Anyone using VDI
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I've not used it, but vWorkspace is meant to be a good-value product for VDI
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we use VDI at where i work at the moment approx 500 users on VDI.
From a support perspective i think they are more hassle than they are worth, from a user perspective they are not as powerful performance wise as a desktop pc.
apparently there is a cost benefit, but personally i think the increase in support time and negative impact it has on productivity out weigh that cost.
not to mention the fact that it is centralized which means that if the main clusters go down 100s of users have no pc. Which has happend here. just adding another major point of failure.
it has some more benefits apparently, but they are questionable imo.
From a support perspective i think they are more hassle than they are worth, from a user perspective they are not as powerful performance wise as a desktop pc.
apparently there is a cost benefit, but personally i think the increase in support time and negative impact it has on productivity out weigh that cost.
not to mention the fact that it is centralized which means that if the main clusters go down 100s of users have no pc. Which has happend here. just adding another major point of failure.
it has some more benefits apparently, but they are questionable imo.
from the support wise other than the servers hosting the vms going down what hassle are you seeing with them? as from a support pov they should be easier to support as thats as far as I am concerned their main advantage. So would be interested to hear on the problems your getting with them
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The main problem i find is with performance. Flash does not work in browsers, so no flash training, which of course caused problems when training department rolled out training and deadlines and it didn't work for 500 users. Word and Excel had major problems. Crashing etc.
As the memory and cpu is assigned server side users are forever phoning up complaining about crashes and performance problems asking to be moved in to "faster memory and cpu groups". When they phone up complaining and they are already in that group i have to suggest that they purchase a desktop through procurement... it is ok for secretaries and people who just run outlook and one or two other apps. But no graphics apps, no dev apps, no big spreadsheets etc.
We have recently ran in to some big issues with the VDI but this might be due to the incompetance of the people who administer the clusters and profile servers and roll out the new image etc. But regardless of where the blame is, it has been a tough few weeks with people being unable to save to their desktop, their profile not saving, printers going missing etc.
benefits you could say that it is easy to roll out software, but you can just use altiris or sms or other software deployment that works just as well.
As the memory and cpu is assigned server side users are forever phoning up complaining about crashes and performance problems asking to be moved in to "faster memory and cpu groups". When they phone up complaining and they are already in that group i have to suggest that they purchase a desktop through procurement... it is ok for secretaries and people who just run outlook and one or two other apps. But no graphics apps, no dev apps, no big spreadsheets etc.
We have recently ran in to some big issues with the VDI but this might be due to the incompetance of the people who administer the clusters and profile servers and roll out the new image etc. But regardless of where the blame is, it has been a tough few weeks with people being unable to save to their desktop, their profile not saving, printers going missing etc.
benefits you could say that it is easy to roll out software, but you can just use altiris or sms or other software deployment that works just as well.
![Shaz]sigh[](/styles/overclockers/avatars/4.png){kind=avatar}
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I'm just running a couple of POCs for a multi-thousand seat org.
VDI is generally thought about in the form of hosted VM desktops. This is a misnomer. VDI to me = hosted desktops and shared desktops (XenApp/TS).
Since Q3/09, interest in VDI has exploded. This year with XenDesktop 4 and View 4 (and the potential introduction of client hypervisors any quarter now) will see VDI steamrolling itself in to IT and staying put for quite a while. With the additional collaboration between MS and Citrix, the scrapping of VECD and the recent acquisitions by VMware (RTO/parts of Ionix), the industry is just starting to spice up.
The benefits of VDI are undeniable - ignoring capex (as you aren't going to save there), you're looking at huge reductions in operating expense due to lowering admin/support overhead, greater lifecycle management and far greater control. Putting money to the side, service levels to the business will not only be easier to achieve but should also become much more competitive.
As mentioned before, VDI is both a hosted and shared desktop solution, this is why both XenDesktop can broker desktops to VMs or XenApp and View can broker desktops to VMs or Terminal Services.
The general consensus is that you can split your workers in to two, task workers (call center/admin/repetition type staff) and knowledge workers (management, sales, exec, etc etc). Task workers get a shared desktop, knowledge workers get a hosted desktop.
Doing so - you get the benefits of the density and cost saving shared desktops bring with the freedom (albeit perceived) and guaranteed performance that a hosted desktop bring.
Slightly confused why people are finding them hard to support or lacking performance.
From a desktop perspective, a user needs four things, an OS, applications, profile and company data.
By abstracting these four things, management, support and flexibility instantly becomes easier.
For your OS, you should be looking at Windows 7 (if an MS org). There's no reason not to. Strong compatibility, rock solid stability, good performance and low mem footprint, awesome PR (user's watch TV...) and lots of nice new features (applocker et al).
For your apps, look at virtualising them and streaming/publishing them (XenApp/ThinApp/App-V). Look at things like Dazzle, again, user perception is key.
Profiles. This is the #1 key part of a user's experience. They want to login (quickly), get their desktop experience and personal files. They don't want profiles corrupting/recreating, not being available or simply taking 5 years to log on. I would say look at RTO virtual profiles but you can't now. Take a look at Liquidware Labs Profile Unity. Not the same thing but it's a start.
I'll ignore company data, it's too big of a topic to mention here but think of tiering, offloading AV, timely backups etc.
So what does all this give - all user's run on a baseline OS, all their apps are virtualised.
By doing this, deploying apps or upgrades becomes a lot easier. Support becomes a lot easier too as essentially all apps are living on top of a baseline OS. If something breaks in a non persistent environment, scrap it and start again. The user loses nothing as everything is abstracted.... this works for both hosted and shared desktops (!).
On to performance. You should never have a compute (CPU/mem) performance issue on a hosted desktop - it will always be disk. Look to put your parent image on fast (flash disk) and your clones on denser slower disk. You should have profiled your users before moving to VDI and have a decent idea on the approx IOPS per user you'll need. If not, well - get the spade and keep digging.
Any other perf issues will be logon/logoff storms and AV - shouldn't be hard to diagnose, may be hard to fix.
VDI is generally thought about in the form of hosted VM desktops. This is a misnomer. VDI to me = hosted desktops and shared desktops (XenApp/TS).
Since Q3/09, interest in VDI has exploded. This year with XenDesktop 4 and View 4 (and the potential introduction of client hypervisors any quarter now) will see VDI steamrolling itself in to IT and staying put for quite a while. With the additional collaboration between MS and Citrix, the scrapping of VECD and the recent acquisitions by VMware (RTO/parts of Ionix), the industry is just starting to spice up.
The benefits of VDI are undeniable - ignoring capex (as you aren't going to save there), you're looking at huge reductions in operating expense due to lowering admin/support overhead, greater lifecycle management and far greater control. Putting money to the side, service levels to the business will not only be easier to achieve but should also become much more competitive.
As mentioned before, VDI is both a hosted and shared desktop solution, this is why both XenDesktop can broker desktops to VMs or XenApp and View can broker desktops to VMs or Terminal Services.
The general consensus is that you can split your workers in to two, task workers (call center/admin/repetition type staff) and knowledge workers (management, sales, exec, etc etc). Task workers get a shared desktop, knowledge workers get a hosted desktop.
Doing so - you get the benefits of the density and cost saving shared desktops bring with the freedom (albeit perceived) and guaranteed performance that a hosted desktop bring.
Slightly confused why people are finding them hard to support or lacking performance.
From a desktop perspective, a user needs four things, an OS, applications, profile and company data.
By abstracting these four things, management, support and flexibility instantly becomes easier.
For your OS, you should be looking at Windows 7 (if an MS org). There's no reason not to. Strong compatibility, rock solid stability, good performance and low mem footprint, awesome PR (user's watch TV...) and lots of nice new features (applocker et al).
For your apps, look at virtualising them and streaming/publishing them (XenApp/ThinApp/App-V). Look at things like Dazzle, again, user perception is key.
Profiles. This is the #1 key part of a user's experience. They want to login (quickly), get their desktop experience and personal files. They don't want profiles corrupting/recreating, not being available or simply taking 5 years to log on. I would say look at RTO virtual profiles but you can't now. Take a look at Liquidware Labs Profile Unity. Not the same thing but it's a start.
I'll ignore company data, it's too big of a topic to mention here but think of tiering, offloading AV, timely backups etc.
So what does all this give - all user's run on a baseline OS, all their apps are virtualised.
By doing this, deploying apps or upgrades becomes a lot easier. Support becomes a lot easier too as essentially all apps are living on top of a baseline OS. If something breaks in a non persistent environment, scrap it and start again. The user loses nothing as everything is abstracted.... this works for both hosted and shared desktops (!).
On to performance. You should never have a compute (CPU/mem) performance issue on a hosted desktop - it will always be disk. Look to put your parent image on fast (flash disk) and your clones on denser slower disk. You should have profiled your users before moving to VDI and have a decent idea on the approx IOPS per user you'll need. If not, well - get the spade and keep digging.
Any other perf issues will be logon/logoff storms and AV - shouldn't be hard to diagnose, may be hard to fix.
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That's not a virtualised desktop issue, that's an admin issue.
Flash performance with ICA/HDX and PCoIP is now almost close to native with decent bandwidth.
Excel and Word crashing is not related to anything bar poor deployment.
Lots of good info there guys, thanks.
Using VDI, who is using Roaming Profiles? This is something I need to look at, esp from a storage POV, users shouldn't be saving to their desktop etc but they do and im concerned about pulling all that data onto centralised storage.
Using VDI, who is using Roaming Profiles? This is something I need to look at, esp from a storage POV, users shouldn't be saving to their desktop etc but they do and im concerned about pulling all that data onto centralised storage.
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You have to use roaming profiles, else you'll be using persistent desktops and the capex costs will be immense.
That or you rob user's of their (again, keep using this word) perceived freedom and use mandatory profiles.
That or you rob user's of their (again, keep using this word) perceived freedom and use mandatory profiles.
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I was looking into Appsense to handle the App Data elements of the roaming profile, and Folder Redirection (already in place) for the rest. By all accounts the login times are cut dramatically by using the two. The decision by the upper echelons to replace the ageing Desktop kit with new models seems a questionable one as Id like to of seen Thin devices myself.
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