Citrix Provisioning

About SAN policies

PVS clients always failover to server side cache during boot when the vDisk mode is set to Cache in device RAM with overflow on hard disk.

Tip

An option has been removed from the Cache type field in the vDisk Properties window. The option Cache on device hard disk is no longer available from the drop down menu because it does not support ASLR. The replacement for this field is Cache in device RAM with overflow on hard disk. For more information, see Features removed from future releases.

Resolving failover to server side caching during boot

1.  In a PVS target device booting in private vDisk mode or maintenance vDisk version, open a command prompt with administrator privileges.

2.  Run the diskpart utility, using the following command:

diskpart

3.  To verify the SAN policy, run the command:

Diskpart > san

The SAN policy should be Online All for PVS target devices to function correctly in while in Cache in Device RAM with Overflow on Hard Disk mode.

4.  To change the SAN policy, run the command:

Diskpart > san policy=OnlineAll

5.  Shutdown the PVS target device and change the vDisk mode to standard image or promote the maintenance version to test or production version.

Note

The SAN policy causes the PVS write cache drive to remain offline.  During boot, the PVS target device determines that the write cache drive is ineligible for use as a write cache and therefore will failover to server side cache. 

Important considerations

When creating a machine template, ensure that it has a similar hard disk drive structure and that it can boot from a vDisk in Private Image mode. For example:

  • To PXE boot a VM with write cache, create a VM with 1 hard disk drive.
  • To use Boot Device Manager (BDM) to boot a VM with write cache, create a VM with 2 hard disk drives.
  • To use BDM to boot a VM that uses a personal vDisk and write cache, create a VM with 3 hard disk drives.
About SAN policies