Once again, here is a common question I get from all kinds of people, partners, customers, random people via email….  here are my thoughts on VDI benefits over Terminal Services:

• Easier to manage for the average IT Professional, because of the standard OS, standard application installations
• Printing and applications are more stable due to them not being shared by multiple concurrent users.
• Resources can more easily be guaranteed for each user
• New systems can be dynamically provisioned, when, or before they are needed
• Systems can easily be deleted when they are no longer needed, or to push out a new base image
• Application compatibility and support from application vendors, as almost all apps are written for XP Pro & Vista.
• Much easier to do a “one off” configuration for users with “special needs”
• Developers can be made administrators so they can destroy their VMs, “if necessary”, without affecting others.  Normal users should still be locked down, if they’ll tolerate it.
• Desktop Administrators/Engineers are “a lot” less expensive to employ than Terminal Services/Citrix Administrators.

The first bullet is the most important to just about every organization.  Most companies have Terminal Services or Citrix in place, but few are truly comfortable managing these systems.  Terminal Services and Citrix are often maintained by a very small subset of the IT Staff, because the rest of the IT staff has no idea how the technology “really” works.  It’s also true that many companies already have a Virtual Infrastructure in place, and people to manage that infrastructure.  With that in mind, one can utilize those resources to manage the hardware for VDI, while providing desktop support & helpdesk personnel with a much simpler and more feature rich set of tools to do their jobs.

For companies that are happy with Terminal Services, VDI is just another tool to help them address application delivery and desktop management issues.  TS usually only penetrates about 20% of corporate desktops or applications to be delivered, so there is a lot of room for VDI.

When looking at VDI there are things that MUST be addressed, as each Virtual Desktop is a “single user Terminal Server”. If one doesn’t consider and address problems inherent to Terminal Services when deploying Virtual Desktops, you’ll just have the same problems, but now for more users.

• Universal Printing
• User Profile Management
• User Environment Configuration & Lockdown

Provision Networks has been making these tools for about 10 years, so we don’t have to cobble these tools together for VDI, or acquire some technology and try to integrate it with our current management framework.

 

Notice that I did NOT say that Terminal Services was bad, or that companies should throw TS away and fire all of their TS/Citrix Engineers.  I think there is a place for both “in some cases”, i.e. at companies that have a fine tuned, well maintained Terminal Services implementation and more than one or two adminstrators that understand how everything works.  Proper change control and thorough documentation in a Terminal Services environment is absolutely required for it to remain stable, and be managed by more than one person.

 

VDI can be centrally managed using our Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite, regardless of the underlying hypervisor(s) in place. The Virtual infrastructure can consist of a single vendor’s hypervisor, or any combination of different hypervisors, while still being managed from one pane of glass (the Provision Management Console).  This same console can also centrally manage Terminal Servers, Applications, User Profiles, Network Printers and all of the settings related to the User Environment 

 

So have I ever recommended Terminal Services over VDI to a customer that does NOT already have a Terminal Services deployment, and a staff that really knows how to effectively manage Terminal Services? Not yet.  The good thing is that we’re not asking customers to choose one or the other.  Customers can deliver applications or desktops from VDI, PC Blades, standard PCs and Terminal Services, and can manage it all in one place.

 

VDI does have some down sides/requirements:

• Virtual Infrastructure is REQUIRED, i.e. VMware, Virtual Iron, Hyper-V, Virtuozzo
• SAN storage is typically required. 
• MSFT Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) license subscriptions are REQUIRED. (except with Virtuozzo, but that’s an entirely new post)

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