Comments on: VDI: Very Disappointed Indeed

By: bstaples

bstaples — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Well done! Kenneth’s article phrases, “Eat your own dog food!” in much more genial language.

By: sectorcj

sectorcj — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Very interesting article. I think the key with VDI is that it can be very usefull in the right situation such as remote working or in an R&D type environment where users need a short term sandbox to play in. But as yet there is no substitute for local desktops when it comes to flexibility and performance, it will be interesting to see where things go from here.

By: stiiixy

stiiixy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

G’day Ken. I heard Sun rolled out their own VDI internally recently. I’m sure a call to one of the local offices could confirm or refute that.

By: geekatcmu

geekatcmu — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I'm very much a "right tool for the job" person. I'm mostly all about Unix in the data center and Windows on the desktop, with lots and lots of virtualization in the mix. Thus far, I've found only two places where VDI is going to be useful to us:
1) targeted application environments
2) multi-os clusters

As an example of one above, we have 4 people who need to use an application that is *only* supported with an insanely configured VPN. We can either deploy two machines to the offices of the users in question, or else have a VM set up for them to use for the problematic application.

For number two, think about teaching clusters. Some instructors want Windows, others want Linux, but *no one* wants to wait for the system to update itself when it boots. VDI is just about perfect for this as the VMs are completely generic and, since they're running all the time, we can keep them updated.

By: cbartram

cbartram — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

A healthy dose of realism, but let’s see what happens when someone takes a crack at protocol bottleneck part of the problem. For those who are determined to go down the path of virtualized Windoze desktops, Vector Networks have ensured their stuff provides asset management functionality such as inventory and application usage measurement consistently across mixed physical and virtual environments. Software license optimization does not miraculously happen through VDI.

I suspect the same core issues of performance and resource will also prevent SaaS via the internet working for the corporate market, but that’s another story….

By: robertobrien

robertobrien — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If only you had said what “VDI” is.

By: marc_t

marc_t — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Well, my mom taught me what “VD” is, and I guess “I” stands for “inoculation”? ;-)

By: khess

khess — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry, Robert, VDI is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. It refers to creating virtual machines either from scratch or from a physical to virtual conversion (P2V) from your computer to a server system. You then run a thin client, a program that connects you to your virtual machine on a server, and you run your desktop over the network.

That's the 10 second version of VDI.

Read more about VDI on Wikipedia.

Sorry I didn't explain it but my column/blog is sort of like a Technical Soap Opera; You just jump in somewhere and pick up the story as you go. ;-)

By: khess

khess — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

To Marc,

Do people still say “VD”? We said that way back when we watched those black and white school films. I think the 21st Century term is STD.

By: leku

leku — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I believe Sun rolled out their own VDI (Sunray) quite a few years ago. It may be “ancient” technology and not “hip” or trendy per se, but it works..

By: tekmazter

tekmazter — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Ken,

Don't go completely sour on VDi. From the perspective of where my current organization is with already in-place technology, VDi makes a lot of sense but it's not a one size fits all solution.

I currently work for an organization which is a call center. Approximately 18 mos ago we went away from the ancient backend infrastructure (HP-UX riding on HP 9000 N-Class servers) with old clunky dumb terminals at the end users desk. Now we're all terminal server on the backend and 90% thin client at the desktop. With the exception of regular staff users, we are 100% THIN at our agent desks.

Many of the challenges which require an organization to provide a Terminal Server infrastructure to its end users are similar to those of VDi. Especially when you're talking about bandwidth requiresments and capabilties in supporting RDP over the wire. Because of this, I believe that VDi in an environment such as this can really thrive as well as minimize startup costs.

We've recently purchased a small amount of VDi licenses along with VDM due to other needs on behalf of our agents which are not supported in a terminal server environment. We are a moderately sized VMserver shop already with approx 60 vm guest servers in a 5 server cluster running DRS, Vmotion, HA etc...This also helped minimize costs associated with an entry level deployment of VDi.

Understanding that each organization is different, the individual items which would make VDi a success or failure will also be different. We drive base images of XP desktops to remain consistent and unchangeable. This is PERFECT for a VDi environment. With that, SAN arrays such as NetApp and EMC do some amazing things which allow us to reprovision 30+ desktops nightly throughout the organization with some fairly basic scripts and all in the matter of minutes.

In closing, I do see you point. However, I think people need to be creative in the thought process of how VDi can be leveraged today and how it can fit into environments which are difficult to support due to the physical restraints PC's at desks.