Introduction

The first step in implementing a fully functioning infrastructure is to configure XenDesktop's components. After this, the second, and maybe the most important, step is to deploy the virtual desktop instances.

To accomplish this task, you need to interface the Citrix Delivery Controllers with a hypervisor, a bare-metal operating system that is able to create, configure, and manage virtual machines. XenDesktop is able to communicate with three important hypervisor systems on the market: XenServer, VMware vSphere, and Microsoft Hyper-V, plus the Citrix Cloud platform automation known as CloudPlatform. The mechanism implemented is the following: after you have created a template, a virtual machine with a Microsoft desktop or server operating system on board, XenDesktop is able to deploy OS instances to the end users starting with the virtual machine image using different deployment technologies.

The main task of the Delivery Controller is to start virtual machines and assign...