Leased VM solution using View?

[kenderkin]

we would like to setup racks of servers for small businesses to "lease" virtual pc's. reducing their cost etc

I want to know if you can do this with ESX and View and mowtly how would you set it up. I am a VM noob, other than ESXi in our lab for test networks i dont know much.

it would be awesome to get some community input based on real world exerience with remote offices, mobile users etc.

thanks!

kenderkin

[admin]

Hi there,

yes this works from a technical perspective. You have to take care, that the licensing with VMware, Microsoft etc. is ok!

From the technical View, you will need ESX, vCenter and View.

The infrastructure depends on what you exactly want to do ...

• should the users all be in one domain?

• How does the application portfolio look like?

• do you want to have redundant server?

• how do they access the desktops (e.g. over the Internet)?

Load of question .. and more to be answered... you should speak to a VMware View partner or a VMware rep to discuss details on that ...

Thanks,

Christoph

[kenderkin]

Christoph

thanks for the quick reply! I should have been more detailed.

Each SMB client will have their own domain. The overall idea is to have a cookie cutter SBS 2k3 or 8 DC, somekindof gateway device like Untangle, Workstations etc for each client on na seperate network from all other clients. This can then be replicated ad nauseum and all we have to do is move data, configure specific apps per client etc.

Target network size here is between 5-50 workstations

For our hardware i was looking at going all Dell blades with their 48TB SAN and scaling up from there as we add more and more clients. Downside is just to get started the hardware costs are about $150k!! So funding problems aside do you have oterh suggestions for hardware? I know SAN is prob going to be my biggest expense.

Also I ahve a questions about bandwidth requirements per client. I have heard everything from 10kbps to 150kbps per client. So we have done some testing here with single clients and averaged about 30k per client using RDP. So scaling this up to 1000 endpoints means 30Mbps or more both ways. We are goping to colo with an ISP her ein our town.

Is there another lighter weight protocol to use?

Also how are people handling USB peripherals etc on the thin client side? I can use 3rd party application to map the USB stuff to the server so the end user has a similar experience to a regular PC but maybe someone has a better idea.

I did speak to VMware rep and they were singularly unhelpful. I can read the sales platitudes online myself but for help in design they didnt give me alot of information.

I know that is alot of questions but i think if we can get this thing off the ground that this model can be repeated ad nauseum and eventually no end user will actually have a PC! Since I am increedibly lazy and hate leaving my comfy chair to work this would be great for me

thanks againfor the help

kenderkin

[DutchFrank]

Hi Kenderkin,

We currently have a similar product offering (using Terminal Services to SMB 3-25) and are looking at extending the service with Virtual (offline) desktops (XP/Vista). We have developed a concept where all customers are within the same domain, but are only able to see their own resources. This heavily reduces the cost and time to setup a new customer (with for example 15 users).

From our experience the main problem in providing the service is internet latency. Current users are trying to make use of multimedia, which isn't great over the internet.

The setup that I would currently recommend is using Open-E as a central storage device and supermicro host servers. This will reduce your cost to max. 50K for 1000 desktops and you would still have good performance and high availibility options (Clustered storage and hosts). Use 15K SAS for your ESX datastores and 10K SATA for your RAW volumes (fileservers, archive servers). The option to replicate your storage in-sync to another storage device makes it that in the event of a storage/location fall-out your customers can continue to work by connecting to another location (automatically or manual).

Send me an e-mail if you would like to discus the technical details some more.

Cheers, Frank