Prepare a Provisioning Services Private vDisk for Shared vDisk

This post will try to list some of the Best Practices I’m using when preparing a Provisioning Services Private vDisk for Shared vDisk usage. First of all I always use XenApp Cloning Tool from CitrixTools.net. This tool are not supported by Citrix, but it’s much more powerful and will save you a lot of troubleshooting. Recently the latest version of the tool fixed a issue with slow ICA performance which I been haunting for quite a while. The reason is because Pierre adds registry tweaks to the application when new ones appear. BUT you have to decide, install XenAppPrep from Citrix or XenApp Cloning Tool.

Note : I have been experiencing problems with both tools installed at the same time.

There is a lot of Best Practice documents out there, but no complete guide, so I have made a little script so I don’t forget them all. This way the same procedures is run every time, independent of whom is doing the vDisk updates. Please feel free to leave comments on your Best Practices.

@echo off
cls
echo ************************************************************
echo ***** This will prepare the machine for Standard Image *****
echo ************************************************************
pause
ipconfig /flushdns
echo.
defrag C: /v
echo.
echo Running Provisioning Services Optimization Tool
call "c:\Program Files\Citrix\Provisioning Services\TargetOSOptimizer.exe"
echo.
echo Running XenApp Cloning Tool
call "c:\Program Files\Citrix Tools\XenApp Cloning Tool\XenApp Cloning Tool.exe"
shutdown /S