Citrix Provisioning Console Error: 0x00000057 - Invalid Parameter

Citrix Provisioning Console Error: 0x00000057 - Invalid Parameter

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Article ID: CTX250229

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Description

Citrix Provisioning does not support VHD based vDisks on 4K storage in any Citrix Provisioning product version. Microsoft's VHD file specification only supports a disk logical sector size of 512 bytes. A read/write access VHD on 4K disk will trigger read-modify-write emulation, which results in sub-optimal streaming performance and basic vDisk maintenance errors. For example, during vDisk version promotion, you may see the console error, Error: 0x00000057 - Invalid Parameter.

Environment

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Resolution

Recommended Solutions: 

1. Update your existing VHD vDisks to the VHDX file format. This can be done by running the Citrix Provisioning vDisk Imaging Wizard and selecting the VHDX format during creation.  Existing vDisk must first be reverse imaged back to a Master local disk.
2.  Leverage Hyper-V to convert the file format from VHD to VHDX.  See: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/hyper-v/convert-vhd?view=win10-ps

Alternative:

Move your existing VHD based vDisk to 512 logical sector size based storage.

 

 vDisk Sizing and Storage Guideline:

1. VHD [logical sector size 512] must be on storage with 512 logical sector size. No RMW.

2. VHD [logical sector size 512] does not support storage with 4096 logical sector size. PVS has not implemented RMW for performance reasons.

3. VHDX [logical sector size 512] can be on storage with 512 logical sector size. No RMW.

4. VHDX [logical sector size 512] can be on storage with logical sector size 4096.  PVS implements RMW if necessary. vDisk Logical sector size must match Master Target Device hard disk. 

UEFI Targets Only:

5. VHDX [logical sector size 4096] can be on storage with 512 or 4096 logical sector size. No RMW.


*Read-Modify-Write (RMW) results in degraded overall disk performance.  

Problem Cause

The problem is a result of disk alignment.  VHD was not initially designed for 4k based storage.  In many cases, most modern SANs can mask the alignment issue by writing directly to a virtual cache layer, although storage vendor implementation will vary, therefore the PVS kernel driver requires it to follow the VHD/VHDX specifications.  PVS may also implement RWM within the kernel where possible, as mentioned in the section above.  See: 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/w8cookbook/advanced-format--4k--disk-compatibility-update

Additional Information

* Please note that prior to converting any vDsks from VHD to VHDX, you must first merge all vDisk versions to a new base vDisk before proceeding.  If the vDisk is using KMS or MAK licensing, it is possible that you will have to reset this configuration.

How Emulation Works - Read-Modify-Write (RMW)

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/win7appqual/512-byte-emulation--512e--disk-compatibility-update