Josh's Blog

As I recover from my post Thanksgiving food coma and we near the end of 2009 I am thinking where virtualization is going to be and what is next. I think back to September 2007 the biggest buzz at VMWorld was around Virtual Desktops. We had the explosion of Thin Client providers and connection brokers with ESX as the backend technology to run your desktops on. The concept was so exciting to me of the idea of bringing all of your desktop workloads into the datacenter, centralizing data, and eliminating the desktop refresh cycle was just awesome. I remember coming back from VMWorld and ordering and testing various Thin Clients from many manufacturers. My conclusion then was Virtual Desktops just wasn’t ready for prime time, the lack of true multi monitor support and the reliance on RDP provided a disappointing user experience.

Fast forward to today… I truly believe Virtual Desktops is here! I feel that in 2010 we are going to see large scale adoption of Virtual Desktops in the workstation space. The struggling economy and companies tightening budgets on infrastructure and staffing Virtual Desktops really makes sense. Let’s not kid ourselves the upfront cost to get VDI going is not cheap when you include servers, thin clients, and SAN infrastructure but if you start to think forward to the next desktop refresh or the companies upcoming Windows 7 upgrade where many of the PC’s under desks are going to be obsolete it really starts to make sense. What I am already seeing in the industry is customers buying Thin Clients from vendors like Wyse instead of your traditional PC and investing money in server hardware and storage and running VMware View knowing that in three years from now there will no longer be the need for a desktop refresh.

Why Virtual Desktops now you ask? Well I have been waiting on the release of VMware View 4 with all the hype around PCoiP and if it was going to live up to it. In all of my testing of in our Lab of PCoiP with a Wyse R90L and quad monitors has been great. Watching HD videos from You Tube is phenomenal using PCoiP display protocol as opposed to the RDP experience which is mediocre at best. Another previous drawback for me was the multi monitor experience with the inability to deliver more than one monitor without software assisted trickery using applications like SplitView which added to the cost and complexity of the deployment. PCoiP the and ability to deliver the optimal resolution and pivot orientation to each monitor independently is a huge advancement in supplying demands of today’s desktop users. As mentioned in my earlier post about Site Recovery Manager 4, VMware View 4 now also runs on the vSphere platform but you do need to be running the r released vSphere4 Update1. Below is a full list of new features in VMware View 4.

• VMware View with PCoiP – PCoiP provides an optimized desktop experience for the delivery of the entire desktop environment including applications, images, audio, and video content for a wide range of users on the LAN or across the WAN. PCoiP can compensate for an increase in latency or a reduction in bandwidth, to ensure that end users can remain productive regardless of network conditions.
• PCoiP includes VMware View Display with support for up to four monitors and the ability to deliver the optimal resolution and pivot orientation to each monitor independently.
• VMware vSphere Support – VMware vSphere 4 support enables improved virtual machine scalability, performance, and management, with continued support for VMware Infrastructure 3.x.
• Enhanced single sign-on – The Log in as current user feature is integrated with Active Directory and smart cards to help simplify the process of logging in to a VMware View desktop.
• Restricted entitlements – Administrators can control user access to virtual desktops based on the View Connection Server being used for authentication.
• Smart card policies – Administrators can set group policies to force desktop disconnection and require reconnection when users remove smart cards.
• Domain filtering – You can use vdmadmin.exe to control the accessibility of domains and traverse trust relationships more quickly.
• You can cleanly delete View desktops using scripts.
• You can log in to View desktops using user principal names (UPN).
• You can explicitly configure IP addresses to override those supplied by the View Agent when accessing a desktop.
• Mixed Active Directory and Kerberos authentication is supported.

In my early use of VMware View I have overall been impressed, I have had a few bumps in the road related to getting multiple monitors working. I am also a little disappointed that we did not see any integration into vCenter in this version of View to provide that single management pane of glass. I was also surprised to see that Windows 7 is experimental but I have also read that Q1 of 2010 it will be fully supported.

A true desktop experience—multiple monitors displaying rich media.

So why VMware View 4 and Thin Clients?

1. True Desktop experience

   • Multiple Monitors
   • Rich Media

2. Reduction in costs

   • Thin clients last 3x longer than desktops, Centralized Client OS Management
   • Thin client computers use only a fraction of amount of energy that is used by a desktop computer.
   • Reduction in desktop support costs – patching, upgrades, and troubleshooting

3. Ease of management

   • Rapid Client Deployment
   • Centralized Client OS Management
   • Centralized Data can easily be backed up
   • Desktop and Operating Systems refreshes are reduced and eliminated

4. Security and Compliance

   • Data Security – Data is in Datacenter
   • Secure Remote Access Web Portal
   • HIPAA and Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Compliant

Is anyone else thinking this all sounds familiar? Virtualization is creating what I call the “computing circle of life.”  We are going back to the days of dumb terminals and hypervisor computing but this isn’t your father’s compute system as long as we don’t see the return of Token Ring I think everything is going to be alright.  Stay tuned in the upcoming weeks for us showing off VMware View 4 in our EMC VMware Center of Excellence.