To perform imaging (sometimes after performing reverse imaging) to create a new vDisk from a virtual machine on any residing hypervisor

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Instructions

1) Follow this article for preventing Bnistack Error: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX133188 (Open cmd in this article as an administrator else we cannot run the mentioned command.)
2) Verify before performing imaging that all network best practices are performed as it is as per http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX117374 and antivirus best practices strictly as per http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124185 else you will run into issues during imaging.
3) Make the all the changes required to make before performing imaging, once all changes are made we can go ahead and perform imaging.
4) Run Imaging wizard and enter PVS Server’s IP Address and connect to the farm.

5) If you want to create new vdisk follow the following steps :

• Give a name to the new vdisk. We can create 2 type of vdisk as follows-
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• Fixed vdisk- Here the vdisk block size is fixed and cannot be changed. For example if we are set for vdisk block size as 20GB, even we don’t use entire 20GB the size of the vdisk cannot be changed and hence leads to wastage of space in the store.
• Dynamic vdisk- This is the recommended vdisk type as the value we select here is just the minimum size of the vdisk block and it automatically keeps on increasing as per the size of the data on the vdisk.

6) Select Licensing option as per your requirements :

7) Select C Drive for imaging

8) The Add Target Device page appears. Type the target device name and click Next.

9) It will ask if you want to change the vdisk selected. Select yes.

10)Select Optimize for Provisioning Services and finish the imaging wizard


11) It will ask for a reboot once the setup is running, don’t select any option, ensure that you set the boot option as network boot(For Vmware select the checkbox in Edit settings->Boot Options-> Force entry to BIOS Setup.

12)Shutdown the virtual machine and then power it on.
13) For all other hypervisors it will boot in network, for VMware machines it will boot to the BIOS Menu

If you are using BDM ISO select “CD-ROM Drive” at top else select “Network Boot” on top.
Note- E1000 NIC’s are not supported on vSphere 5​ as per http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX131993 
14) Once the machine successfully boots in network, the imaging wizard will complete as per following: 

15) Once the wizard is done, click Finish. The target device's desktop appears.



16) Open PVS Console. Choose the newly created vDisk, open File Properties and select Enable Active Directory machine account password management.
17) Still in the PVS Console, choose the newly created target device, right-click and select Properties and change the Boot from option to vDisk. Right-click the target again and using the Active Directory drop-down menu, select Create Machine Account.
18) Change boot device to PXE.
19) Reboot target device.

The target device will boot from the vDisk.

 

This article is specific to PVS 7.x. It contains steps to image a new vdisk from a master target device

Disclaimer:
All the screenshots being used in this article are taken from our internal lab, none of them contains our customer's data