One of the most popular ways to migrate from one Citrix Presentation Server farm to a new Citrix Presentation Server farm is to build the farms in parallel and use Web Interface to aggregate the two separate farms’ published applications. This is a great strategy and I have used parallel farms many times in the past to migrate users to a new farm. One of the challenges of this strategy is duplicating published applications and policies from the old farm to the new farm. Traditionally, you would need to either manually create each published application in the new farm or use scripting to export/import published applications. This is where Project Mobius comes in. Project Mobius is a Microsoft Windows application that allows you to drag and drop published applications and/or folders from one Citrix Presentation Server farm to one or more separate Citrix Presentation Server farms. Project Mobius currently only has capabilities to migrate published applications, but the capability to migrate policies is slated for a future release.
Download Project Mobius Beta 1
Installation
Project Mobius requires Microsoft .Net Framework version 2.0.
Project Mobius utilizes MFCOM to perform application migration. Thus, Project Mobius must be run from either a Citrix Presentation Server or a workstation that has the Citrix Presentation Server SDK installed and registered for DCOM (utilizing mfreg.exe).
Project Mobius does not require an install. Simply copy Mobius.exe as well as Interop.MetaFrameCOM.dll to a location on your Presentation Server (or workstation).
Tested Platforms
The MFCOM interfaces and methods used in the source code for Project Mobius should be compatible with Citrix MetaFrame XP 1.0 and above. However, Project Mobius has specifically been tested on the following platforms:
- Citrix MetaFrame XP FR3
- Citrix Presentation Server 3.0
- Citrix Presentation Server 4.0
- Citrix Presentation Server 4.5
Using Project Mobius
Step 1 – Click File -> Connect to Farm. Then, specify any Citrix Presentation/MetaFrame Server in any farm you want to manage. Project Mobius uses the specified server to enumerate all published applications and folders in a given farm. Repeat this step for any additional farms you want to manage. (Tip: you may also right click on the Enterprise Farms tree node or click the Connect to Farm icon to connect to a farm.
Step 2 – Highlight a folder in the left hand tree view containing the published applications and folders you want to migrate. Drag and drop the published applications and folders from the right hand side to the appropriate location in any farm on the left hand side. (Tip: you may use Ctrl or Shift to select multiple published applications or folders).
Click to enlarge
Optional – Farms that have a large number of applications may take several minutes to enumerate all published applications. This is due to the fact that Project Mobius has to use the LoadData() method of the IMetaFrameApplication interface for each published application in order to retrieve the application object and bind the object to the tree view. This can be time consuming as each call to LoadData retrieves all properties for a published application. To mitigate this time consuming process, click on Tools -> Options. Then, select Enable dynamic population. This option will only load published applications for the selected folder. Each time you highlight a new folder, Project Mobius will dynamically retrieve the published applications within the folder.
Trivial Information
For those of you still reading and wondering why this piece of software is called Project Mobius, let me explain. Citrix code names Presentation Server after rivers (Hudson = Presentation Server 3.0; Colorado = Presentation Server 4.0; Ohio = Presentation Server 4.5; etc.). I was pondering what to name this project and I decided to name products after wakeboard tricks. One wakeboard trick that has a cool sounding name in my opinion is called a Mobius. A Mobius is a back side roll (flip) with a 360 degree handle pass rotation. If you want to see what it looks like, check out this video. So, all in all, this project has no hidden tie in to the wakeboarding Mobius. I just think it is a cool name (and trick).
Thank you, works fine and as expected. Very fast Tool for my urgent Restore! You made my day…
Must have Tool!
Greets
Richie
oops, my bad. I see an earlier post with the same question and answer. It only copies…yippee
Hi, I want to copy published apps from XP FR3 farm to PS4.0 farm. Does this app copy or actually move published apps? I don’t want to move as I need to test for a few weeks as not all users use the WI and will still need to run apps from the XP farm. Thanks, Stephen
Thanks for all the developers
Jason, will your tool “convert” the old 256 color icons into true color icons?
When do you plan to release an update on this tool?
Used the tool to migrate about 100 apps from 4.0 to 4.5. This tool saved me hours upon hours of creating and configuring apps. This tool rocks!!
Project Mobius impersonates the user running the program to authenticate to your various farms. Is your users account an administrator on both farms?
Thank you it works well and is exactly what I need. I also would like it to work between domains and I could not get both farms up at the same time. Should it work between domains? I am trying to merge two farms on two different domains and I can connect to one but the only way I can connect to a second farm is to disjoin from the domain join the second domain. I even had to reinstall citrix (this part was probably just user permission related) Is there a way to copy the between domains that should work?
If your new farm is a Presentation Server 4.5 Farm, the applications will be disabled because they are not published on any server.
Hi,
All my applcations are disabled after the migrating to the new farm.
what is the fix for this?
shaqmoo@Yahoo.com
I have been testing the non-released Beta 2 and some of your requests were added:
File – Exit
View has gone
Help – About (Version number)
I think the public release of Beta 2 will be very soon..
Also starting the app from a network drive, you may also notice the app won’t even start, so copy it to your local harddrive (I do this on the Citrix Server)
I have tested Content Redirection in the (un-released) Beta 2 and looks great.
O.K. – this happens if the tools was started from a networkdrive. Copy it to your local harddrive and it should work as designed.
Yes, I get the same thing… Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 SP2 PS4.5
I´m alway getting an error message
There was an error connecting to the farm with server xxxx
Request for permissions of type systems.security.permissions.security.permission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, publickeytoken=´xxxxxx´ failed
The latest (un-released) beta fixes this. I am still working on some File Type Association issues as well as finalizing policy migration. But, if you send me an email, I will send you the latest (un-released) beta.
I hope so, need this tool urgently, but it does help a lot transferring the apps, saves a lot of time. Fully working this will be a “must have”
FS
This is an Access Denied error message. If you are running Project Mobius from a workstation, make sure you have correctly configured impersonation using dcomcnfg.exe. Also, make sure the account you are using is an Administrator on each farm you try to connect to.
what needs to be done for the same error
or is there any other tool to migrate or copy the published applciation
Content Redirection is not included
Unsure this is SDK limitation. Lets see what is Beta 2
In the meantime, use PS4 Documentor – http://sbc.vanbragt.net/mambo/glance-at-free/cps-farm-inventory.html to report your Application Configuration and check the settings in the new Farm.
Thank you sir for the reply.
I am trying it now and get the following when trying to connect to another server than the one I’m on:
There was an error connecting to the farm with server dgo…..
Retrieving the COM class factory for the remote component with CLSID
{ED62F4E2-63C2-11D4-94D8-00C04FB0F326} from machine dgo….. failed due to the following error:
80070005
I tried this on both the old farm to connect to the new farm and from the new to the old with same results.
Thoughts:
Project Mobius only copies the applications. Applications in the source farm are kept as is.
If/When I implement this utility, will it just copy the app or does it remove it from the old farm?
I just want to copy and leave the old farm up.
Thanks!
Jason,
This tool worked great, but after rebooting the Citrix web interface didn’t worked at all.
As I know it caused by the dotnet 2.0. Do you have any idea? Thanks!
Simon
Jason has acknowledged ‘Copy User and Group assignments’ doesn’t work and the Bug will be fixed soon.
This worked FANTASTIC for me and will save me hours of work when moving applications from DEV to Prod. Thanks Jason!!!
–Stephen
Hi Jason, don`t hesitate to contact me, if you need a hand to do german localization (it that is on your plan at all?)
Regards Josef Zeiler
I have managed to get it working…finally. This is very good but one thing that needs to be noted it that the OS needs to be the same in both farms.
This seems like a great utility, but as of yet I have been unable to prove this practically as I keep getting the following error. Please advise.
” There was an error connecting to the farm server ts04-0030.
Unable to cast COM object of type `System.__ComObject` to interface type `MetaframeCom.IMetaFrameFarm`, This operation failed because the QueyInterface call on the COM conponent for the interface woth IID`{ED62…}` failed due to the following error: Interface not registered (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80040155).”
That is an access denied message. Make sure you have admin rights. Then check to make sure that dcom has impersonate rights. Run “dcomcnfg”. Expand “Component Services” and then “Computers”. Right Click “My Computer”, select “Properties” and then go to the “Default Properties” tab. Make sure that the “Default Impersonation Level” is “Impersonate”.
Jason,
Some items I found while testing. MPS4.0 2K3 to MPS 4.0 2K3.
1) After dragging to anothe farm are the servers supposed to populate based on the target folder or server of the second farm.
2) After moving then deleting the moved application does not refresh the tool. After closing out and reconnecting to the farm the app still was listed. CMC shows the app removed.
3) Receiving this error from a Dev MPS 4.0 farm.
—————————
Error Connecting to Farm
—————————
There was an error connecting to the farm with server bostrmd04. Any fix for this one? If I load try another server in the farm I can connect.
Retrieving the COM class factory for remote component with CLSID {ED62F4E2-63C2-11D4-94D8-00C04FB0F326} from machine bostrmd04 failed due to the following error: 80070005.
—————————
OK
—————————
So far that’s all. I’ll keep testing.
Works great with the except that the ACL wasn’t migrated, as Ronald mentions above. My environment is PS 4.0 to PS 4.0 farm (test to prod) running on Windows 2003 server. A couple of suggestions: seems silly, but a ‘File’, ‘Exit’ option would be good. Also, the options under the ‘View’ menu didn’t do anything. Finally, I’m assuming you’ll have a least a little bit of Help text somewhere in a subsequent release? Thanks, Jason!
.. we have a problem.
User and Group Migration dosn´t work. The Option is checked but no Users and Group will be added in PA.
Environment: PS3.0 Farm to a PS3.0 Farm
Any Ideas?
Best Regards
Ronald