a15a679427. A virtual disk

is stored on a SR container and also contains a different UUID. This is not a problem when leveraging

XenCenter data movement commands. However, HP StorageWorks P4000 SANs support many

efficient features that allow instantaneous snapshots or smart clones to be created with a single

backend storage command. At the storage level, one or many volumes may be created from a base

volume without the data passing from SAN to XenServer host to SAN. This process is instantaneous,