Hi All,

My company where I'm working on is quite small (less than 60 users) Software house, ranging from Dell laptop and HP desktop some of them installed with Windows XP and Windows Vista OEM licenses, To simplify the hardware I'm thinking to get 60x Windows 7 Professional VM using Open License for just once off payment (not yearly subscription) on the VMWare ESXi and they can just remote desktop into those VM while the existing workstation is clean reinstall back to the factory settings.

The VM Server host specs:
two of Dell R710 Intel E5500 @ 2.66 GHz with 32 GB RAM (each holding 30 VMs)
Dell MD3000i iSCSI SAN with 15k rpm 14x300 GB RAID-5

Benefits:
1. Centralized environment
2. Rather than worrying about broken workstation hardware and maintaining it, every person can just bring their own hardware into the office :-o)
3. Simplify backup

The licensing scheme:
1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition --> for creating unlimited Windows Server VM approx. USD $ 2000 per CPU sockets
2. VMware Technology Alliance partner Not For Resale license --> approx. USD $5000 annually
3. Windows 7 Professional Open License greement (once off payment only).

Would that be a good idea for a developer to remote desktop into the VM, while their laptop can be use for something else (eg. playing music or browsing the web)

any thought and comments would be greatly appreciated here.

Thanks
AWT