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Citrix XenApp 6.5 disaster recovery

powershell, XenApp 6.5

Citrix XenApp 6.5 disaster recovery

High availability is always a hot topic at the customer but one thing is often forgotten. Disaster Recovery.

Recently I had a disaster recovery test on a Xenapp 6.5 environment. Scenario, delete all components.

Before starting I had to make sure that the backup was completed successfully. After deleting all components, VM’s, Databases etc… I started the restore. First I started to restore the Operating Systems then I restored the database for XenApp 6 after that I started an unattended install of XenApp 6.5 DataCollector by Login Solution 4. After the installation of the DataCollector I did a check to see if the farmsettings, farmpolicies and all other settings are restored again.

Settings that were restored:
– Database connection: Yes
– FarmSettings: Yes
– FarmPolicies: Yes
– DataCollector: NO!!

Why didn’t the DataCollector restore properly?
Within XenApp 6.5 Citrix introduced a new terminology. By default, the data collector is configured on the first server when you create the farm.
With a database restore the farm is already created so the first server we installed was just an additional XenApp Server.

How could this be resolved? If I do not restore the XenApp database the first installed server will be the DataCollector but I don’t have any farmsettings or other settings stored in the database. A colleague came up with the idea of using the Citrix powershell migration module to export and import all the needed farmsettings. This way it is possible to install the first XenApp server with a new database. After the install you need to use the Citrix powershell migration module to import the settings.

For more information about the Citrix powershell Migration module click here.

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