Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure - VDI is for Real

So you have taken a big step, and have began virtualizing your server environment. You get all of the benefits of virtualization: 1.) Reduced the number of physical servers in your datacenter. Therefore reducing your power and cooling requirements. 2.) Increased utilization of remaining servers through DRS clusters. 3.) Added High Availability to every single application that you have using VMware HA clusters. And a few others. Now, what's stopping you from taking these same concepts and applying them to your desktop environment? The desktop environment has been one of the hardest IT based management tasks to keep under control. This is the case for several reasons. 1.) PCs are constantly being replaced. Either through hardware failure, or lack of processing power a PC usually has about a 3 to 4 year lifespan. 2.) You aren't replacing all of the PCs at the same time. This means that you now have to manage drivers and other OEM software for each different model that you are supporting. 3.) Users store data on their local hard drives. Most of the time this isn't being backed up by your Enterprise Backup solution. When hard drives crash, businesses can lose quite a bit of critical data. This is a very large risk for small businesses. 4.) Applications and even Windows can go haywire. Files get corrupt. Users delete system files. Its just a fact of life. So, getting back to the initial idea, why can't we take all the great benefits that we get through server virtualization, and apply them at the desktop level? What if you could replace 100 400 watt desktop machines with 100 16w thin clients? Well you can. Your first step is to create a base image. Through this base image, all of your user's desktops will be created. For most of us, you will be creating Windows XP Pro or Windows Vista VM's. Remember, that Windows XP and Windows Vista OEM licenses aren't transferrable to a VM. You must buy licenses from your provider of choice for the VMs. Once you have created your base image, you then convert that Virtual Machine into a template. I like to run sysprep on the image, just before making it a template. VMware VirtualCenter can also do this as a built in feature for many operating systems as you deploy from the template. From your template, you begin deploying your VMs. Watch your physical resources to be sure that you don't oversubscribe any of your hosts. I would also suggest that you keep desktop VMs seperate from server VMs. Desktop I/O and Server I/O is quite a bit different. On the client side you have a couple of choices. To keep it simple I will go over a quick 1 to 1 scenario. This means that for every XP Machine, there is one thin client machine configured to connect to it. The other choice involves the use of a Virtual Desktop Broker software package. There are several that are available today. I haven't used any of them as of yet. VMware is also releasing an update to their VDM in the coming months. For the thin client peice I am currently using several JackPC's from Chip PC. They seem to do the job that I need them for. They are small, and fit in a wall jack. The only drawback to them, is that they are CE based, and not XP Embedded, therefore there isn't as much flexibility to them that I would like. In summary, VDI has several benefits. You get a decent costs savings in your monthly power consumption by dropping your PC power requirements by close to 90 percent. You get the ability to snapshot your client VMs that may contain mission critical data, and even use the VCB to back them up. You can now quickly provision more desktop VMs through your created template. Plus you get all the benefits of HA and DRS.