Common paths to VDI?
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@scottalanmiller said in Common paths to VDI?:
RDS is used as the front end for a lot of VDI, so in a large number of cases VDI is a backend to RDS and the end user experience is identical. Of course you can do VDI without RDS and RDS without VDI. But lots of VDI, including Citrix XenDesktop, uses an RDS like experience to enable connections.
Agreed.
TO the end users, though, it's all just instant, automatic connections. You dont experience any difference in the interactions regardless of which method you are using unless you intentionally expose some manual component of the engagement.
Again, I agree that's what it SHOULD be. But the thin clients we have do not work as seamlessly with Microsoft's RDS as they do with VMware View.
The higher ups here are VERY much fans of good user experience, and VMware is the incumbent.
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@nerdydad said in Common paths to VDI?:
I wasn't particularly interested in a comparison between VDI to RDP, but more interested on how one gets to a "thin-client" environment in general. "VDI" is just a term that I have known it as a general technology/topology (such as similar to the 1980's client-server session based technologies) and not in a particular vendor/protocol/specific product instance.
Probably could have been better asked "How does one move from desktop/laptops to thin client environments?"
VDI is VERY specific, it is one to one virtualization of desktops without the sharing of resources and is not something that existing in the 1980s. You are thinking of terminal services, which is called RDS in the Windows world. So using VDI explicitely gave you something different.
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@dafyre said in Common paths to VDI?:
Again, I agree that's what it SHOULD be. But the thin clients we have do not work as seamlessly with Microsoft's RDS as they do with VMware View.
The higher ups here are VERY much fans of good user experience, and VMware is the incumbent.
Something tell sme that someone just didn't set them up properly.
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@dafyre said in Common paths to VDI?:
@scottalanmiller said in Common paths to VDI?:
@dafyre said in Common paths to VDI?:
@scottalanmiller said in Common paths to VDI?:
@dafyre said in Common paths to VDI?:
@scottalanmiller said in Common paths to VDI?:
@dafyre said in Common paths to VDI?:
Unless you have a real clear cut reason as to WHY VDI and the places it can save you time and/or money, it won't be worth it.
As an educational insitution, it makes sense for us, since we can cut down having to buy 250 to 500 worker class workstations every year to only having to buy and replace thin/zero clients when they fail. (We do have to pay Licensing for MS and/or VMware, but we get steep discounts).
As a good stop-gap or test scenario, I'd suggest that using RemoteApps or even Remote Desktop sessions could show you the potential for how well VDI could work for your business.
In your case, what makes VDI superior to RDS?
That is a decision that came down from higher up before I started here, unfortunately.
I prefer the Microsoft RemoteApp and RDS over a full VDI desktop.
You said that using VDI made sense for you. I was asking what about it made sense. Sounds like the answer is... it doesn't make sense, RDS would have been the right choice but no one did an evaluation of the needs?
I think it does make sense in the places we use it (and it has enough scale to be cost effective). RDS would also be effective there, but less user friendly when compared on the thin clients we use. But more to your point, no, no evaluation was done in real world testing. (A few things were 'tested' to make it look like it happened on paper).
How does scale play a role versus RDS? What would make RDS less user friendly? How would end users even know the difference?
Because the bean counters enjoy knowing how the bottom line is affected when we undertake a project. In this case, scale goes along with the financial side of things, not with the user experience side of things.
Except VDI is always more costly than RDS, regardless of scale, so that argument would take you in the opposite direction. That was part of my point - VDI never makes sense based on scale, so why would scale matter if scale would never make the bean counters happy?
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@nerdydad said in Common paths to VDI?:
Probably could have been better asked "How does one move from desktop/laptops to thin client environments?"
Install RDS, done.
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@scottalanmiller said in Common paths to VDI?:
@nerdydad said in Common paths to VDI?:
I wasn't particularly interested in a comparison between VDI to RDP, but more interested on how one gets to a "thin-client" environment in general. "VDI" is just a term that I have known it as a general technology/topology (such as similar to the 1980's client-server session based technologies) and not in a particular vendor/protocol/specific product instance.
Probably could have been better asked "How does one move from desktop/laptops to thin client environments?"
VDI is VERY specific, it is one to one virtualization of desktops without the sharing of resources and is not something that existing in the 1980s. You are thinking of terminal services, which is called RDS in the Windows world. So using VDI explicitely gave you something different.
Duly noted.
When I worked at the Dept of Energy, they were deploying thin clients and specifically called it "VDI" with VMware Horizon. In the environment, everybody shared a "golden image" of the OS and each user had their particular profile loaded on top of their copy of the golden image, with the apps that they needed. This is the particular environment that I am trying to refer to.
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@nerdydad said in Common paths to VDI?:
@scottalanmiller said in Common paths to VDI?:
@nerdydad said in Common paths to VDI?:
I wasn't particularly interested in a comparison between VDI to RDP, but more interested on how one gets to a "thin-client" environment in general. "VDI" is just a term that I have known it as a general technology/topology (such as similar to the 1980's client-server session based technologies) and not in a particular vendor/protocol/specific product instance.
Probably could have been better asked "How does one move from desktop/laptops to thin client environments?"
VDI is VERY specific, it is one to one virtualization of desktops without the sharing of resources and is not something that existing in the 1980s. You are thinking of terminal services, which is called RDS in the Windows world. So using VDI explicitely gave you something different.
Duly noted.
When I worked at the Dept of Energy, they were deploying thin clients and specifically called it "VDI" with VMware Horizon. In the environment, everybody shared a "golden image" of the OS and each user had their particular profile loaded on top of their copy of the golden image, with the apps that they needed. This is the particular environment that I am trying to refer to.
Then you are back to VDI. You are flip flopping. Do you want shared computing like in the 1980s, or do you want one ot one virtualization where each user gets their own instance and they don't share, that's VDI. VDI is the expensive one that you never want unless you've proven that the other options don't work/ You never "want" VDI. If the phrase "I want VDI" comes up, something is wrong. It is always "I have no choice but VDI".
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VDI odes not actually mandate thin clients. VDI could actually be done with a mass of KVM cables. The thing that makes it VDI is not the thin client nature of it, but the sprawl of VMs.
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@scottalanmiller said in Common paths to VDI?:
@nerdydad said in Common paths to VDI?:
@scottalanmiller said in Common paths to VDI?:
@nerdydad said in Common paths to VDI?:
I wasn't particularly interested in a comparison between VDI to RDP, but more interested on how one gets to a "thin-client" environment in general. "VDI" is just a term that I have known it as a general technology/topology (such as similar to the 1980's client-server session based technologies) and not in a particular vendor/protocol/specific product instance.
Probably could have been better asked "How does one move from desktop/laptops to thin client environments?"
VDI is VERY specific, it is one to one virtualization of desktops without the sharing of resources and is not something that existing in the 1980s. You are thinking of terminal services, which is called RDS in the Windows world. So using VDI explicitely gave you something different.
Duly noted.
When I worked at the Dept of Energy, they were deploying thin clients and specifically called it "VDI" with VMware Horizon. In the environment, everybody shared a "golden image" of the OS and each user had their particular profile loaded on top of their copy of the golden image, with the apps that they needed. This is the particular environment that I am trying to refer to.
Then you are back to VDI. You are flip flopping. Do you want shared computing like in the 1980s, or do you want one ot one virtualization where each user gets their own instance and they don't share, that's VDI. VDI is the expensive one that you never want unless you've proven that the other options don't work/ You never "want" VDI. If the phrase "I want VDI" comes up, something is wrong. It is always "I have no choice but VDI".
Sorry about the flip-flopping. I assumed that VDI and RDS was the same type of technologies (similar to terminal back in the 80's) but different takes from different companies.
RDS sounds more like the technology that I would be needing instead of VDI. I can always redirect users drives as necessary to the file server, along with printers, applications, etc.
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@nerdydad said in Common paths to VDI?:
@scottalanmiller said in Common paths to VDI?:
@nerdydad said in Common paths to VDI?:
@scottalanmiller said in Common paths to VDI?:
@nerdydad said in Common paths to VDI?:
I wasn't particularly interested in a comparison between VDI to RDP, but more interested on how one gets to a "thin-client" environment in general. "VDI" is just a term that I have known it as a general technology/topology (such as similar to the 1980's client-server session based technologies) and not in a particular vendor/protocol/specific product instance.
Probably could have been better asked "How does one move from desktop/laptops to thin client environments?"
VDI is VERY specific, it is one to one virtualization of desktops without the sharing of resources and is not something that existing in the 1980s. You are thinking of terminal services, which is called RDS in the Windows world. So using VDI explicitely gave you something different.
Duly noted.
When I worked at the Dept of Energy, they were deploying thin clients and specifically called it "VDI" with VMware Horizon. In the environment, everybody shared a "golden image" of the OS and each user had their particular profile loaded on top of their copy of the golden image, with the apps that they needed. This is the particular environment that I am trying to refer to.
Then you are back to VDI. You are flip flopping. Do you want shared computing like in the 1980s, or do you want one ot one virtualization where each user gets their own instance and they don't share, that's VDI. VDI is the expensive one that you never want unless you've proven that the other options don't work/ You never "want" VDI. If the phrase "I want VDI" comes up, something is wrong. It is always "I have no choice but VDI".
Sorry about the flip-flopping. I assumed that VDI and RDS was the same type of technologies (similar to terminal back in the 80's) but different takes from different companies.
RDS sounds more like the technology that I would be needing instead of VDI. I can always redirect users drives as necessary to the file server, along with printers, applications, etc.
Right, RDS (or TS as it used to be) is the stnadard approach. VDI is the hipster buzzword of the day that has only become practical as of late and people jump on the bandwagon because it is new and interesting, but rarely evaluate it and then are trapped with all kinds of cost and complexity. As long as RDS works for you, it is generally far better. Easier, simpler, cheaper.
VDI comes into play only when you are running apps that cannot be deployed to a server (whether by bad tech or a crippling license) or you are doing someting where people need to be administrators on their own individual boxes (eek!!) So VDI is common in classrooms for system admin classes so that people can destroy their own instances and not mess with other people But for normal users who are kept with user accounts, you normally use RDS since they can't mess with each other as they are not admins.
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RDS enables the licensing to allow a Windows server to act like a UNIX server. UNIX was multi-user from the beginning. Windows restricts that by license without RDS.
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The simplest VDI implementations is just throwing up a Windows 10 VM on a hypervisor. It means nothing more than that. Lots of SMBs just do that when they need VDI. VDI is licensed "per VM" so scale plays little to no role. The cost is the same per user whether you need one or one million of them (well, at some point MS will make a deal with you.)
So I actually see VDI making the most sense for tiny shops that need one or two special case VMs and are unwilling to run a dedicated little box for them (which is generally cheaper) so that they don't have to license an RDS server which generally is overly expensive till you have at least five users (to get into your CAL packs.)
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To avoid VDI at the bank, they did racks of workstations in the datacenter.
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We (at Scale) have done a lot of work with Workspot for easy VDI solutions on Scale HC3. We have also done a lot of testing and validation around more traditional terminal services approaches like XenApp and Microsoft RDS. Both approaches have merit and vary in their value proposition, management, and approaches. Of course, a lot of Scale customers use the "simple" VDI approach of simply running Windows 8 or Windows 10 desktop VMs on top of their cluster and using the stock RDP options to connect to them, no special VDI products needed if you want to go that route. There are free front ends for this approach as well, we know that someone here in MangoLassi has used Guacamole, instead of RDS, as a front end connection aggregator for exactly that purpose.
