VMWare Virtual Desktop Inteface (VDI)
I’m uncertain if EMC’s Chuck Hollis was explicitly referring to VDI when he posted about thin clients, so it took me some time to grasp the magnitude of the changes ahead implied in his posting. A picture from VMware will help illustrate how VDI works.
So whats the big deal? The user desktops are not deployed at their desks. They are virtualized and managed and deployed in the data center. As a result of this, they can be displayed anywhere with the same functionality and the user experience does not change.
There are two points to amplify from Chuck’s post:
1. Thin Clients in this context are the thin client hardware boxes that can display the desktops (and they may well enjoy a resurgence…although the counter argument is that desktop PCs have come down in price and up in features…so why bother?)
2. More importantly, is that if the level of performance for the user can actually be improved…maybe even on-demand (as Chuck alludes), then you’ve got a prescription for a serious revolution in desktop management and total cost of ownership. Especially in large organizations.
It’s no secret that managing desktops for users is a thankless task. Coupled with a never-ending hardware and operating system upgrade cycle, the endless security patching, and the poor track record of desktop backups, the VDI story gets interesting very fast.
For example, if you were fortunate to already have VDI deployed, it would be the fail-safe way to upgrade to Vista with the safety net that Enterprise customers want…specifically being able to fail back to their old (but working) XP desktops without having to physically touch all those desktops.
Of course, you’re going to want a lot of storage and more importantly, you’re going to want the tools that manage that storage well.
