The purpose of this guide is to instruct a PVS Administrator on the quickest way to perform a defragmentation process on a vDisk, while minimizing the amount of downtime incurred for the PVS Targets.

It is important to note that, while this process can be performed without having to Power Down the Target Devices, in the end the Target Devices must be rebooted to acquire the defragmented vDisk.

Instructions

1. Create a new Merged Base making sure it is configured to Test Mode
   • Launch the PVS Console
   • Right click on the vDisk and select Versions from the context menu
   • In the Versions Window click on the Merge button
   • In the Merge Window make sure you select Merged Base and set access to Test mode. Click Ok

2. After the Merge has been completed take note of the new Version number assigned to the Merged Base (version #3 in the example below)

3. A new file with a VHD or VHDX extension will be found in the Store
   Note: The name of the new file will have the following naming scheme: VDiskName.VersionNumber with an extension of .vhd or .vhdx
   For example if the vDisk name is MyDisk and the new version is 3, then the file name will be either MyDisk.3.vhd or MyDisk.3.vhdx

4. Mount the Merged Base vDisk through the Operating System on the PVS Server
   There are various ways to mount the vDisk, such as using Disk Management or diskpart
   Please refer to the Operating System documentation on this topic

5. Depending on the Volumes inside the vDisk, one or more new drive letters will become available to the Operating System on the PVS Server
6. Proceed to defragment the drive that contains the OS on the vDisk using your preferred disk defragmentation tool
7. After defragmentation is completed, unmount the vDisk from the Operating System
8. Boot targets in Test Mode as needed to confirm the Merged Base is working correctly
9. Promote the Merged Base to Production and reboot all the targets to use the new Merged Base

CTX138742 - How to Mount and Unmount a vDisk Version from the Command Line Interface