<div>In Part I I covered the basics of what the "new" Personal vDisk feature in XenDesktop 5.6 is. In this part I'll cover how it's installed/configured, and some of the interesting things I found out doing during some lab-playtime.</div>
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<div>The installation/configuration to enable the Personal vDisk is rather low-thrill, and that's a good thing because simplicity is bliss, right?</div>
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<div>On the golden Windows 7 image I created I installed the virtual desktop agent and was presented with this new screen prompting me to enable the PVD on the desktop side.</div>
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<div><strong><img src="//5112A56D-2801-418C-B36F-373B069B7FAE/image.tiff" alt="" /></strong></div>
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<div>During the creation of the desktop Catalog, the new option for "Pooled with personal vDisk" is available, and that's the one I used. This creates the desktops using Machine Creation Services (MCS).</div>
<div><strong><img src="//9448D709-F79C-4B06-9EE9-1DD2F304E7C1/image.tiff" alt="" /></strong></div>
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<div>Through the wizard I set the PVD to 10GB and used the P: drive.</div>
<div><img src="//51D85CFA-C271-49A1-AF7F-8DCFD973AFB2/image.tiff" alt="" /></div>
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<div>That was basically the process to "enable' the feature, and I wanted to take it out for a spin. My first login actually gave me an error message about not being able to connect to the vDisk image, so I went back to my golden Windows 7 machine and updated the vDisk inventory, shut it down, and took a new snapshot. This process took a couple of minutes, but seemed to do the trick.</div>
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<div><strong><img src="//8931652E-1599-4DF8-9B7E-63FE33F1F99C/image.tiff" alt="" /></strong></div>
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<div>On my next login everything worked as desired, and my PVD mapped/connected without issue. Logged into the desktop, I downloaded and installed Google Chrome, adding a shortcut to my desktop. Then I logged out, went back to the base image and applied some updates and installed Adobe Reader-- tasks that are likely common for an IT administrator. Once the image completed and my desktop was available, I logged back in and sure enough, Google Chrome was there waiting for me.</div>
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<div>So I decided to get a little crazy with the testing. I created a second desktop assignment (the same user, but now assigned to TWO desktops) and logged in to the newly assigned desktop, "PVD Pool (2)". None of my apps or test data were there. On this second desktop I installed WINRAR, and added the shortcut to the desktop, and logged back out.</div>
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<div><img src="//983BB293-3B30-4B26-A36D-60A1C167429E/image.tiff" alt="" /></div>
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<div>Next, I logged in to each desktop as the original user (administrator) and was presented with two separate "PVD environments", with the applications I installed maintained separately to each PVD on each desktop.</div>
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<div><img src="//CC9526AE-47D9-43FA-905E-71588B2BC043/image.tiff" alt="" /></div>
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<div>To take it a little further, I assigned a SECOND USER to the second desktop (username Average Joe) and logged in with that account.</div>
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<div>To my surprise, the WINRAR application was still available-- which leads me to believe the "Personal" vDisk isn't so much "personal" as much as it was "desktopanal", which is a new word. What I mean by this is that the PVD stays with the desktop it connects to first, even if a different user is then assigned and logs in (which is what I did).</div>
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<div><img src="//640ABB32-AFEB-4899-B688-21ADAB3E078A/image.tiff" alt="" /></div>
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<div>As Average Joe I installed Firefox, logged off, then logged back in as the original user and Winrar and Firefox were both available-- again, proving that the PVD is tied to a desktop, and not just the original user assigned to it, but any user who then logs in to that desktop.</div>
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