Thursday, October 24, 2013

Neil versus PVS - Part I - Shadow Copy

Hi Friends,

Oh my goodness, have you ever had one of those days where NOTHING wants to work?  Wow, that's today!  Every time I take one step forward I take two back.  Why is Citrix PVS torturing me so?  I don't know, maybe I pissed it off...  Any who, time for you to enjoy the fruits of my agony.

This is a weirrrrrrrd one.  So I finished installing PVS on my Windows 7 master image and decided to use PvDisk.  So this is before I even got to creating my vDisk.  PvDisk starts to do it's magic and BOOM!  Error, failure, no go, do not collect $200!  I look in the log and I got some weird error that said something like failed to initializebackup.  I searched my buddy Google, but really couldn't find anything.  So I figure maybe it's something to do with PvDisk right?  So I re-create my Windows 7 machine, install XenDesktop without installing PvDisk.

Everything's working cool, I'm creating my vDisk, the machine reboots so it can run the XenConvert and BOOM!
















I took a look at the log and the error was surprisingly similar to the PvDisk error.  Hmmm maybe I'm onto something?  The error was something like Failed to initialize backup.  That looks familiar!  So I look around and I find this Citrix article CTX134075.    Well according to this article the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) needs to be running.  So I took a look and sure enough it was disabled.

I go to create a new vDisk, the machine reboots so it can run the XenConvert and BOOM!  What the heck?!  This time the error says something like failed to addtosnapshotset.  UGH!  So I look around on Google and found this thread.  Apparently there's TWO Shadow Copy Services!

















I go into Services and sure enough there's a second one called Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider.  I turn that service on, create a new vDisk and then the XenConvert started to work!!

I don't know if the PvDisk error is fixed now, but I get a sneaking suspicion it is.  I'll let you know when I re-install it.

So if you're getting weird snapshot errors with PVS/PvDisk, take a look at your Shadow Copy Services, both of them, they might not be running.

Until Next Time!
-Brain

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