Citrix VDI now retired from internal pupil use. Anyone else doing the same?

[superatticman]

After nearly 5 years of usage, we have now decommissioned Citrix VDI from our internal pupil system. It will now purely be used for Staff remote access and internal Staff BYOD access. That will also be held to review in the future.

 

I've nothing against the technology at all. In the right environment it's a fantastic infrastructure which ticks both technical and business case boxes. However, for us it hasn't really served a purpose apart from complicating things and requiring an extremely high level of technical know how to administer and procure. I've seen plenty of arguments on here from a technical point of view about how it can be made to look virtually identical to a decent spec physical PC etc.

 

From a different angle, has anyone managed to gain tangible benefits from a business case point of view?

 

I'd love to see some figures if that is the case.

 

And has anyone else retired VDI from their network? Or are we going against the grain here. Be interested to know.

[bashy]

We have moved a hundred desktops onto vdi. The start up cost are huge but year 3 onward has been a benefit, this allowed allow us to convert old desktop to thin clients, But yes I can see why to end the project. We use it a lot on BYOD to present a unified desktop.

[MatthewL]

When I was in my previous job we had no choice purely down to 1 application and I lost track of how many times the farm was rebuilt. We ended up extending to a full desktop to allow full BYOD working and access from home and also as we were merging some 10+ networks/domains into 1 we could have 1 platform that did work across it all till it was migrated allowing staff to work from where ever. It setup right its a good tool if used right.

[Achandler]

We have decommissioned our number of clients from approc 150 to 50 or so. Keeping them alive for ones scattered in classrooms where we can't afford to change and to allow staff remote access.

 

In fairness the thin cliets/ VDI were being used for what they weren't designed to be originally, i.e. photoshop etc. They were also put in place to discourage people stealing from the school because essentially they were useless if stolen. They have done a decent shift though, a lot of them are 7-10 years old, and they are useless when you need 1-5 computers for research in a classroom. Whether there is a business case for them, I don't know, I don't think you save real costs over time, by the time you account for initial costs, ongoing licensing (Microsoft and Citrix), so then the issue becomes are they easier or harder to look after then fat clients. I think they are probably just as much effort if not more. People selling VDIs always say the saving is in the time, but in reality it takes no time at all to reimage classrooms now, to adminstrate updates etc.

[PotNoodleTech]

Yep from 100 clients down to 28 at the mo and will be getting rid of those 28 as soon as humanly possible.

 

So much faster and more reliable with Fat Clients.

 

Most cost and reliability/support savings from VDI are a myth when you drill down into the finances and logistics with a fine tooth comb. Also, as you've found out, trying it in the real world in anger throws up issues that you may not have expected due to VDI/Thin clients inherent inflexibility compared to fat clients.

 

For me, £250 fat clients with SSD in all rooms means they take 30 mins to build using WDS - I literally don't have to touch them again.