Any successful IT Project follows some sort of methodology. One part of the project methodology should include an investigation phase, where one takes an inventory of the current environment, and brainstorms for anything that may be required or could cause the project to fail. This is also important so valuable time is not wasted performing preparation tasks that could have been accomplished before the consultant/vendor is on site.

VDI deployments typically start with a small POC (Proof of Concept) where one or more connection brokers are put thru the paces to see if they meet the business and technical requirements, and to verify that the product functions as advertised.

Before one starts the POC, there are a lot of things to consider, i.e. Virtual Infrastructure, SAN, Clients, Connection Broker, Network Infrastructure, Peripheral Support, Security Requirements, Licensing, Current Desktop Management Tools….

To ease in this collection of data I’ve created a spreadsheet that attempts to capture the important details. The point of doing this is to make sure the consultant, vendor and customer are aware of the customer’s current environment, requirements and planned deployment size.

vdi_pre-engagement_inventory

P.S. Sheet one of the Excel Workbook is broken down into categories comprised of several related items, where each item is answered by a picklist or manual entry. Sheet two contains the definitions of all of the picklists.