I would like to thank everybody who came out to NWN’s Road Show last week. For me personally, it was pretty fun talking about XenDesktop and getting to meet those who attended.

We had some great questions so I decided to post some of them here:

1. If a user is logged onto a virtual desktop (hosted on Microsoft Hyper-V), what happens if you try to connect to the virtual machine using the SCVMM Administration Console?

The answer: Not much, you’ll either the screen below or a blank one

2. Can the Provisioning Server 5.0 data stream be encrypted?

The short answer: No, not yet anyway…

The longer answer: I heard from Citrix that Ardence made a “Secure Server” in version 4.1 that can be used to encrypt data stream and has been primarily used in the federal space for classified workstations. The ability to encrypt the data stream has not yet been incorporated into PVS. You can however, encrypt the write cache should you choose to place it on a hard disk as shown below.

3. Is the Active Directory schema extended when the XenDesktop Desktop Delivery Controller is installed?

Answer: No, though the installation of the DDC will require on OU, only standard Active Directory objects are created and used by the DDC. The XenDesktop OU will be used to store the Controllers security group, a Service Connection Point (SCP) that contains meta-information about the XenDesktop farm, and a RegistrationServices container which contains one SCP object for each DDC that is created.