VDI AST-0109266 ITWspotlight 1210 v3

8/12/2019 VDI AST-0109266 ITWspotlight 1210 v3

1/22

Digital Spotlight | December 2013/January 2014

Your

strategicguide to VDICompanies take bold steps intodesktop virtualization as benefitsbegin to outweigh challenges G


2/22

C O V E R I M A G E B Y T H I N K S T O C K D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 3 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 4 I T W O R L D . C O M 2

Inside

4 CriticalsuccessfactorsIT leaders share

their best advice

and lessons learned

to help you avoid

rookie mistakes.

9 State ofthe marketVDI technology is

better, aster and

cheaper. Adoption

may be slow, but

VDI deployments

can transorm abusiness when

planned careully.

13 Leveragefor BYODCan VDI help

manage personal

devices connect-

ing to corporate

networks? There

are pros and cons tothis approach, but

early deployments

look good.

16 Trail-blazersCompanies take

bold steps into desk-

top virtualization

as benefits begin

to outweigh chal-

lenges. Learn howVDI technology is

being deployed

in mission-critical

workflows.

21 Howto startA typical VDI proj-

ect has many parts.

Heres an imple-

mentation checklist

to get you started.

DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION

Jodie Naze

Editor in chief

[email protected]

(508) 820-8536

Amy Bennett

Managing editor

[email protected]

(508) 820-8563

Sean Weglage

SVP/Publisher

[email protected](508) 820-8246

John Vulopas

Account director, digital

[email protected]

(508) 271-8024

Ryan Ayalde

Online account executive

[email protected]

(415) 978-3312

Steve Traynor

Art director

[email protected]

INTERNATIONAL

DATA GROUP

Patrick J. McGovern

Chairman of the Board

Michael Friedenberg

CEO

Matthew Yorke

CEO

John Gallant

Chief Content Officer
mailto:jodie_naze%40itworld.com?subject=mailto:amy_bennett%40itworld.com?subject=mailto:sean_weglage%40itworld.com?subject=mailto:john_vulopas%40itworld.com?subject=mailto:ryan_ayalde%40itworld.com?subject=mailto:straynor%40idgenterprise.com?subject=mailto:straynor%40idgenterprise.com?subject=mailto:ryan_ayalde%40itworld.com?subject=mailto:john_vulopas%40itworld.com?subject=mailto:sean_weglage%40itworld.com?subject=mailto:amy_bennett%40itworld.com?subject=mailto:jodie_naze%40itworld.com?subject=http://www.citrix.com/xendesktop


3/22

FROM THE EDITOR

Not your athers VDI

I you havent looked

at VDI technology in awhile, youll find that its

changed. Faster, cheaper

technology has made it an

interesting option or some

companies seeking a way to

support flexible, work-rom-

anywhere environments. In

act, in some cases, BYOD is

driving new interest in VDI

given that virtualized desk-

tops can help keep corporatedata on corporate servers,

not on client devices. Its not

a panacea or all o BYODs

security concerns, o course,

but VDI has caught the eye o

some CIOs looki ng or ways

to minimize the security

impact o personal mobile

devices. Granted, the market

is still small, and we dont

want to minimize the chal-

lenges acing a VDI project(sofware licensing costs or

example), but companies

that have deployed VDI have

experienced tangible ben-

efits. Want a successul proj-

ect? Check in with olks who

have kicked the tires. To get

you started, weve assembled

advice rom IT leaders who

have successully deployed

VDI. They shared their rookiemistakes (Dont virtualize

everything!) and their best

tips (Choose that pilot proj-

ect careully!). We hope you

find this inormation helpul

when researching your own

project.

Good luck!

Jodie Naze

Editor in chief

D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 3 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 4 I T W O R L D . C O M 3

XenDesktop

Virtual desktops on-demand

from any device.
http://www.citrix.com/xendesktophttp://www.citrix.com/xendesktophttp://www.citrix.com/xendesktophttp://www.citrix.com/xendesktop


4/22

T H I N K S T O C K D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 3 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 4 I T W O R L D . C O M 4

Critical

successfactors

IT leaders sharetheir best advice andlessons learned to

help you avoid rookiemistakes.

By David Strom


5/22



Aew years ago, desktop

virtualization (or virtual

desktop in rastructure,

better known as VDI) su-

ered rom complex installations,unrealistic expectations and lack-

luster user experiences. However,

those issues are largely behind us

as a result o better technologies

and implementations. L ower stor-

age costs including flash memory

improvements, better deduplica-

tion technologies, cheaper zero-

ootprint client machines, better

support o mobile clients and thin

provisioning have made VDI moreattractive. Nonetheless, a success-

ul VDI deployment takes careul

planning and an understanding o

where to find the best initial target

opportunities. For a VDI project to

save money and deliver on expec-

tations, experts say you should

careully consider these seven

main areas.

# 1 Know the VDIprojects goalsOne common rookie mistake is

thinking that all o your desktops

belong in the virtual column. That

is almost never going to happen, no

matter how ortunate your circum-

stances. The best VDI deployments

are either or a specific purpose, a

subset o your user environmentor a particular application. Under-

standing this concept at the begin-

ning o any project is critical. A case

in point is health i nsurer Aetna.

Afer piloting VDI in 2009, Aetna

rolled it out to more than 2 7,000

users and partners. It wasnt about

saving money, says Alan Pawlack,

Aetnas head o client services. It

was about flexibility to the busi-

ness and reacting to the businessshifs where they wanted to

do business and starting up new

offices or new extensions to the

company.

VDI is a different way o lie,

appropriate in limited use cases

such as call centers, hospitals, com-

puter lab classrooms and other

places where bulk quantities o

desktops that arent individually

owned will be requently used.Careully think about your total

user population, and propose VDI

to departments where it makes the

most sense or where you plan to

upgrade rom older XP machines.

Understand what apps users con-

sume and that not every app, such

as Photoshop or others with inten-

sive graphics needs with low net-work latencies, lends itsel to VDI.

One approach is to triage your

needs. VDI can be used in three di-

erent ways: as traditional terminal

services, to supply persistent desk-

tops and to supply non-persistent

desktops with stored user profiles.

Jason Strickland o Southeastern

Community College in Raleigh, N.C.,

has a combination o non-persis-

tent desktops or computer labsused by students and persistent

desktops or staff. This distinction

makes sense because persistent

desktops can consume more net-

work resources.

#2 Consider mobility needsThe more mobile your work-

orce, the more likely VDI will be a

good fit. For example, commuter

workstations that employeescheck out versus fixed offices

are good candidates. VDI is also

a great way to improve access to

applications that reside on the cor-

porate network when supporting a

large remote workorce.

Many hospitals use VDI or this

very reason. Hospital staffs tend to

move around as they deliver careto patients, and with a VDI deploy-

ment, patient inormation is at their

fingertips wherever they go. Seattle

Childrens Hospital is a good exam-

pleo how VDI benefits a mobile

staff. Beore its VDI deployment,

configuration differences among

its thousands o PC workstations

made the computing experience

unamiliar and unpredictable or

hospital staff. Log-in and applica-tion download times were also

long. With VDI, staff members use

single sign-on to log into their desk-

tops and applications on a zero

client in seconds, enabling them

to spend the rest o their prepara-

tion time discussing the patient

they are about to see. Once in clinic

exam rooms, they can log into

the same desktop state they just

lef with the ull i normation andpatient context displayed in 10 to

15 seconds.

While mobile can mean that

users are actually moving about, it
http://www.citrix.com/customers/seattle_childrens_hospital_en.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/customers/seattle_childrens_hospital_en.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/customers/seattle_childrens_hospital_en.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/customers/seattle_childrens_hospital_en.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/customers/seattle_childrens_hospital_en.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/customers/seattle_childrens_hospital_en.html


6/22


could include remote workers, too.

For example, the city o Barcelona

skipped Windows 7 and upgraded

to a virtual Windows 8 desktop

that will eventually support 2,500users. Its goal was to enable more

employees to work rom home

with better and more consistent

desktop support.

Another popular application is

in higher education, where VDI

can reduce support needs andimprove campus computer lab

access. Virtualization allows us to

more effectively use IT to support

the universitys educational mis-

sionby allowing our users to get

access to resources wherever they

are and rom whatever device theychoose, said Sue Workman, asso-

ciate vice president o support at

Indiana University. Indiana Uni-

versity has multiple campuses and

nearly 100 labs, some o which are

shared with students rom other

universities and community col-leges.

#3 Control softwarelicensing costs

One o the biggest VDI imple-

mentation challenges is how

desktop sofware is licensed. Major

sofware vendors are becoming

more sympathetic to virtual con-

figurations, but its still an issue. Part

o the problem lies squarely withhow Microsof treats virtualizing

its Windows licenses, orcing most

enterprises to enter into a volume

purchase agreement to obtain

the lowest total Windows license

costs. To make matters more com-

plex, Microsof has other licensing

plansbased on number o users

and whether Sofware Assurance

support is i ncluded. (To learn more,

the licensing issue is covered in

some detail in thisNetwork World

review.)

However, VDI could cut the num-

ber o licenses consumed across

Really understand VDIs ROI

Many of the arguable benefits of VDI have todo with return on investment and long-termtotal cost savings from using virtual desk-

tops rather than ordinary PCs. The theory goes thateven though you might spend more on networkinfrastructure and storage, VDI will cut supportcosts. However, the actual science of calculatingROI is somewhat elusive, partly because VDI has somany moving parts.

Several of the major VDI vendors offer onlinecalculator tools, including this onefrom Citrix.Although its for configuring the companys VDI-in-a-Box implementation and you may be thinkingabout using another VDI product, it is worth looking

at how Citrix has set up its spreadsheet template.There are various assumptions that you can adjust,such as support costs for installing the underly-ing operating system or resolving end-user issues,along with the specific infrastructure improvements.

Default numbers are used to get you started (natu-rally it paints VDI in its best possible light) and canbe easily adjusted to reflect your particular situation.

Another method is more descriptive than the fill-in-the-box approach. Consider how you would tell astory about your migration to VDI so that manage-ment can understand some of the issues you dealwith currently. For example, lets say that you wantto use VDI to improve services and lower your sup-port costs, along with getting more life out of exist-ing equipment. While you want to deploy Windows7 or 8 across your campus, your existing PCs arentpowerful enough to run them. You also want tomake use of a converged network infrastructure that

will run your storage and IP telephony along with thedesktop PCs. Once you have this story, begin to costout the various components and track the changesto your existing computing equipment.

http://www.cio.com/article/718257/City_of_Barcelona_Consolidates_VDI_with_Windows_Server_2012http://www.cio.com/article/718257/City_of_Barcelona_Consolidates_VDI_with_Windows_Server_2012http://www.citrix.com/news/announcements/jun-2011/indiana-university-teams-with-citrix-to-deliver-personal-cloud-to-100000.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/news/announcements/jun-2011/indiana-university-teams-with-citrix-to-deliver-personal-cloud-to-100000.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/news/announcements/jun-2011/indiana-university-teams-with-citrix-to-deliver-personal-cloud-to-100000.htmlhttp://www.microsoft.com/licensing/licensing-programs/licensing-programs.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/licensing/licensing-programs/licensing-programs.aspxhttp://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2013/071713-vdi-citrix-vmware-microsoft-271812.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/products/vdi-in-a-box/how-it-helps/understand-roi.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/products/vdi-in-a-box/how-it-helps/understand-roi.htmlhttp://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2013/071713-vdi-citrix-vmware-microsoft-271812.htmlhttp://www.microsoft.com/licensing/licensing-programs/licensing-programs.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/licensing/licensing-programs/licensing-programs.aspxhttp://www.citrix.com/news/announcements/jun-2011/indiana-university-teams-with-citrix-to-deliver-personal-cloud-to-100000.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/news/announcements/jun-2011/indiana-university-teams-with-citrix-to-deliver-personal-cloud-to-100000.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/news/announcements/jun-2011/indiana-university-teams-with-citrix-to-deliver-personal-cloud-to-100000.htmlhttp://www.cio.com/article/718257/City_of_Barcelona_Consolidates_VDI_with_Windows_Server_2012http://www.cio.com/article/718257/City_of_Barcelona_Consolidates_VDI_with_Windows_Server_2012


7/22


the enterprise, since all sofware

application instances are pooled

centrally. Metro Health Hospitalin

Grand Rapids, Mich., or example,

currently has 4,200 Active Direc-tory users, but the typical number

o concurrent logged-in sessions

ranges rom 1,400 to 1,700. Know-

ing that not every logged-in user is

using the same set o sofware, the

hospital could cut the cost by trim-

ming the number o licenses to a

third or less o the existing level

and still have roughly the same

level o service.

And because VDI has tightercontrol over the desktop, it could

eliminate the need or antivirus

and central desktop management

sofware.

#4 Identify requiredinfrastructure improvements

Collin Hachwi, IT i nrastructure

manager at Digital Intelligence

Systems LLC (DISYS), knew the

right questions to ask: Can our

inrastructure support VDI now

and into the uture, what are cur-

rent storage and processing needs,

and how many users do we intend

to deploy VDI to? However, it also

helps to understand the existinglevel o virtualization in your com-

pany, even i your only experience

has been with virtualizing some

servers. Its also critical to know

storage consumption trends on a

departmental or user level so you

can predict what those needs will

be when you virtualize these desk-

tops.

#5 Learn from initialmistakes with a pilot programDISYSs Hachwi knew that he

wasnt trying to virtualize every

desktop and picked his pilot VDI

project care-

ully, finding

users who

werent using

demandinggraphics apps

or oddball

peripherals

on their desk-

tops. Other IT

managers have

ound that the

best strategy

is to segment

your user population into discrete

stages and start with users whohave the least demanding needs

first so you can prove VDIs worth

and take advantage o your own

learning curve beore moving on to

more complex application porto-

lios.

Peripherals, in particular, can

be vexing or VDI. Virtualized Win-

dows with mice and keyboards

dont translate well into touch-

screen iPads and browser-based

access. Seattle Childrens Hospital

is trying to pull thi s off by working

with Microsof and a value-added

reseller to make Windows 8 more

touch-riendly. Windows 8 is the

only touch-enabled OS that you

can really virtualize, says CIO Wes

Wright.

#6 Keep persistent desktopsand golden master diskimages to the bare minimum

Another advantage o deploying

VDI is that everyone starts with the

same or limited set o master desk-

top images, typically a Windows 7

or 8 base. This can reduce overall

desktop support costs, since the

IT staff knows what end users are

using. However, you should bewary o creating too many virtual

desktop master images because

they create more work: The more

images there are, the more updates

have to be applied and maintained

across the board.

Strickland o Southeastern

Community College had 24 differ-

ent Windows images across his

campus. He and his staff wanted

to avoid patching more than one

Windows golden image, which i s

what they now have afer their VDI

deployment. They were also able

to toss five-year-old Windows Vista

http://www.networkworld.com/news/tech/2013/052013-vdi-rollout-269968.htmlhttp://www.networkworld.com/news/tech/2013/052013-vdi-rollout-269968.htmlhttp://www.networkworld.com/news/tech/2013/052013-vdi-rollout-269968.htmlhttp://www.networkworld.com/news/tech/2013/052013-vdi-rollout-269968.htmlhttp://www.citrix.com/xenapp


8/22


PCs that didnt support their

current device drivers. As a

result o reducing these vari-

ations, they have improved

support and responsivenessto their users. Our students

were pleased at how quickly

they could get online to their

desktops with our VDI imple-

mentation, said Strickland.

But there also have been

benefits elsewhere. We can

update our lab configura-

tions in mid-semester or

even anytime without the

complexity and the associ-ated downtime that we used

to have.

#7 UnderstandSSO/authenticationissues before anyVDI deployment

Incorporate all o your

authentication improve-

ments into a new VDI rollout.

This is what The Johns Hop-

kins Hospital in Baltimore, MD

did last year when it wanted

to combine a collection o

technologies to support a

more mobile workorce. The

IT department at the sprawl-

ing complex in downtown

Baltimore combined the hos-

pitals identity managementprogram, proximity card tech-

nology and single-sign-on

capabilities with a VDI rollout.

While this may seem like olly

to some, it paid off because

employees were happy with

being able to connect to their

virtual desktops rom any-

where in the complex with a

single login.

David Strom writes about

networking and commu-

nications topics. You can

reach him through his web

siteor ollow him on Twit-

ter @dstrom.Allen Bernard,

Stacy Collett, Sophie Curtis

and Tom Kaneshige contrib-

uted to this report.


People need to stay productive when theyre on-the-go. Thats why 97 of the

Global 100 use Citrix XenApp for remote a ccess without the risk. Easily acces

Windows apps and data from any device, anywhere and keep corporate datasafe in the datacenter.

Visit www.citrix.com/xenapptoday to learn more.

2013 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

4988 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara, CA 95054 USA

*All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

be easy for everyone.

XenApp. Bringing Windowsapps and data to a mobile world.
http://strominator.com/http://strominator.com/https://twitter.com/dstromhttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttp://www.citrix.com/xenapphttps://twitter.com/dstromhttp://strominator.com/http://strominator.com/


9/22

Stateof themarketVDI technology is better, fasterand cheaper. Adoption maybe slow, but VDI deploymentscan transform a business when

planned carefully.By Allen Bernard



10/22

D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 3 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 4 I T W O R L D . C O M 1 0

To say that virtual desk-

top inrastructure (VDI)

is making a comeback

would be a bit o an over-

statement. O course, the technol-ogy has come a long way since the

1960s, when pretty much every-

one using a computer worked in

virtual sessions akin to terminal

services such as Citrix Systems

XenApp and Microsof Windows

Server Remote Desktop Session

Host (RDSH).

Today, there are three main

flavors o VDI, desktop virtualiza-

tion or remote desktop: Terminal

services, persistent desktops rom

VMware and Citrix who collec-

tively own 90 percent o the mar-

ket and non-persistent desktops

that include a stored user profile.

(The term VDI reers to all three

flavors and their associated inra-

structure.)

Persistent desktops represent an

image o the users PC stored in the

data center. This i s the Cadillac o

VDI rollouts, meaning its the most

expensive and i nrastructure-

intensive, but its also the most

desirable rom a user point o view.

Non-persistent desktop images

and terminal services, meanwhile,

are temporary desktop sessions

that, once terminated, return to a

shared pool or someone else touse. The big difference between

the two is that terminal services

are aimed at workers such as call

center representatives who dont

need personalized desktop images

or applications.

Non-persistent sessions, on the

other hand, can be stored with

an associated user profile. When

a user logs back in, he starts up

where he lef off and can custom-

ize his settings and applications. Its

like a persistent image, only with-

out the associated storage- and

server-side overhead. Even though

its not the same as a true one-to-

one experience, it comes with

some o its own storage overhead,

as changes must be saved over

time, this makes the most sense or

some adopters in terms o cost and

user experience.

VDI deployment easier nowthat techs cheaper, faster

Until recently, anything but ter-

minal services was considered too

inrastructure-intensive or every-

day office and knowledge workers.

But new technologies and alling

prices have made VDI a viable and

cost-effective alternative to putting

workstations on every desktop,

says Kevin Strohmeyer, director o

product marketing or desktops

and applications at Citrix.

What weve seen over the last

12 to 18 months is massive in-line

deduplication technologies, host-

based cache technology basi-

cally, the realization that, with so

many desktop [virtual machines],

youve got the same images run-

ning copy afer copy afer copy on

the server, Strohmeyer says. Why

do I have to send all my reads and

writes out to central storage to

operate these big arms o VMs?

Why cant I stash and operate those

locally?

As or pricing, Strohmeyer says

Citrix partner NetApp offers all-

in VDI storage setups or $35 per

user. A ew years ago, that number

would have been as much as $500.

Several advancements explai n

this dramatic price drop:

Lower costs or archival

and cache storage.

Improved in-line data

deduplication or desk-

top environments.

Why do I have to sendall my reads and writes

out to central storage tooperate these big farms ofVMs? Why cant I stash andoperate those locally?



11/22


Cheap Teradici zero cli-

ents and thin clients.

PCoIP (VMware/Tersdici),

HDX (Citrix) and Microsof

RemoteFX user datagram

protocols or streaming

graphics as bitmaps.

Support o Android and iOS

mobile operating systems.

The Windows 7 desktop,

which is more VDI-riendly

than Windows XP.

Thin provisioning o tiered

hybrid storage inrastructures,

using SSD or caching and

HDD or archival storage.

Fast caching appliances, rom

companies such as Alacritech,

which also extend SSD lie

New end-to-end applica-

tion perormance monitor-

ing tools rom startups such

as Aternity and AppNeta.

Sofware vendors allowing

VDI licenses or their products.

High-perormance graphics

cards (GPUs) that take over the

heavy lifing rom server and

client CPUs and push out 3D

graphics in a VM environment.

Taken together, these technolo-

gies bring numerous benefits to

VDI: Centralized management,

patching and support; improved

data security; robust DR/BC sup-

port, including shorter data recov-

ery times; easier BYODroll-out and

management, and centralized

document and data storage.

But theres an additional cost

to get started, says Gartners Mark

Margevicius, vice president and

research director or client com-

puting. The way we see it, desktop

virtualization is really a p remium

offering. While it has great appli-

cability, its something customers

have to be willing to spend more

money on.

This premium, which can

approach 40 percent, comes rom

having to build the inrastructure

to support all those virtualized

desktops and, potentially, buy vir-

tual desktop access licenses rom

Microsof or each device. (Unless

a company has Microsof Sofware

Assurance as part o its licensing,

it can cost up to $100 per device

to extend Windows beyond the

workstation.) Some costs can be

offset with converged inrastruc-

tures rom vendors such as Ci sco

Systems, D ell, Hewlett-Packard and

VCE.

Niche VDI deploymentsstill dominateEven with renewed interest

and increased adoption, the VDI

market is puny, at no more than 4

percent o all workstation deploy-

ments, though Gartner projects

this number to double by 2016.

VDI is most ofen deployed in

niche environments or a small

subset o users or in places such as

call centers. In addition, industries

that put a premium on security

and ease o use, including financial

services and healthcare, are warm-

ing to VDI. So is manuacturing,

Strohmeyer says, which sees VDI

as a way to enable secure collabo-

ration and version control o glob-

ally distributed design-side pro-

cesses and intellectual property.

Then again, companies that put

a high value on flexibility have

rolled out VDI to al most every-

one. Afer piloting VDI in 2009, the

health insurer Aetna has since

rolled it out to 27,000 employees

and business partners.

It wasnt about saving money,

says Alan Pawlack, Aetnas head o

network and distribution engineer-

ing. It was about flexibility to the

business and reacting to the busi-

ness shifs where they wanted to

do business, starting up new offices

or new extensions to the company.

The recent advances detailed

above let Aetna realize the benefits

o its early investments, Pawlack

says. So did negotiating better

terms with Microsof a process

that gives many companies pause.

The licensing stack is still artificial,

and wed love to see that simpli-

fied, he says. The overhead o

the bureaucratic process is not

needed.

Meanwhile, or American Elec-

tric Power, cost remains a second-

ary consideration in a post-Stuxnet

world. The primary driver, then,

is the capability to manage and

secure data and systems centrally.

This seemed to be a so und prac-

tice to provide us with the opportu-

nity to manage o ur administrative

costs and provide a solution that

is compatible with the business

http://www.cio.com/article/736183/Can_BYOD_Breathe_New_Life_Into_the_Virtual_Desktop_http://www.cio.com/article/729478/New_Evidence_Shows_Stuxnet_Used_Since_At_Least_2007http://www.cio.com/article/729478/New_Evidence_Shows_Stuxnet_Used_Since_At_Least_2007http://www.cio.com/article/736183/Can_BYOD_Breathe_New_Life_Into_the_Virtual_Desktop_


12/22


needs, says Derek Myers, senior

manager o inrastructure and

complex services.

However, a long-overdue desk-

top reresh and Windows 7 migra-

tion in early 2012 really drove the

decision to adopt. Even then, the

rollout was limited; to date, about

13 percent o the companys 23,000

employees use desktop virtualiza-

tion.

As that number increases over

time, the utility should begin to see

some return on their investment,

Meyers says. When we looked at

the number o units we realized we

were not going to have an immedi-

ate cost savings on the first push. Its

an up-ront investment.

VDI users can live oncutting edge for a price

For Florida Atlantic Universitys

College o Engineering and Com-

puter Science, going the VDI route

was part leading-edge thinking

leaders wanted to complement

a newly open LEED-certified build-

ing with green technology and

part curiosity about what they

could do with the latest round o

technology advancements.

According to Mahesh

Neelakanta, director o IT or FAUs

engineering department, the think-

ing was, i we can do [VDI] or our

office staff and our researchers, we

can pretty much handle any type

o staff in the university.

Not only do FAUs 2,300 engi-

neering student remotely access

high-end engineering applications

such as MathLab and AutoCAD

remotely, Neelakanta also supports

FAU branches in other parts o the

state.

Normally, such graphic-intensive

programs are poor candidates or

VDI. Aetna and American Electric

Power roll out VDI or office work-

ers and outsourcers who use the

same set o applications with little

user-level customization.

FAU, on the other hand, can push

3D graphics to remote users by

using PCoIP and zero-clients rom

Teradici, as well as server-side K1

and K2 graphics cards rom nVidia,

which virtualize and share GPU

processing with all running VMs.

For 3D graphics, meanwhile, FAU

relies on 18 10G bps Lenovo blade

servers, 1Gbps nVidia K1 GPUs and

ATI 3D accelerator cards. Each

server will eventually be able to

support up to 16 concurrent users

but at $16,000 per setup, they are

costly.

FAUs VDI implementation

is just three months along, and

Neelakanta says its about as close

to cutting edge as you can get

today. In act, FAU presented its

case study alongside Teradici at

VMworld 2013.

Storage, licensing,connectivity still stifleVDI implementation

Even with those technological

advancements, storage specifi-

cally, the gigabits o IOPS allocated

to each user still rates as the

aspect o VDI implementation

area to figure out first, Neelakanta

says. Without the right storage

architecture to provide users with

so much IOPS that they dont know

their desktop is being hosted in the

cloud, VDI suffers or ails altogether.

Microsof licensing will probably

cause fits or most olks, too. Finally,

complexity and connectivity can

be inhibitors. I you dont have a

highly automated IT inrastructure

with a CMMI score o 2 or 3, 10Gbps

switches over ast LANs and broad-

band or remote workers, then

attempting VDI is probably a bad

idea.

Even though its really good stuff,

until those [issues] get solved, this

remains a niche market, Gartners

Margevicius says.

Allen Bernard is a Columbus,

Ohio-based writer who covers IT

management and the integration

o technology into the enterprise.

You can reach him via email at

[email protected] ollow

him on Twitter @allen_bernard1.

mailto:writer182%40hotmail.com?subject=https://twitter.com/allen_bernard1https://twitter.com/allen_bernard1mailto:writer182%40hotmail.com?subject=


13/22

LeverageforBYODCan VDI help manage personal devices connecting to corporate networks? There are pros

and cons to this approach, but early deployments look good. By Tom Kaneshi ge

T H I N K S T O C K D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 3 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 4 I T W O R L D . C O M 1 3


14/22


15/22


ing closely with Microsof engi-

neers and a sofware company

called VitalHub to basically port

Windows desktop sofware to

touch-riendly Windows 8 so that it

could be served up in a virtualized

environment to iPads. The end-

goal is to have a touch-enabled,

tablet-sized version o Cerner run-

ning on the iPads Saari browser.

Windows 8 is the only touch-

enabled OS that you can really

virtualize, Wright says.

Fortunately or Wright, Seattle

Childrens Hospitals clinicians didnt

pound on his door demanding

access to the Cerner native iOS app

on their iPads. One o the reasons is

that clinicians use the Cerner app

mostly at the hospital where theres

a Windows machine with a large

monitor around every corner.

This keeps them rom reaching

or an iPad, Wright says.

Microsofts monkey wrenchEven more conusing is Micro-

sofs role in all o this.Forresters Johnson advises CIOs

to careully consider the uture o

Windows desktop applications or

their systems o record beore mak-

ing the jump to virtual desktops. I a

CIO anticipates a long-term depen-

dency on the Windows desktop

say, five years and beyond then

he might want to consider one o

a hal-dozen virtual desktop solu-

tions.

For most large organizations, vir-

tualizing Windows applications to

support BYOD would be very likely

a medium to long-term solution,

Johnson says.

The problem is that Microsof

seems to be moving away rom

virtual desktops and toward a new

mobile application model, thus

diminishing the need or tradi-

tional desktop sofware. In addition,

Johnson points out that Microsof

is putting little marketing resources

behind Microsof VDI and Client

Hyper-V.

We think the Windows desktop

will be increasingly used or a sub-

set o all the work that people do,

Johnson says.

Virtual desktops face BYODsecurity challenges

The virtual desktop also isnt a

panacea or BYODs security woes.

The reality is that some employ-

ees will need to download corpo-

rate data on their BYOD tablets or

phones and work offline instead o

always having to fire up an onl ine

virtual session. Seattle Childrens

Hospitals solution to this problem

is an Outlook plug-in rom Accel-

lion, a mobile file-sharing sofware

vendor. Security-cleared employ-

ees can use Accellion to attach a

file and send it ully encrypted to a

home email address.

Wright cant wipe BYOD com-

puters, so instead he leans on user

agreements and checks Accellion

logs to make sure those files are

being handled properly.

For some CIOs, that might not be

good enough. I CIOs think desktop

virtualization gets them out o the

BYOD security challenge, John-

son says, theyre sorely mistaken.

Employees accessing, say, an EMR

system rom a personal iPad via

a virtualization session, or even a

terminal services session, doesntabsolve them rom an auditors

requirements.

The auditor will still expect the

CIO to have some control over the

iPad, Johnson says. It might be

as simple as enorcing a passcode

or detecting whether or not the

device is jailbroken and then deny-

ing access i it is.

Nevertheless, Wright says he

fields weekly calls rom peers

who want to know i VDI can help

them make sense o t he BYOD

trend thats stampeding toward

them. Afer all, corralling personal

devices using a mishmash o

mobile device management sof-

ware, user policies, geo-encing

and other emerging mobile tools is

a Herculean task.

I think its a way or IT to get

out o having to control personal

devices, a way to give the user the

inormation without having to

worry about the device, Wright

says, adding, Its really turned into

an elegant solution or BYOD.

Tom Kaneshige covers Apple,

BYOD and Consumerization o IT

or CIO.com. Follow him on Twitter@kaneshige.

https://twitter.com/kaneshigehttps://twitter.com/kaneshige


16/22

Trail-

blazersCompanies take bold steps intodesktop virtualization as benefitsbegin to outweigh challenges.Learn how VDI technology isbeing deployed in mission-critical

workflows. By Stacy Collett

T H I N K S T O C K D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 3 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 4 I T W O R L D . C O M 1 6


17/22


At the new Johns Hopkins

Hospital in Baltimore,

the maxim do no harm

extends beyond caregiv-

ers to members o the technology

team, especially when they under-

take a sweeping desktop virtualiza-

tion project that could impact the

daily routine o up to 9,000 clini-

cians.

I were going to take on technol-

ogy change inside a critical care

setting, and with systems that

serve our sickest patients, weve

got to have a well-thought-out plan

or making sure it works and that

theres backup, says Stephen Sears,

director o cloud and virtualization

services at the 1.6 millio n-square-

oot hospital.

The sheer physical size o the

new hospital meant clinicians

would need to be more mobile

and rely more heavily on wireless

computing. In addition, caregivers

were adopting a new clinical docu-

mentation system, and Sears knew

that they would be spending much

more time on desktops and mobile

devices.

So the IT team proceeded cau-

tiously with one o the largest

desktop virtualization projects

o its kind one that combined

VMwares View desktop virtualiza-

tion product, the hospitals identity

management program, proximity

card technology and single-sign-on

capabilities. While the initial costs

were comparable to the costs asso-

ciated with implementation o ull

desktops, the improvements that

the virtual desktop in rastructure

(VDI) promised to yield in clini-

cians mobility and workflow and

ultimately patient care solidified

the projects business value.

The level o enthusiasm around

us giving them a portable desktop

was kind o crazy. It elt like I was

giving out stuff at an Oprah show,

Sears recalls. When he first showed

a group o child lie specialists how

they could take notebooks rom

session to session and i nteract

with applications in the data center,

they were amazed, he says. We

were real heroes.

While desktop virtualization

provides many benefits, until

recently, it has also come with con-

cerns about elusive ROI, scalability

and storage headaches, desktop

latency and slow adoption by skit-

tish users. But today many com-

panies are giving virtual desktops

a try anyway as workers demand

more mobility and IT departments

seek easier desktop management.

Companies with successul VDI

implementations have worked

through the obstacles and report

happy, more mobile and produc-

tive users, better security, ewer

IT headaches related to mainte-

nance and repairs, and minimal

new expenses. Whats more, many

companies that move to virtual

desktops already have virtualized

server environments, meaning

they have the storage, platorms

and licenses necessary to make

the VDI implementation ast and

relatively inexpensive.

I think theyve gotten a little

smarter about how they deploy

desktop virtualization, says Dick

Csaplar, an analyst at Boston-basedAberdeen Group. They dont look

at it as something that they spread

evenly across the whole organiza-

The level of enthusiasm around usgiving them a portable desktop was

kind of crazy. It felt like I was givingout stuff at an Oprah show.Stephen Sears,director o cloud and virtualization services, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore



18/22

i S T O C K P H O T O D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 3 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 4 I T W O R L D . C O M 1 8

tion. I think theyre much smarter

at targeting user groups and use

cases, and theyre not looking at it

as a panacea like server virtualiza-

tion.

There are still challenges associ-

ated with desktop virtualization. In

some cases, its not initially cheaper

than a ull desktop PC environ-

ment. Moreover, virtual systems

may require a lot o storage, and its

important to ensure that virtual

systems dont put undue demands

on IT resources at certain times.

But those who have embraced

desktop virtualization say the ben-

efits outweigh the challenges.I think the flexibility o al lowing

[users] to decide where and how

they do business is invaluable,

says Michael Fergang, vice presi-

dent and CIO at The Grange Mutual

Casualty Group, which deployed

about 150 virtual desktops in its

training and IT qual ity assurance

departments.

At audio communications manu-

acturer Plantronics in Santa Cruz,Cali., about a quarter o the 1,700

knowledge workers connect iPads

to a virtual desktop inrastructure.

They want to be able to do their

work whether on the road or here

at headquarters, and [they want

to] use apps that may not be sup-

ported on [mobile] pl atorms, such

as an expense report or a time

management tool, says CIO Tom

Gill.

When the first iPads began

trickling in, Gil ls team created a

virtual desktop pl atorm that gave

users access to applications that

typically dont work well on the

devices, such as Java. A second

platorm was also created to access

a ew business intelligence apps.

We want to be proactive, Gillsays. Instead o saying no [to work-

ers using their own devices], lets

figure out exactly what we can do.

The company had adopted virtual

servers and SANs years earlier,

which made the $50,000 invest-

ment on a virtual desktop platorm

really very minimal or a company

o our size, Gill adds.

IT consulting firm Digital Intel-

ligence Systems (DISYS) in McLean,Va., is migrating its 500 U.S. employ-

ees to virtual desktops to standard-

ize processes and reduce the num-

Added advantage

VIRTUAL DESKTOPS

TO THE RESCUE

Desktop virtualizationcan save the day in a cri-sis. At Iowa Workforce

Development, while upgradingmore than 150 desktops fromWindows XP to Windows 7, atemporary staffer accidentallydragged a folder for all of theagencys PCs into the reimagingfolder, and machines all across

the state started to undergo thereimaging process.

When we saw what washappening we imme-diately shut itdown, but we

had affected more than 150machines at that point, CIO

Gary Bateman recalls. Themachines were inoperable atthat time. We knew it would takedays and possibly weeks to getthose back online.

Instead, Bateman decidedto create virtual desktops outof the affected machines byrunning an Ubuntu operatingsystem on a Linux kernel andadding a VMware View client

that hooks to the virtual desk-top. We were able to get all150 machines up and running

in probably two to threehours, he says.



19/22


ber o tools its workers use. The

firm issues VDI instances to all new

employees, as well as to workers

whose PCs are up or reresh. But

employees also have the option

o using their own devices at work

and will be reimbursed or a por-

tion o the costs, depending on

their business unction. Or they

can receive a stipend to buy the

device o their choice.

The goal is to make [using tech-

nology] simple, says IT director

Collin Hachwi. We dont want

them bypassing us. We dont want

to be viewed as a barrier to any-

thing. We want to support theirworkflow and their day-to-day

operations.

Trial and errorIowa Workorce Development

has used virtual desktops or three

years at its Des Moines headquar-

ters and at 19 offices statewide.

More than 75% o its 650 employ-

ees use VMware View on thin

clients or daily operations. Andmembers o the public access state

employment services via virtual

desktops at public locations such

as libraries.

CIO Gary Bateman says desktop

virtualization helped the agency

streamline operations, improve

services to the public and save

money on maintenance and

upgrades. But that wasnt always

the case.

When the agency first rolled out

virtual technology, the systems ran

on old equipment. The servers

and SANs were not up to par, Bate-

man recalls. Desktops and serv-

ers ran slow, he says, and people

got a bad taste in their mouth. We

really had to overcome that and

prove to p eople that they wouldrun correctly. Once the agency

moved to NetApp SANs with solid-

state disk drives, floating virtual

desktops, which are newly created

rom a master template each time

a user signs on, were created more

quickly. People loved them, he

says.

Virtual desktops were so suc-

cessul that when the state was

aced with closing 16 o its 35unemployment offices, Bateman

launched 3,000 virtual desktops at

500 public locations to give resi-

dents many o the same services

they would have received at those

offices all with no new invest-

ment on the back end, since serv-

ers, sofware and licenses were

already in place.

Looking ahead, Iowa aces

a consolidation mandate, and

the data o all agencies will be

combined into a couple o data

centers, Bateman explains. As we

move all o our equipment into a

common data center, were looking

into how to use that VDI or other

agencies, as well.

Solving storage andspeed issues

Some early adopters ound

that virtual desktops required too

much storage, especially when

completely re-creating each

desktop on the back end. Storage

space quickly ran out, and systems

slowed to a crawl when the desk-

tops needed upgrades or virus

patches. That problem has largely

been solved with better time man-agement and by replacing static

desktops with floating virtual desk-

tops.

Pros and consVIRTUAL DESKTOP

BENEFITS...

43%Quicker applicationinstallation

41%Reduced desktop support

30%Improved controlof desktops

24%Support for at-home

workers

...AND CHALLENGES

46%Software licensing terms

37%Uncertain ROI

33%Lack of budget

32%

End-user acceptanceSource: Aberdeen Group

survey with 121 respondents;

November 2012



20/22


In 2011, when DISYS piloted vir-

tual desktops or 45 days with 30

employees, the firm was stunned

by how much data users had

stored on their desktops. Users

with 300GB drives had filled up250 gigs, Hachwi recalls. We had

not allocated that to every user it

was more o a 30GB size limit. The

pilot group had to cull through data

and decide what would be rel-

egated to a private cloud. That was

a very strenuous process, he adds.

It took some people longer to get

onto VDI because o it.

DISYS also went with floating

desktops, where sessions aredestroyed every time a user signs

out and rebuilt when he signs back

in, with data and preerences in

place. It made the most sense or

us. It also kept the overall size o the

required inrastructure very low,

Hachwi says.

With a single template or creat-

ing virtual desktops, the upgrades

and virus patches are carried out

at one time. And because desktopsessions are destroyed, viruses are

less likely to spread throughout the

organization.

Managing I/O issues is also criti-

cal to a smooth user experience.

Virtual desktops are volatile, and

you really have to have your arms

around that and understand that

youre going to have to plan or thatvolatility such as rom a resource

consumption standpoint, says

Adam Wilson, enterprise applica-

tions supervisor at The Grange

Mutual Casualty Group.

I might have one user that runs

reports at certain times a month.

Theyre sharing resources with

other olks, so they can affect [over-

all perormance], Wilson says. Or i

500 people sit down at 8 a.m. to login, thats a completely different sce-

nario on a regular desktop versus a

virtual desktop. You have to archi-

tect around those scenarios.

Safety netsVDI setups also give IT depart-

ments more control over data. At

DISYS, weve had instances where

our sales guys lost their laptops,

which lef sensitive data vulner-able, Hachwi says. Now, all the data

resides in the data center, so i they

lose or break the device, they just

sign in to something else. Its defi-

nitely a ail-sae or us, he says.

At Johns Hopkins Hospital,

where speed and accuracy can

be a matter o lie and death, Sears

made sure there was a backupoption or clinicians systems.

They can always get to the old

apps by walking up to a [PC at a]

clinical workstation, Sears says.

Its not hard to maintain the old

system, and clinicians are not

conused when switching back

and orth between systems. Today,

about 5,000 clinicians use virtual

desktops daily. Others preer the

old system. And some such as anICU nurse who spends most o the

day with one patient, or example

just dont need VDI. We dont orce

people to do any one thing, he

says. They have options.

Stacy Collett is a Computerworld

contributing writer. You can reach

her at [email protected].

mailto:stcollett%40comcast.net?subject=VDImailto:stcollett%40comcast.net?subject=VDI


21/22


How tostartA typical VDI project has many parts. Heres an implementationchecklist to get you started. By David Strom

What kinds o clients will you

use? Your choices are one o the

many specialty-built zero-ootprint

clients, ordinary PCs that you can

reuse rom your existing inventory

or mobile devices such as tablets.

Dont orget about buying newmonitors as well.

What will your network stor-

age choices be? Typically, many

installations deploy some kind o

storage area network, but there

are many ways to configure these,

including mixing SANs with solid-

state adapters to i mprove disk

perormance or or caching. Tra-

ditional disks are used or archival

storage. Also i nclude the cost oany storage management sofware

solutions.

Will you need a higher-

powered graphics card? For some

applications, it makes sense to

purchase graphics cards with

more processing power or more

on-board memory to cope with

the increased graphics burden thata virtualized application places

upon a client system.

Which network transer pro-

tocols will you employ? The more

popular ones are PCoIP(VMware/

Teradici), HDX(Citrix) and Micro-

sof RemoteFX. All three have ways

to more efficiently move graphics

as bitmaps across an Ethernet net-

work.

What will the cost o anynew data center inrastructure

be? Your VDI solution may require

boosting the perormance o exist-

ing network routers or switches to

handle the higher network traffic

generated rom the virtual desk-

tops. You might want to examine

end-to-end application peror-

mance monitoring tools rom start-

ups such as Aternityand AppNetato figure out exactly what you

will need as your VDI population

increases. You might also want to

consider moving to one o the con-

verged network/storage/virtualiza-

tion inrastructures rom vendors

such as Cisco Systems, Dell, IBM or

Hewlett-Packard.

Do you need desktop virtual-

ization sofware? It seems obvious,

but it still needs to be part o thecalculation.

What about image manage-

ment sofware? Each o the major

VDI vendors, along with numerous

third parties, offers tools to make

the deployment o different custom

desktop images more manageable.

Will you need to adjust sof-

ware licenses including desktop

OS? You may have to change yourcurrent enterprise agreement or

purchase licenses applicable to vir-

tual desktops. Also, you might use

your VDI project to migrate your

last existing Windows XP users to a

more modern OS such as Windows

7 or 8, both o which are more VDI-

riendly.

David Strom writes about network-

ing and communications topics.You can reach him through his

web siteor ollow him on Twitter

@dstrom.and speaks
http://www.teradici.com/pcoip-technologyhttp://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/products/citrixhdxtechnologydatasheet.pdfhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817578%28v=ws.10%29.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817578%28v=ws.10%29.aspxhttp://www.aternity.com/http://www.appneta.com/http://strominator.com/https://twitter.com/dstromhttps://twitter.com/dstromhttp://strominator.com/http://www.appneta.com/http://www.aternity.com/http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817578%28v=ws.10%29.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817578%28v=ws.10%29.aspxhttp://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/products/citrixhdxtechnologydatasheet.pdfhttp://www.teradici.com/pcoip-technology


22/22

Date post:	03-Jun-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	julia-silver-marson
View:	219 times
Download:	0 times

VDI AST-0109266 ITWspotlight 1210 v3

Documents