Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS) is a powerful tool that can be used to create and manage large numbers of virtual machines (VMs). One of the benefits of using MCS is that it allows you to create VMs with multiple partitioned disks. This can help improve the performance and functionality of your VMs in a number of ways.

Store Different Types of Data on Separate Disks – You can store your operating system on one disk and your application data on another disk. This can help to improve performance by reducing contention on the disks.

Deploy Applications with Specific Drive Assignment Requirements – Some applications are required to be installed on a specific drive letter. MCS can ensure that these applications are installed correctly by creating a separate partition for them.

To create multiple partitioned disks with Citrix MCS, follow these steps::

  1. On the hypervisor, create a new VM instance that will serve as a master image.
  2. Create the desired number of partitioned disks in the VM on Root disk.
  3. Assign drive letters to the partitioned disks.
  4. Install the Citrix VDA software on the hypervisor.
  5. Create a new catalog in Citrix Studio.
  6. In the catalog, select the VM image and click Create.
  7. If you plan to enable the optional WBC disk, select the Write Back Cache (WBC) option in the Create dialog box for the disks.
  8. Click Create.

Citrix MCS will create the VMs with the specified number of partitioned disks. If you enable the WBC option, that will enable write caching on the disks, which can improve performance.

Creating VMs with partitioned disks is easy and simple. However, here are a few things to keep in mind when creating multiple partitioned disks in MCS:

  • In Azure, the OS reserves the D drive to assign to a temporary disk. If you are creating VMs in Azure, you cannot use the D drive for a partitioned disk or WBC disk.
  • MCS now supports Manually Assigning a Drive Letter to the MCSIO WBC Disk. Therefore, the drive letters for the partitioned disks and the MCSIO WBC disk should not conflict. For example, if you are creating a VM with two partitioned disks and want to use the Write Back Cache (WBC) disk, you should assign a drive letter other than C:, D:, or E: to the WBC disk.
  • If you do not assign the drive letter manually to the WBC disk, then the drive letter of the MCSIO WBC disk will be determined by Windows OS. For example, if you create a VM with two partitioned disks and do not assign a drive letter to the WBC disk, then the WBC disk will be assigned the next available drive letter, such as F:.

Following these steps, you can create multiple partitioned disks while creating VDAs using Citrix MCS. If you are looking for a way to improve the performance, security, and flexibility of your VMs, consider using multiple partitions with Citrix MCS.

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