Citrix Provisioning Server provides workstation and server disk images on demand using streaming technology. The proper use of Provisioning Services allows better image management, faster desktop and server deployments, greater resource flexibility, and total cost reduction (through both operational cost savings and storage savings). Provisioning Services is not without a cost since it requires multiple PVS servers (to ensure fault tolerance), its own database, and potential modifications to the change-management processes that might already be in place.

Provisioning Server is independent of any other Citrix technologies. It can be used to deliver server OS or desktop OS workloads, but it is not limited to delivering only XenApp or XenDesktop images. It can stream images to physical devices or virtual machines hosted on any hypervisor platform (Hyper-V, vSphere, or XenServer).

PVS manages virtual disk images, which are called vDisks, and streams the...