How do YOU demo VDI?
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@scottalanmiller You spend the vast majority of your days with IT professionals. I spend the vast majority of my days with people who aren't completely certain of the difference between a mouse and a keyboard, or SD and HD, or a copier and a printer.
If I had a nickle for every customer that "...knows what VDI looks like and how it acts, hard to find anyone that doesn't use it or something that looks identical regularly." I could buy a single piece of nickle candy.
Not in the real world: "Showing off a physical thin client hardware device is kind of pointless as you can describe it perfectly... it's exactly like a normal computer running the thin client software, but with a smaller computer that costs "less" (often they cost more.)"
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@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:
@scottalanmiller You spend the vast majority of your days with IT professionals. I spend the vast majority of my days with people who aren't completely certain of the difference between a mouse and a keyboard, or SD and HD, or a copier and a printer.
I spend my days with those people, I do the same in the trenches work as everyone else.
But even those people, they use things like RDP all of the time.
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@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:
Not in the real world: "Showing off a physical thin client hardware device is kind of pointless as you can describe it perfectly... it's exactly like a normal computer running the thin client software, but with a smaller computer that costs "less" (often they cost more.)"
What do you mean not in the real world? Thin clients are often pricey. And they are identical to using a normal computer to demo it.
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My real point there, though, is that if the goal is to demo something, do they really need to see the box?
Because it's identical, to the end user, the only difference is the box and if the end user isn't technical (like you said) then they can't tell the difference between the boxes, either.
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I'm literally setting up VDI for a new user right now.
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@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:
@scottalanmiller You spend the vast majority of your days with IT professionals. I spend the vast majority of my days with people who aren't completely certain of the difference between a mouse and a keyboard, or SD and HD, or a copier and a printer.
If I had a nickle for every customer that "...knows what VDI looks like and how it acts, hard to find anyone that doesn't use it or something that looks identical regularly." I could buy a single piece of nickle candy.
Not in the real world: "Showing off a physical thin client hardware device is kind of pointless as you can describe it perfectly... it's exactly like a normal computer running the thin client software, but with a smaller computer that costs "less" (often they cost more.)"
So what you'll have to do is explain that VDI is a means of connecting to a remote computer. That no additional physical hardware need be present at the user workstation to connect to the remote computer.
Once you do that, RDP to your server and explain that the Microsoft RDP client is a Thin client. All of the processing is being done on the remote system and the user simply needs to be setup to use it.
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You certainly can carry around a thin client. This one is made for that...
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81jfFWl1pzL.SX679.jpg
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@scottalanmiller The customer MUST see their local printer, Electronic Signature Device, Meter Reader Scanner, Barcode Scanner, and a sundry of other business specific peripherals, Software and workflows function correctly before they agree to anything. The demo need to function for a time of up to a few weeks.
I'm not looking to argue about ANY aspect of VDI, just curious how others are doing it.
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These days, though, I would hypothesize that those kinds of thin clients are seeing the end. Chromebooks have so much more volume, and can often do thin client tasks better than thin clients, that I bet the thin client market is at an end.
Now that Chomebooks can run Android and Linux apps, there is no one making a cost effective thin client any longer. So full Chromebooks are cheaper, and more flexible, and more powerful with constant software patches and hardware refreshes.
I bet the traditional thin client market is all but gone.
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@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:
I'm not looking to argue about ANY aspect of VDI, just curious how others are doing it.
I'm not either. Just trying to say that I think that there is a reason why no one else is doing it in that way, it's so easy to demo in other ways.
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@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:
@scottalanmiller The customer MUST see their local printer, Electronic Signature Device, Meter Reader Scanner, Barcode Scanner, and a sundry of other business specific peripherals, Software and workflows function correctly before they agree to anything. The demo need to function for a time of up to a few weeks.
Okay, so NOT a walk in sales demo. This is more a proof of concept demo.
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@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:
@scottalanmiller The customer MUST see their local printer, Electronic Signature Device, Meter Reader Scanner, Barcode Scanner, and a sundry of other business specific peripherals, Software and workflows function correctly before they agree to anything. The demo need to function for a time of up to a few weeks.
If you don't need it to be mobile, they any computer or any thin client will do. Assuming you sell some specific thin client, or want to, use that for the demo to show it off. If not, use whatever makes sense.
Setting up and demoing all of that stuff can be down with or without a hardware thin client. Because of how thin clients work, you can demo either way equally and interchangeably.
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I guess that the real question, though, is which part are you asking about? It sounds like you require...
- A working VDI system to show the back end working.
- A physical box for the end user to touch, poke, prod, taste, etc.
- A full set up of the system working as if it was in production.
If I'm understanding that correctly, what pieces are you asking about? This sounds totally dependent on the customer. Like, if it is extremely light demo, bringing in a Nuc like I said, will work to create a single VDI instance (or maybe a couple) from the back end. And bring in as many thin client hardware units as they need to show it working (and show mobility and stuff, I'd always do at least two.) Put them on full desks, do a full roll out.
Only downside is basically you have to do all of the engineering for free, while still in sales mode.
If hosted is okay, then the Nuc could be replaced with a central VDI solution of your choice that you host, or a hosted one like AWS WordSpaces.
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@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:
@scottalanmiller The customer MUST see their local printer, Electronic Signature Device, Meter Reader Scanner, Barcode Scanner, and a sundry of other business specific peripherals, Software and workflows function correctly before they agree to anything. The demo need to function for a time of up to a few weeks.
I'm not looking to argue about ANY aspect of VDI, just curious how others are doing it.
So what you want is a thin client manager. Where someone puts in thin.domain.com:142 and they get a specific set of preconfigured things for them that they would have as if they were at the office.
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I'm on to other things now. This one seemingly simple and casual question has resulted in a rise in blood pressure and anxiety that I find completely unnecessary and unproductive.
I have found no helpful or beneficial responses so far here. Only argumentative replies suggesting I have already pigeon-holed my demo tactic and that I chose wrong.
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@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:
I'm on to other things now. This one seemingly simple and casual question has resulted in a rise in blood pressure and anxiety that I find completely unnecessary and unproductive.
I have found no helpful or beneficial responses so far here. Only argumentative replies suggesting I have already pigeon-holed my demo tactic and that I chose wrong.
While you may have explained what you are looking for incorrectly that is for sure. If you wanted VDI solutions, VMWare has one, Citrix XenServer another.
So I believe I'm on the most accurate topic in that you want to be able to demo a VDI solution, and need to know what to recommend.
Rather than how can you demo VDI.
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@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:
I'm on to other things now. This one seemingly simple and casual question has resulted in a rise in blood pressure and anxiety that I find completely unnecessary and unproductive.
I have found no helpful or beneficial responses so far here. Only argumentative replies suggesting I have already pigeon-holed my demo tactic and that I chose wrong.
Who is arguing? We are just clarifying what you are asking for. No one argued, just pointed out ways to demo that would be really simple. It was all an attempt to answer exactly what we thought you were asking.
None of it was disagreeing with something that you had said.
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@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:
Only argumentative replies suggesting I have already pigeon-holed my demo tactic and that I chose wrong.
I think you must have not understood what we posted, because I don't think any of us said that. It would have not made sense for us to have done that, since I don't think any of us, even now, are completely sure what you were asking or trying to do. We aren't up to the point of arguing or anything like that. Just trying to clarify what it is you are looking to find out, and pointing out ways that we think would best solve the problem you are facing.
(Other than showing that Amazon offers RDP for WorkSpaces, of course.)
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VDI is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. You run a desktop environment for a set of users on a hypervisor in your server room or COLO.
The user launches a piece of software on a desktop, laptop or chromebook or even an app from their iPad and is connected to a virtual environment that has the user login with a set of credentials.
From there they have all of the tools to do their job, printers, email, scanners etc etc.
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Make sure you choose the right storage method for VDI if you are doing this yourself, otherwise you will have a right shit storm. You will save money and resources if you can use session based desktops rather than VDI based. there are only specific cases when you need VDI desktops I find. If you have session based desktops you can also have 2 sessions hosts and if you spec them properly you can put one in maintenance mode for updates, software installs etc and shift everyone else on to the other server temporary.
