When trying to use PlateSpin to seed a server image across a WAN connection for a DR site the job would fail after a certain amount of time. Come to find out the process has a time limit of 24 hours to finish or it will fail. This time limit is hard set and cannot be increased. A way around this is to use a local image server at both ends.

Update:  We've added another post that discusses WAN optimizations for Platespin that you'll want to read.

These are the basic steps you need to follow: [more]

  1. Create an image server local to the source (Discover then right click in Portability Suite and choose install image server).
  2. Capture the image (Drag the source to the image server).
  3. Export the image (this step fixes the config.xml file point to the right location after it moves the image files).
    • The Image Operations tool is installed with the PowerConvert server and not with the Image server.
      On the PowerConvert server you have to locate the following folder: “C:\Program Files\PlateSpin PowerConvert Server\bin”
    • In that folder locate the folder: “ImageOperations” and copy it to the Image server.
    • On the Image server:
      1. Open a command prompt.
      2. Navigate to the folder “ImageOperations’ that was copied over from the PowerConvert server.
      3. Run the command “imageoperations /gather /imagepath={path of the image} /output={path that you want to place the copy of the image}” without the quotes.
      4. Once the command completes the folder specified in /output will contain the files that need to be copied to the other image server.
  4. Move the files across the WAN (FTP, Physically, etc whatever method best works for the environment).
  5. Create an image server local to the target ESX host.
  6. Import the image into the image server local to the target.
    • The Image Operations tool is installed with the PowerConvert server and not with the Image server.
      On the PowerConvert server you have to locate the following folder: “C:\Program Files\PlateSpin PowerConvert Server\bin”
    • In that folder locate the folder: “ImageOperations” and copy it to the Image server.
    • On the new Image server:
      1. Copy the folder “ImageOperations” again to this folder from the PowerConvert server that installed this Image server.
      2. Open a command prompt.
      3. Navigate to the folder “ImageOperations” that was copied over from the PowerConvert server.
      4. Run the command “imageoperations /register /imagepath={path of files copied from old Image server}” without quotes.
      5. Once the command completes refresh the details of the Image server from within PowerConvert.
  7. From the Discovered Server list expand the image server local to the target and deploy the image to target ESX host
  8. Select the deployed server and choose Prepare For Synchronization
  9. Setup a filed based server sync job.

Once completed the job should allow for incremental updates over a slower link without hitting the 24 hour time limit.