Entering Virtual Enviroment - Questions

[ahuxham]

Morning Folks,

Just after a bit of advice really.

We're due to open a new remote soon and have a requirement for 5-20 PC's down in the new office, both sites will be connected via site to site VPN on our BT POP 10MB leased carrier.

We're currently exploring various avenues to achieve this and one of those is Thin Client / VDI's as we have an in house database system that would prove to intensive for our leased lines, so having the data computed on our backbone would save massive traffic between sites and free up our other services going between sites.

I'm currently "evaluating" VMWare View's product range. Have and ESXI server setup, resource pools and the assosciated management applications (VMWare Infrastructure Management, and VMWare View Server)

Will be evaluation XenServer / XenDesktop as well.

We are just trying to achieve or evaluate a situation where 5-15 Wyse terminals can connect to their respective desktops saved on either platform.

Could someone if possible point me in any directions for reading, applications needed and the likes. Still not quite sure what the role of the "Connection Broker" is, and why the terminals cant simply RDP into their respective VDI stored on the server.

[tmcd35]

AFAIK the TC's could just RDP their respective VDI. However I believe the View protocol has faster/smooter video handeling and their may be some other benefits of using a connection broker.

For 5-20 machines though this solution may be a little overkill. Do they need their own individual machines? Have you thought of using a straight forward Terminal Server?

[ahuxham]

AFAIK the TC's could just RDP their respective VDI. However I believe the View protocol has faster/smooter video handeling and their may be some other benefits of using a connection broker.

For 5-20 machines though this solution may be a little overkill. Do they need their own individual machines? Have you thought of using a straight forward Terminal Server?

Our Database will not run over Terminal Servers, nor are we licensed to-do this, added the fact, the cost to upgrade licensing could cost us massive amounts.

[Theblacksheep]

Could someone if possible point me in any directions for reading, applications needed and the likes. Still not quite sure what the role of the "Connection Broker" is, and why the terminals cant simply RDP into their respective VDI stored on the server.

The VDI connection broker manages the desktops.... it controls the logins.

it:

* enable/disable desktops
* enable disable users/group from logins
* Control availability of desktops.
* its also the central point of contact for web logins, that you can point to your Firewall/isa so you dont have to do desktops individually. Think scale and multiple web log-ins.



Keep in mind that VMware view is currently only for ESX 3.5... a vSphere update is meant to be released this year and there should be a bunch of new features, improvements etc

It can also be used for a bunch of other stuff, we use them for ALAN testing and for the children to forfill certain ciric activities that arent possible on the standard desktops. non persistant disks are very usefull

[tmcd35]

Does the connection broker also allow hot desking? So the end user always gets the same VDI regardless to whichever TC they logon from?

I was under the impression that VMWare view was more expensive to set up than Terminal Servers - once all the licensing and everything was taken into account.

I suppose a cheap simple way to get what you want would be to assign each Wyse TC it's own XP VM on ESX/Xen to RDP into. Then just treat each TC as a regular fat client.

[Theblacksheep]

Does the connection broker also allow hot desking? So the end user always gets the same VDI regardless to whichever TC they logon from?

Yes, you can specify user/group to specific VM or a 'linked clone' VM (dynamically cloning and adding VMs as needed).

You can timeout VMs if they stay logged on. You can also schedule reboots etc (i reboot every lesson change for the VMs that are used for forfilling ciric needs)

You'll need vcenter 2.5 for linked clones, this isnt supported yet in vsphere.

Cost wise you can get an 'enterprise' VDI started pack for about 1k this includes the enterprise (vmotion, drs etc) ESX licence, connection to a vcenter and 10 VDI connections. Additional VDI licences are about £400 for another 10.

[ahuxham]

and if this looks attractive you may be better of just using terminal services

Read my reply to TM about our licensing issues with terminal services.

[apaton]

Another solution to consider

SUN VDI3 with Sun Ray's

This can use VMWARE View or more interestingly uses the free VirtualBox. Combine this with Sun Unified Storage/ZFS you have a complete system with, fast cloning technology.

Sun Ray is an Ultra Thin Desktop technology using ALP protocol.



An excellent blog can be found at Jumping VDI


Andy

[linescanner]

The Sun VDI 3 setup could allow you to do this at a decent price.

For the small number you are talking about this could be done on a single server (yes I know, no resilience)