30.05.2012 01:01
Age: 360 days
Category: EN
When is VDI successful?
Very interesting...
Q:
Perhaps this is a topic not germane to any of these Unidesk forums, but: I am wondering if anyone has collected data on end user acceptance of VDI delivered through the Unidesk/View platforms. And if anyone has data on whether users prefer using a virtual desktop over a physical desktop.
Motivation for asking: All the stuff I've read about the benefits of VDI are very tech and dollar centric, focusing on ease of application deployment, management, and updates, making it easier for IT to deal with malware infestation, lengthening physical hardware refresh cycles, and the like. What I want to know is: as an end user in a university setting, how will my working life improve when IT takes away the PC device I've grown used to and replaces it with a thin or zero client? I'm finding it hard to spin VDI in a way that offers end users tangible benefits, other than "it will relieve some of the ever-increasing burden on IT of supporting your desktop, allowing IT to support you better and letting IT do more with less". Can VDI offer end users something better than a physical desktop experience, or is the best we can hope for to match a physical desktop experience? I am thinking of all the various VDI scenarios: persistent desktops for individual users, non persistent desktops for kiosk and classroom and lab settings, etc.
Thanks for any thoughts you might have.
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A:
Well from my own experience I can tell you that Department heads and managers love the dollars and cents aspect of VDI, even though they don't really understand the underlying technology. My end users in the trenches love their VDI desktops and if given the choice wouldn't go back. I had a few offices that had performance problems with their PCs connecting back to the datacenter over slow WAN links. They both use a medical billing/charting application that is run off a server in the datacenter. This app was horribly slow for them, pretty much to the point where they were easily spending double the amount of time to peform a simple task within the app.
So we decided to virtualize their desktops and move them into the datacenter. Now their app runs great, faster than it has ever been for them. I started out with Non-Persistant desktops with just VMware View, but moved to peristant desktops once we added Unidesk to the equation. These particular users are mostly single task user and don't really care much about customizing their desktop. My next deployment though will be for users that do customize their desktops to fit their needs, making a persistand desktop a requirement. The nice thing about Unidesk is that they can have their customization and I can still manage the desktop as if they were all the same.
I grade VDI success rather simply, if a users is unable to tell the difference between a VDI desktop and their regular desktop I call that a success. If the VDI desktop peforms even better than their regular desktop, I'll call that wildly successful. If I can virtualize their desktops and simplify the management of those desktops, while still providing the same or better user experience, thats a successful deployment in my book.
Well from my own experience I can tell you that Department heads and managers love the dollars and cents aspect of VDI, even though they don't really understand the underlying technology. My end users in the trenches love their VDI desktops and if given the choice wouldn't go back. I had a few offices that had performance problems with their PCs connecting back to the datacenter over slow WAN links. They both use a medical billing/charting application that is run off a server in the datacenter. This app was horribly slow for them, pretty much to the point where they were easily spending double the amount of time to peform a simple task within the app.
So we decided to virtualize their desktops and move them into the datacenter. Now their app runs great, faster than it has ever been for them. I started out with Non-Persistant desktops with just VMware View, but moved to peristant desktops once we added Unidesk to the equation. These particular users are mostly single task user and don't really care much about customizing their desktop. My next deployment though will be for users that do customize their desktops to fit their needs, making a persistand desktop a requirement. The nice thing about Unidesk is that they can have their customization and I can still manage the desktop as if they were all the same.
I grade VDI success rather simply, if a users is unable to tell the difference between a VDI desktop and their regular desktop I call that a success. If the VDI desktop peforms even better than their regular desktop, I'll call that wildly successful. If I can virtualize their desktops and simplify the management of those desktops, while still providing the same or better user experience, thats a successful deployment in my book.