New VDI Project

[techie08]

Hi Everyone

 

In the summer im looking at implementing VDI namely Xendesktop and XenApp. Im looking at a basic startup setup with 2 servers with 2 x 6core CPUs and 96gb RAM each and 40 VDI connections.

 

Im just after opinions really, good and bad on other peoples implementation of XenDesktop/XenApp and any potential road blocks i could come across? As i dont have much knowledge on how to implement XenDesktop, if anyone can PM details of good companies that they have had to do the install would be great.

 

We do run software like Solidworks 2012/12, Adobe CS3 master suite collection and MissonMaker so feedback anyone using this software in a Xendesktop/Xenapp environment would great.

 

Many Thanks

Edited May 22, 2012 by techie08

[gshaw]

It's worth looking at VDI-in-a-box before you go down the XenDesktop route... it's now part of Citrix but doesn't need SAN storage so could work out considerably cheaper. Check out jamesfed's VDI open day thread, could be just what you need

[techie08]

The Xendesktop Setup i was looking at doesn't need a SAN either.

[FN-GM]

I was involved with a project in rolling out 15,000 Xenapp/ XenDesktop devices. We run Photoshop one some VDI's, it did work pretty well. The other software we didnt have.

[gshaw]

The Xendesktop Setup i was looking at doesn't need a SAN either.

 

That's interesting, very similar feature sets between XD and the Kaviza product in that case... always thought the main difference was the lack of shared storage requirement. How does XD do it with DAS?

[techie08]

That's interesting, very similar feature sets between XD and the Kaviza product in that case... always thought the main difference was the lack of shared storage requirement. How does XD do it with DAS?

 

The solution that has been spec'd out for me has two hosts with 8 146 SAS drives in. Not really sure how it load balances etc. Im guesing there is a provisioning server on each host but im not 100% on that.

[Dave_O]

The real question you have to ask is why are you pursuing this path? Is it to save money? Because you think the technology is up to the job? Because you think it is more cost effective? Because the maintenance is less? Because you think you are future proofing?

 

How long do you think this solution will last? (or do you want it to last!) 5 year, 6 years?

 

I guarantee that if you buy something like a Dell 380 (about £380 per unit), you will have less trouble, it will work faster and it will probably last well beyond this time. The time for desktop VDI virtualisation is not yet upon us... my suggestion spend your money on physical stuff and wait.

 

How much are they asking for the whole solution and lets compare that to the price of the Dells

Edited May 22, 2012 by Dave_O

[FN-GM]

The time for desktop VDI virtualisation is not yet upon us... my suggestion spend your money on physical stuff and wait.

 

Can you expand on this please? Personally i think it is.

[Tallwood_6]

The real question you have to ask is why are you pursuing this path? Is it to save money? Because you think the technology is up to the job? Because you think it is more cost effective? Because the maintenance is less? Because you think you are future proofing?

 

How long do you think this solution will last? (or do you want it to last!) 5 year, 6 years?

 

I guarantee that if you buy something like a Dell 380 (about £380 per unit), you will have less trouble, it will work faster and it will probably last well beyond this time. The time for desktop VDI virtualisation is not yet upon us... my suggestion spend your money on physical stuff and wait.

 

How much are they asking for the whole solution and lets compare that to the price of the Dells

 

I think there are economies of scales and you have to look at what you will be using it for i.e ICT suite library and evaluate.

[techie08]

Its good to know people's point of view with this, that's why I posted. I've been doing months of research and to be honest I find my self going round in circles half the time! I've been to one school using XenDesktop with over 200 clients successfuly. Im also looking at Xen for the longer term to try and reduce the cost of hardware spent in ICT Suites when refreshes are needed.

[glennda]

96Gb ram for 40 VDI connections? Seems a little ott IMHO unless you are buying the hardware to expand further in the future.

 

Have you considered Vmware View? Or is the Vram costings taking it well out of price range?

[techie08]

96Gb ram for 40 VDI connections? Seems a little ott IMHO unless you are buying the hardware to expand further in the future.

 

Have you considered Vmware View? Or is the Vram costings taking it well out of price range?

 

Defiantly to expand in the future. I've looked at view but I thought the features like Xenapp were better.

[glennda]

Defiantly to expand in the future. I've looked at view but I thought the features like Xenapp were better.

 

fair enough i've used both but i'm in the vmware camp but i work for a vmware partner so would be!

[Dave_O]

OK. It's unclear from your posts whether you work in a school or are a supplier of solutions (local authority, vendor etc) so I will assume nothing.

 

In five or six years time there may be some killer solution that make VDI a must have. At the moment having sat in hundreds of lessons with staff and students both using VDI and desktop/laptops I can tell you that every one of them to a man found the VDI solution frustrating both in terms of speed and functionality. Now it doesn't matter if you (or I for that matter) think VDI is the best thing since sliced bread, if the people using it don't like it and want it taken out then my money is on them.

 

My guess is now you are coming up with all sort of thought like "this idiot has no idea how to implement an effective solution." Now on that one you will have to trust me. I have seen the so called best and when you get away from the techs and SLT most students and staff would rather have a PC or laptop. VDI works best in schools that don't know any better. Typical scenario is, school has crap IT, someone come in and sells them some VDI solution that costs the earth, school has no idea how to maintain it, spend loads on maintenance. 5 years down the line someone comes in and sells them.... and the cycle goes on. ( Based on a true story - names withheld to protect the innocent)

 

I've learnt the hard way that the most effective solutions are those that come from the staff not from some technical bod (like me). From my rounds in over 50 schools where I take the time to talk to staff and students, they want PCs, laptops and I have to admit now mobile devices. Yes I know you can run VDI on PCs, laptops and other sundry devices but why abstract from the physical, it just adds a layer of complexity which is neither needed nor wanted. It may be easier to manager, more secure? not really we keep nothing on the physical box of any importance. I have to ask, therefore, who are we doing this for? Us, to make life easy, or staff and students? I know where my money is going and it aint VDI

[glennda]

You could run 40 VDI sessions from just one of those hosts IMHO

[techie08]

The second would be for failover, just in case!

[Dave_O]

Wrt VMware view, it is not cost effective for most schools. Have you factored in the cost of the Windows licenses you will need for the thin clients? This on its own makes it less viable than physical boxes with OEM licenses where you can use your EES. With thin clients they are not covered by EES (unless they have a flavour of Windows on them)

 

Does your solution include clients? or are you reusing kit?

Edited May 22, 2012 by Dave_O

[FN-GM]

96Gb ram for 40 VDI connections? Seems a little ott IMHO unless you are buying the hardware to expand further in the future.

 

Have you considered Vmware View? Or is the Vram costings taking it well out of price range?

 

Thats about 2GB per VM plus a little bit spare, sounds about right to me. My former places had 150 users on these spec servers using XenApp and server 2008 R2

 

This wont apply to a school but if setup correctly there are cost savings involved. The company i worked for installed 800 devices and saved $7,000,000 and got extra functionality and more flexibility.

 

 

I have been unofficially looking at VDI options for the new school build at my place. There will be allot of hot desking. Nobody will have a dedicated classroom or office. Staff will use common rooms and hot desk. VDI will be a must for some users and will probably use XenApp for the ones who dont have fussy, specialist apps or need abit more of a kick. The user will log onto a ThinClient and will either get a VDI or XenApp session based on the way the account it setup.

Edited May 22, 2012 by FN-GM

[Dave_O]

Why do you need VDI for this? Roaming profiles and a well managed desktop allow any machine to look and feel like your own!

 

Does your solution not support memory over commit?

Edited May 22, 2012 by Dave_O

[glennda]

Wrt VMware view, it is not cost effective for most schools. Have you factored in the cost of the Windows licenses you will need for the thin clients? This on its own makes it less viable than physical boxes with OEM licenses where you can use your EES. With thin clients they are not covered by EES (unless they have a flavour of Windows on them)

 

Does your solution include clients? or are you reusing kit?

 

Dave in some cases it is cost effective. Thin station is very good on old kit. With View I take a rough cost of about 250 per machine but it varies obviously with quantity. Also when it comes to replace the hardware in 4 years time you have the licensing in place and a thinclient is cheap as chips. In some circumstances it is cost effective solution.

@techie08 - failover is good but it would be cheaper to store spare parts for the one server....

 

Also if you want proper failover you would need a san in the middle. I've just built a iscsi one running about 5 vm's from a Dl380 G4 with decent SCSI disks and Raid controller using Open - E

[glennda]

Why do you need VDI for this? Roaming profiles and a well managed desktop allow any machine to look and feel like your own!

 

Does your solution not support memory over commit?

 

Memory over commit is standard with pretty much anything same with Thin provisioning of HDD space but it can come back to bite you in the back side.

 

@FN-GM 2gb per VM seems rather alot to be honest from what i have been working on. I recently was working on a host system which used view for around 50 clients from 1 DL380.

 

Also with Thin clients you can connect from anywhere securely whereas having students at home on a snow day its not easy to connect them to a desktop inside school otherwise, or when they are ill etc.

Edited May 22, 2012 by glennda

[FN-GM]

@Dave_O quotes dont seem to work...

 

Anyway That is all well and good but for these reasons VDI would be better.

• When hotdesking staff can just disconnect the session and connect in another location. Everything will be open no need to log off and on again.
  
• The apps follow the staff. Some computers around school may have different apps, different versions and different OS. You can assign an OS to a user and not a machine. This can be done with XenApp but some apps dont work as well with that as they do with XenDesktop.
  
• Remote access it better, connect to the VDI, the machine they always use.
  
• Easier to manage the machines
  
• Saves licensing costs. If one users needs say photoshop and they use 5 computers. You buy one license and put it on the VDI rather than each machine.
  
• Thinclients last longer than desktops, money saving there.
  

Edited May 22, 2012 by FN-GM

[FN-GM]

Memory over commit is standard with pretty much anything same with Thin provisioning of HDD space but it can come back to bite you in the back side.

 

@FN-GM 2gb per VM seems rather alot to be honest from what i have been working on. I recently was working on a host system which used view for around 50 clients from 1 DL380.

 

Also with Thin clients you can connect from anywhere securely whereas having students at home on a snow day its not easy to connect them to a desktop inside school otherwise, or when they are ill etc.

 

All our machines have a min of 2GB ram. We wouldnt downgrade, my test VM is 1GB and runs out of RAM. Running a modern OS with apps etc will needs something better. You can get away with it now but maybe not for so long. The project i worked on had deployed 1,500 out of 15,000 and from what i learnt on that you would be lucky to get away with 1GB. It does also depend on the apps etc.

 

For student remote access XenApp is the way to go.

[glennda]

All our machines have a min of 2GB ram. We wouldnt downgrade, my test VM is 1GB and runs out of RAM. Running a modern OS with apps etc will needs something better. You can get away with it now but maybe not for so long. The project i worked on had deployed 1,500 out of 15,000 and from what i learnt on that you would be lucky to get away with 1GB. It does also depend on the apps etc.

 

For student remote access XenApp is the way to go.

 

I havn't used/seen VDI in the education enviroment for about 3 years so not sure, but from what i have seen with some rather heavy apps got away with quite a lot using View. Although we had to use XP for the client os (licesnsed already) for passthrough of some devices to provide voice to text conversion easily.

[Dave_O]

Memory overcommit is only a recent incarnation of Hyper-V. I ask the question only because the 96Gb with 2Gb per machine is excessive, 56Gb would probably be enough.

 

We will have to agree to disagree about value and cost effectiveness. I have been burnt by VDI and will not be revisiting it unless there is a huge leap forwards. We will keep watching and waiting. Ubiquitous wireless, mobile devices, using the software and hardware we have ... these are the areas where we will be focusing our attention over the next two years. Lets face it VDI is of much less importance than supporting staff and students in the effective use of the technology.