At this point, you are probably wondering how to harness the economics of a shared desktop with the personalization capability of a dedicated desktop. Citrix made this possible with the acquisition of RingCube, and called the feature Personal vDisk (PvD). The PvD feature allows you to manage pooled and streamed master image with the addition of allowing people to make their desktops personal by installing applications and saving their desktop preference settings. This is a key difference from traditional VDI deployments with pooled desktops, where users would lose their customized preferences and personal applications after the administrator modifies the base VM or master image. In other words, administrators can quickly and centrally manage their base VMs and provide users with a customized and personalized desktop experience.

Personal vDisks provide this separation of pooled/shared desktops from personalization by sending all changes made on the user's VM to a separate...