VDI Deployment

We’re looking in the process of setting up a VDI trial, if memory serves some of you already have VDI up and running, if you don’t mind me asking I’m curious as to…

• What spec hardware your running it on?
• Ratio of users to processors/core?
• User perceptions of VDI – we did a small terminal server/thin client deployment a few years back and the users didn’t like it much which lead to it being retired early!

Thanks in advance

Using VDI-in-a-Box here which is hosted on a HP DL385 G7 server with a PCI-E SSD.

Have done plenty of blog posts about it on my website (will save me typing out everything here!) - VDI | my world of IT

Plenty of other users on here have VDI on various other solutions but the biggest thing I always ask myself before running a IT project is why am I doing this?

C7000 Blade chassis

10 BL460c G6 dual 6 Core Xeon, 96GB Ram.

Each Server supports 44 Desktops.


Client HW is a Mix of T5740 terminals, 4320T ( thin laptops ) and fat devices connecting.

Performance for most users is fine.

There are a few issues but generaly more reliable than loads of FAT clients.

Rob

Hello,

VMware View - 4 x Dell R710 Servers (2 x Quad Core with 72GB Ram) - iSCSI Connected to a Datacore SAN (runs onto of Windows) with 3 x PCIe 960GB SSDs. Each server handles about 30-40 users depending on the software being used.

Citrix XenDesktop - 8 Nodes (Intel E3 - Quad Core with 32GB Ram along with a single SSD - 240GB, no RAID). Each node handles 12 desktops fine.

Originally we used Windows Terminal Services - this wasn't too popular. VMware View was originally used for Remote Access, which is popular. We decided to migrate Windows TS to Virtual Desktops, however, View was too expensive hence why we got Citrix. It also saved a lot on backend SAN Storage etc. Means that usability is similiar to a traditional desktop - just to slowness of older Thin Clients that are an issue now!

Thanks,

Rob

Just planning our upgrade path soo too, so will be building a test environment on some old ML380G...... to run XenServer 6 and the latest XenDesktop Release..


Rob

We've done some pretty expensive XenDesktop deployment, but now leaning more toward a mix of XenApp and XenDesktop as the VDA licensing for Win7 virtual desktops (plus additional hardware requirements) can all add up to a lot, whereas RDS CALs are much cheaper and by using XenApp we can host at least double the number of users per server compared to XenDesktop.

XenApp gives the same experience, runs most apps still and XenDesktop is used for the apps that don't behave under XenApp. Under the Citrix campus agreement we can mix & match both to our liking.

Cheers
Dan

Yeah, we are going to revisit XenApp as it never realy featured in the deployment.

I believe you can download full 60 day trials for all that is required..

Our next step may be looking at running vMware server again with XD/Xenapp over the top.

Rob