Cloning Citrix presentation servers 4.0 to other Active Directory forest

Citrix presentation 4.0 isn't a new product in the market. Recently, I needed to perform a proof of concept for cloning Citrix presentation servers 4.0 from a production Active Directory forest to a testing Active Directory forest. 

Why do I need to clone Citrix presentation server?

Many applications were installed on Citrix presentation servers. However, I don't want to re-install all applications on new presentation servers. Finally, I tried to clone the servers.

In this post, I will talk about high level migration steps. Terminal Service licensing servers and Citrix licensing servers have been set up in both environment. 

I'm going to talk about what I did and which tools I used for cloning Citrix presentation server 4.

First of all, all Citrix presentation servers are virtual machines. It's easy for me to clone it. Before cloning Citrix presentation server, I checked "Add local administrators" and assigned "Full Administration" on "Privileges" window.

Then, I cloned the virtual machines which are installed Citrix presentation servers from VM level but I didn't perform sysprep for Citrix cloning.

After that, power-on the cloned virtual machines and logged in as local administrator.

Then, I preformed "chfarm" to create a new farm and change it to local store.

I launched Citrix presentation console to check "Add local administrators" and assign "Full Administration" on "Privileges" window again.

I used "Clone XenApp VM v1.0" to help me to do some tasks related to Citrix presentation servers. This tool can work with Sysprep or NewSID tools for generating new SIDs for Windows. For cloning Citrix presentation servers, I checked all options from "Clone Virtual Machine Tasks" and then click "Clone".

When cloning finished, I updated the IP address and join to new domain.

After joining domain, I used "Clone XenApp VM v1.0" to perform "Post-Clone Virtual Machine Tasks" for all Citrix presentation servers.

Then, I performed "chfarm" again to join the new Citrix farm on another Active Directory domain.

After that, I updated the local administrator option of Citrix presentation console again.

Finally, I could publish the applications on my cloned Citrix presentation servers on the new Citrix farm.

This post is based on my lab environment for proof of concept. I don't guarantee it works on your environment. All above steps are for your information.

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights!