vir tualisation
FACILITIES desktop
virtualisation solutions needs to be very well specified. In particular, the requirement to utilise high performance storage was noted to push costs too high for many business cases.
The recent wide spread availability of SSD storage has dramatically reduced the size of budgets required to deliver better than adequate service performance to users, as has the introduction of ’cloning’ technologies. Indeed, the rapidly growing maturity of desktop virtualisation solutions coupled with advances in the underlying physical server, storage and networking infrastructures are making it likely that perceptions of cost disadvantages may reduce dramatically in the near future.
Figure 1
How quickly this leads to an acceleration of adoption will depend on a number of factors unique to each organisation and its requirements. However, in my opinion there is, still, a major understanding shortfall with few organisations appreciating the breadth of desktop virtualisation solution architectures available. It is also reasonably clear that few organisations have a good feel for which
solutions are suited to different usage needs and business requirements.
To address these issues, particularly the latter, it is important that organisations tackle a major area in which many lack essential data, namely having a good knowledge of
£How the users need to work, their mobility needs and the network communications they are likely to be using during all parts of their working lives, which could now include while travelling, working from home or even on holiday.
£The data security, information governance and protection requirements of the systems they access.
Only with up to date answers to these questions and similar projections for potential future usage does it become feasible to identify which type of desktop virtualisation solution will be suited to the business and work-style requirements of different types of users [2].
how users work and the systems they use. (Figure 2)
In order for any desktop virtualisation project to be successful it is essential that accurate information is obtained relating to: £Who the users are. £The applications they access and the data they need to see and modify in their business roles.
Only with accurate information of this type can data centre managers be confident they can scale solutions appropriately to ensure business users receive the service level quality they need, and more importantly, at least as high quality of service as they currently receive from existing desktops.
Data centre managers need to gather this type of information before any desktop virtualisation projects get underway if problems are to be avoided. Indeed, managing data centres, no matter how complex, is usually much simpler than dealing with unhappy users.
Figure 2 Further reading
1. Desktop Virtualization eBook
http://www.freeformdynamics.com/fullarticle.asp?aid=1433 2. User Virtualization eBook
http://www.freeformdynamics.com/fullarticle.asp?aid=1390 The above eBooks are available for free download from the Freeform Dynamics website.
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