1. Desktop Virtualization 101
Understanding Desktop Virtualization Delivery Models
This slide deck was used as part of a conference session providing an introduction to desktop virtualization presented by Simon Bramfitt , founder of Entelechy Associates
The session was held at the Virtualization Solutions Exchange (VSX 2012) November 2, 2012 at the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California.
Information on VSX 2012 can be found here
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Entelechy Associates 2012

2. @SimonBramfitt Introductions
Simon Bramfitt is the founder and principal analyst of Entelechy Associates.
Simon blogs here
Entelechy Associates is a California-based industry analyst organization with a particular focus on desktop management and application delivery technologies, we provide strategic guidance to both technology vendors and enterprise IT organizations looking to provide and implement next-generation application delivery services. Further information on Entelechy Associates can be found here

3. Don Estridge – President, IBM Entry Systems Division
Don Estridge President of the IBM Entry Systems Division and “Father of the PC”

4. The IBM 5150 Personal Computer was launched on August 12, 1981
The IBM 5150 Personal Computer was launched on August 12, At the time, the project team shocked IBM executives by forecasting that it would sell 250,000 units in three years.
Just four years later IBM announced that it had sold 1 million PCs worldwide.
In the last 30 years, over 3 billion PCs, and PC descendants have been sold.

5. Much has changed since the launch of the PC
Much has changed since the launch of the PC. User interfaces evolve beyond all recognition from the blocky green on black text of the DOS command prompt to the rich graphical interfaces driven by a mouse touch and voice that are used today. At the same time, computers are faster, smaller, and cheaper than ever before; with even the cheapest mobile phone having many times the computing power of the original 5150.
Computers have got faster and cheaper in the intervening period, but personal computing has not got, in any meaningful sense, better. Today’s personal computing experience is still centered on the device. With few exceptions, applications and are still installed locally. The only way to ensure that applications are available as needed is to rigorously enforce standardization and ensure that all devices have required all applications preinstalled.
That has to change

6. “What we discovered was that the way people responded emotionally to PCs was more important than what the computer actually did.
Setting aside the sales success of the PC, Estridge recognized something far more important than the overall market opportunity.
“What we discovered was the way people responded emotionally to PCs was more important than what the computer actually did”
A profound understanding that would take the best part of 30 years to be proven right.

7. Few people had the insight to realize the importance of Estridge’s revelation

8. When first introduced, the iPhone and iPad were unashamedly positioned as a consumer devices, expensive toys and no more than that. However, the outstanding utility that the combination of cloud services and high-performance tablets created, rapidly forged the transition from play thing to business tool. New market segments were created overnight, forcing established enterprise systems vendors to react if they wish to remain relevant. Opening the door to a new generation of enterprise class services. It was only when real business value could be attached to consumer centric devices like the iPad that the problems started to surface. The iPad educated a new generation of employees to the opportunities inherent in of consumer centric devices.

9. The collective voice of business is demanding change

10. Virtualization
IT’s response was built on virtualization

11. Virtualization
Or if you prefer, virtualization

12. Server Virtualization
Application OS
Hardware
Virtualization arrived in the data center
Transforming inefficient physical servers

13. Server Virtualization
App
App
App OS OS OS
Hypervisor
Hardware
Into more versatile platforms capable of running multiple independent workloads

14. Server Virtualization
App
App
App OS OS OS
Hypervisor
Hardware
More importantly there workloads could be managed as a tightly integrated package of OS and Application providing provisioning flexibility and consistency

15. Right? What’s good for the Data Center Must be good for the Desktop
Stands to reason then that if we can do it with big server workloads we should be able to do it with the desktop

16. Desktop Virtualization
Apps OS
User
Apps OS
User
Apps OS
User
Apps OS
User
Apps OS
User
Apps OS
User
Apps OS
User
Apps OS
User
Apps OS
User
Apps OS
User
Apps OS
User
Desktop Virtualization
Hypervisor
Hardware
So we built VDI environments

17. And they didn’t work

18. Sometimes spectacularly.

19. What is Desktop Virtualization?
The creation of personalized working environments, the applications, data and configuration settings that each user needs to do their job while at the same time ensuring conformance with organizational governance, risk and compliance management policies.
The core problem is that while the principle of server virtualization to concentrate multiple OS/Application stacks on a hypervisor works very well, desktop virtualization has very little to with hypervisors.
Desktop virtualization is better thought of as a management system

20. Lesson Zero The creation of personalized working environments,
the applications, data and configuration settings
that each user needs to do their job
while at the same time ensuring conformance with organizational governance, risk and compliance management policies.
Consider this lesson #0
Creation - Dynamic, real time, flexible
Personalized - yours, your apps, your data, your config
Their job and nothing but your job – rights management – eliminate Admin privileges
Policy controls – pwd mgmt, data information leakage

21. Desktop Virtualization
Desktop virtualization is the future of personal computing
Lesson #1

22. VDI?
VDI is just one type of desktop virtualization

23. VDI? Apps OS User Apps OS User Apps OS User Apps OS User Apps OS User
Hypervisor
We host multiple desktop OS instances on a hypervisor, but the real work is in managing the applications
Hardware

24. VDI- Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
Server Hosted Desktop Virtualization (Gartner Inc.)
Citrix XenDesktop, VDI-in-a-Box
VMware View
Dell vWorkspace
Microsoft and others …

25. VDI Desktop Operating System (Windows)
Remoting Protocol – Connected Operation Only
End Point PC
Thin Client
Mobile Devices

26. Moar IOPS! VDI Lesson #2 More IOPS Why are IOPS so important?
Desktop operating systems like Microsoft Windows are designed to run with dedicated system resources – most importantly memory and storage. Ensuring adequate resources are available on a standalone desktop PC is never a challenge. A PC can readily accommodate 16 GB of memory and conventional low-cost (7,500 RPM) spinning disk storage can offer in excess of 1 TB and 80 IOPS per spindle, which is more than adequate for Windows 7.
In a VDI environment, where many desktops are concentrated onto a single hypervisor platform, meeting these requirements becomes more difficult. Storage capacity is never a problem, compared to many systems, the amount of disk storage required for a VDI environment is low. Attaining the required throughput is, however, a different matter. With many hundreds, and in some cases many thousands, of desktops all sharing a common storage infrastructure, demand for IOPS presents a significant challenge. Furthermore, as a desktop operating system, Windows 7 was developed with the assumption that all operating system resources are available for its exclusive use. With VDI, many Windows desktops simultaneously and independently read and write to a shared set of storage resources in a manner that looks highly random since there is no coordination among the desktops. Random reads and writes present an interesting performance challenge for latency sensitive disk-based storage infrastructure.
The impact of this problem is most dramatically demonstrated in the “boot storm”. The Windows boot and logon processes generate many times more IOPS than steady-state user operations. When many desktops are all starting at once, for example at the start of a call center shift, the storage infrastructure will see an order of magnitude increase in load compared to the rest of the day. In poorly specified systems, this boot storm will overload the storage infrastructure, starving Windows desktops of resources, resulting in excessively long startup times and degrading performance across all active systems.
Conventional storage solutions attempt to meet the IOPS challenge by scaling out – deploying many more high-performance disk drives than are needed for capacity purposes to deliver the required IOPS. This approach is capital intensive, represents a significant ongoing operational cost and is ultimately unsustainable as virtual desktop numbers increase. Scale-up solutions make use of Solid State Drive (SSD) storage systems which achieve much greater IOPS to meet boot storm load levels. However, SSDs have relatively low capacity and are expensive in comparison to conventional drives. Server based high-performance flash memory controllers can be used in conjunction with disk-based SANs to increase available IOPS, but these often cannot be used with blade servers which are frequently cited as the preferred hardware platform for VDI environments.

27. IOPS v Login Time
Without enough IOPS boot and login time can extend from seconds to many minutes

28. VDI Compute/Storage Costs
However over the past few years vendors have worked hard to lower the cost of compute and storage to the point where today we can honestly say that VDI ‘can’ cost less than a conventional PC

29. VDI Challenges Discovery Integration Managing Change User Experience
Service Level Management
VDI may now be cheap, but that does not mean it is easy
Transforming existing desktop services delivery teams can be difficullt

30. What about RDSH? RDSH - Remote Desktop Services Host
AKA – Citrix, Terminal Services, Service based Computing

31. User User User User User User User User User User User Apps Apps Apps
Windows Server 2008/2012
Hypervisor
One OS, but many independent sessions
Many configuration options, delivering individual apps or a full desktop
Hardware

32. RDSH Easier licensing Lower cost licensing More sessions per server
Application-centric model is mobile friendly
More mature
No IOPS concerns
Many advantages

33. VDI Desktop OS Greatest application compatibility
Simplest application support
Possibly more stable
But do not overlook the fact that VDI offers benefits that RDSH cannot deliver

34. RDSH There’s life in the old dog yet Lesson 3
RDSH will be a (the) major part of VDI for the foreseeable future

35. DaaS?
What about DaaS

36. DaaS Desktop as a Service VDI from the Cloud (Public/Private/Hybrid)
Remoting Protocol – Connected Operation Only
End Point PC
Thin Client
Mobile Devices
DaaS = Cloud hosted VDI

37. DaaS IBM, Fujitsu, Dell, CompuCom, RapidScale, tuCloud, dinCloud, …
Desktone, Virtual Bridges, Citrix, View …
Focus tends to be on service provide rather than technology
But technology is still important
Desktone and Virtual Bridges started as pure DaaS players but are finding an increasing market for on premise deployments (i.e., VDI)

38. DaaS
A sinmple model

39. RDSH for DaaS Service Provider License Agreement Available
More flexible service
Lower cost
Microsoft licensing is biased against DaaS - but the older RDHS technology has a licensing model that is far more DaaS friendly and substantially cheaper

40. DaaS
Display
Data
Pay close attention to the impact that latency can have on application performance in DaaS environments

41. DaaS Challenges Diversity of provider and platform Provider stability
Application performance
User experience
DaaS decision making is harder due to diversity of provider and platform and possible application performance issues
But for some use cases it has significant advantage

42. DaaS
Could have potential

43. IDV?

44. IDV Intelligent Desktop Virtualization (Marketing Gone Wild)
VMware Workstation, Fusion, Mirage
Citrix XenClient
MokaFive BareMetal
Put simple IDV runs a VDI style desktop on the endpoint rather than the data center -

45. IDV Centrally managed Local execution End Point
Local compute, storage, graphics
Disconnected Operation
End Point
PC only (today)
No tablet, smartphone options today

46. User Apps OS Hypervisor Hardware
As with VDI - IDV runs on a hypervisor
And can run more than one managed desktop image per device

47. User Apps OS Hypervisor Hardware
However in many cases IDV runs just a single managed OS image

48. User Apps OS Hardware Hypervisor
IDV can work with both type I and type II hypervisors,

49. User Apps OS Hypervisor Hardware
And using the Mirage technology that VMware acquired with its Wanova acquisition
The hypervisor can be dispensed with as well

50. IDV Challenges Not for mobile devices Low awareness Low adoption
Low prioritization
IDV is today limited to x86 devices

51. IDV
If mobile is not a big part of your business consider this carefully

52. Thank you