OS Streaming VDI sessions - Is it important to VDI

[vdinut]

I have seen many posting where members ask how to solve a problem with VDI and others answer to take a look at Ardence. But, there is not to much dialog coming back about this solution. I am trying to understand the importance and need of the solution.

For those not familiar with how it plays in VDI, let me give a brief description. Ardence (owned by Citrix), streams OS's in real time to bare metal or virtualized desktops and servers. The image is shared, so many desktops can boot of the one image. The hard disk calls are re-directed to a network share of the OS and for all intensive purposes, the hardware or virtualized hardware does not know it does not have a local hard drive.

So how does this play in VDI? In VDI, you set up a ESX server with multiple virtualized desktops prepared to PXE boot. When a user logs in or if it is pre-provisioned by a broker, the XP OS boots up in real time. This is actually a Vdisk from Ardence, not a VMDK. It will boot up in the expected time you would see if you had a normal hard drive locally and will act as you would expect. It is not screen scraping, but actually running utilizing the full power of the local system, in this case, the ESX server.

How it can help.

1. Would only need 1 or a few images for 1000s of users. Today's scenario for 1000 users utilizing a 10GB VMDK would require 10TB of storage. Under Ardence, probably less than 100GB total. This does not include user storage which would be the same under both scenarios.

2. Patch Management would happen on 1 or a few images. You boot up a VDI desktop in administrator mode, install the application from CD. Immediately available to all 1000 desktops.

3. OS management would happen on 1 or a few images. you boot up a VDI desktop, let it grab MS, Virus, etc updates and then it is immediately available to all 1000 desktops.

4. Upgrading an OS would require creating 1 Vista image. Put on Server. When everyone reboots, they have Vista.

So, no large SAN, no provisioning, no cloning, etc. Simplified management.

My question is, how important is this? Where are they downsides?

Also, I have noticed that I have not seen much about DR. If you needed 10TB to hold you images, would you need a co-location with the equal amount of space. Thereby, doubling the cost of SAN storage. Under Ardence, you would only replicate the <100GB of images.

I have seen comments on Ardence pricing. $250 a seat list. If this is the obstacle, where should pricing be for the value it is bringing in reduced SAN storage and vastly improved management.

Look forward to a good dialogue on this.

[mreferre]

>I have seen comments on Ardence pricing. $250 a seat list. If this is the

>obstacle, where should pricing be for the value it is bringing in reduced

>SAN storage and vastly improved management.

This is not the obstacle .... this is THE obstacle. You can try to sell me a Ferrari (and I am sure you can convince me it's an excellent car) but I just don't have the money to buy it.

Every single VDI ecosystem provider seems to be tuning their hw/software prices just below the cost of a standard PC most customers are buying .... without realizing that in order to create a complete VDI solution you have to SUM up all these pieces and all of a sudden you get into the 2000$ per user space ..... which is a joke ..... really.

250$ is, to me, just about right for a Server install. If you want to be successfull with Ardence for VDI you need to take into account that desktops is all about volumes ........ and volumes means low price. Honestly you can't charge for a client technology the same that you would charge for a server technology.

I don't want to give you a number ....... but 250$ is, to me at least, order of magnitude higher than what (most) customers would be ready to pay for this (WONDERFUL I have to say) technology.

My two cents.

Massimo.

[sgrinker]

It's also worth mentioning that both NeoWare and Wyse have and are further developing similar technology. Now I can't speak from personal experience on any of the 3 (Ardence, Wyse, Neoware) other than what I've been told or read so far, so I'm not even going to begin to weigh in on this one. I do have to agree with Massimo that the price point definitely is on the high side when looking at the client side. With time though, I'd hope that they get the price down. It's important to note that Citrix acquired them not too long ago in the grand scheme, and I'm sure that they are still working out the plan for this technology in the future.

[admin]

Ardence does bring the value of reducing the cost of storage. It is very appropriate for pooling. One of the challenges or areas that needs to develop in order to add move value to VDI long term is persistence. They will not have that until 2008.

[mreferre · Accepted solution]

I agree.

As per:

Ardence does bring the value of reducing the cost of storage

It is to be noticed however that cost of storage is almost irrelevant compared to the cost of Ardence. Their marketing usually play with big numbers (i.e. "you can save 10TB of storage etc etc") but when you do the math and try to calculate how much you would spend (today) for low-class 10TB of storage Vs how much you would spend in Ardence licenses to avoid using 10TB of storage ..... that is when fun begins.

Easy management is a positive attribute of Ardence Vs standard storage but again 250$ per vm is way too much.

Massimo.

[admin]

Very good point. I forgot to mention the list price of $250. I tend to forget the price as I view it as something that should be part of a solution i.e. just one of many ways to "Deliver" the desktop experience. At that price + standard discounts I am sure it is attractive to some as a way to do diskless PC's

[devzero]

250$ per vm is way too much

i like thin client computing and i also like the VDI concept - but i think, even 250$ for a >thin client< is way too much.

you can get a whole pc for 199$ - so i really wonder, how to argue to buy thin clients instead. ok - TCO "should" be better, but with VDI, you need a fat server infrastructure and you need expensive ESX licenses to drive the thin clients.

there is the 39$ dvd player - there is the 100$ laptop (soon) - but where is the 99$ thin client ?

making cheaper thin clients would give greater success to thin client computing (and also VDI)

regarding OS/appplication streaming: from my personal point of view - i think it is technically interesting thing, but conceptually nonsense, especially when it`s licensed per client. maybe it`s too early to give a comment, because i don`t know enough about this technology - but lets wait some time and take a look how this technology evolves and gets adapted....

[Kadish]

(Ardence Employee) - the following statement is my personal opinion

The Ardence customers I work with are buying Ardence Data Center addition to reduce storage for virtual servers that are already deployed.

I’m curious why there isn’t more public discussion about this?

[Kadish]

Dupe

[mreferre]

>i like thin client computing and i also like the VDI concept - but i think,

>even 250$ for a >thin client< is way too much.

I completely agree.

Massimo.

[admin]

I think you will start to see sub 100 dollar thin clients this year. First generation might not give you all the options you are seeking but, it is clear the thin client market is moving too low cost task based designs. Just my opinion but, the reason you have not seen them before is most the players that are in the thin client market have business models that were based on you upgrading every three years like a PC. Or that nickel and dimed you with add-on's. For years there was only one device in the market that shipped standard with a five year warranty

I agree that the cost of OS streaming is too high. It clearly is priced for a server market and not a desktop volume market. Most people are willing to pay 250 extra dollars to improve the management of their Citrix farms though. As with all things when Ardence was the only option they could set the price and really not worry about it. Now with Wyse, Neoware and others developing offerings I am sure a price shift will occur. I do believe that as things move closer to the tipping point, and organizations look closer at SBC some if not a high percentage will re-purpose their PC's using a streaming technology or thin OS, as they depreciate them and will blend in thin clients along the way assuming the thin clients continue to develop more feature functionality, protocols get better and prices drop.

[david_marshall]

I agree about the per seat licensing cost as well. Is there an enterprise license for a larger organization to scale this thing out more? If the price per seat stays the same, I don't see this thing taking hold as quickly. Don't get me wrong, I think the technology is fantastic and much needed. There are a lot of "hidden" costs or soft costs to take into consideration as well. Desktop management, image management, etc. can be quite costly, and this solution provides an answer to that problem. Again, I agree with Massimo about the client per seat pricing however.

The technology will continue to advance, hopefully get cheaper, along with price drops on thin client devices as more people enter the market offering a solution.

How does the pricing from an OS vendor relate? If 1000 people are using the same image, is it a single OS license cost? That would reduce client OS licensing costs if true, however, I can't see the folks at Redmond applauding this very much.

[mreferre]

I can't see the folks at Redmond applauding this very much.

Applauding ? They are waiting for people doing this to bring them to court (instead of them always being BROUGHT to court by someone......)

Even worse than that is that you need standard XP licenses (i.e. not OEM licenses as you would use on desktops). This of course adds and adds and adds the cost of this solution (this is a general VDI issue .... not strictly related to the use of Ardence but the 250$ "tip" makes things even more ridicolous.....).

Massimo.

[vdinut]

Answers on Microsoft licensing: It's a start!

Microsoft announced two new Windows Vista licensing options last week that could have big implications for how customers buy, deploy, and manage the Windows client operating system. By enabling its largest customers to run Windows Vista centrally on servers and stream Vista images, applications, and data down to thin clients and PCs, the company hopes to simplify its customers' IT architectures, eliminate configuration and security headaches, and start the ball rolling toward a subscription-based Windows revenue model.

Microsoft quietly introduced two new licensing options last week at the Microsoft Management Summit 2007 conference in San Diego, California. The first option gives users the right to run Windows Vista Enterprise Edition on "diskless PCs," or thin clients. The second option, called Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktops, or VECD, gives customers the option to run Windows, applications, and data in virtual machines running on centralized servers. Both new licensing options are available only to Software Assurance customers, which tend to be the largest IT shops. Previously, there was no clear way to license Windows when parts of the operating system reside on different machines.

Full article at: http://www.itjungle.com/two/two040407-story01.htm

[mreferre]

Correct. They are starting to do something .....

Massimo.

[TomHowarth]

now that is a significant, step in the right direction