XenDesktop 5’s machine create service simplifies the task of creating, managing, and delivering virtual desktops to users. MCS has a collection of services including AD Identity Service, Provisioning Service, and Machine Identity Service. AD identity service automatically creates Active Directory computer accounts in the organizational unit you specified on the Number of VMs page. The account names are the same as the names of the machines.

With the full integration of Citrix XenApp, you can deliver on-demand applications as a seamless part of your overall desktop management strategy, extending the benefits of virtualization throughout the enterprise.

When you create a catalog to provision desktops via MCS in XenDesktop 5, a master image is copied to each storage volume. This master image copy uses hypervisor snapshot. After a few minutes of the master image copy process, MCS creates a differential disk and an identity disk for each VM. This process only takes a few seconds. We have tested to create 60 VMs, it takes around 11 minutes total.

The differential disk is created the same size as the master image to host the session data. The identity disk is normally 16MB and is hidden by default. The identity disk has the machine identity information such as host name and password.

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