Greg Porter, MCITP: EA, Cal Poly

October 17, 2010

What is a desktop virtualization?

Depends on the marketing droid you are talking to theres a lot of hype.
Desktop virtualization separates a desktop environment from a physical machine using a clientserver model of computing. The model stores the resulting "virtualized" desktop on a remote central server thus, when users work from their remote desktop client, all of the programs, applications, processes, and data used are kept and run centrally. (Wikipedia)

This isnt new

This was the ORIGINAL model of computing - a terminal (character based display device) attached to a remote server X Windows (Unix) based solutions for doing this have been around for 20+ years

Why the hype now?

Desktops are out of control, users load and run whatever they like on their workstations
Hard to support, no standard software

Hard to manage configuration, no telling

whats installed Risk of data loss, company data not safe

Businesses need to prove compliance with IT security policies

Shared Services

Many users share one machine

A user can run away with RAM or CPU
Different users may need different apps that

conflict with each other

Can be relatively simple to deploy Sun Global Desktop, Citrix XenApp, Windows Terminal Services

Shared Services (a la Terminal Services, XenApp)

Desktop Virtualization

Similar to shared services but:

Each user gets their own virtual machine
Machines can be spawned on demand from

a golden image Desktop controller server manages user connections, VM power states, load balancing Users CAN share a machine if appropriate

Citrix XenDesktop, VMware View

Desktop Virtualization

Production Example Vmware View

Achilles has a heel

All of these schemes require a display device you need a desktop to see your desktop Business would like to reuse their existing PCs until they die repurposed as thin clients

If you reuse PCs, now you have to manage the

desktop machines you already have PLUS the virtualization infrastructure

End users in general dont like the idea of thin clients you are taking their machine away

You could re-use your PCs

Make and deploy a stripped down OS image

Bare minimum Windows + proper client

software (ICA client for Citrix, View client for VMware)

Defer replacement for now, save a little money in the short term Double the work, you have to manage the real workstations, plus the virtual workstations

You could buy actual thin clients A couple of hundred dollars a piece, not

that much cheaper than an entry level workstation Run their OS from firmware, no moving parts Most have some firmware update management scheme Easy to manage than repurposed PCs Get the right one for your solution
Make sure the ones you buy natively connect to

your solution. ICA clients for Citrix, View clients for VMware, etc.

Lessons Learned

Vendors wildly overstate the savings Dramatically increases complexity on the server side, especially if business has little existing experience with virtualization End users typically hate thin clients
To be accepted, the new solution has to be dramatically

better than the old desktops Someone suggested stuffing the thin clients into an empty desktop case

Once they use it, end users *REALLY* like having their desktops available from anywhere They also *REALLY* like persistent state, where they can disconnect, then reconnect, and continue where they left off (a la Session Broker, etc.)

Heres something truly new On Demand Desktop Streaming

Originally made by Ardence, licensed by Dell (ODDS), now part of Citrix XenDesktop (Citrix Provisioning Server) Boot many PCs from one central image PCs dont need a hard drive Can display a menu of boot images to pick from - Linux, Windows, etc. You dont need a desktop to see a desktop Ardence demonstration Head to head with SATA at Univ. of Neb.

2010 by Gregory L. Porter, glporter@calpoly.edu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA