XenDesktop 5 Quick Deploy is the fastest way to deploy a fully functional XenDesktop installation. You specify a master VM and select some users, then Quick Deploy creates virtual desktops, makes them available for the users, and shows you how to access your desktops. To achieve this in the minimum number of steps, Quick Deploy has some prerequisites and makes a number of assumptions. This topic describes what Quick Deploy does, the prerequisites for running Quick Deploy, and the assumptions that Quick Deploy makes.

Prerequisites

To run Quick Deploy you need:

• A host with sufficient processors, memory, and storage to accommodate the number of machines for the desktops you plan to create.
• Access to an administrator account with permissions to create new machines on the host.
• A master VM running the Virtual Desktop Agent from which to create the desktops. The master VM must be available on the host where the machines will be created.
• Access to an Active Directory domain containing accounts for the desktop users.
• Access to a domain administrator account with permissions to create new Active Directory computer accounts for the machines. If you intend to create computer accounts in a different domain to that containing the user accounts, a trust relationship must be established between the two domains.
• A single-server installation of all the XenDesktop server-side components, including the controller, Desktop Studio, the Web Interface, the Citrix License Server, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.

Running Quick Deploy

Quick Deploy is only available when the XenDesktop components have been installed, but not yet configured. After installing the XenDesktop components, ensure that you are logged on using an account with permissions to create machine accounts in Active Directory. If Desktop Studio is not already open following the installation, start Desktop Studio and run Quick Deploy, which includes the following steps.

1. Site. Specify a name for your XenDesktop deployment. Consider naming your site according to the geographic location of the data center.
2. Host. Establish a connection to the hypervisor cluster or resource pool that will host the machines created by Quick Deploy.
3. Resources. Specify the hypervisor storage and virtual network to be used for the machines.
4. Master Image. Specify the virtual machine or snapshot from which you want Quick Deploy to create the desktops.
5. Number of VMs. Specify the number of desktops that you want to create and a location for the Active Directory computer accounts.
6. Users. Select the Active Directory users or user groups to whom you want to assign the desktops.

For more information about using Quick Deploy to set up a XenDesktop environment for evaluation purposes, see Installing and Configuring the Evaluation Deployment.

Assumptions

To streamline the deployment process, Quick Deploy automatically configures:

• Licensing. In the absence of a valid XenDesktop license, Quick Deploy desktops are available for 30 days and usage is limited to a maximum of 10 desktops at any one time. To continue using Quick Deploy desktops after the 30 day grace period has expired or to use more that 10 desktops simultaneously, install a valid XenDesktop license on the Citrix License Server running on the server hosting the XenDesktop components.

  By default, Quick Deploy sets the product edition in Desktop Studio to Platinum Edition. If you install a license for a different edition, reset the product edition in Desktop Studio by selecting the Configuration node in the left pane and, in the Actions pane, clicking Edit licensing.

• Virtual machines. Although XenDesktop 5 supports a number of different machine types, Quick Deploy creates pooled-random machinesonly.

  Quick Deploy machines are automatically named according to the scheme “sitename**#”. Here, sitename is the name you specified for your deployment on the Site page, ** is two random letters, and # is a number that increases incrementally from 1 to n, where n is the number of desktops to be created. Leading zeros are added where necessary to ensure that all machine names contain the same number of digits.

• Active Directory computer accounts. Quick Deploy 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 to which they relate.

• Machine catalog. In XenDesktop, collections of machines are managed as a single entity called a catalog. Quick Deploy automatically creates a catalog named “QD Catalog”.

• User assignment. In XenDesktop, user assignment to machines is managed using desktop groups. Quick Deploy automatically creates a desktop group named “QD Desktop Group”. By default, Quick Deploy limits user access to one desktop at a time.

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