Suggestions on VDI etc and alternatives

[mrbios]

Hi,

Currently we have 3 IT Suites of 31 machines each, all 3 are nearing there 5 year mark, parts are dieing all over the place now and all 3 will need replacing.

I think i want to try and gain a few things from there replacement:
Easier management
energy saving
Must last another 5 years
Must be capable of running Adobe CS5 / MS Visual studio 2010 (probably the most intensive applications used on them)

We were originally thinking of just removing all 93 PCs and putting in 93 more PCs of a newer spec, but i want to try and get some idea of the alternatives first...

These pcs are used by secondary school students
All have 100mb links back to a HP 2650 managed switch
Those 2650s each have 1GB links back to a 3400CL
From that 3400CL there is a 2GB trunk back to the core network switch.

So essentially the cabling and network is perfectly capable of a VDI solution i'd have thought (the funds are there for a 10GB link from core switch to the 3400 should that be a suggested move)

My biggest issue is the way in which flash and various flash based programs affect virtual solutions, i've only ever used microsoft terminal services for it's most basic purposes in the past so my knowledge of virtual and remote solutions is very limited - hence the need for advice.

Any suggestions from some big brains around here on what sort of solution would likely work best? or am i best off sticking with individual PCs and hopefully being able to get intel vpro working or something for an additional bit of remote management possibility?

 

[mrbios]

Ah i should have mentioned that, we currently have 4 virtual host servers running 20-25 VMs and a virtual center server

So the intial infrastructure is setup there, i guess we would just have to bolt on licenses and the biggest issue im thinking of is the cost of fast storage to run the VMs from?

initially it would be 100 x virtual desktops with an eye to expand (if it works out) to more like 400-500, so anything we put in to run the 100 would have to be easily expandable to cope with 500 clients

 

[mrbios]

Thanks Little_Crow, some very useful information there. I would certainly use seperate ESX servers for them, how many ESX servers can a virtual center server have connected to it? I know foundation can only have 3 which we upgraded to standard recently so we could fit the 4th server in, but im not sure what the limitation of VC standard license is?

I'm trying to get my head around the client side of things as well at the moment.... there appears to be two options, thin clients and zero clients. I get the jist that one has windows 7 embedded and the other has no operating system on the physical client at all, but what i'm failing to comprehend at the moment is how exactly it makes a difference? What are the pros and cons of both?

Per PC here we're currently only using 25GB of space in use, the rest of the software is installed on a file server and runs on clients from there.

I've had very brief look into ThinApp but while trying to get my head around vmware view and thin and zero clients it just sort of scrambled my brain

 

[mrbios]

I've found some more information on VMware view which indicates that for us it's not a viable solution at all, so while im still open to suggestions of other solutions (no experience of Xen Desktop so i shall investigate) i think vmware view is a big far no as the costs, performance etc wouldn't work out at the present moment in time.

Maybe one day when the technology has matured and evolved a bit more i'll look at it again.

 

[mrbios]

What would you say individual desktop performance is like deathwish?

and how did initial costs work out? was it worth it for the ROI? I'd be interested in an outline of the various costs involved if your able to give me that, be it exact or estimate?