Virtual Desktop Blog

RE: Sorry guys, the bandwagon is full....

king@it.ibm.com — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 09:45:15 GMT

Stephan,

I agree.... in fact we are just at the beginning with this: both from a technology perspective (I agree on this with "Virtual Guru" as well) as well as from a deployment model perspective if you will. There is an interesting idea/trend floating around at this point regarding providing "desktops as a service". So instead of letting 1000 organizations do it with 1000 "casual" engineers ("casual" means that they can't possibly focus on doing it well because it's a fraction of what they need to do / know for their own organizations) you might want to have 10 senior VDI engineers design/setup/manage it for you from a central location (actual VDI hardware location wouldn't matter).

I am not saying this is going to certainly be the future as I don't have a crystal ball to look into (I wish I had ... I'd be in Vegas at this point.... not here posting these sort of stuff.... ) but if you think about it it does make sense, both from a provider perspective (it's good new business) and for the 1000 organizations that don't have to reinvent the wheel every time with limited experience and knowledge.

My 2 (euro - formerly Lira) cents.

Massimo.

RE: Sorry guys, the bandwagon is full....

Virtual guru — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 05:20:35 GMT

All the virtual desktop vendors (including Vmware) recommend existing tools for application and license management. This is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Currently all these solutions move the problems of desktop management from physical desktops to data center. To benefit from these technologies we need a new way of managing applications and data so that when each user logs in OS (vm image), applications and user data can be assembled on-demand.

Currently it is one user one image proposition which is not cost effective. We should move towards a one image mutiple user scenario to get any kind of cost effectiveness in storage, backup and other services.

RE: Sorry guys, the bandwagon is full....

Stephan — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:26:39 GMT

I agree with most points in the blog post, except for the fact that in its current incarnation as envisioned by VMware and others it is new. Unless Germany is on a moon around Jupiter. I know of no company that has done the jump to full VDI with full-featured thin clients, desktop broker, HA/DRS on a blade system and a finally good storage concept. Our company has been doing 1:1 "VDI" since the days of GSX server but in my view this is not VDI because the 'I' in VDI is all bone no flesh.

Massimo: VDI is as much a cash cow as is knowledge of other datacenter solutions. A real VDI solution requires a pretty dense "hot spot" of skills in many fields within a small group of maybe 3-5 people to make it all work in time and on budget. Not many shops can or will do it, big shops like IBM GS will eat the cake they bake so in my view only a fraction will do it right and actually save the customer some money.

My 2 euro cents.
Stephan

RE: Sorry guys, the bandwagon is full....

king@it.ibm.com — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:09:47 GMT

I have to agree with your comments...

I have heard at VMworld 2007 that they wanted to be in the VDI market and I had the same wonder you had .... how can they do that if they don't support XP? In fact what they want you to do is to use a WIndows Server dedicated (i.e. not TS shared) VE (Virtual Environment) for every user. The only advantage I see here is that they might have less overhead running a VE than you might have running a VM but the limitations are clear. Two above all in my opinion:

no Windows desktop OS support (hence all the problems of application certifications / standard desktop deployments etc etc ..)
no self-containment (especially for dedicated VDI desktops)

I have never been a fan of OS virtualization ..... obviously I can't be a fan of it for VDI .... at least the way it is right now. But hey ... VDI appears to be the next cash cow for the vendors (VMware included) so no matter what .... they want to get onto THAT wagon .....

My 2 cents.

Massimo.