Creating the First Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop 7.7 Machine Catalog

Once Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop 7.7 has been installed and a site created the next step is to create a machine catalog. Launch Citrix Studio...

Shows Citrix Studio launched for the second time

Click on Set up machines for desktops and applications or remote PC access to start machine catalog creation.

Citrix Studio create machine catalog introduction

Click Next.

Select the type of OS used Desktop, Server or Remote PC

Select Server OS for creating hosted shared desktops (XenApp), Desktop OS for VDI desktops and Remote PC Access to connect to physical office desktops. In this case we are going to select Desktop OS.

Controls whether the machines are power managed and what technology is used to create them

Select Machines that are power managed to allow XenApp/XenDesktop to power manage these machines or Machines that are not power managed if no power management is required or the machines cannot be powered on and off.

Specify the technology to use to create the virtual machines Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS) that uses the hypervisor's built-in technology to create virtual machines, Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) a separate component that network boots machines from a shared gold image or Another service or technology if something else was used to create these machines.

In this case the virtual machines are to be power managed and created using Machine Creation Services.

Random or static desktops, personal vDisk, changes saved to disk or discarded when user logs off

Desktops can be randomly selected for users when they request a VDI desktop to log on to or they can be statically assigned to users, so they always log on to the same desktop each time. Changes on a random desktop do not persist over reboots and are lost. Static desktops can have changes saved to a Personal vDisk by selecting Yes, save changes on a separate Personal vDisk.

Select the master image and snapshot from Select a snapshot (or a virtual machine) list that will be used to create the virtual machines.

Specify the number of VMs to create and virtual hardware size

Specify the number of virtual machines to create in Number of virtual machines needed and number of Virtual CPUs and Memory (MB), which default to the virtual hardware size of the master image.

Create Active Directory accounts or use existing ones, select OU and specify computer account naming

Select Create new Active Directory accounts or Use existing Active Directory accounts, select the domain from Domain and locate the OU under Active Directory location for computer accounts where the computer accounts will be created and specify a account naming convention in Account naming scheme. The naming convention should have one or more # characters at the end that will be replaced with numbers as each machine is created.