Pano Controller is the central component of the Pano System architecture and provides the following benefits:

• Provides an overview of your entire virtual infrastructure, ensuring DVMs are running and available for users.
• Allows you to monitor and control both Pano zero clients and Pano Remote USB keys from one console.
• Supports a wide range of deployment models with both user- and device-based DVM Collections.
• Scales to very large deployments by working in groups for load-balancing and redundancy.
• Has installable Roles that control the overall function of each Pano Controller:
  • Zero Client Controller Role - discovery, login, and management of Pano Zero Clients.
  • Virtual Desktop Broker Role - connection broker between users and their virtual desktops.
  • Full Role - combines both of the above Roles.
• Integrates with the native connection brokers included in VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop in place of Pano Controller's Virtual Desktop Broker Role.
• Provides a front-end to each virtualization platform's native provisioning and management tools such as VMware vCenter Server, Microsoft SCVMM, and Citrix XenDesktop Studio.
• Works with Active Directory for secure user authentication based on your existing infrastructure.

Pano Controller provides a simple, unified way to deploy and manage all of your Pano endpoints and desktops.

Pano Controller integrates with the DVM provisioning and management provided by your virtualization platform vendor to provide enhanced capabilities. 

• Running on the Hyper-V platform it works with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM - a required component).
• On the VMware platform it optionally integrates with vCenter Server for enhanced DVM management.  And it can integrate VMware's View Connection Server as an alternate connection broker if needed for very large or hybrid endpoint deployments.
• On the Citrix XenDesktop 4 or 5 platforms it integrates with XenDesktop Studio, Citrix Provisioning and Machine Creation Services.

On all platforms Pano Controller ensures a secure and reliable login process by optionally integrating with directory services such as Microsoft Active Directory. Rather than maintain a separate database of users, it queries your existing directory service directly during each login attempt. IT administrators only need to perform user account management in the directory service. Pano Controller can even determine which pool of virtual desktops should be assigned to a user based on the user's group membership in Active Directory.

Pano Controller itself runs as a self-contained virtual machine within a hypervisor on one of your data center servers, simplifying deployment and further improving hardware utilization.  

Pano Controller provides a web-based management Console that can be access from any system with a web browser - including a Pano virtual desktop.  And because the interface requires only standard HTTP and HTTPS protocols you can access it remotely over any web-capable network link making remote management via a VPN or even a dial-up line possible.

The new Pano Maestro management component allows you to create multiple groups of up to six Pano Controllers each.  These Pano Controller groups enables highly scalable deployments, managing many thousands of virtual desktops and zero clients from a single console.

Pano Controller groups also ensure higher availability for your Pano virtual desktops.  By installing the Pano Controllers in the group across separate physical servers the group can continue operating even if one or more of the servers should become unavailable due to a software or hardware problem.  In the event of a failure of the server hosting the master Pano Controller instance a secondary instance in the group will automatically take on its duties without any user downtime.