Standard workplace solution - Citrix / VDI?

steinooo

steinooo

steinooo

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Has anyone got experience of XenClient for business?

Hi all,

There are discussions where I work about implementing a standard desktop solution. That involves a limited choice of laptop, desktop and thin client.

The company want to put servers (application, database, file etc) from as many business units as possible into a central datacentre, and from the same datacentre publish a desktop containing the relevant applications.

However the choice of technology is confusing me. The company is open to using VDI or traditional Citrix (with a slight preference for VDI) but I can't figure out what would be a best fit for most because of the following scenarios:

- What do laptop users do if they don't have a connection to the WAN? They could have MS Office installed locally, but copying files back to the Citrix / VDI desktop seems a bit ham-fisted :-/

- How do CAD workers deal with large files going back and forth over the WAN in any situation?

- What do we do with poor bandwidth sites where VDI / Citrix will be poor performance? I know there are CTX branch repeaters etc but will that help for VDI?

- How do people use software which has weird dongles and card readers etc with VDI/CTX?

I know that very rarely one size fits all and the company is open to a hybrid of technology to fit different needs, but I'm finding the concept of making the desktop a "standard one" across different platforms very confusing....I just wondered if anyone else had come across any similar situations in their walk of life!

Thanks in advance for any input! :)

Edit: Changed the thead title to be more appropriate
 
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Personally most of your points seem to suggest you shouldn't look at VDI. as VDI only really works if you don't have an infrastructure that basically meets those points.

You also need to careful need to weigh up storage requirements for your VDI to get relevant IOPS. We spent 6 months investigating VDI and then canned it all as our existing storage wasnt able to deliver IOPS required and purchasing required IOPS was extremely expensive
 
Bry said:
Personally most of your points seem to suggest you shouldn't look at VDI. as VDI only really works if you don't have an infrastructure that basically meets those points.
Click to expand...

I thought as much. In quite a lot of sites we have a measly 512Kb line. Although I thought I read somewhere that it only required the same bandwidth as traditional Citrix which is why it was being considered.

You also need to careful need to weigh up storage requirements for your VDI to get relevant IOPS. We spent 6 months investigating VDI and then canned it all as our existing storage wasnt able to deliver IOPS required and purchasing required IOPS was extremely expensive
Click to expand...

This I'm not too concerned about, we would host the solution in our datacentre, and if it isn't acceptable performance we'd ask them to make it better. Essentially I can forget about the performance of the storage - unless the infrastructure isn't a standard SAN which I had read something about at one point....
 
I wouldn't attempt CAD on VDI.

You could create a standard image that works across laptops and desktops client. Using standard sysprep and cloning methods The thin client would have to be its own image though. You could have the thin client and remote access the same image, or i think you could use the internal vdi for remote access as well.
 
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