FOCUS VIRTUALIZATION UPDATE
Issue 12, Oct/Nov
FOCUS UPDATE: VIRTUALIZATION
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erver virtualization has become commonplace, so that means the next frontier for virtualization must be the desktop. A number of
leading vendors are increasingly focusing in this space. VMware, for example, released a new version of its desktop-virtualization solution VMware View 4.5 in September and Cisco, during the same month, announced it has partnered with Citrix to provide a joint desktop-virtualization solution.
While the biggest impact of transition to virtualized desktops will be, without a doubt, felt in the corporate offices, data center managers will also notice a change. Citrix’ XenDesktop director of product marketing Natalie Lambert says a data center providing services to an organization transitioning to virtual desktops will have to add storage, servers and possibly network equipment to support a virtualized- desktop infrastructure.
“Your desktop environment is moving into the data center,” Lambert says. “Watch out server guys, the data center is not only for big- application workloads anymore, so you’re going to increase your capacity.”
Desktop virtualization is still a relatively young technology, which means there is not a lot available in terms of market data. IT market research firm IDC, however, forecasts that rapid adoption of client virtualization
THE DESKTOP AND THE DATA CENTER Yevgeniy Sverdlik explores how desktop virtualization will trickle down to the data center
will begin in the latter part of this year and continue throughout 2011. It also predicts that the market for desktop-virtualization- management software will have experienced a five-year compound annual growth rate of 16.9% between 2009 and 2014.
THE DESKTOP IN THE DATA CENTER
Impact in the data center will vary, depending on the type of desktop virtualization solution the organization chooses. There are two distinctly different technological approaches to virtualizing desktop PCs: VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) and session-based.
A VDI-based infrastructure involves a hypervisor installed on a server, serving multiple virtual machines with each VM running its own operating system and software, with its own virtual disk space, CPU resource and memory, behaving like a stand-alone desktop computer. A session- based environment does not necessarily use a hypervisor but has one Windows operating
VMWARE GOES OFFLINE VMware is claiming an industry first with the ability of its new desktop-virtualization solution which lets users “check out” their virtual desktops from the host data center and use them offline.
VMware’s VP for End-User Computing Products Vittorio Viarengo said in a statement that the new VMware View 4.5 expanded the number of use cases for desktop virtualization.
The company said:View allows users to access their virtual desktops while they are disconnected from the network but still ensures enforcement of security and compliance policies consistently across desktops, whether they are connected or disconnected. The View Client Local Mode also allows for employees to use their own PCs to access virtual desktops and for contractors to use their own IT resources.
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system installed on a server, providing each user with remote access to the environment.
While each user of a VDI-based system can customize their environment, session-based environments are standardized. A session-based deployment, however, can serve a substantially greater number of users than a VDI can. So to serve the same amount of users, a data center will have to add a lot more compute, storage and network resources for a VDI deployment than it will for a session-based virtual-desktop deployment. This does not necessarily mean that one is better than the other, Lambert says. “A lot of vendors out there offer VDI … which is great technology but only ideal for certain cases.”
While VDI would be appropriate for “knowledge workers” who need customized environments, a call center PC, for example, will only run about three applications and does not need to be personalized, in which case a session-based virtualization approach would be ideal.
DESKTOP POWERS EU RESEARCH PROJECT The EU recently said it plans to rollout a desktop grid project it says could unlock the processing power of 200,000 desktop computers in the name of research.
It plans to set up a European Commission funded European Grid Infrastructure that will combine computing power in 20 of its countries, providing “sustainable and continuous” power by using the capacity of idle
machines.The project is costing €25 million over four years – a small price to pay, according to the EU, for the research that will be undertaken on the environment, energy and health.
This will be the largest grid infrastructure created for research to date, and will be carried out as part of the EU’s digital Agenda for Europe, which hopes to draw on the social and economic potential of IT.
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