One of Portability Suite’s three fundamental workload infrastructures, a PlateSpin® Flexible Image is an image of a supported Windows workload consisting of volume data along with configuration specifics of the source server’s hardware, operating system, and network identity.
You can use Flexible Images for provisioning, data recovery, basic disaster recovery, and as an intermediary format in peer-to-peer workload protection jobs, such as Server Sync. See Synchronizing Workloads with Server Sync.
Image configurations are maintained in an XML (config.xml) file with each image having one or more sets of associated volume data.
Flexible Images and the image server’s config.xml configuration file are stored on the designated Flexible Image Server host in the following directory:
..\Program Files\PlateSpin Image Server
In addition to volume data directly captured during an X2I conversion, Portability Suite supports:
Third-party volume archives, such as Acronis True Image or Symantec LiveState
Raw volume data
Like peer-to-peer conversions, image deployment allows for key workload configuration options, such as those for managing the workload’s disk layout, volume sizes, network identity, and domain or workgroup affiliation.