Digital Spotlight | December 2013/January 2014

Your strategic guide to VDI

Companies take bold steps into desktop virtualization as benets begin to outweigh challenges G

Inside

Jodie Naze Editor in chief jodie_naze@itworld.com (508) 820-8536 Amy Bennett Managing editor amy_bennett@itworld.com (508) 820-8563 Sean Weglage SVP/Publisher sean_weglage@itworld.com (508) 820-8246 John Vulopas Account director, digital john_vulopas@itworld.com (508) 271-8024 Ryan Ayalde Online account executive ryan_ayalde@itworld.com (415) 978-3312 Steve Traynor Art director straynor@idgenterprise.com

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IntErnatiOnaL Data GrOUP Patrick J. McGovern Chairman of the Board

4 Critical success factors

IT leaders share their best advice and lessons learned to help you avoid rookie mistakes.

9 State of the market

VDI technology is better, faster and cheaper. Adoption may be slow, but VDI deployments can transform a business when planned carefully.

13 Leverage for BYOD

Can VDI help manage personal devices connecting to corporate networks? There are pros and cons to this approach, but early deployments look good.

16 Trailblazers
Companies take bold steps into desktop virtualization as benefits begin to outweigh challenges. Learn how VDI technology is being deployed in mission-critical workflows.

21 How to start
A typical VDI project has many parts. Heres an implementation checklist to get you started.

Michael Friedenberg CEO

Matthew Yorke CEO John Gallant Chief Content Ofcer

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FROM THE EdITOR

Not your fathers VDI

f you havent looked at VDI technology in a while, youll find that its changed. Faster, cheaper technology has made it an interesting option for some companies seeking a way to support flexible, work-fromanywhere environments. In fact, in some cases, BYOD is driving new interest in VDI given that virtualized desktops can help keep corporate data on corporate servers, not on client devices. Its not a panacea for all of BYODs security concerns, of course, but VDI has caught the eye of some CIOs looking for ways to minimize the security impact of personal mobile devices. Granted, the market is still small, and we dont want to minimize the challenges facing a VDI project (software licensing costs for example), but companies that have deployed VDI have experienced tangible benefits. Want a successful project? Check in with folks who have kicked the tires. To get you started, weve assembled advice from IT leaders who have successfully deployed VDI. They shared their rookie mistakes (Dont virtualize everything!) and their best tips (Choose that pilot project carefully!). We hope you find this information helpful when researching your own project. Good luck! Jodie Naze Editor in chief

XenDesktop
Virtual desktops on-demand from any device.

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Critical success factors

THiNKStOcK

IT leaders share their best advice and lessons learned to help you avoid rookie mistakes. By David Strom

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few years ago, desktop virtualization (or virtual desktop infrastructure, better known as VDI) suffered from complex installations, unrealistic expectations and lackluster user experiences. However, those issues are largely behind us as a result of better technologies and implementations. Lower storage costs including flash memory improvements, better deduplication technologies, cheaper zerofootprint client machines, better support of mobile clients and thin provisioning have made VDI more attractive. Nonetheless, a successful VDI deployment takes careful planning and an understanding of where to find the best initial target opportunities. For a VDI project to save money and deliver on expectations, experts say you should carefully consider these seven main areas.

Know the VDI projects goals

One common rookie mistake is thinking that all of your desktops belong in the virtual column. That

# 1

is almost never going to happen, no matter how fortunate your circumstances. The best VDI deployments are either for a specific purpose, a subset of your user environment or a particular application. Understanding this concept at the beginning of any project is critical. A case in point is health insurer Aetna. After piloting VDI in 2009, Aetna rolled it out to more than 27,000 users and partners. It wasnt about saving money, says Alan Pawlack, Aetnas head of client services. It was about flexibility to the business and reacting to the business shifts where they wanted to do business and starting up new offices or new extensions to the company. VDI is a different way of life, appropriate in limited use cases such as call centers, hospitals, computer lab classrooms and other places where bulk quantities of desktops that arent individually owned will be frequently used. Carefully think about your total user population, and propose VDI to departments where it makes the most sense or where you plan to

upgrade from older XP machines. Understand what apps users consume and that not every app, such as Photoshop or others with intensive graphics needs with low network latencies, lends itself to VDI. One approach is to triage your needs. VDI can be used in three different ways: as traditional terminal services, to supply persistent desktops and to supply non-persistent desktops with stored user profiles. Jason Strickland of Southeastern Community College in Raleigh, N.C., has a combination of non-persistent desktops for computer labs used by students and persistent desktops for staff. This distinction makes sense because persistent desktops can consume more network resources. The more mobile your workforce, the more likely VDI will be a good fit. For example, commuter workstations that employees check out versus fixed offices are good candidates. VDI is also a great way to improve access to applications that reside on the cor-

#2

Consider mobility needs

porate network when supporting a large remote workforce. Many hospitals use VDI for this very reason. Hospital staffs tend to move around as they deliver care to patients, and with a VDI deployment, patient information is at their fingertips wherever they go. Seattle Childrens Hospital is a good example of how VDI benefits a mobile staff. Before its VDI deployment, configuration differences among its thousands of PC workstations made the computing experience unfamiliar and unpredictable for hospital staff. Log-in and application download times were also long. With VDI, staff members use single sign-on to log into their desktops and applications on a zero client in seconds, enabling them to spend the rest of their preparation time discussing the patient they are about to see. Once in clinic exam rooms, they can log into the same desktop state they just left with the full information and patient context displayed in 10 to 15 seconds. While mobile can mean that users are actually moving about, it

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could include remote workers, too. For example, the city of Barcelona skipped Windows 7 and upgraded to a virtual Windows 8 desktop that will eventually support 2,500 users. Its goal was to enable more employees to work from home

with better and more consistent desktop support. Another popular application is in higher education, where VDI can reduce support needs and improve campus computer lab access. Virtualization allows us to

more effectively use IT to support the universitys educational mission by allowing our users to get access to resources wherever they are and from whatever device they choose, said Sue Workman, associate vice president of support at

Indiana University. Indiana University has multiple campuses and nearly 100 labs, some of which are shared with students from other universities and community colleges.

#3

Control software licensing costs

Really understand VDIs ROI

any of the arguable benets of VDI have to do with return on investment and long-term total cost savings from using virtual desktops rather than ordinary PCs. The theory goes that even though you might spend more on network infrastructure and storage, VDI will cut support costs. However, the actual science of calculating ROI is somewhat elusive, partly because VDI has so many moving parts. Several of the major VDI vendors offer online calculator tools, including this one from Citrix. Although its for conguring the companys VDIin-a-Box implementation and you may be thinking about using another VDI product, it is worth looking at how Citrix has set up its spreadsheet template. There are various assumptions that you can adjust, such as support costs for installing the underlying operating system or resolving end-user issues, along with the specic infrastructure improvements.

Default numbers are used to get you started (naturally it paints VDI in its best possible light) and can be easily adjusted to reect your particular situation. Another method is more descriptive than the llin-the-box approach. Consider how you would tell a story about your migration to VDI so that management can understand some of the issues you deal with currently. For example, lets say that you want to use VDI to improve services and lower your support costs, along with getting more life out of existing equipment. While you want to deploy Windows 7 or 8 across your campus, your existing PCs arent powerful enough to run them. You also want to make use of a converged network infrastructure that will run your storage and IP telephony along with the desktop PCs. Once you have this story, begin to cost out the various components and track the changes to your existing computing equipment.

One of the biggest VDI implementation challenges is how desktop software is licensed. Major software vendors are becoming more sympathetic to virtual configurations, but its still an issue. Part of the problem lies squarely with how Microsoft treats virtualizing its Windows licenses, forcing most enterprises to enter into a volume purchase agreement to obtain the lowest total Windows license costs. To make matters more complex, Microsoft has other licensing plans based on number of users and whether Software Assurance support is included. (To learn more, the licensing issue is covered in some detail in this Network World review.) However, VDI could cut the number of licenses consumed across

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the enterprise, since all software application instances are pooled centrally. Metro Health Hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich., for example, currently has 4,200 Active Directory users, but the typical number of concurrent logged-in sessions ranges from 1,400 to 1,700. Knowing that not every logged-in user is using the same set of software, the hospital could cut the cost by trimming the number of licenses to a third or less of the existing level and still have roughly the same level of service. And because VDI has tighter control over the desktop, it could eliminate the need for antivirus and central desktop management software.

Identify required infrastructure improvements

Collin Hachwi, IT infrastructure manager at Digital Intelligence Systems LLC (DISYS), knew the right questions to ask: Can our infrastructure support VDI now and into the future, what are current storage and processing needs, and how many users do we intend

#4

to deploy VDI to? However, it also helps to understand the existing level of virtualization in your company, even if your only experience has been with virtualizing some servers. Its also critical to know storage consumption trends on a departmental or user level so you can predict what those needs will be when you virtualize these desktops.

Learn from initial mistakes with a pilot program

DISYSs Hachwi knew that he wasnt trying to virtualize every desktop and picked his pilot VDI

#5

project carefully, finding users who werent using demanding graphics apps or oddball peripherals on their desktops. Other IT managers have found that the best strategy is to segment your user population into discrete stages and start with users who have the least demanding needs first so you can prove VDIs worth and take advantage of your own learning curve before moving on to more complex application portfolios. Peripherals, in particular, can be vexing for VDI. Virtualized Windows with mice and keyboards dont translate well into touchscreen iPads and browser-based access. Seattle Childrens Hospital is trying to pull this off by working with Microsoft and a value-added reseller to make Windows 8 more

touch-friendly. Windows 8 is the only touch-enabled OS that you can really virtualize, says CIO Wes Wright.

Keep persistent desktops and golden master disk images to the bare minimum
Another advantage of deploying VDI is that everyone starts with the same or limited set of master desktop images, typically a Windows 7 or 8 base. This can reduce overall desktop support costs, since the IT staff knows what end users are using. However, you should be wary of creating too many virtual desktop master images because they create more work: The more images there are, the more updates have to be applied and maintained across the board. Strickland of Southeastern Community College had 24 different Windows images across his campus. He and his staff wanted to avoid patching more than one Windows golden image, which is what they now have after their VDI deployment. They were also able to toss five-year-old Windows Vista

#6

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XenApp. Bringing Windows apps and data to a mobile world.

PCs that didnt support their current device drivers. As a result of reducing these variations, they have improved support and responsiveness to their users. Our students were pleased at how quickly they could get online to their desktops with our VDI implementation, said Strickland. But there also have been benefits elsewhere. We can update our lab configurations in mid-semester or even anytime without the complexity and the associated downtime that we used to have.

more mobile workforce. The IT department at the sprawling complex in downtown Baltimorecombined the hospitals identity management program, proximity card technology and single-sign-on capabilities with a VDI rollout. While this may seem like folly to some, it paid off because employees were happy with being able to connect to their virtual desktops from anywhere in the complex with a single login. David Strom writes about networking and communications topics. You can reach him through his web site or follow him on Twitter @dstrom. Allen Bernard, Stacy Collett, Sophie Curtis and Tom Kaneshige contributed to this report.

CM

MY

CY

CMY

Corporate apps

Understand SSO/authentication issues before any VDI deployment

Incorporate all of your authentication improvements into a new VDI rollout. This is what The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD did last year when it wanted to combine a collection of technologies to support a

#7

should be everywhere.

And secure remote access should be easy for everyone.

People need to stay productive when theyre on-the-go. Thats why 97 of the Global 100 use Citrix XenApp for remote access without the risk. Easily access Windows apps and data from any device, anywhere and keep corporate data safe in the datacenter.

Visit www.citrix.com/xenapp today to learn more.

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2013 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 4988 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara, CA 95054 USA *All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

State of the market

VDI technology is better, faster and cheaper. Adoption may be slow, but VDI deployments can transform a business when planned carefully. By Allen Bernard

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o say that virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is making a comeback would be a bit of an overstatement. Of course, the technology has come a long way since the 1960s, when pretty much everyone using a computer worked in virtual sessions akin to terminal services such as Citrix Systems XenApp and Microsoft Windows Server Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH). Today, there are three main flavors of VDI, desktop virtualization or remote desktop: Terminal services, persistent desktops from VMware and Citrix who collectively own 90 percent of the market and non-persistent desktops that include a stored user profile. (The term VDI refers to all three flavors and their associated infrastructure.) Persistent desktops represent an image of the users PC stored in the data center. This is the Cadillac of VDI rollouts, meaning its the most expensive and infrastructureintensive, but its also the most desirable from a user point of view.

Non-persistent desktop images and terminal services, meanwhile, are temporary desktop sessions that, once terminated, return to a shared pool for someone else to use. The big difference between the two is that terminal services are aimed at workers such as call center representatives who dont need personalized desktop images or applications. Non-persistent sessions, on the other hand, can be stored with an associated user profile. When a user logs back in, he starts up where he left off and can customize his settings and applications. Its like a persistent image, only without the associated storage- and server-side overhead. Even though its not the same as a true one-toone experience, it comes with some of its own storage overhead, as changes must be saved over time, this makes the most sense for some adopters in terms of cost and user experience.

Why do I have to send all my reads and writes out to central storage to operate these big farms of VMs? Why cant I stash and operate those locally?
minal services was considered too infrastructure-intensive for everyday office and knowledge workers. But new technologies and falling prices have made VDI a viable and cost-effective alternative to putting workstations on every desktop, says Kevin Strohmeyer, director of product marketing for desktops and applications at Citrix. What weve seen over the last 12 to 18 months is massive in-line deduplication technologies, hostbased cache technology basically, the realization that, with so many desktop [virtual machines], youve got the same images running copy after copy after copy on the server, Strohmeyer says. Why do I have to send all my reads and writes out to central storage to operate these big farms of VMs? Why cant I stash and operate those locally? As for pricing, Strohmeyer says Citrix partner NetApp offers allin VDI storage setups for $35 per user. A few years ago, that number would have been as much as $500. Several advancements explain this dramatic price drop: NN Lower costs for archival and cache storage. NN Improved in-line data deduplication for desktop environments.

VDI deployment easier now that techs cheaper, faster

Until recently, anything but ter-

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NN Cheap Teradici zero clients and thin clients. NN PCoIP (VMware/Tersdici), HDX (Citrix) and Microsoft RemoteFX user datagram protocols for streaming graphics as bitmaps. NN Support of Android and iOS mobile operating systems. NN The Windows 7 desktop, which is more VDI-friendly than Windows XP. NN Thin provisioning of tiered hybrid storage infrastructures, using SSD for caching and HDD for archival storage. NN Fast caching appliances, from companies such as Alacritech, which also extend SSD life NN New end-to-end application performance monitoring tools from startups such as Aternity and AppNeta. NN Software vendors allowing VDI licenses for their products. NN High-performance graphics cards (GPUs) that take over the heavy lifting from server and client CPUs and push out 3-D graphics in a VM environment. Taken together, these technolo-

gies bring numerous benefits to VDI: Centralized management, patching and support; improved data security; robust DR/BC support, including shorter data recovery times; easier BYOD roll-out and management, and centralized document and data storage. But theres an additional cost to get started, says Gartners Mark Margevicius, vice president and research director for client computing. The way we see it, desktop virtualization is really a premium offering. While it has great applicability, its something customers have to be willing to spend more money on. This premium, which can approach 40 percent, comes from having to build the infrastructure to support all those virtualized desktops and, potentially, buy virtual desktop access licenses from Microsoft for each device. (Unless a company has Microsoft Software Assurance as part of its licensing, it can cost up to $100 per device to extend Windows beyond the workstation.) Some costs can be offset with converged infrastruc-

tures from vendors such as Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and VCE.

Niche VDI deployments still dominate

Even with renewed interest and increased adoption, the VDI market is puny, at no more than 4 percent of all workstation deployments, though Gartner projects this number to double by 2016. VDI is most often deployed in niche environments for a small subset of users or in places such as call centers. In addition, industries that put a premium on security and ease of use, including financial services and healthcare, are warming to VDI. So is manufacturing, Strohmeyer says, which sees VDI as a way to enable secure collaboration and version control of globally distributed design-side processes and intellectual property. Then again, companies that put a high value on flexibility have rolled out VDI to almost everyone. After piloting VDI in 2009, the health insurer Aetna has since rolled it out to 27,000 employees

and business partners. It wasnt about saving money, says Alan Pawlack, Aetnas head of network and distribution engineering. It was about flexibility to the business and reacting to the business shifts where they wanted to do business, starting up new offices or new extensions to the company. The recent advances detailed above let Aetna realize the benefits of its early investments, Pawlack says. So did negotiating better terms with Microsoft a process that gives many companies pause. The licensing stack is still artificial, and wed love to see that simplified, he says. The overhead of the bureaucratic process is not needed. Meanwhile, for American Electric Power, cost remains a secondary consideration in a post-Stuxnet world. The primary driver, then, is the capability to manage and secure data and systems centrally. This seemed to be a sound practice to provide us with the opportunity to manage our administrative costs and provide a solution that is compatible with the business

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needs, says Derek Myers, senior manager of infrastructure and complex services. However, a long-overdue desktop refresh and Windows 7 migration in early 2012 really drove the decision to adopt. Even then, the rollout was limited; to date, about 13 percent of the companys 23,000 employees use desktop virtualization. As that number increases over time, the utility should begin to see some return on their investment, Meyers says. When we looked at the number of units we realized we were not going to have an immediate cost savings on the first push. Its an up-front investment.

VDI users can live on cutting edge for a price

For Florida Atlantic Universitys College of Engineering and Computer Science, going the VDI route was part leading-edge thinking leaders wanted to complement a newly open LEED-certified building with green technology and part curiosity about what they could do with the latest round of

technology advancements. According to Mahesh Neelakanta, director of IT for FAUs engineering department, the thinking was, if we can do [VDI] for our office staff and our researchers, we can pretty much handle any type of staff in the university. Not only do FAUs 2,300 engineering student remotely access high-end engineering applications such as MathLab and AutoCAD remotely, Neelakanta also supports FAU branches in other parts of the state. Normally, such graphic-intensive programs are poor candidates for VDI. Aetna and American Electric Power roll out VDI for office workers and outsourcers who use the same set of applications with little user-level customization. FAU, on the other hand, can push 3D graphics to remote users by using PCoIP and zero-clients from Teradici, as well as server-side K1 and K2 graphics cards from nVidia, which virtualize and share GPU processing with all running VMs. For 3-D graphics, meanwhile, FAU relies on 18 10Gbps Lenovo blade

servers, 1Gbps nVidia K1 GPUs and ATI 3-D accelerator cards. Each server will eventually be able to support up to 16 concurrent users but at $16,000 per setup, they are costly. FAUs VDI implementation is just three months along, and Neelakanta says its about as close to cutting edge as you can get today. In fact, FAU presented its case study alongside Teradici at VMworld 2013.

be inhibitors. If you dont have a highly automated IT infrastructure with a CMMI score of 2 or 3, 10Gbps switches over fast LANs and broadband for remote workers, then attempting VDI is probably a bad idea. Even though its really good stuff, until those [issues] get solved, this remains a niche market, Gartners Margevicius says. Allen Bernard is a Columbus, Ohio-based writer who covers IT management and the integration of technology into the enterprise. You can reach him via email at writer182@hotmail.com or follow him on Twitter @allen_bernard1.

Storage, licensing, connectivity still stie VDI implementation

Even with those technological advancements, storage specifically, the gigabits of IOPS allocated to each user still rates as the aspect of VDI implementation area to figure out first, Neelakanta says. Without the right storage architecture to provide users with so much IOPS that they dont know their desktop is being hosted in the cloud, VDI suffers or fails altogether. Microsoft licensing will probably cause fits for most folks, too. Finally, complexity and connectivity can

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Leverage for BYOD

Can VDI help manage personal devices connecting to corporate networks? There are pros and cons to this approach, but early deployments look good. By Tom Kaneshige
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s many as 6,000 people tap into Seattle Childrens Hospitals network to check out confidential medical records and email. They might do so from all sorts of personal mobile devices and other roguish computers, ranging from personal Apple iPads and Android smartphones to (gasp!) Internet caf desktops. Even more alarming, there isnt watchdog software continuously tracking these devices and remotely wiping them when theyre lost or stolen. Theres no draconian Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) user policy blacklisting apps. Theres no telling employees that they must give up privacy rights. None of these security risks matter, because Seattle Childrens Hospital employs a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) that safely keeps corporate data on corporate servers, not on client devices. Thats the beauty of my BYOD strategy, says CIO Wes Wright. It should be obvious by now that this isnt your run-of-the-mill BYOD story. In fact, Seattle Childrens Hos-

pitals approach hints at something altogether more fascinating: BYOD leading a resurgence of virtual desktops, a once-promising technology that has largely fallen on the heap of failure. Virtual desktops come in many flavors and configurations, but basically the technology allows servers to run virtualized Windows desktop sessions accessible via a simple Web browser. From an IT perspective, this makes the client device largely irrelevant. Sounds great for BYOD, right? I think the whole BYOD thing really has kick-started VDI, Wright says.

improvements have solved two of the technologys biggest hurdles, according to a newly released free ebook entitled The New VDI Reality, an update to The VDI Delusion. Now BYOD is breathing new life into the virtual desktop. The number one driver for investment in client virtualization, according to our surveys in the end of 2012, is supporting work from anywhere so flexible work styles, says David Johnson, principal analyst at Forrester Research, which he writes about in a blog post. In 2011, it was trying to increase manageability and lower costs. Its a significant change.

Virtual desktops: rise, fall and rise again

A few years ago, the virtual desktop fell in stunning fashion. Virtual desktop projects failed due to cost overruns, complexity and a poor user experience. Some of those technical challenges have since been addressed. The introduction of storage technology to support persistent, one-to-one disk images and GPU-based graphics

Can Windows software run on iPads?

While BYOD drives a resurgence in the virtual desktop, its important to note that some of virtual desktop technologys failings still exist and are even magnified in the brave new world of BYOD. Chief among them: Virtualized mouse-and-keyboarddriven Windows desktop software renders poorly on new-fangled touch-screen tablets.

To understand the problem, you need only to look at the popular Windows-based Cerner EMR (electronic medical record) software that Seattle Childrens Hospital relies on. For starters, clinicians had complained to Wright that a virtualized session of the desktop version of Cerner was unwieldy on the iPads native Safari browser. The Cerner app touch-enabled or not simply doesnt work well on a small tablet form factor. Theres just too much information to view. Then there is Cerner itself trying to enter the mobile game. The software company has been focused on developing a native iOS app instead of a mobile Web-based version, which flies in the face of the desktop virtualization model. In order to get [the native app] to play, Im told that I have to register each device to be able to get to the Cerner server, Wright says. That goes against my BYOD and virtualization strategy. I dont want to be keeping track of somebodys personally owned equipment. Instead, Wright has been work-

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ing closely with Microsoft engineers and a software company called VitalHub to basically port Windows desktop software to touch-friendly Windows 8 so that it could be served up in a virtualized environment to iPads. The endgoal is to have a touch-enabled, tablet-sized version of Cerner running on the iPads Safari browser. Windows 8 is the only touchenabled OS that you can really virtualize, Wright says. Fortunately for Wright, Seattle Childrens Hospitals clinicians didnt pound on his door demanding access to the Cerner native iOS app on their iPads. One of the reasons is that clinicians use the Cerner app mostly at the hospital where theres a Windows machine with a large monitor around every corner. This keeps them from reaching for an iPad, Wright says.

Microsofts monkey wrench

Even more confusing is Microsofts role in all of this. Forresters Johnson advises CIOs to carefully consider the future of Windows desktop applications for

their systems of record before making the jump to virtual desktops. If a CIO anticipates a long-term dependency on the Windows desktop say, five years and beyond then he might want to consider one of a half-dozen virtual desktop solutions. For most large organizations, virtualizing Windows applications to support BYOD would be very likely a medium to long-term solution, Johnson says. The problem is that Microsoft seems to be moving away from virtual desktops and toward a new mobile application model, thus diminishing the need for traditional desktop software. In addition, Johnson points out that Microsoft is putting little marketing resources behind Microsoft VDI and Client Hyper-V. We think the Windows desktop will be increasingly used for a subset of all the work that people do, Johnson says.

Virtual desktops face BYOD security challenges

The virtual desktop also isnt a

panacea for BYODs security woes. The reality is that some employees will need to download corporate data on their BYOD tablets or phones and work offline instead of always having to fire up an online virtual session. Seattle Childrens Hospitals solution to this problem is an Outlook plug-in from Accellion, a mobile file-sharing software vendor. Security-cleared employees can use Accellion to attach a file and send it fully encrypted to a home email address. Wright cant wipe BYOD computers, so instead he leans on user agreements and checks Accellion logs to make sure those files are being handled properly. For some CIOs, that might not be good enough. If CIOs think desktop virtualization gets them out of the BYOD security challenge, Johnson says, theyre sorely mistaken. Employees accessing, say, an EMR system from a personal iPad via a virtualization session, or even a terminal services session, doesnt absolve them from an auditors requirements. The auditor will still expect the

CIO to have some control over the iPad, Johnson says. It might be as simple as enforcing a passcode or detecting whether or not the device is jailbroken and then denying access if it is. Nevertheless, Wright says he fields weekly calls from peers who want to know if VDI can help them make sense of the BYOD trend thats stampeding toward them. After all, corralling personal devices using a mishmash of mobile device management software, user policies, geo-fencing and other emerging mobile tools is a Herculean task. I think its a way for IT to get out of having to control personal devices, a way to give the user the information without having to worry about the device, Wright says, adding, Its really turned into an elegant solution for BYOD. Tom Kaneshige covers Apple, BYOD and Consumerization of IT for CIO.com. Follow him on Twitter @kaneshige.

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Trailblazers
Companies take bold steps into desktop virtualization as benets begin to outweigh challenges. Learn how VDI technology is being deployed in mission-critical workows. By Stacy Collett

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t the new Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, the maxim do no harm extends beyond caregivers to members of the technology team, especially when they undertake a sweeping desktop virtualization project that could impact the daily routine of up to 9,000 clinicians. If were going to take on technology change inside a critical care setting, and with systems that serve our sickest patients, weve got to have a well-thought-out plan for making sure it works and that theres backup, says Stephen Sears, director of cloud and virtualization services at the 1.6 million-squarefoot hospital.

The sheer physical size of the new hospital meant clinicians would need to be more mobile and rely more heavily on wireless computing. In addition, caregivers were adopting a new clinical documentation system, and Sears knew that they would be spending much more time on desktops and mobile devices. So the IT team proceeded cautiously with one of the largest desktop virtualization projects of its kind one that combined VMwares View desktop virtualization product, the hospitals identity management program, proximity card technology and single-sign-on capabilities. While the initial costs were comparable to the costs asso-

ciated with implementation of full desktops, the improvements that the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) promised to yield in clinicians mobility and workflow and ultimately patient care solidified the projects business value. The level of enthusiasm around us giving them a portable desktop was kind of crazy. It felt like I was giving out stuff at an Oprah show, Sears recalls. When he first showed a group of child life specialists how they could take notebooks from session to session and interact with applications in the data center, they were amazed, he says. We were real heroes. While desktop virtualization provides many benefits, until

The level of enthusiasm around us giving them a portable desktop was kind of crazy. It felt like I was giving out stuff at an Oprah show.
Stephen Sears, director of cloud and virtualization services, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore


recently, it has also come with concerns about elusive ROI, scalability and storage headaches, desktop latency and slow adoption by skittish users. But today many companies are giving virtual desktops a try anyway as workers demand more mobility and IT departments seek easier desktop management. Companies with successful VDI implementations have worked through the obstacles and report happy, more mobile and productive users, better security, fewer IT headaches related to maintenance and repairs, and minimal new expenses. Whats more, many companies that move to virtual desktops already have virtualized server environments, meaning they have the storage, platforms and licenses necessary to make the VDI implementation fast and relatively inexpensive. I think theyve gotten a little smarter about how they deploy desktop virtualization, says Dick Csaplar, an analyst at Boston-based Aberdeen Group. They dont look at it as something that they spread evenly across the whole organiza-

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DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT dEsKTOP VIRTUALIZATION

tion. I think theyre much smarter at targeting user groups and use cases, and theyre not looking at it as a panacea like server virtualization. There are still challenges associated with desktop virtualization. In some cases, its not initially cheaper than a full desktop PC environment. Moreover, virtual systems may require a lot of storage, and its important to ensure that virtual systems dont put undue demands on IT resources at certain times. But those who have embraced desktop virtualization say the benefits outweigh the challenges. I think the flexibility of allowing [users] to decide where and how they do business is invaluable, says Michael Fergang, vice president and CIO at The Grange Mutual Casualty Group, which deployed about 150 virtual desktops in its training and IT quality assurance departments. At audio communications manufacturer Plantronics in Santa Cruz, Calif., about a quarter of the 1,700 knowledge workers connect iPads to a virtual desktop infrastructure.

They want to be able to do their work whether on the road or here at headquarters, and [they want to] use apps that may not be supported on [mobile] platforms, such as an expense report or a time management tool, says CIO Tom Gill. When the first iPads began trickling in, Gills team created a virtual desktop platform that gave users access to applications that typically dont work well on the devices, such as Java. A second platform was also created to access a few business intelligence apps. We want to be proactive, Gill says. Instead of saying no [to workers using their own devices], lets figure out exactly what we can do. The company had adopted virtual servers and SANs years earlier, which made the $50,000 investment on a virtual desktop platform really very minimal for a company of our size, Gill adds. IT consulting firm Digital Intelligence Systems (DISYS) in McLean, Va., is migrating its 500 U.S. employees to virtual desktops to standardize processes and reduce the num-

Added advantage
VIRTUAL DESKTOPS TO THE RESCUE

esktop virtualization can save the day in a crisis. At Iowa Workforce Development, while upgrading more than 150 desktops from Windows XP to Windows 7, a temporary staffer accidentally dragged a folder for all of the agencys PCs into the reimaging folder, and machines all across the state started to undergo the reimaging process. When we saw what was happening we immediately shut it down, but we

had affected more than 150 machines at that point, CIO Gary Bateman recalls. The machines were inoperable at that time. We knew it would take days and possibly weeks to get those back online. Instead, Bateman decided to create virtual desktops out of the affected machines by running an Ubuntu operating system on a Linux kernel and adding a VMware View client that hooks to the virtual desktop. We were able to get all 150 machines up and running in probably two to three hours, he says.

i St O c K p H O t O 

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DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT dEsKTOP VIRTUALIZATION

ber of tools its workers use. The firm issues VDI instances to all new employees, as well as to workers whose PCs are up for refresh. But employees also have the option of using their own devices at work and will be reimbursed for a portion of the costs, depending on their business function. Or they can receive a stipend to buy the device of their choice. The goal is to make [using technology] simple, says IT director Collin Hachwi. We dont want them bypassing us. We dont want to be viewed as a barrier to anything. We want to support their workflow and their day-to-day operations.

Trial and error

Iowa Workforce Development has used virtual desktops for three years at its Des Moines headquarters and at 19 offices statewide. More than 75% of its 650 employees use VMware View on thin clients for daily operations. And members of the public access state employment services via virtual desktops at public locations such

as libraries. CIO Gary Bateman says desktop virtualization helped the agency streamline operations, improve services to the public and save money on maintenance and upgrades. But that wasnt always the case. When the agency first rolled out virtual technology, the systems ran on old equipment. The servers and SANs were not up to par, Bateman recalls. Desktops and servers ran slow, he says, and people got a bad taste in their mouth. We really had to overcome that and prove to people that they would run correctly. Once the agency moved to NetApp SANs with solidstate disk drives, floating virtual desktops, which are newly created from a master template each time a user signs on, were created more quickly. People loved them, he says. Virtual desktops were so successful that when the state was faced with closing 16 of its 35 unemployment offices, Bateman launched 3,000 virtual desktops at 500 public locations to give resi-

dents many of the same services they would have received at those offices all with no new investment on the back end, since servers, software and licenses were already in place. Looking ahead, Iowa faces a consolidation mandate, and the data of all agencies will be combined into a couple of data centers, Bateman explains. As we move all of our equipment into a common data center, were looking into how to use that VDI for other agencies, as well.

Pros and cons

VIRTUAL DESKTOP BENEFITS...
43% Quicker application installation 41% Reduced desktop support 30% Improved control of desktops 24% Support for at-home workers

Solving storage and speed issues

Some early adopters found that virtual desktops required too much storage, especially when completely re-creating each desktop on the back end. Storage space quickly ran out, and systems slowed to a crawl when the desktops needed upgrades or virus patches. That problem has largely been solved with better time management and by replacing static desktops with floating virtual desktops.

...AND CHALLENGES
46% Software licensing terms 37% Uncertain ROI 33% Lack of budget 32% End-user acceptance
Source: Aberdeen Group survey with 121 respondents; November 2012

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DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT dEsKTOP VIRTUALIZATION

In 2011, when DISYS piloted virtual desktops for 45 days with 30 employees, the firm was stunned by how much data users had stored on their desktops. Users with 300GB drives had filled up 250 gigs, Hachwi recalls. We had not allocated that to every user it was more of a 30GB size limit. The pilot group had to cull through data and decide what would be relegated to a private cloud. That was a very strenuous process, he adds. It took some people longer to get onto VDI because of it. DISYS also went with floating desktops, where sessions are destroyed every time a user signs out and rebuilt when he signs back in, with data and preferences in place. It made the most sense for us. It also kept the overall size of the required infrastructure very low, Hachwi says. With a single template for creating virtual desktops, the upgrades and virus patches are carried out at one time. And because desktop sessions are destroyed, viruses are less likely to spread throughout the organization.

Managing I/O issues is also critical to a smooth user experience. Virtual desktops are volatile, and you really have to have your arms around that and understand that youre going to have to plan for that volatility such as from a resource consumption standpoint, says Adam Wilson, enterprise applications supervisor at The Grange Mutual Casualty Group. I might have one user that runs reports at certain times a month. Theyre sharing resources with other folks, so they can affect [overall performance], Wilson says. Or if 500 people sit down at 8 a.m. to log in, thats a completely different scenario on a regular desktop versus a virtual desktop. You have to architect around those scenarios.

Safety nets
VDI setups also give IT departments more control over data. At DISYS, weve had instances where our sales guys lost their laptops, which left sensitive data vulnerable, Hachwi says. Now, all the data resides in the data center, so if they lose or break the device, they just

sign in to something else. Its definitely a fail-safe for us, he says. At Johns Hopkins Hospital, where speed and accuracy can be a matter of life and death, Sears made sure there was a backup option for clinicians systems. They can always get to the old apps by walking up to a [PC at a] clinical workstation, Sears says. Its not hard to maintain the old system, and clinicians are not confused when switching back and forth between systems. Today, about 5,000 clinicians use virtual desktops daily. Others prefer the old system. And some such as an ICU nurse who spends most of the day with one patient, for example just dont need VDI. We dont force people to do any one thing, he says. They have options. Stacy Collett is a Computerworld contributing writer. You can reach her at stcollett@comcast.net.

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How to start
A typical VDI project has many parts. Heres an implementation checklist to get you started. By David Strom
What kinds of clients will you use? Your choices are one of the many specialty-built zero-footprint clients, ordinary PCs that you can reuse from your existing inventory or mobile devices such as tablets. Dont forget about buying new monitors as well. What will your network storage choices be? Typically, many installations deploy some kind of storage area network, but there are many ways to configure these, including mixing SANs with solidstate adapters to improve disk performance or for caching. Traditional disks are used for archival storage. Also include the cost of any storage management software solutions. Will you need a higherpowered graphics card? For some applications, it makes sense to purchase graphics cards with more processing power or more on-board memory to cope with the increased graphics burden that a virtualized application places upon a client system. Which network transfer protocols will you employ? The more popular ones are PCoIP (VMware/ Teradici), HDX (Citrix) and Microsoft RemoteFX.All three have ways to more efficiently move graphics as bitmaps across an Ethernet network. What will the cost of any new data center infrastructure be? Your VDI solution may require boosting the performance of existing network routers or switches to handle the higher network traffic generated from the virtual desktops. You might want to examine end-to-end application performance monitoring tools from startups such as Aternity and AppNeta to figure out exactly what you will need as your VDI population increases. You might also want to consider moving to one of the converged network/storage/virtualization infrastructures from vendors such as Cisco Systems, Dell, IBM or Hewlett-Packard. Do you need desktop virtualization software? It seems obvious, but it still needs to be part of the calculation. What about image management software? Each of the major VDI vendors, along with numerous third parties, offers tools to make the deployment of different custom desktop images more manageable. Will you need to adjust software licenses including desktop OS? You may have to change your current enterprise agreement or purchase licenses applicable to virtual desktops. Also, you might use your VDI project to migrate your last existing Windows XP users to a more modern OS such as Windows 7 or 8, both of which are more VDIfriendly. David Strom writes about networking and communications topics. You can reach him through his web site or follow him on Twitter @dstrom.and speaks

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REsOURCEs

Falling cost of Desktop Virtualization. What that means for you.

See how changing cost factors in every part of the desktop virtualization architecture make it more affordable than ever.

Securing Android, iOS and Windows Tablets & Smartphones

Android, iOS and Windows tablets and smartphones play an increasing role in enterprise computing, providing new flexibility and mobility for workers and ITbut create new challenges around security. Learn how to address these issues effectively with BYOD. Download the white paper to learn more.

Four Customers Who Never Have to Refresh Their PCs Again

Learn how four companies turned their annual PC refresh budget into cutting-edge solutions that deliver greater mobility and security.

IDC Report: Mobile Devices - The New Thin Clients

Read this IDC report and get essential guidance for understanding the role thin clients plus virtual desktops play in the enterprise today.

Five Customers Deliver Virtual Desktops and Apps to Empower a Modern Workforce
Learn how Citrix solutions helped 5 companies realize the full value of desktop virtualization through a project-byproject approach based on key business priorities.

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